"Methods to improve English listening skill for Primary students"

VINH UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY FOR PRIMARY STUDENTS "Methods to improve English listening skill for Primary students" Student: Nguyễn Thị Quỳnh Anh Student ID: 18571402311047 Class: ……………………………… Teacher: Lê Thị Thanh Bình, M. A Nghệ An, August 6th 2021 Part 1: Introduction I. THEORETICAL BASIS The Party and State have determined that the goal of education is to train a comprehensive human being to meet the requirements of industrialization and modernization of the country. In which, foreign language - English is one of the languages that play the role of an active and effective means of supporting the deeper and deeper integration of the country. Therefore, improving the quality of education in general and the quality of English in particular is one of the top concerns of the current educational career. And that is especially important for primary school students who are just starting to approach foreign languages. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to have the support of the Party and the State, the education sector, especially the team of teachers and the contribution of the students' parents. Currently, the state of distraction from learning, students learn to cope with rote learning without knowing how to self-study, students are quite weak. How to remedy this situation? How to attract students to focus on learning is a problem that requires educators, teachers who are passionate about their profession, the school's pedagogical council, and always make efforts to make plans, programs, forms, and methods to improve teaching and learning, and improve the quality and effectiveness of education. II. PRACTICAL BASIS Although English in primary school today plays a significant role in the learning process of children. It equips children with vocabulary, grammar and minimal, basic, and simplest sentence patterns around topics that are very close, loved and familiar to them. Therefore, it is extremely important to keep students interested and reinforce knowledge. Because this greatly affects students' motivation to learn, a fundamental factor affecting the process of learning a language: Without motivation, children will not learn - and the consolidation of knowledge also deepens systematically over the materials learned in the lessons, creating a solid foundation to help students learn better and be more confident in the learning process later on. It is a fact that, during class hours, most of the students are often passive, lack flexibility, are afraid to read - speak English and rarely participate in speaking to learn the lesson. Primary school students are children, their awareness level is still low, their learning quality is not consistent. It is not an easy task to get the best results from their subjects. So how do they form and develop the most comprehensive learning skills? How do you love and deepen your knowledge of foreign cultures? In any way to help students master the lesson without being boring, it must be really attractive, create a joyful and comfortable atmosphere in class, and arouse students' interest when absorbing foreign culture that they themselves did not know anything. With so many practical and objective reasons, by the efforts of teachers and students. I have used a lot of flexible, new and modern teaching methods to improve the effectiveness of teaching listening and speaking skills to students. Unexpectedly, when changing the teaching method, the children were very interested and bold, more open, no longer timid, they also participated in the lesson more actively, recently students have more progress in English. Although the results are not very high, the initial progress has made me more excited at work. Therefore, this school year, I decided to choose the topic "Methods to improve English listening and speaking skills for Primary students through conversations" to research. These are my little experiences, I have done and have achieved very good results. Part 2: Background Knowledge Part 3: Findings and Discussion 1. Teachers need to perform well in the process of teaching listening The progress of a listening lesson must go through 3 stages: Pre - Listening, While - Listening and Post - Listening. This teaching process not only helps students understand and grasp the lesson, but also helps them to use listening skills in real-life communication. But the prerequisite is that teachers need to define well and clearly the purpose of the task in the next stages. 1. 1. Pre–Listening: (Before listening) The tricks used in this stage are True/False Prediction, Open Prediction, Ordering, Pre – Questions. This is the stage to help students orientate, think about the topic or situation before students listen. Teachers should create a mood to prepare for the listening test for students by leading, prompting, asking questions about the topic of the listening lesson, asking students to look at the pictures, read the words and guess if they are going to listen to the topic. What's the matter, who's going to tell who. . . Teachers can ask students to work in groups to make preliminary guesses about what they are about to hear through pictures or listening situations, but the important thing is to get them interested before listening. Teachers help children anticipate difficulties in pronunciation or new structures, background knowledge, etc. Finally, the teacher clearly tells the students how many times they will be heard and instructs the task requirements when listening (choose true, false, answer questions. . . ) Example: I ask students to listen and complete the exercise below: First, I will ask students to observe 6 clocks in 2 exercise sentences and work in pairs: ask and answer the time in each picture by saying “What time is it? > It's …” Next, I would ask and have students answer each picture and review how to say the time at specific times in English (even hours, 15 minutes, 30 minutes and 45 minutes) to help them listen better. Finally, I made it clear to the students that they would be heard 3 times and ticked the answer. 1. 2. While - Listening (During the listening process) The tricks used in this phase are Selecting, Deliberate Mistakes, Grids, Listen and Draw, Comprehension Questions… This is the stage where students have the opportunity to practice. At this stage, the teacher gives the types of exercises that students are required to perform. Students can make mistakes at this stage, so teachers should pay attention to correct students' mistakes and give correct answer options. With the example exercise in the Pre-listening section, I played the disc for the students to listen to 3 times (If the content is difficult for them to listen to 4 times). The first time: Help students familiarize themselves with the listening lesson and understand the content of the listening lesson. Second time: Listen to the correct information to choose the correct answer. Third time: Listen and check your answers. After that, I have students cross-exchange with their friends, I think they will like this form very much because in general, primary school children really want to be "teachers" and students will focus more when they do edit post. Next, I ask students to give you their answers and call on them to give their answers with explanations. Finally, I closed the correct answer 1. b; 2. b, check the specific results of each student, praise them for doing right and encourage them to do it wrong. 1. 3. Post – Listening (After listening) The tricks used in this stage are: Roleplay, Recall, the story, Write it up, Further Practice. . . This is the practice phase after listening, at this stage students use the knowledge and language skills that have been practiced in the "While Listening" stage into real and meaningful communication situations. Teachers need to combine other skills to develop and expand listening lessons such as recall, write it up, discussion, playing game, etc. Example: To help them use the knowledge of asking and answering about time in English in real communication, I did: + First, Organize the game “Passing the secret! (Secret passes)”. I divided the students into small groups (6 children), asked them to line up in a vertical line (in this form, the children will be curious about what to queue for and participate more actively). The student in 1st place in each group will then step up to the teacher's side, and the teacher will whisper a time-related statement (e. g. I get up at 6 o'clock. ) to the students. Student 1 will whisper to student 2 and then to student 6 in turn. Student 6 has the task of reading aloud the sentence that has been heard. I will observe, listen and record the group with the correct answer. Next, I alternated from student 2 to student 6. Finally, I commented and summed up the competition, praising the groups with many correct answers and encouraging the groups that did not get much correct. From the above activities, children will develop listening skills, talk about time, faster reflexes and improve teamwork. + Second, I give homework to students; ask them to write about the timetable of activities in a day according to the structure learned in the previous lesson. They will then present to the class in the next class. I offer some suggested questions: “What time do you get up? , What time do you have breakfast? , What time do you go to school? , What time do you have lunch? , What time do you go home? , What time do you have dinner? ; What time do you do exercises? ; What time do you go to bed? ”. Students will listen to the presentation and ask questions according to the instructions above. I give comments and corrections to students, commend students for their good work and completion of assignments; encourage and remind students who do not do well or do not do. The above activities will help children develop listening, speaking, reading and writing skills; Be bolder and more confident when giving presentations in class, in real-life conversations and at the same time improving the spirit of self-studying English at home for children. 2. Apply various forms of organization to teach listening skills. To study well in English and, importantly, for children to apply, develop good English communication skills in later grades. We need to understand children's psychology before applying a new teaching method. Young primary school students are still playful, at the age of eating, sleeping, and playing. Based on this psychology of children, let them see learning English as a game or, in other words, having fun in teaching and learning English. In addition to the tips compiled in the manual, I myself use some of the solutions (tricks) below in my teaching process and find them to be really effective in attracting students’ attention and concentration of students. 2. 1. Funny drawings In addition to using the pictures on the word cards, in the 4th grade English program there are very easy to draw pictures such as: fish, briefcase, book. . . These funny drawings will attract high attention from words on the children's side, children are often very curious, first of all they see what the teacher draws, what is beautiful or ugly and leaves a memorable, but profound impression on the child. Looking at the picture, the child will read the corresponding word or write the word under the picture or make a sentence containing the word of the illustration. With a drawing but can introduce students to many different use situations. Example: With a picture of a fish I might ask students to complete the following four sentences: 1. I like. . . . . . . (fish) 2. My favorite food is. . . . . . ( fish) 3. I have. . . . . . . . . . . . ( a fish) 4. This. . . . . . . . . is for you (fish) 2. 2. Body language In addition to the tricks of using cards, drawing pictures, I also use body language to express: animal sounds (birds, tigers, cats. . . ) actions (dancing, singing. . . ). Students will guess words from my gestures or can imitate reading and gesturing. This trick attracts all children to participate because children have the opportunity to show their talents. Thereby helping children form more independence, confidence and inculcating words. 3. Some practical forms of practicing listening skills Learn English through songs, cartoons, videos of native speakers. I encourage students to listen to their favorite English songs, repeat the lyrics, and sing along to the music. Sing it over and over again to memorize the lyrics and sing more naturally. This will help improve your memory when listening to English and develop the basic sounds you need for correct pronunciation. Besides, children can listen to more on TV and practice singing along. Doing so will help children improve their listening and speaking skills. Around the last 5 minutes of class, I'll entertain the students by listening to a short song, a short film or a video of real-life native conversations. This will help them relax after class, develop listening and speaking skills and increase their listening speed. Part 4: Conclusion Through researching and applying the topic, I have learned the following experiences: - To improve the quality of teaching, teachers must be enthusiastic about their profession, be responsible for their lessons, care about students and the quality of teaching, then they can choose flexible methods in the direction of teachers innovate for their students. - Prepare thoughtful, detailed and meticulous lesson plans. Increase the use of available teaching aids or make them rich, practical and effective. - Use short videos, or organize many games to increase vocabulary and practice sentence structure to make students interested in the subject. The system for students is full of simple, easy-to-remember and easy-to-use key knowledge. - Encourage students to change into English what they say in Vietnamese and use English more often in class, or in groups of friends studying at home. Praise and reward those who are gifted, make progress and participate in speeches. Currently, the facilities for teaching and learning English for elementary students in some primary schools across the district are very limited. Even at my school, there is still a shortage of an English classroom that is fully equipped with projectors, large LCD screens, laptops with Internet connection, and lacks a lot of pictures and reference materials. This greatly hinders the attraction and excitement of the students to the lesson. Therefore, the application of my initiative encountered many difficulties and did not bring into full play the effect of my initiative. Therefore, I would like to recommend the superiors to do the following: + Strengthening facilities: Radio, TV, Video player, Projector, English classroom. . . especially facilities for schools that are facing difficulties to serve skill-oriented teaching communication for elementary students + Advising the District People's Committee to support the investment in training and retraining primary English teachers to approach the standard and above international standards in terms of language ability and teaching capacity to meet the increasing demand for industrialization and modernization of the home district in the future.