The beaten path in teaching English
The Institute of Educational Sciences and the Management Board of the National Foreign Language Project recently published an annual report on foreign language teaching in Vietnam. Accordingly, most teachers shared that they are confident in their ability to teach reading, writing, and grammar skills to students, but find it more challenging to teach listening and speaking skills.
In fact, most English teachers today only stand at the perspective of imparting knowledge, but do not really inspire students in learning foreign languages.
Many English learners easily get high scores in writing but are confused when communicating, which is an inevitable result of a training process. Or in other words, it is a rut in teaching and learning English through many generations.
It is necessary to create an English communication environment.
Primary school students in Ho Chi Minh City during an English class
ILLUSTRATION: DAO NGOC THACH
From a professional perspective, to focus on listening and speaking skills, teachers need to create an English communication environment through pedagogical activities with the support of technology and materials to serve the interactive skill development.
To some extent, teaching grammar, reading or writing can incorporate listening or speaking skills.
With a short dialogue about daily activities, teachers can give students practice communicating to get to the structure and usage of the present simple tense in real life. Questions and answers in the reading comprehension section will be dialogue activities to help students improve their speaking before writing the answers in their notebooks or marking in their books. A2 level email writing exercises of about 25-35 words are interesting speaking topics for students of primary or secondary school age.
English subject according to the 2018 General Education Program has many lessons designed to integrate and transfer skills from listening to writing or speaking.
If teachers are diligent in applying the materials in textbooks, they can transform "receptive skills" (receptive skills including listening and reading) into "productive skills" (expressive skills including speaking and writing).
From another perspective, encouraging students to develop their healthy hobbies or entertainment in practicing the language is also a modern trend when combining playing and learning. Watching a movie, reading a book, listening to an English song, just need to appreciate the words, sentences, dialogues, lyrics and when communicating, applying them will be highly effective.
English is also included in the preschool program with the aim of helping children get acquainted with foreign languages to absorb foreign languages from a young age. Children do not need to know sentence structure, do not need to know how to express long words, just need to understand the main idea expressed because the main purpose of communication is to understand each other. When holding an apple, just say "apple" or look at the numbers 1, 2, 3 and say "one", "two", "three"!
The most important thing for teachers is to make children love learning foreign languages and apply language according to their age psychology. In teaching activities, skillfully integrating language skills is a success for teachers. Do not focus on right or wrong but focus on reflexes when practicing.
English teachers can utilize the lessons in the program to build a communicative environment.
Innovation in teaching thinking for English communication environment
In the next levels of education, students will perceive right and wrong when the acquisition of knowledge and skills will be specified according to the quantitative and qualitative aspects of each stage.
Building and developing a learning environment and using foreign languages in high schools, especially English, is being focused on in many educational institutions. This is a good sign, having a positive impact on teachers and learners of English or foreign languages in general.
Teachers can guide students to practice the three R slogan: Remember, Recall and Retain. Create a habit of marking and taking notes in a notebook of dialogues and good sentences to memorize vocabulary and sentence patterns, then when encountering a similar situation, they must recall them to speak or write sentences. Repeating this many times will of course keep them in mind for a long time and help them have more opportunities to practice language skills.
With audio or video files, learners have the opportunity to practice pronunciation and intonation to improve listening comprehension skills as well as memorizing and using common vocabulary and phrases when practicing communication. Don't be hasty and discouraged at first. Knowledge and skills will gradually permeate those who are determined with their own goals.
More than anyone else, the teacher is the one who innovates thinking to create an English communication environment for students with knowledge, pedagogical skills and the support of information technology.
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