Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm Applying active learning techniques into english speaking class grade 10

 NGHE AN DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING 
 THAI HOA HIGH SCHOOL 
 TEACHING EXPERIENCE 
TOPIC: 
 "APPLYING ACTIVE LEARNING TECHNIQUES INTO ENGLISH 
 SPEAKING CLASS GRADE 10" 
 SUBJECT: ENGLISH 
 Author: Phan Thi Phuong Thao 
 Telephone: 0812812757 
 Year 2023 
 - Carry out surveys and tests among grade 10 students. 
5. Study and experimental time 
 This research has been applying for teaching speaking skill at class 10A, 10C 10M 
of Thai Hoa high school during the school year 2022-2023. 
 PART II: INVESTIGATION 
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 
1. Active learning techniques 
1.1. Definition of active learning techniques 
“Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just by sitting in class 
listening to teachers, memorizing prepackaged assignments, and spitting out answers. 
They must talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past 
experiences, apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of 
themselves.” – A. Chickering and Z.f. Gamson, “Seven principles for good practice”. 
AAHE Bulletin 39 (March, 1987), 3-7. From this opinion, it can be seen that learning 
in general and learning a language in specific is a complex and long process. Practice 
makes perfect. If students take part in learning process, they will learn more. Active 
learning is any learning activity in which students participate or interact with learning 
process. In recent years, the term active learning has become increasingly common 
among English classes. The English teachers all over the world are trying to make 
students more active, more involved in the lessons. 
After a long time teaching English at a high school, I see that the common problem 
that happen in many English speaking lesson is that students feel shy to speak in an 
English speaking class because of the anxiety of making mistakes due to lack of 
grammar, vocabulary, structures and ideas. In fact, English instructors must have 
worked hard to attract the students to speak a lot in the class. However, the result is 
not up to their expectation. 
Active learning is alleged to help in solving this problem. It focuses on the 
significance of learner’s involvement in learning process. 
Firstly, active learning helps develop collaborative skill. When using the methods to 
encourage active leaning, the teachers will ask students to work with other students, 
so they have chance to improve group collaborative skill. 
Secondly, active learning is a good way to increase engagement. Students who are 
actively learning will actively engaged. They will excitingly participate in each 
classroom activities. 
Thirdly, active learning encourages risk taking. It pulls students out of their comfort 
zone and forces students to share their ideas with others so through learning tasks, 
students will gain confidence and self-possession. 
In short, active learning has brought lots of benefits to an English class. 
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 Role play: 
In this activity, students are given a particular role to play in a conversation or other 
interaction. They may be given specific instructions on how to act or what to say. The 
students will then act out the scenario and afterwards there will be reflection and 
discussion about the interactions. 
 Poster session: 
Teacher divides the class into 6 or 8 groups, and assign each group to find and make 
poster related to the topic. After that each group will present their ideas in front of the 
class while other groups give feedback. Teacher should provide group assessment 
checklist to evaluate their participation during the class session. 
 Jigsaw: 
In this activity, students are divided into small groups. Each group has a different 
topic. After students take time to finish their task during their original group, one 
expert from this group will have to teach his new group. 
 Guessing game: 
This is a simple warmer activity that can be used to generate some interests at the 
beginning of class. Students work in groups. Each group will have a representative 
who will describe the objects to their group members. The other people in the group 
have to guess what it is. The group who can guess more will be the winner. 
 Questionaire: 
Teachers will prepare students a poll. Students read the information, mark, finishing 
the on-demanding content and reporting. 
 Mapped dialogue: 
This activity can be done through the use of visuals such as maps, diagrams, charts. 
The teachers present the chart and then the students practice and act out in pairs or in 
group. 
 Ranking: 
Students may rank (put in order of importance) the items on a list they have made. 
For example, afer students have made long list of clothing words, you can ask those 
questions.” Which are the most important clothes to wear in winter?” or after making 
a list of countries, “which countries would you like to visit? Where would you go 
first?” after making a list of hobbies,” which of these hobbies are the most fun?” you 
can use this activit to learn nouns during the lesson. The level of this activity depend 
on difficulty of the words on the list. 
 Problem - solving: 
Present a problem to the students. Students work in pairs or as a whole class to solve 
the problem. For example, “Tom never does his homework, what should teachers do? 
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 2. Speaking skill 
2.1. Speaking skill definition 
 Speaking is a basic skill that language learners should master with the other 
language skills. It is defined as a complex process of sending and receiving messages 
through the use of verbal expressions, but it also involves non-verbal symbols such as 
gestures and facial expressions. Hedge (2000: 261) defines speaking as “skill which 
people are judged while first impressions are being form”. 
 The ability to speak confidently and fluently is something which children will 
develop during their time at school, and something that will help them throughout 
their life. 
 Speaking skills are defined as the skills which allow us to communicate 
effectively. They give us the ability to convey information verbally and in a way that 
the listener can understand. 
 Children will learn English speaking skills as well as speaking skills in other 
languages, in primary and secondary school. Learning how to develop English 
speaking skills is so important for ESL students and EAL students too. It's one of the 
most important parts of language learning as speaking is how we tend to communicate 
in everyday life. 
 Speaking is an interactive process where information is shared, and if 
necessary, acted upon by the listener. So, it’s important to develop speaking skills in 
order to communicate effectively. 
2.2. Characteristics of speaking skill 
 Many researchers who have paid much attention on the oral skill. They 
 investigate the characteristic of spoken language. In their point of view, speaking is 
 not completely accepted as a separative area, speech is more commonly unplanned, 
 contextualized, informal and reciprocal than writing. It can be clearly seen that 
 speakers usually have a little time to prepare for their conversations. Bygate 
 claimed: 
 "Oral language can be identified by certain features which are more prototypical of 
 speech than of writing. 
 Among these features, one of the most typical one is that speech is organized 
 by clauses, phrases and spoken utterances while writing is generally organized 
 according to whole sentences. In addition, spoken language is less formal in relation 
 to vocabulary and grammar than writing language, characterized by repetition of 
 utterances, close relation to the context in question and features of correcting 
 speech. 
 As speaking skill is the ability to start and to maintain a conversation, it closely 
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 students always focus on other skills while using a little time on oral skill or even 
 ignore it. Agree with him, Grace Stovall Burkat (1998) claims that it is necessary 
 to supply students with the basic aspects of the skill. In his opinion, language 
 learners need to recognize that speaking involves three areas of knowledge: they 
 are Mechanics, Function and Social, and Cultural rules and Norms. 
 Mechanics including pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary is the basic 
 aspect of speaking skill that gives the basements to develop the skill. This aspect 
 helps students use the right words in the right order with the correct pronunciation. 
 The second aspect requires the recognitions of the functions. It includes 
 transaction, interaction and performance. This aspect helps students recognize the 
 type of talk with certain criteria and purposes. 
 Another aspect that is last but not least than others is the social and cultural 
 rules and norms such as turn-taking, rate of speech, length of pauses between 
 speakers, relative roles of participants. This is background knowledge that helps 
 them to understand how to take into account who is talking to whom, in what 
 circumstance. 
 Teacher should help students use English in real life such as communicate with 
 foreigners to develop the ability to produce grammatically correct, logically 
 connected sentences. 
3. Adapting Textbooks 
3.1. Definition 
 In teaching and learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL), speaking has 
always received a great deal of attention. According to Carrell [3; p.1] “for many 
students, speaking is by far the most important of the four macro-skills, particularly 
in English as a second or foreign language”; sharing the same point of view, Richard 
[11; p.15] shows that “Becoming an effective and fluent speaker in another language 
has a number of important benefits for learner.” Undoubtedly, speaking has become 
not only an important means to communicate with other people but also an essential 
means to help them with their further study in future. Unfortunately, teaching and 
learning speaking skill at high schools are still far from satisfactory for various 
reasons. Despite the teacher’s effort, students’ motivation is still low and speaking 
lessons are said to be the boring one. 
English language teaching materials in general and textbooks in particular play the 
role of tool, tutor, guide book. These roles are especially significant in EFL contexts 
including Vietnam, where textbooks are regarded as a staple in almost all EFL classes. 
Textbooks are useful source of language input and guidance for both teachers and 
learners. Despite the development of technology and the growth of computer-assisted 
language learning, it is unlikely that textbooks will disappear. In teaching and learning 
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 course through the textbooks from the one the writer has laid down. 
 - Branching: teachers may decide to add options to the existing activity or to 
 suggest alternative pathways through the activities. 
 - Extension: where an activity is lengthened in order to give it an additional 
 dimension. (For example, a vocabulary activity is extended to draw attention to 
 some syntactic patterning.) 
 - Rewriting/modification: teacher may occasionally decide to rewrite material, 
 especially exercise material, to make it more appropriate, more “communicative”, 
 more demanding, more accessible to their students, etc. 
 - Replacement: text or exercise material which is considered inadequate, for 
 whatever reason, may be replaced by more suitable material. This is often culled 
 from other resource textbook. 
 - Omission: the teacher leaves out things seemed inappropriate, offensive, 
 unproductive, etc., for the particular group. 
 - Addition: where there seems to be inadequate coverage, teachers may decide 
 to add to textbooks, either in the form of texts or exercise material. 
 Textbook adaptation can be done at three levels. The first level is macro 
 adaptation, which is ideally done before the language program begins. After 
 comparing what is covered in a textbook and what is required by the syllabus or 
 examination, the teacher may find that certain areas or even whole units of the book 
 can be omitted, and certain contents need to be supplemented. 
 The second level of adaptation is adapting a unit. This could be done by 
 reordering the activities, combining activities, omitting activities, rewriting or 
 supplementing exercise material, etc. Unit adaptation helps to make the classroom 
 teaching more smooth and cohesive. It also helps the teacher to better fulfill the 
 aims of a unit. 
 The third level is adaptation of specific activities in a unit. Occasionally an 
 activity is regarded as valuable, but it is not well-designed or it is not suitable in a 
 particular class. If the teacher does not want to give up the activity, he or she needs 
 to adapt it. 
3.2. Instructions for adapting textbooks 
 Teachers should follow the following steps when adapting the textbooks: 
 1. You have to decide what content or which topics need adapting in light of 
 the reading texts and activities. Activities can relate to any one of the four basic 
 skills: reading, listening, writing and speaking. Can the text be exploited because 
 of its thematic, lexical and structural elements in order to appeal and engage all 
 three levels of students? If not, you will need to adapt your textbook activities to 
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