After role-play for mid-term test

Today as planned, we performed our role-play for mid-term test. Each group has their own story which brought us some useful experience as well as amazing feeling.

F5:
Your performance made a good impression on us- very natural, very confident…The content was coherent and gave you a chance of using a lot of function such as: making a plan or giving opinion( I think, in my opinion…) or expressing agreement ( I couldn’t agree more…).

Flying kites
Your content was very funny. You had a good preparation in appearance. We think that every member in your group took over the role well. We still remember cunning face of the fortune teller when asking for money and Ms. Hien’s pale face when rushing to the “World Cup”! Although your role-play was a bit long, it was such a good one!

Happy family
Quite different from other groups, your story was concerned about the important issue: polution, and solution for it. You used a lot of appropriate function in giving opinions.
Each of you had a good pronunciation, so we can easily understand your story.

Viva Vietnam
Good pronunciation and intonation are your strong points! The content is a situation which we can face up with after graduation.Thanks!

3snakes and 1cat :
Your romantic story is like a Korean film. I like the scene two lover talking with each other with the song “ Nothing gonna change my love for you”.

All 4 one
Your role-play made us imagine a scene in a thrilling action film. I was really amazed and attracted!
However, at the beginning your voice was not loud enough for us to hear clearly.

About our role-play:
Honestly speaking, we weren’t confident enough in our performance. Moreover we made some mistakes in pronunciation…So the result wasn’t as good as we had expected.

We hope you will remark frankly for us to get experience in the final exam.
Thanks.

AFTER THE FIRST PRESENTATION

Yesterday, each group is supposed to present power point in front of the class. Generally speaking , we didn't have any problems with technology and everything went smoothly. But due to the limit of time, there were only three groups presenting lessons. Our group is the last one, so we will present later. Through presentation of three groups, we have learned some useful things.

In my opinion, each group has their own creation.

F5:

You make an good impression on us about your introduction. Each member of your group has a nickname as lovely as you are!hehe^^

The theories of each lesson are concise and coherent. The background is light, clear enough for everyone to see. Another interesting feature is that you have a small role-play to illustrate for the lesson in which each function is contributed by our classmates. Thanks to this, we can memorize knowledge better.
However, we want to share a small idea about your background: it’s quite simple and not very colorful. In my opinion, you should add some more exciting pictures as well as colorful letters.

F.l.y.i.n.g k.i.t.e.S
One of the most impressive points in your power point is that you know how to use photographs creatively and funnily. We are really attracted by the way you present your slices.

Happy family

We really appreciate your preparation for the presentation. The theories are quite sufficient and diverse with many functions which are not only in our textbook but also in outside sources. Especially you put a short video into your slices to make them more exciting.
On the other hand, it seems that the time you spend on your presentation is a bit long. Generally speaking, your group had a really good presentation. Thanks.

In brief, our ideas above are our subjective ones after attending the presentation of three groups yesterday. And I hope that you will give your ideas about our presentation next time to make all of us become better. Thanks!

APPLYING POWER POINT IN SPEAKING CLASS

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Nowadays, thanks to the development of high technology, using power point in teaching is encouraged to adopt to schools. That is the reason why in this second semester, our speaking teacher divides our class into seven groups and requires each group to present one part of lessons in turn in front of class .

Using power point is useful in many respects:

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With only textbooks, the lessons become very monotonous. In contrast, using power point makes our lessons more vivid by adding video, pictures, and even sounds, which can draw students' attraction easily and reduce their stress when they have to study for a long time. Futhermore, when explaining the lessons by using this program, you show your professional style and self-confidence. It is really necessary for you- a English teacher in some day.

To adopt this program effectively, it is certain that you need to spend a lot of time searching for many kinds of materials, or even take a computer course. As a result, you have a chance of getting accustomed to modern technology. This is extremely useful, as in the future, power point is potentially popular.

Using power point in speaking class:

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Next Wednesday, we are going to present our speaking lessons by using powerpoint program. With its advantages, in my point of view, the atmosphere of that day will be very exciting. Each group will make a great effort to design their lessons. It means that they have to spend time finding information, sounds and pictures as many as possible to illustrate their explanation, which makes each lesson more interesting. Moreover, using powerpoint, students don't spend much time chalking on the board. Therefore, there is more time for practise speaking or other activities instead.

With powerpoint, we can design the lessons into specific sections. So, you can present knowledge on screen step by step, which helps students summarize main ideas more easily and more quickly. Besides, adopting this program, you can also create many exercises to review and check how many percentages of lessons students catch on. For instance, with speaking lessons, we can give students many function exercises to practise. This enables them to memorize longer.

In short, power point is really useful for both teachers and pedagogic students. Therefore, we hope to have many chances of using power point in presentation.

With interesting things powerpont brings, we are really looking for presenting by applying this program on next Wednesday.

MISS MOON and TRUONG THAO-



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Role-plays in speaking class

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Playing role contains
some advantages.

In my opinion, playing roles is one of the most useful and interesting ways to improve speaking skill because it contains some advantages. Firstly, playing roles makes the atmosphere of class become less strained. Therefore, students are in a good mood to grab knowledge. Role-plays also make the lessons more vivid. As a result, this heps them memorize lessons longer. Secondly, playing role is a group activity, which teaches students how to work in a team effectively. In addition, it offers them a chance to promote their relationship and express solidarity, which improves their friendship as they have an opotunity to understand each other. Thirdly, when given an imaginary situation, students are encouraged to develop both the imagination and the creation. The reason is that they have to create the situations which contains good functions for each context. Through these situations students turn functions into practical and vivid knowledge. This makes each lesson more interesting.

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Several difficulties in playing roles

As you know, not most of sutdents have a natural aptitude to become a good actor or actress. Indeed, roleplay is quite a challenging task because students are bound to be playwrights, directors and actors. It means that they not only create scripts but also play them. Writing a script is not easy for these amateur scriptwritters as a good situation is certainly interesting. But it aslo has to content suitable functions for different situations. For example, you cannot say" HI'' WHEN you meet your teachers or oder people. So, students need to consider carefully when choosing words for their scripts. Writing a situation also requires you to have a lot of vocabulary to turn your thought into words. When having a script, the next thing students have to do is to practice it regulariy. It often includes learning script, playing with each other, and this takes them a lot of time to become smooth.

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Another difficult thing in playing role is to balance between playing role and speaking. MANY students who try to be involved themselves in their situation often forget to take notice of their pronunciation. This makes listeners have difficuties in understanding their story, so the story is less interesting or it cannot draw other students' attraction.

How to make an interesting roleplay.

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Roleplay is a group activity so, to have a good role-play each member of group has to work hard. They need to spend a lot of time preparing for given topic and each person has to contribute to their role. In addition, they had better have a good relationship with each other to make a comfortable atmosphere when working together. It is the most important factor to motivate each member to work effectively. If your group has these factors, I believe you will succeed in playing role.

__MISS MOON and TRUONG THAO__

Debating method

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In comparision with our traditional teaching method, debating one has some overwhelming features.

Generally speaking, our teaching methods are in favour of theorities. While lecturers say, most of students just try to take notes as much as possible. Therefore, there is no much time for discussion. This gradually turns them into ''machines". It means that they are told what should be done or shouldn't, which prevents them from being active.

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In contrast, with debating method, students have a chance of discussing with their lectures and other students. It requires each student to think to find out the answers to problems by themselves. Through this, they learn to form their own ideas and opinions. They also get an oppotunity to express their ideas in front of the class. Gradually they know how to make their own decisions and develop independent thinking. It cannot be denied that by discussing matters together students can bear knowledge in mind.

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How to encourage students to be involved in debating?

Firstly, teachers need to devide the class into small groups(about 4 people in a group) so that everyone can speak in discussion class. Secondly, lecturers should raise controversial and interesting issues, which encourages them to think about the topic.In addition, it also helps students catch up with current change in modern life.Thirdly, the impotant thing is that students should distinguish the difference between debating and quarrelling. Because the primary goal of debating is to help students have right view- point in many fields.So we should make a comfortable atmosphere in order to motivate students to give their opinions for topic. And teachers need to balance the debating atmosphere between groups.

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In summary, with its strong points debating method should be encouraged to apply not only to speaking but also to other subjects.

-TRUONG THAO-