SKKN Some experience to teach english speaking skill for students in grade 5

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 The reason for choosing the topic

Nowadays the trend of international integration in many areas including the field of education has brought English up a very important position. English as a means of communication is the key to the treasure of humanity. On the other hand, the wide application of information technology has made learning English become urgent and indispensable. So learning English of Elementary School students is particularly concerned by students, parents, all the teachers of education in our country. English has become one of the main subjects in the curriculum of students.

Learning and using of English require a diligent process of creative practice of both learners and teachers. Especially in the situation of education reform as currently, teaching English in view of communcation methods is widely supported. According to this method, students have many opportunities to communicate, to practise language and to participate in practical situations: Learning coupled with practising.

Primary level English program has been implemented in all regions across the country. Innovation prominent feature of the content of this program is to privide maximum opportunities for students to practise four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing on the topics and situations, communication contents related to environments living at home and abroad. The change in facilitating the teaching and learning of English in secondary schools becomes teaching living language instead of teaching words as many years ago. However, in practical English skills forged for students, teachers confronted with many difficulties, especially listening skill forged. Through my school in the city area, when students started to learn foreign languages, most of them were very interested in English, but eventually they fell tired of it. Most of them are very bad at speaking skill. It’s difficult for them to understand the content of an essay or dialogue they hear. 

In my opinion, the purpose of learning English is to communicate it with the speakers. Speaking is the most difficult skill of all, especially for students living in the countryside or in the remote region. Through the years of teaching English in elementary school, I found that English communication skills of the students are still limited. To overcome this situation, I have researched some experiences to improve the speaking skill of primary students. The primary environment is the fundamental place forming habits and communication capacities. Frequent communication results in braveries  for students without fears of making mistakes in public speaking. As for students lacking proficiency in the mother tongue language, they had a lot of difficulties in getting access to a foreign language. Their timidity makes oral communication limited greatly.This is why I choose the theme of experience initiative: “Some experience to teach English speaking skill for students in grade 5 in Dien Bien 1 Primary School”. I hope I will get more and more my colleague’s ideas which I can complete my knowledge and my subject. It can help my students improve the communication.

1.2 The purpose of research

I am an English teacher in a primary school. I constantly research, activity innovate teaching methods to improve the quality of teaching and learning. I wrote this topic to share small experience with my colleagues to help students grade 5 of Dien Bien 1 Primary school improve the knowlegle and quality of English in communication.

– Find out the current status of teaching speaking skills.

             – Build the basic of teaching English and the methods to help students communicate.

              – Evaluate empirical results and draw up useful pedagogical lessons.

1.3 The objects of research

– Some experiences to teach English speakinging skill for students in grade 5 in Dien Bien 1 Primary School.

– Students of class 5D, 5E at Dien Bien 1 Primary school.

1.4 The methods of research

With this topic I have applied the following methodology:

– Observe students .

– Interview students.

– Check and compare learning outcomes of students.

– Study the textbook program, instruction manuals.

– Discuss with experienced colleagues in professional meetings.

2. CONTENT EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE

2.1. Theoretical basis of the experience initiative

Speaking skill is one of four key skills in teaching English to students with the ability to communicate quickly and practice to achieve the highest efficiency.

Elementary students, who have just entered the first grade, find it very difficult to learn how to speak and write Vietnamese well. They face many difficulties at school and most of them are weak at four skills listening, speaking, reading and writing. Especially they are afraid of speaking English at school due to many different causes such as being psychocogical shy, cautious, afraid of being laughed at when they are wrong. There are too many students in the class, teachers do not have enough time to help students develop their speaking skills for each student. It is said good training will help to overcome the limitations on less.

Developing speaking skill helps students with more practice conditions in the class, a foreign language class. It is necessary to review old and then introduce new lesson. All new knowledge is suggested gradually from the basic knowledge they have learned in the previous lessons. Therefore, students aren’t afraid of making new posts.

Through practicing speaking, teachers help students acquire knowledge in an active way, overcome the inhibition of only certain classes of gifted students participate in speech, so it will attract all students in participating classes’s activities including moderate or week children.

Enhencing the ability of students to behave in different situations, so students are interested and boldly confident when they practice communicating in English. School will become fun, funky and highly efficient.

2.2 . Situation issues before applying experience initiative

1. Advantages:

– Dien Bien 1 Primary School is located in the center of the city. The school has a teaching staff who are young, fit, enthusiastic, capable of teaching and always love their job. Qualifications and standards are 100%. In the field of education, my school is always interested, focused on teaching and learning, always enables teachers and students to fulfill the duties and assigned targets. And the school has always received the active support of the local government for many years, the school was rewarded as the advanced school in the city.

– Administrators of our primary school always care about and create favorable facilitities and profestional documents serving as teaching subjects: projectors, TV.

– Most students prepare books and supplies for learning English 

1. Disadvantages:

– Although our primary school is located in the center of the city, the situations of the students face many difficulties. There is not enough investment in English in time. Students also are not familiar with the method of learning in English listening skill as well as how to learn really effectively.Beside that, the total number of classes and students are overcrowded.

– To the parents, they are also difficult to check or guide children to learn a foreign language at home by subjects, which parents do not know. They have limitedly accessed to communicate in English outside school hours.

In addition, English is a difficult subject, the knowledge is difficult but takes less study time, and in the listening process they do not control what they will be listened. Words in tape are too fast, not familiar.  A lot of new words, word stress, sentence stress, intonation are very different and difficult for students to understand the content. The questions is how we overcome these weaknesses in order to contribute to improve the learning quality of speaking skill, help students communicate more confidently in using English as a second language, be proficient in words, sentences, especially for students in as grade 5 students in Dien Bien 1 Primary School.

In order to solve this problem, the first semester of school year     ……….., I had a small survey with two classes of grade 5 as follows:

Result:

With this result we can see the results of students in inadequate. The number of good students is low, while that one of weak students is high. So this fact requires teachers to find remedies, to help them improve their learning outcomes.

3. The solutions of implementation

Introduce the purpose of practice speaking English skill. There are many ways to practice speaking English such as: Speaking in individually, in pairs or in groups. If students practice in pairs or in groups, teachers have to divide into pairs, speak in group prior to his students to practice with each other. Teachers also have the discipline required to practice.

Practice speaking has to be systematic, ongoing and trould be  followed the guideline from easy to difficult.

Depending on the situations teachers should prepare the appropriate form of exercise for many pupils to practice speaking in each part of the lessons such as.

Speaking of freedom: Teachers creat contexts, themes for students to practice speaking in pairs or groups. In this section teachers can use pictures, photos in and out of textbook or close topics to them and teachers should ask students to speak in real situations.

Speaking is creating opportunities for students to communicate closely to real life. Teachers should encourage students to follow the guiderline test, accept mistakes. They should not make pressure, they will bring severe fear of making mistakes.

Teachers should make maximum use of classroom time, creating opportunities for students to be able to use the learning means efficiently.

Select a theme to develop, consistent with psychology, age and nature of such period of daily life, or the people on movie watched on television, on the favorite sport or someone they really, really love.

Teachers can question the nature of evil to students argue for exciting part.

Some solutions to develop speaking skill.

Solution 1: Impvoving the sudents’ awareness about learning how to communicate in English.

Propaganda is the first method chosen to raise awareness for students.

As you know, some primary students don’t pay more attention to learn and communicate English because it is only a optional subject in primary schools. It is also a difficult subject at school. Therefore I always persuade my students about the importance of communicate English. If the students speak English well, they can communicate English with the speakers, they can travel over the world, they can be easy to make friends with the foreigners, they can chat with the foreigners on facebook or zalo, they can be easy to find a good job or read newspapers, stories or watch films in English. Thank to my persuasion, my students can understand why they should communicate in English. When they understand the important role of speaking, they will be hard- working to take part in communicating English effectively.

Solution 2:Teacher should communicate in English much more than in Vietnamese in the classroom language classroom.

To help students speak English well, teacher should encourage students to use English as much as possible. Classes should provide opportunities for students to communicate in a variety of forms: Teacher – Whole class, Teacher-Student, Student-Student. The teacher is the person who guides the children to make simple situations and subject – based conversations.

Beginning of lesson:

– Good morning. How are you?

– Did you have a nice weekend?

– Have you done your homework?

– Let’s play a game now, shall we?

– Are you ready?

Ask for repetition:

– Would you mind repeating……?

– Could you say it again?

– Pardon?

During English lessons, Teacher should speak English much more than Vietnamese and use a mixture of the two languages.

Solution 3: Impvoving communication through using pictures

Nowadays, modern teaching methodology encourages the use of as many media, especially pictures as possible in classroom. At the same time, the innovation in English teaching at general education level demands that the schools should provide students with a good communicative skill in English. However, nowadays teaching English speaking at many primary schools as well as the using of pictures in English speaking classrooms to motivate learners haven’t been paid attention to. Therefore, this aims at researching the use of pictures in English speaking classes at primary schools and put forward some practical suggestions to improve the quality of English speaking teaching and learning. I usually use the pictures to help my students practice communicating in all of the lessons. My students are very practical when I use the pictures, my students can be easy to talk and understand.