Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm How to improve students’ speaking skill while teaching other skills

 I. PROBLEM SITUATION:
 1. Reasons for choosing the theme:
 1.1. Rationale of theory:
 Nowadays, English is playing a very important role in the global development. Therefore, the teaching of English has been improved in method of the communicative, learner-centered approach which is adaptable to give students many opportunities to communicate in English. However, at many junior high schools in Vietnam, the teaching of English has not really developed students’ ability, activeness and motivation.
 1.2. Rationale of practice:
 Speaking is a crucial part of language learning. The mastery of speaking skill in English is a priority for many language learners. Nowadays, many learners even consider the ability to speak the language is the aim of language learning. They often evaluate their success in language learning as well as the effectiveness of their English courses on the basic of how well they feel they have improved in the spoken language proficiency. Despite its importance, for a long time, teaching speaking has been depreciated. Traditional teaching methods have seemed to emphasize the learning of language system (rules of grammar and lists of vocabulary items ) as a goal in its own right and failed to give learners an ability to gain realistic experiences in actually using the language knowledge gained. Moreover, very often when people study a language, they accumulate a lot of 'up-in the head' knowledge, but then find that they can't actually use this language to express what they want to. There seem to be some difficulties in moving language from 'up-there' knowledge to actively usable language. Without experience in using the language, students may tend to be nervous about trying to say something. Nowadays things have been different. Today's world requires that the goal of learning speaking English should develop students' communication skill so that students can express themselves and use the target language to state opinions, express their feelings and exchange information. Many new teaching methods have been introduced and applied to serve the basic need of English learners. Among them, communicative approach and learner-centered approach seem to be the most effective ways to teach oral communication. Also, we should apply these methods in teaching the four skills and focus on designing speaking activities in appropriate stages of English lessons while teaching other skills so that students always have a lot of chances to practice speaking while learning English. 
 1.3. Urgency: 
 Now I am teaching English at a junior high school near my house. I used to teach English at two other junior high schools in my district. What I have realized is that a large number of students are afraid of learning to speak English and say that it is difficult for them to be good at this skill and there is not a real language environment for them to do their practice every day. Moreover, their awareness of importance of being good at this skill is not really made clear because speaking skill is not usually included in their exams, so they often learn English only for their written exams, not for communication. In addition, some teachers of English do not still manage to put real interest in their lessons. Another reason is because of the lack of necessary equipment for teaching English at many schools in Viet Nam. Indeed, the school where I am working as a teacher of English has been famous for its good quality in education for years. Most students of my school are well brought up by their parents and they identify a good motivation in their studying, which leads to their better study results for English as well as other subjects at school. However, according to the survey carried out at the beginning of this school year at my school, more than 70% of the students reported that they are worried about their English speaking skill. They said that they could hardly make a simple conversation in English or express what they thought. Importantly, most of them assumed that speaking is very difficult for them to master. Therefore, if students do not learn how to speak or do not get many opportunities to speak in the language classroom, they may soon get de-motivated and lose interest in learning. On the other hand, if the right activities are taught in the right way, speaking in class can be a lot of fun, raising general learner motivation and making the English language classroom fun and dynamic.
 1.4. My ability:	
 Necessarily, among the teachers of my school I should work harder and harder so as to master the language and always give my students good lessons, which means that my students always have the chance to develop their speaking skill in the language. That is the matter I have been absorbed in and that is the reason for my theme.
2. Purpose of study:
 I would like to give out some of my own experience in improving students’ ability of speaking English.
3. Researched knowledge:
 Ways to make students more excited about developing their speaking skill and ways to encourage students to feel confident enough to express their ideas in front of the class.
4. Researched participants:
 Students of my junior high school.
5. Ways to conduct the theme:
- My real teaching at my school
- Surveys
6. Time and place for conducting the theme:
- Time: School year 2015- 2016 - Place: At my junior high school
II. PROBLEM SOLUTION:
1. Logical basis:
 The goal of teaching speaking skills is communicative efficiency. Learners should be able to make themselves understood. 
 To help students develop communicative efficiency in speaking, instructors can use a balanced activities approach that combines language input, structured output, and communicative output. 
2. Practical basis:
 For most learners, the ability to speak a foreign language is synonymous with knowing that language because speech is the basic means of human communication. 
 English learners no longer expect the traditional approach of their teachers based on developing mainly the grammatical competence and using methodology popular in the past. 
 Today, teachers are expected to provide their students with useful active knowledge of the foreign language, not just theory about the language.
3. Developing students’ speaking skill while teaching speaking itself:
 There are many rules teachers of English must remember while teaching speaking so that they can help students improve their speaking skill. 
 3.1. Firstly, teachers must make sure that students feel safe and confident while they express themselves:
 In my point of view, the first thing that teachers have to do to help students improve their speaking skill is that they have to help them overcome their feelings of shyness and nervousness when practicing English in their class. One of the best ways to solve this problem is to put them in 'safe' situations in class where they are inspired and encouraged to manage to use the language from their background. Organizing communicative activities in pairs, in groups is also an effective way to serve this aim. Working in pairs, in groups, students will feel less anxious when they are 'on show' in front of the whole class together. Moreover, pair-work and group-work can help shy students who would never say anything in a whole class activity have the confidence to open their mouths. Students can also learn from one another's new ideas so that they will have something to speak in front of the class later. Another thing that teachers should remember to help students have confidence in speaking is teachers’ positive correction and feedback. Making errors is a natural and unavoidable part of the learning process, but how to correct students’ errors is particularly important. Teachers need to provide appropriate feedbacks and corrections, but they ought not to interrupt the flow of communication. Teachers should take notes while pairs or groups are talking and address the problems to the class after the activity without embarrassing the student who made the error. Teachers can also write the errors on the board and ask who can correct it. Teachers should encourage their students to speak whatever they can and focus on what they have got right, not on what they have got wrong. Teachers should also help them to develop positive attitudes towards their friends’ errors and to correct themselves. Teachers should try to develop for themselves positive strategies of error corrections. When students achieve success in oral communication, they will feel confident and secure and they will enjoy learning English. Also, they will have confidence to take part in communicative activities later.
 3.2. Secondly, teachers must pay attention to warm-up activities: 
 Warm-up is also an important part which contributes to the success of a speaking lesson. Warm-ups help learners put aside their daily distractions and focus on English. Warm-ups also encourage whole-group participation which can build a sense of community within the group and warm-ups can help to arouse students' interest in speaking. 
 Teachers should vary warm-up activities to attract students' attention and interest because if they feel excited about their lessons from the beginning, they will make a good contribution to it. In order to give students exciting readiness for their speaking lesson, teachers can do different things to arouse students’ interest by using various teaching techniques such as brainstorming, word web, chatting, etc. 
 Before a new lesson I often motivate my students by chatting to them about the topic of interest, giving them preparation tasks or quick warm-up to get them in the right mood for the new lesson. Brainstorming is one of the simplest teaching techniques, but it is one of the most effective kinds of motivation because it takes a short time. I can write key words on the blackboard and the class is encouraged to think of ideas, words, phrases associated with them. 
 I have ... s to do exercises in a passive way. If we observe a Traditional Grammar Teaching class in most of the schools in our district, we may find out that nearly every teacher follows a simple way like this: Firstly, the teacher lists the grammar rules. Then, the students learn by heart all the rules and do some exercises. Lastly, the teacher gives more written exercises such as blank-filling or translation, . This is quite similar to what we called 3P theory: Presentation, Practice and Production. These three stages convey different purposes. Presentation is to present new language in context so that the meaning is clear, to present the new form in a natural spoken or written text so that students can see its use in discourse, to link the new form to what students already know, to check comprehension, to elicit the form from students where possible and exploit their existing knowledge.
 And when students learn English this way, some of them would have good command of English especially in the examinations, but when they open their mouth, they always find that they can’t get a proper word to express themselves or sometimes when someone points out some mistakes in their speech they can hardly believe that they have made such silly mistakes. Most of my students mention that they are quite sure to have learned the corresponding term but they can’t help making mistakes when they talk. That is the question which is going to be focused on. Nowadays, most of us realize that in order to teach grammar lessons effectively so that students can not only remember grammar rules but also apply the language in communication, we should resourcefully move as quickly as possible from certain pattern drills to oral interaction because each student really likes talking about his or her own ideas and feelings. We should give them a reason to use the structure we teach in conversation. Let’s look at some examples:
 A very simple communication task is designed in the GRAMMAR PRACTICE lesson immediately after Unit 14 (Tiếng Anh 6). A series of questions were raised and my students practiced asking and answering them. This activity was a transition to EXERCISE 5.
 Another illustration is seen in LANGUAGE FOCUS 4 lesson (Tiếng Anh 7). With the target grammatical knowledge of the PAST SIMPLE TENSE, my students were asked to look at the given pictures and answer the question orally.
 And immediately after this interaction activity was another interaction one in EXERCISE 1
 Above are some examples in which we can use communicative tasks to help students practice English while learning Grammar. Giving them as many chances to practice speaking English as possible is the best way to help them improve their speaking skill.
 4.4. Developing students’ speaking skill while teaching “Presentation-Practice-Production” lessons:
 This illustration is extracted from lesson 1 of Unit 14 (Tiếng Anh 6). 
This oral task was designed in the production stage of the lesson. In order to make the communicative activity easy enough for my students to fulfill, I gave each of them the hand-out and helped them complete their network on their hand-outs first. 
 The following photo of a part of the board was taken at the end of the lesson.
This is the photo of my students working in close pairs, asking and answering about their plans for this summer vacation.
 In order to encourage my students not to speak in their L1, I was walking around the classroom, monitoring their participation and giving them support and help if necessary.
 * RESULTS:
 After a period of time of conducting these solutions, to my expectation, I have gained satisfying results. I've found that my students have become more confident and active in their speaking lessons. Many of them said that they no longer feel their speaking lessons stressful and too difficult. Most of them admitted that their speaking skill has been improved a lot day by day. 
 In fact, I usually encourage my students to feel excited and confident in their oral skill; therefore, I usually give them good grades when they do their speaking tasks well or quite well and I do not discourage them by giving them bad grades when they do not fulfill their oral exercises. Instead of that, I always give these students positive feedbacks so that they will try their best later. However, my students are told that their speaking skill is always assessed during the school year and their constant progress is always positively taken into consideration. In addition, their results for the final term oral exams account for 30% of the total results for this language subject. 
 * THE SATISTICS OF THIS SCHOOL YEAR:
 The results of the first term oral exam 
 Grade
Number of students
Mark 5 and over
Under mark 5
 total
 rate
 total
 rate
 7
 45
 30
 67%
 15
 33%
 Grade
Number of students
Mark 5 and over
Under mark 5
 total
 rate
 total
 rate
 6
 30
 18
 60%
 12
 40%
 Grade
Number of students
Mark 5 and over
Under mark 5
 total
 rate
 total
 rate
 7
 45
 30
 67%
 15
 33%
The results of the second term oral exam
 Grade
Number of students
Mark 5 and over
Under mark 5
 total
 rate
 total
 rate
 7
 45
 35
 78%
 10
 22%
 Grade
Number of students
Mark 5 and over
Under mark 5
 total
 rate
 total
 rate
 6
 30
 21
 70%
 9
 30%
 III. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS:
Conclusion:
 Speaking is an important part of second language learning to any learners. The ability to communicate in English clearly and efficiently contributes to great success of the learner in school and to far better success later in his life. Therefore, it is essential that language teachers pay great attention to helping students develop their speaking skill rather than leading students to pure memorization. Teachers should provide students with a rich environment where meaningful communication takes place while teaching any other skill. With this aim, various speaking activities can contribute a great deal to students in developing basic interactive skills necessary for life. These activities make students more active in the learning process and at the same time make their learning more meaningful and fun for them. And remember the English proverb: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”.
 2. Recommendations:
 2. 1. Recommendations to THE EDUCATION AND TRAINING COMMITTEE DIVISION and my school: 
 - I recommend that THE EDUCATION AND TRAINING COMMITTEE DIVISION hold more sample teaching lessons, using various useful teaching techniques in an artistic way in order to attract students’ enthusiasm in communication tasks.
 - I suggest that THE MANAGING BOARD of my school buy more and more materials of methodology for the teachers of the school. As a result, the teachers should have a better chance to develop their job. 
 2. 2. Recommendations to other teachers: 
 - Indeed, I know that I am not really full of experience in teaching because the number of years I have involved in this job is still far smaller than many of my colleagues. Therefore, I would need useful comments and supplements from experienced teachers so that my initiative ideas would be much better.
 Sincerely!
 Ha Noi, April 5th 2016
The headmaster’s identification:
I am sure that I myself have
written this experiential initiative.
This document is not someone else’s copy.
 The writer,
 .
IV. REFERENCE BOOKS
Celce-Murcia. M. 2001. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (3rd ed). USA: Heinle & Heinle.
Chaney, A.L., and T.L. Burk. 1998. Teaching Oral Communication in Grades K-8. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Baruah, T.C. 1991. The English Teacher's Handbook. Delhi: Sterling Publishing House.
Brown, G. and G. Yule. 1983. Teaching the Spoken Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harmer, J. 1984. The Practice of English Language Teaching. London: Longman.
McDonough, J. and C. Shaw. 2003. Materials and Methods in ELT: a teacher’s  guide. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell.
Nunan, D., 2003. Practical English Language Teaching. NY: McGraw-Hill.
 ENTRY
______@&?______
 CONTENT 
PAGE
I. Problem situation 
1
 1. Reasons for choosing the theme
1
 1.1. Rationale of theory 
1
 1.2. Rationale of practice 
1
 1.3. Urgency
1
 1.4 My ability
2
 2. Purpose of study
2
 3. Researched knowledge
2
 4. Researched participants
2
 5. Ways to conduct the theme
2
 6. Time and place for conducting the theme
2
II. Problem solution
3
Logical basic
3
Practical basic
3
While teaching speaking itself
3
While teaching other skills
13
 * Results
30
 * The statistics of this school year
30
III. Conclusion and recommendations
31
Conclusion
31
Recommendations
31
 2.1. To my school and the EDUCATION &TRAINING COMMITTEE DIVISION
31
 2.2. To other teachers
32
IV. Reference books
33
Ý KIẾN NHẬN XÉT, ĐÁNH GIÁ VÀ XẾP LOẠI
CỦA HỘI ĐỒNG KHOA HỌC CƠ SỞ
 Ngày tháng năm 2016
 Chủ tịch hội đồng
 (ký tên, đóng dấu)
 Ý KIẾN NHẬN XÉT, ĐÁNH GIÁ VÀ XẾP LOẠI
 CỦA HỘI ĐỒNG KHOA HỌC CẤP TRÊN 
 Ngày tháng năm 2016
 Chủ tịch hội đồng
 (ký tên, đóng dấu)
PHÒNG GDĐT HUYỆN THANH OAI CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM
 Độc lập- Tự do- Hạnh phúc 
BIÊN BẢN CHẤM VÀ XÉT DUYỆT SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM
Tên SKKN: “HOW TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL WHILE TEACHING OTHER SKILLS”
Tác giả: .
Môn: Tiếng Anh 
Đánh giá của Hội đồng chấm (Ghi tóm tắt những đánh giá chính):
..
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..
..
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 Tính sáng tạo: . / 4 điểm
 Tính KH, SP :  / 4 điểm
 Tính hiệu quả:  / 6 điểm
 Tính phổ biến, ứng dụng:  / 6 điểm
Xếp loại: ..
( Xếp loại A: Từ 17 đến 20 điểm
 Xếp loại B: Từ 14 đến < 17 điểm
 Xếp loại C: Từ 10 đến < 14 điểm
 Không xếp loại: < 10 điểm)
 Người chấm 1 Người chấm 2 Ngày  tháng  năm 2016
(Ký, ghi rõ họ tên) (Ký, ghi rõ họ tên) Chủ tịch Hội đồng xét duyệt