SKKN Some activities to help grade 7 students at Luong Noi secondary school improve their speaking skill in extra lessons in the afternoon

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1. The reasons for topic:

English, an international language, has been a compulsory subject at secondary schools in Vietnam in the past few years. All students want to learn English well to have a better future. Along with improving grammar, students need to improve their language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. For me, the main target of learning a foreign language is to communicate with people all over the world. 

However, there are still students who are not aware of the importance of the subject in their lives so they are lack of interest in studying this subject. To build up the students’ passion of learning English, it needs to give them an exciting learning environment, to innovate teaching methods of teachers to be scientific and effective. Therefore, the teacher always finds the most suitable methods to apply to each unit remarkably, helping the students acquire the language lessons fast with good memory and especially the passion for the subject. Personally, I always explore and learn through colleagues, through the media, through many different teaching methods that are interesting and helpful.

Luong Noi secondary school students are interested in learning English, especially in grade 6, but over time they feel afraid, decreased interest, learn and lead his people to the quality department increasingly decline in the grade on. That’s why the higher grade the students are in the more difficult they feel in learning English and many of them lead to be lazy to learn this subject. The main reason is that they do not remember structures and new words. From this reality I have always tried to answer the question “How students can remember words and sentence structures well to make learning English easier?” And through many testing lessons I notice that the lesson introducing new language (often introducing new language focused on new vocabulary, grammar and language functions through teaching dialogues) is the first and decisive content of a successful unit. For the above reasons, I boldly launched an initiative experience  “Some activities to help grade 7 students at Luong Noi secondary school improve their speaking skill in extra lessons in the afternoon.”

1.2.  Research purpopes:

           My purpose in writing this initiative experience was to find out what the most common  and effective methods in developing speaking skill and improve the quality of teaching English at Luong Noi secondary school, help students understand the importance of speaking skill in learning English through extra lessons. Beside that I can cultivate myself the professional capacity in teaching, improve the teaching methods appropriate for each positive post, each subject students to improve the quality of teaching and learning English at Luong Noi secondary school.

1.3.  Research objects:

Initiative experience focused on taking some activities to help grade – 7 students at Luong Noi improve their speaking skill in extra lessons in the afternoon.

1.4. Research methods:

– Theoretical Reseach: Reading, Reference, Teacher book, Lesson plan .

– Statement of the problem at Luong Noi junior high school.

– Teaching method.

2. THE CONTENTS:

2.1. Theoretical Base:

Performing the movement of each teacher is a moral example, self-learning and innovation and to meet the requirements of innovative teaching methods and teaching organizations towards active teaching, learner centered, scientific lesson design, arranging reasonable activities of teachers and students, focusing on close object students, promoting positive, proactive creativity in foreign language learning of the students. Innovating teaching methods so that in each lesson students are interested in learning, positive practice and remember new language at class time.

2.2. Statement of the problem:

1. Advantages:

– I am a young teacher so I am always enthusiastic with my English teaching job and I always want to find something new, interesting for my students. My love for my lovely students is also a kind of motivation for me to try my best to help them. 

– Many of my students are eager to learn how to speak English well so that they can communicate with foreigners when they have chance. 

– More and more students and their parents are aware of the importance of speaking skill. 

– My collogues as well as other teachers in my school always give me good encouragement and support. 

1. Disadvantages: 

– When I applied my experiences and innovations, I also have some certain difficulties as following: 

–  Most of my students are ethnic people and they are familiar with speaking their own language ( The Muong Language ) even at class. 

– The number of students who can speak English and wants to improve their speaking skill is very limited. 

– Teaching aids and time are also a big problem as I still need more time and teaching aids to prepare a contented lesson for extra class in the afternoon. 

– Quite a few students are too weak to speak English as they don’t know much lexicology as well as lacking grammar structures. 

        In the first semester of school year ………..before applying my research, I gave a speaking topic to the students in class 7A and 7B “ Talk about your bedroom.”, testing their speaking skill through lession 3: At home.

Here are the survey results quality speaking skill of students of grade 7 at Luong Noi secondary school – school year ………..:

From this result I have adopted some solutions to introduce some activities to help grade 7 students improve their speaking skill in extra lessons in the afternoon.

2.3. The solutions:

In fact, very few students can speak English fluently after studying it for 4 years at junior high school. I have observed some of colleagues’ teaching lessons and through observation, I have realized some difficulties that teachers and students have.

1. To teachers: 

– In most of extra lessons in the afternoon, teachers just help their students do grammar exercises, reading, writing and listening. They ignore speaking skill so day by day, month by month and year by year, students find it really hard to speak English though they can understand what other people speak in English in a simple way.

– Some teachers cannot create speaking activities for students to take part in or they are not creative in designing activities. 

– Some teachers don’t make models so that students cannot imitate. Some teachers don’t have enough teaching aids like pictures, real objects….. for students to express their ideas. 

1. To students: 

– Many students are not confident to present their ideas in English though they can understand what other students and their teachers say.