SKKN Implementing extracurricular activities to enhance students’ speaking skill at high school

PART I: INTRODUCTION

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.1. Reason for choosing the topic

In recent years, English teaching plays a vital role in the period of

modernization and industrialization. English has been one of the most important

subjects at school. For the educational innovation, many considerable changes in

teaching and learning English at high schools in Vietnam have been made. In oder

to develop students’ communicative competence, the emphasis of English teaching

has been placed on the mastery of communicative language skills in which four

language skills including listening, speaking, reading and writing have been given

balanced weight in the national syllabus.

However, the quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning English in

many high schools in Vietnam in general and in Nghe An in particular, are not really

as good and high as expected , especially, teaching speaking English skill in upper

secondary school is a really big challenge for most teachers as it is not easy at all for

the teachers to grow the students’ interest in order that they have motivation to speak

English. In reality, Vietnamese students find it hard to be able to communicate in

English fluently. One reason is that teachers have not frequently created a suitable

communication environment for students to learn speaking skill. Most teachers rely

basically on the textbook and do not spend time designing a variety of interesting

activities. Learning English is to communicate; nevertheless, in speaking lessons

students are usually passive, write most of the time or keep silent and after speaking

lessons, students do not know how to express their ideas in real situations related the

topic they have learned in class.

As teachers of English, we find out that sometimes it can be difficult to keep

our students on task in four walls of the classroom . Therefore, we always try to look

for the most effective ways of teaching so that our students can understand the lesson

easily and love learning English. We have applied a variety of different ways of

teaching related using teaching aids and other technologies. Among those, the most

effective method that allows our students to participate in is extracurricular activities

since students can relax and learn the language at the same time without much

pressure of studying. In the recent years we have applied many extracurricular

activities at our school on a large scale and we have found that our students have

studied more actively and effectively. They are always more eager to access the

lesson than before. Our students always look forward to extracurricular activities.

Bearing those in mind, we would like to conduct the Teaching Experience entitled

“Implementing extracurricular activities to enhance students’ speaking skill at Cua

Lo high school” in oder to enhance speaking English opportunities for students and

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improve the quality of teaching and learning English at Cua Lo high school.

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.2. Aims of the study

The study is carried out to meet the following aims:

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To provide in-depth information on the types of extracurricular activities

learners participate in, as well as how they engage themselves in such outdoor

activities.

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To give a brief overview on outdoor activities and introduce samples of

extracurricular activities out of the class.

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To stimulate student creativity and activeness as well as reduce students’ stress

and pressure.

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–

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To improve the quality of teaching and learning English at Cua Lo high school.

To enhance English communication skill of the students at Cua Lo high school.

To suggest some feasible solutions to eliminate the demotivating factors in

English speaking lessons in order to better students’ English learning.

–

To suggest some extracurricular activities in teaching speaking skill.

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.3. Scope of the study

The study was going to be conducted at Cua Lo high school for average students

about applying extracurricular activities in increasing students’ interest in learning

speaking to students at Cua Lo high school. Due to the limitation of time, only class

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2D1.2 was asked to participate in the study.

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.4. Method of the study

Collect and study various materials relating to the subject to find out the

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orientation for the content of the topic, understand the research problem and solve

the problem with relatively accurate documentation.

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Attend English lessons of colleagues in and out of school to summerize some

valuable experience in holding extracurricular activities.

Carry out surveys and interviews among students as well as have small

discussions about the effectiveness of the application.

Discuss the problem of teaching method and skills to teach English speaking

skills through expert group meetings.

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–

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.5. Significance of the study

Hopefully, the findings will make a little contribution to the banks of teaching

initiatives to increase interest in learning speaking English for students by

implementing extracurricular activities. The study may also help to find out what are

the difficulties when applying extracurricular activities. Furthermore, it may not only

help to find out the difficulties when applying extracurricular activities but also give

some suggestions to help teachers to overcome these difficulties.

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PART II: CONTENT

.1. Theoretical background methods

.1.1. Teaching and learning English speaking skill

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1. Communicative language teaching approach – an effective language teaching

method.



Definition of communicative language teaching approach

“Communicative language teaching (CLT), or the communicative approach, is an

approach to language teaching that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the

ultimate goal of study.” (www.wikipedia.org)

Communicative language teaching makes use of real-life situations that necessitate

communication. The teacher sets up a situation that students are likely to encounter

in real life. Unlike the audio-lingual method of language teaching, which relies on

repetition and drills, the communicative approach can leave students in suspense as

to the outcome of a class exercise, which will vary according to their reactions and

responses. The real-life simulations change from day to day. Students’ motivation to

learn comes from their desire to communicate in meaningful ways about meaningful

topics.

Margie S. Berns, an expert in the field of communicative language teaching, writes

in explaining Firth’s view that “language is interaction; it is interpersonal activityand

has a clear relationship with society. In this light, language study has to look at the

use (function) of language in context, both its linguistic context (what is uttered

before and after a given piece of discourse) and its social, or situational, context

(who is speaking, what their social roles are, why they have come together to speak)”

(Berns, 1984, p. 5).



The goal of communicative language teaching approach

The main goal of communicative language teaching is to build, to make, and

to develop learners’ communicative ability in the classroom and outside the

classroom in order to the learners to be active speakers without many thinking about

grammatical mistake. In other words, the main goal of this approach is to make an

improvement of the communicative competence, especially ability for speaking in

the classroom or out of class with other person by using oral language.



The way of learning English speaking effectively

Speaking is “the process of sharing meaning through the use of verbal

and non- verbal symbol, in a variety of context (Chaney, 1998, p.13). Learning

English speaking as second language is actually not easy for Vietnamese students.

According to Margre S.Berns again, “language is interaction, it is interpersonal

activity and has a clear relationship with society” (Berns, 1984.p.5). Therefore,

learning speaking is not just a process of imitation or repetition of drills. It requires