Luận Văn Effective techniques to teach English for 1st grader in Vo thi Sau Primary school in HaiPhong

Khóa luận tốt nghiệp
Đề tài: Effective techniques to teach English for 1st grader in Vo thi Sau Primary school in HaiPhong


Part I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
As far as we are concerned, those days education has played a crucial role in
developing country, mainly for developing human forces. It is concerned as
golden key of any nation worldwide including VietNam. Our education system
has been increasingly improved in both teaching and learning activities for the past
few years. People said that learning English is difficult but teaching English is
more difficult. Getting an English lesson successful and attractive is always
everyday wish of most enthusiastic teachers, I suppose. Furthermore, students
today become better at this subject even more and more active in studying.
All these factors suggest me thinking of the idea that an English lesson should be
verified and changed much in the teaching methods.
In modern society, it is considered as an indispensable language in the process of
communicating with various kinds of people from different courtesies. Mastering
English is the best way for us to have a great deal of opportunities to reach the
success in life.
It is the reason why English has became the obligatory subject in every grades of
schools in Vietnam as well as other countries. International English certifications
are no longer strange with Vietnam students as: TOEFL, TOEIC, IELST . Since
last year, all of universities in Vietnam have required their students to pass the
TOIEC test before graduating. However, the qualities and results of that
examination is not high, because most of students lack vocabulary background,
their pronunciation and spelling are not good, leading to difficulties in listening,
speaking, writing and also in reading skills. It is the main reason why student
always fells shy or afraid of talking in class or meets difficulties in listening stage.
English have been applied to the primary teaching program of government,
especially in 1
st
graders rather late compare to neighbor countries. We know,
2
teaching English is difficult but teaching English for children is more difficult, it
require suitable and effective methods. While, some problems still exist in this
teaching program.
Being a student of English Department, I always concern about this problem
because I myself also meet the difficulties in passing the TOIEC, other
international tests and in communication, therefore I decide to study deeply to find
effective ways to teach English from very early, that is 1
st
graders in primary
school. It is also the way to help student study English better.
For these reasons, I have chosen the subject Effective techniques to teach
English for 1
st
grader in Vo thi Sau Primary school in Hai Phong.
2. Aims of the study
My study is about to help the 1
st
graders students improve their English by some
suggested teaching techniques, prepare for them the basic knowledge to meet the
requirement of the next graders. To summarize the above, my study is aimed at:
- Cover back ground knowledge of teaching English for primary student
- Find out reality of teaching and learning English for 1
st
graders at Vo Thi
Sau Primary school in Hai Phong city.
- Find out appropriate techniques for teaching vocabulary lesson which draw
students attention in to the lesson. The student will feel interested,
enjoyable and funny when they come into the lesson. Some effective
techniques will be given out in order to make student study English better.
3. Scope of the study
In fact, there are lots of various techniques to teach English for primary students,
especially 1
st
graders. It requires much of time and effort. However, due to the
limitation of time, resources and knowledge of mine, this study can only focus on
study some effective techniques in teaching vocabulary (spelling and
pronunciation) for 1
st
graders at Vo Thi Sau primary school in Hai Phong city.
3
4. Methods of the study
To complete this graduation paper, a series of methods have been applied:
Collected references, books and websites related to teaching English and
documents were analyzed in details to form the theoretical background this paper.
A survey questionnaire is conducted for the 1
st
graders and teachers of
English at Vo Thi Sau primary school in Hai Phong city, the information from
which has invaluable.
5. Designs of the study
The study is divided into three mains:
Part I is INTRODUCTION that indicates the rationale for choose this
topic, pointing out the aim, the scope as well as the methods of the study.
Part II named THE STUDY, which consists of three chapters:
- Chapter I: Theoretical background focuses on the way teaching English
and techniques to teach.
- Chapter II : The study on learning and teaching English for 1
st
graders
at Vo Thi Sau Primary school in Hai Phong city refers to the survey
questionnaire and analyzed findings of questionnaires results.
- Chapter III: Some suggested techniques in teaching English for 1
st
graders at Vo Thi Sau Primary school in Hai Phong city that contains some
techniques to teach vocabulary which including: pronunciation and spelling, and
some more suggested activities.
Part III is CONCLUSION in which all the issued mentioned above are
summarized.
Briefly, part 1 has referred to rationale , aims, scopes, methods and designs of the
research paper. In the part 2, the study will focus on the literature review , the study
on teaching English for the 1
st
graders at Vo Thi Sau Primary school in Hai Phong
city, and some suggested techniques to teach vocabulary which including:
pronunciation and spelling, and some more suggested activities.


Part II: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter I: Theoretical background
I. Teaching English for beginners (young children in primary school).
The teaching of English to young children has become especially important in
recent years. One reason for this has been the introduction of primary English
teaching in a number of Asia countries nowadays. There is a big difference between
what children of five do and what children often can do. Some children develop
early some later. Some children develop gradually, other in leaps and bounds. It is
not possible to say that at the age of five all children can do x, at the age of seven
they can all do y, or that at the age of ten they can do all z. But it is possible to
point out certain characteristics of young children which you should be aware of
and take into account of teaching. As the teacher, we are the only one who can see
how far up the ladder your individual pupil are. We can only draw our attention to
characteristics of the average children which are relevant for language teaching.
Understanding the characteristics and psychology of the young language learners
will help teacher have effective and suitable methods. Therefore the next part I will
introduce some outstanding characteristics of them.
1. The characteristics of the young language learners
It is important to keep in mind that not all children will take to pair and
group work at once. Particularly five to six and seven years old are often
happiest working alone, and are not yet willing to cooperate and share. They
will want to keep all the cards, read the book alone, play with all toys,
cooperation is something which has to be nurtured and learnt, so if the
students are in the first level of primary school, it is a big problem. They do
not always understand what we want they to do.
Young children cannot decide for themselves what to learn. They love to
play, and learn best when they are enjoying themselves. But they also take
themselves seriously and like to think that what they are doing is real work.
5
Young children are enthusiastic and positive about learning we all thrive on
doing well and being praised for what we do, and this is especially true for
young learners. It is important to praise them if they are to keep their
enthusiasm and feel successful from beginning. If we label children failure,
they then believe us.
They understand situation more quickly than they understand the language
used and they used language skills long before they are aware of them. Their
own understanding comes through hands, eyes and ears. The physical world
is dominant at all time.
The adult world and the childs world are not the same. Children do not
always understand what adults are talking about. adults do not always
understand what children are talking about. The difference is that adults
usually find out by asking question, but children do not always ask. They
either pretend to understand or they understand in their own terms and do
what they think you want them to do.
2. The age factor
We commonly assume that if someone pronounces a second language like a native,
they probably started learning it as a child. Conversely, if a person does not begin
to learn a second language until adulthood, they will never have a native-like accent
even though other aspects of their language such as syntax or vocabulary may be
indistinguishable from those of native speakers.
II. What should be taught
If a language was a house vocabulary would be as construction material to build up
that house. Therefore, needless to say a vocabulary is important or not. So knowing
vocabulary of a language is a minimum self-requirement for those who want to
learn a foreign language.
6
Linked to above, the difficulty of understanding English, not only for both written
and spoken, but listened and read English for people studying English is the limit of
vocabulary they possess. How could you understand a English word that you have
never known or used before?
1. Vocabulary
Firstly, to master the techniques of studying vocabulary, especially for 1
st
graders at
Vo Thi Sau Primary school in Hai Phong, it is impossible not to mention the
concept of vocabulary.
A. Definition
In fact, there are many definitions of vocabulary which can be found in many
various resources. Here are some main definitions of vocabulary:
It has been defined in the website www.en.wikipedia.orgthatA vocabulary is a
set of words known to a person or other entity, or that are part of a specific
language. Meanwhile another definition found in the website
www.wordnet.princeton.eduthat Vocabulary is the system of techniques or
symbols serving as a means of expression.
According to Steven Stalh (2005), it has been said that Vocabulary knowledge is
knowledge, the knowledge of a word not only implies a definition, but also implies
how that word first into the world. Vocabulary knowledge is not something that
can ever be fully mastered, it is something that expands and deepens over the
course of a lifetime. Because instruction in vocabulary involves far more than
looking up words in a dictionary and using the words in sentence. Moreover,
vocabulary is acquired incidentally through indirect exposure to words and
intentionally through explicit instruction in specific instruction in specific words
and word-learning strategies.
From the book entitled A course in Language Teaching written by Penny Ur
(1990:60) vocabulary is defined Vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the