Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm Using local cultural heritage to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning English for mountainous students

 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 CONTENTS page 
I. INTRODUCTION 1 
1. Rationale of the study 1 
2. Aims of the study 2 
3. Scope of the study 2 
4. Methods of the study 2 
5. Significance of the study 2 
II. RESEARCH CONTENT 2 
PART 1: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL BACGROUND 2 
1.1 Basic concepts of culture heritage 3 
1.2. Meaning and organizational methods of using cultural heritage in 4 
teaching and educating in high schools 
1.3. Some cultural features of Tuong Duong district 5 
1.Theoretical background 3 
2. Practical background 6 
2.1. The community 6 
2.2 The teachers 7 
2.3 The pupils 7 
2.4. The students’ learning situation on the education of conservation 9 
and development consciousness local cultural values in Tuong Duong 
district. 
 PART 2: THE SOLUTION ABOUT USING LOCAL CULTURAL 10 
HERITAGE TO IMPROVE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ENGLISH 
TEACHING AND LEARNING THROUGH 
EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES AT TUONG DUONG 1 
HIGH SCHOOL 
1. Raising teachers' awareness in improving the effectiveness of 10 
teaching English through local cultural values in high schools 
2. What can the teacher do to help students preserve local culture 11 
heritages and improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning 
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 I. INTRODUCTION 
 1. Rationale of the study 
 Nowadays, language teaching concentrates on what students want to learn 
rather than on what is to be taught. It can be said that the attitude and the initiative 
from the students are the main activity in the classroom. The success of students in 
the classroom is the main goal of teaching and learning activity. Many factors 
influence students in the classroom. One of them is culture. It is important to relate 
language to the culture because language must be treated in a social context. It 
means that learning a language cannot be separated from learning the culture. 
 Resolution No. 29-NQ/TW requires a strong innovation in teaching and 
learning methods in a modern direction, promotes the positivity, initiative, 
creativity and application of learners' knowledge and skills; overcoming one-sided 
imposed communication. Moving from studying mainly in the classroom to 
organizing diverse forms of learning, paying attention to social activities, 
extracurricular experiences, and scientific research. 
 As an English teacher, I think that contributing to the comprehensive 
renovation of education, towards achieving the aforementioned goals, the use of 
local cultural heritage in teaching in high schools, is extremely important. Through 
learning English and getting to know about different cultures, students can 
understand and love the language and culture of their people better. Thus, the use 
of local culture heritages in teaching in the classroom, especially learning at the 
heritage site, not only helps students develop their foreign language skills, improve 
their speaking and writing skills but also has an understanding of the local cultural. 
 As a result, raising awareness of heritages preservation and patriotism 
among students could make a contribution to the development of the homeland. 
Such are attractive extracurricular activities for high school students when 
experiencing local culture sites. Aim of these activities is encouraging students to 
learn more about historical sites, traditional costumes, and indigenous cuisines. By 
these, students could apply experienced lessons into practical life and this is 
considered as a way which encourages students to efficiently exposure to local 
culture and history. 
 Tuong Duong 1 high school is located in a mountainous district being to the 
southwest of Nghe An province. There is no doubt that teaching and learning 
English is difficult because the students are mainly ethnic minority. Therefore, I 
believe that combination of experiential activities with teaching projects in 
teaching English is essential. Such learning activities will help students actively 
and proactively acquire new knowledge, improve their self-study skill, understand 
and apply the knowledge learned from practice to preserve local cultural heritage, 
gain the patriotism, and promote positive values of local culture. 
 In order to help students to deeply recognize, and have the right attitude and 
behavior to the issues of preserving the local cultural identity where they live, as 
well as learning to accumulate knowledge and improve the quality of English 
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 II. RESEARCH CONTENT 
 PART 1: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL BACGROUND 
 1. Theoretical background 
 1.1. Basic concepts of culture heritage 
 According to the open encyclopedia Wikipedia: Cultural heritage is the 
heritage of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society 
inherited from previous generations, maintained to the present and for generations 
to come. Cultural heritage includes cultural property (such as buildings, 
landscapes, monuments, books, works of art, and artifacts), intangible culture (such 
as folklore, traditions, languages, and knowledge), and natural heritage (including 
culturally important landscapes and biodiversity). Cultural heritage can be defined 
as the legacy of physical artifacts (cultural property) and intangible attributes of a 
group or society inherited from the past. Cultural Heritage is a concept which 
offers a bridge between the past and the future with the application of particular 
approaches in the present. Due to its attached values for these groups or societies, 
cultural heritage is maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future 
generations. 
 + Characteristics of Vietnam's cultural heritage 
 Vietnam's cultural heritage is the values crystallizing from the cultural 
creativity of the community of 54 ethnic groups, undergoing a long historical 
process, being transmitted, inherited and recreated from many generations to the 
present day. Vietnam's cultural heritage is a culturally diverse landscape, a 
valuable asset of the Vietnamese ethnic community and a part of humanity's 
cultural heritage. Vietnam's cultural heritage plays a great role in building and 
keeping nation of our people. 
 Vietnamese cultural heritage is the creative value of learning, exchanging 
and inheriting from the cultures and human civilization. These values are a smooth 
combination of the culture and culture of humanity with the long-standing 
indigenous culture of the Vietnamese people. 
 Vietnamese cultural heritage, especially intangible cultural heritage, has a 
strong vitality, which is being preserved and promoted in the life of the 
Vietnamese ethnic community. 
 + Heritage classification 
 Cultural heritage is divided into two categories: tangible cultural heritage 
and intangible cultural heritage. 
 Tangible cultural heritage refers to physical artifacts produced, maintained, 
and transmitted intergenerationally in a society. All these heritage sites and 
monuments are here thanks to human creativity and have a global cultural 
significance. It is important to preserve these cultural sites because of their value to 
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 • Build plans and organize teaching related to cultural heritages and 
lead students to learn and exploit other contents of cultural heritages through 
materials. 
 Choose the appropriate form of teaching organization: 
 - Teaching in the classroom or organizing extracurricular activities at the 
school; 
 - Organizing English club about local culture 
 - Organizing sightseeing – experiencing cultural heritages; 
 - Teaching through media, multimedia... 
 - Choose appropriate teaching, testing and evaluation methods in order to 
promote the positivity and initiative of students in understanding and exploiting the 
values of cultural heritage. 
 - Popularize and guide the usages of heritage documents in teaching in high 
schools compiled by the Ministry of Education and Training. 
 1.3. Some cultural features of Tuong Duong district 
 - Tuong Duong mountainous district is a poor district in category 30a of 
Nghe An province consisting of six ethnic groups: Thai, Mong, Kho mu, O Du, 
Tay Poong and Kinh living together, creating richness and diversity in tangible and 
intangible cultural life. As recognition that the culture is the background of 
economic development, local authorities have concerned and focused on 
improving citizens’ mental life standard in the recent years. For example, Van 
temple festival which is hold in the early spring is recovered with the true mean of 
custom and minority ethnics groups’ satisfactory in spiritual demand. In 2006, Van 
temple was recognized by Nghe An Provincial Committee to be historical- cultural 
heritage site and Van temple festival has become cultural feature of Tuong Duong 
district in which local people organize festivals to pray for favorable rain, peaceful 
life and organize folk games, cultural exchanges to meet and exchange sentiments. 
The ethnic groups live in Tuong Duong still retain typical identities such as the O 
Du ethnic group with the new year thunder ceremony, the Thai ethnic group with a 
special wedding ceremony, the Kho Mu ethnic group with the celebration of the 
new house, the Mong ethnic group with the early spring buffalo fighting 
 - Recently, authorities have focused on directing 137 villages to organise 
mass art teams, to revivify ancient wedding custom of Thai group at Chan village, 
Thach Giam commune, to research and restore the Xang Khan festival of the Thai 
people in Cha Luan village, Luan Mai commune and the festival of Van temple - 
Cua Rao, Xa Luong commune. Simultaneously, they have researched and 
developed a number of cultural characteristics of the Kho Mu ethnic group, opened 
crafting classes and instructed the use of a number of ethnic musical instruments, 
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 difficulties. Therefore, educators always investigate the best methods for teaching 
English language for students. In ( Johnson, 2002: 25) states that contextual 
teaching and learning helps students see meaning in the learning of academic 
material by connecting academic subject with the context of their daily lives 
including their personal, social, and cultural circumstances. In this case, cultural 
circumstances as part of students’ daily life should be included in the materials or 
lesson plan in the teaching of English. By including local culture in the teaching 
and learning process, it is expected that students will be aware of their own culture 
and able to learn English better since they are asked to describe something they 
know very well. 
 2.2 The teachers 
 Most of the teachers were graduated from Vinh University, or Ha Noi 
national university. No teacher of English in the school has ever been to an English 
speaking country and few of them have chances to communicate with native 
speakers. All of the teachers are highly motivated because they neither want to be 
dismissed by the school nor disappoint their students. 
 2.3 The pupils 
 Most of the students are ethnic minorities. They come from the remote area 
of mountainous districts. Their living condition is poor. The investment in 
education from their families, therefore, is not good sufficient. The factors 
contributing to the low result are that the basic of lower secondary school is poor, 
the students’ skills are not good due to regional characteristics, and especially their 
personal feeling in English is not good, either. Most parents are not aware of the 
importance of English in the current society, so investing time and money in 
learning English at an early age is not enough. This is also the reason why the 
results of the General Certificate of Secondary Education Examinations are 
normally low. 
 *The reality, the drawbacks of teaching and learning English and local 
culture heritage in Tuong Duong 1 high school 
 Tuong Duong 1 high school is the place where many children of different 
ethnic groups such as Thai, H’Mong, Kho Mu, Thai, . Therefore, ethnic minority 
students still find difficulties in language barrier; many of them pronounce Kinh 
unclearly, so communication between them is difficult. Thus, many students also 
feel self-deprecating, not confident enough to communicate with students outside 
the same age. Due to the characteristics of students living away from their families, 
it requires students to be highly independent, but the number of friends who can do 
so is not much. Many students also think that because of difficult family 
circumstances, the path to starting a career later will be difficult, so they only learn 
to cope, there is no orientation for the future leading to reduced study results. That 
is a concern, also the worries of teachers and students. 
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