SKKN Applying some useful speaking activities to enhance the 10th form students’ activeness at 4

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1. Reasons for choosing the research

        English nowadays has become more and more popular and has been widely used in Viet Nam. It is one of the major subjects in many schools and an indispensable means of communication at present. It is also a “useful tool” and a “master- key” to discover the world of science, technology, education, culture, business and diplomacy. With such a trend of development, learning English is, therefore, important than ever before. It is of such great importance that many students are more and more interested in learning English. All learning is active in a certain sense, but some kinds of learning are more active than others. Here, active learning is defined in one sense to mean that the learner uses opportunities to decide about aspects of the learning process. The stimulation of learning activities and regulation processes, or teaching students how to learn, is likely to lead to the best performance in the long run.

       Speaking skill is a very important skill when learning English. Today’s world requires that the goal of teaching speaking should improve students’ communicative skills, because, only in that way, learners can express themselves and learn how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in teacher communicative circumstances. Many language learners regard speaking ability as the measure of knowing a language. These learners define fluency as the ability to converse with others, much more than the ability to read, write or comprehend oral language.

       The real situation of English language teaching in Vietnam shows that speaking is the skill students usually neglect and are not good at even though they have very good grammatical knowledge. Students’ learning methods depend much on teachers; students still are quite passive in their learning process. In order to improve the students’ speaking ability, teachers can use many kinds of communicative activities.

       Being aware of this urgent problem, I have a great desire to study the current activeness of students especially the 10th form students at 4 Tho Xuan high school and to investigate the learning activities in speaking lesson. That is the reason why I choose the topic “Applying some useful speaking activities to enhance the 10th form students’ activeness at 4 Tho Xuan high school”.

1.2. Aims of the research

       The aims of the research are:

– To investigate the situation of teaching and learning speaking to the 10th graders in classroom.

– To investigate the effectiveness of using games in teaching speaking to the 10th graders at 4 Tho Xuan high school.

– To provide some suggestions and implications for the improvement of speaking teaching at 4 Tho Xuan high school by using games in addition to other techniques.

1.3. Object of the research

       The research focuses specifically on using games in warm up activity in teaching speaking to the 10th graders at 4 Tho Xuan high school, namely, 3 classes 10A2, 10A4 and 10A5.

1.4. Methods of the research

       In the process of carrying out this research, the survey questionnaire is used to collect data. The survey questionnaire including pre-task and post-task survey questionnaire is for students from 3 classes 10A2, 10A4 and 10A5 at 4 Tho Xuan high school.

1. CONTENT

2.1. Theoretical background

        Speaking, as Bygate (1997) definites, involves not only the use of the right sound in the patterns of rhythm and intonation, but also the choice of words and inflections in the right order to convey the right meaning.

        O’Malley and Pierce (1996) states that speaking seems to be an important skill that a learner should acquire. It is very important in order to enable students to communicate effectively through oral language because the disability of the students to speak may lead them to be unable to express their ideas even in a simple form of conversation.

        Common speaking activities

        A variety of activities can be used to develop speaking skills. Below are some common ones:

        * Role play

        * Information gap activity

        * Problem – solving

        * Other picture card activities

        Motivation

        Motivation is generally defined as an abstract concept used to describe the willingness of a person to expand to reach a particular goal. For language learners, mastery of a language may be a goal. In linguistic, sociolinguistic and second language acquisition, a number of language learner motivation models have been postulated.

         Oxford and Shearin (1996) points out: “Motivation is important because it directly influences how often use L2 learning strategies, how much students interact with native speakers, how much input they receive in the language being learnt (the target language), how well they do on curriculum-related tests, how high their general proficiency level becomes, and how long they preserve and maintain L2 skills after language study is over…”.

       Language games

       Language games mean games related to language. Hadfield (1987) classifies language games into may categories as follow:

       + Sorting, ordering, or arranging games.

       + Information gap games.

       + Guessing games.

       + Search games.

       + Matching games.

       + Labeling games.

       + Exchanging games.

       + Board games.

       + Role play games.

         Definition of “Teaching speaking”

– The goal of teaching speaking skill is communicative efficiency.

– Learners should be able to make themselves understand, using their current proficiency to the fullest. They should try to avoid confusion in the message due to faulty pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, and to observe the social and cultural rules that apply in each communicative situation.

– To help students develop communicative efficiency in speaking, teachers can use a balanced activities approach that combines: language input, structured output and communicative output.

– To use language as a means of expressing values and judgments and organize their thought in a meaningful and logical sequence.

– To produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns.

– To use word and sentence stress, and intonation.