Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm Implementing extracurricular activities to enhance students’ speaking skill at Cua Lo high school

 SỞ GIÁO DỤC & ĐÀO TẠO NGHỆ AN 
 TRƯỜNG THPT CỬA LÒ 
 ----- ----- 
 SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM 
 IMPLEMENTING EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES TO ENHANCE 
 STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL AT CUA LO HIGH SCHOOL 
(Lồng ghép các hoạt động ngoại khóa để nâng cao kỹ năng nói tiếng Anh cho học 
 sinh trường THPT Cửa Lò) 
 Bộ môn: Tiếng Anh 
 Nhóm tác giả: Phan Thị Huệ 
 Phạm Thị Thùy Linh 
 Tổ: Ngoại ngữ 
 Năm học: 2022-2023 
 Số điện thoại: 0976679154 
 0918245195 
 Email: [email protected] 
 [email protected] 
 Cửa Lò, 2023 PART I: INTRODUCTION 
1.1. 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 
 1 PART II: CONTENT 
2.1. Theoretical background methods 
2.1.1. Teaching and learning English speaking skill 
a. 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 
 3 studies, nature study, outdoor play, heritage education, environmental education, 
experimental education and agricultural education. 
 Extracurricular activities at school are carried out in parallel with other 
educational activities in schools. It is a part of teaching and learning a certain topic 
in a curriculum of the school. Students take part in extracurricular activities under the 
instruction of the teachers. nurture the senses of self- reliance, share with the people 
around them. 
 Extracurricular activities’ aim is to create creativity, different environment for 
students to be most experienced, turn creative ideas of students into reality so that 
they can show off their speaking’s ability. 
b. The Extracurricular Activity Method 
 The extracurricular activity is one of the teaching method that the students are 
under the teacher guiding and make the certain and concrete aim to go to place or 
area for learning and observing something. The extracurricular activity is a visit to 
certain place outside the class that is done as academic activities and it has an 
education aim. 
 The extracurricular activity is a very delightful teaching learning method 
because the students will have pleasant activities and get the enjoyable experience. 
The teacher and students can go to certain places such as supermarkets, factories, 
traditional markets, a famous person’s house, a beauty spot, etc. 
 Based on the above explaination, we can conclude that extracurricular 
activities are the teaching learning activities that are done at class outside for 
learning something, where the students can directly observe objects. The students 
can also make recreation during the activitiy and refresh their mind from boring 
learning activities. From these extracurricular activities students will get the direct 
experience that can make them interested in the topic which is delivered by the 
teacher, so the students want to have deeper knowledge by finding information from 
books and other sources, it can develop their self-study, their co-operation. 
 Generally, the extracurricular activity is encouraged by motivation to find 
information about certain thing, exercise students attitude, develop students interest 
and appreciation and enjoy the new experience; extracurricular activities can make 
the students see directly event and increase the students experience which cannot got 
by them in the class only. Life in the four walls is really restricted. Meanwhile, they 
will get so much knowledge that enrich of things which cannot be learnt inside 
classrooms. 
c. When to use extracurricular activities 
When the weather is fine, we are excited to take our students outside because we 
know we can still be productive when we are free of walls. Yes, it is possible to 
absorb knowledge when they can explore everything by themselve. We have found 
 5 2.2. Practical background 
2.2.1. Students’ viewpoints on speaking skill at Cua Lo high school 
 We have collected a number of students coming from different classes and 
conducted the research about students’ viewpoints on speaking skill and here is the 
result: 
 Statements Like very much like Like a little Do not like 
 Percentage (%) 13 30 40 17 
 The above table show most of students (30%) like speaking English and like 
a little (40%) while some other students(17%) do not like and a small of 
students(13%) like speaking English very much. 
We have also raised a question for my survey is “ Is it important for you to learn 
speaking skill?” and here are the answers: 
 Statements Very important Important Quite important Not important 
 Percentage (%) 18 36 34 12 
 As can be seen in the table, a large number of students state that learning 
speaking are important (36%) and quite important (34%). Some of them (12%) think 
it is not important and a small number of them (18%) think it is very important. 
2.2.2. Applying extracurricular activities in teaching speaking 
More than 2/3 of students (67%) state that their teacher sometimes apply 
extracurricular activities in teaching English and the rest (33%) state that their teacher 
rarely used this activities. 
 Statements Often Sometimes Rarely Never 
 Percentage (%) 0 67 33 0 
 Almost all students (78%) think the way that teachers apply extracurricular 
activities is interesting, the percentages of students who think that it is very 
interesting is 10%, 12% suppose it is quite interesting and no student thinks it is 
boring. 
 Statements Very Interesting Quite Interesting Boring 
 interesting 
 Percentage 10 78 12 0 
 7 preparing test to know whether or not the students’ speaking ability. 
 - Second, the activity in action or implementation in classroom action 
research are, the researcher giving pre- test to the students’ to know how far the 
speaking ability, the researcher increasing students’ ability by using extracurricular 
activities, the activity is based on the planned material and planned steps, and 
reseacher giving a post-test. 
 - Third, the activity of this observation is performed when the students are in 
teaching learning process, the researcher makes notes in observation sheet like the 
students feeling, thinking , seeing and something they do in English teaching - 
learning process. We should plan this observation flexible and open to record. 
 - Fourth, reflecting means the teacher tries to evaluates the teaching learning 
process that has been done by seeing the result of the observation whether the 
teaching process of speaking using extracurricular activities is good to imply in 
teaching process. 
2.3. Samples of using outdoor activities in teaching speaking skill for students 
at Cua Lo high School 
2.3.1. A day as volunteers in S.O.S children’s village with the philanthropy 
campaign of CLECers (Cua Lo English club’s members) 
a. The objectives 
 - raising awareness of philanthropy among students of the school about saving (old 
books, clothes, cash) to help disadvantaged children in S.O.S children’s village 
 - d e v e l o p i n g critical thinking, group collabration, find o u t and process 
the information and solve problems 
 - improving speaking skill for students through conducting a video product 
b. Participants 
 - The school youth union 
 - CLEC members 
 - The English teachers 
 - The former teachers 
 - The students 
c. Steps of organizing the campaign 
 Preparation 
+ stablishing an organizing groups including the teachers of English , the Youth 
Union, Cua Lo English Club (CLEC)’s core team 
+ holding introductory meeting to make detailed plan and split the responsibility 
for each member 
 9