DAKLAK DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
BUON MA THUOT HIGH SCHOOL
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TEACHING INITIATIVE
Title: TEACHING PHRASAL VERBS THROUGH ENGLISH
SONGS AT BUON MA THUOT UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL
Institution: Buon Ma Thuot High School
Teacher
: Huynh Anh Hong
Subject
: English
BUON MA THUOT, 2015
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. RATIONALE …………………………………………………………..…….1
II. CONTENTS OF THE TEACHING INITIATIVE …………………..…….3
1. Theoretical Background …………………………………………..……...3
2. Research Method and Data Collection .…………………………...……...5
3. Realities……………….. …………………………………………..……...6
4. Procedures and Findings ………………………………………..………..7
a. Procedures ……………………………………………………..……. 7
b. Findings …………………………………………………………. .. 12
5. Solutions………………… ………………………………………………13
a. Commonly used phrasal verbs ………………………………… .… 13
b. Kinds of Exercises .......................................................................................20
Gap-filling …………………………………………….……….20
Multiple Choice …………………………………………...…..22
Sentence Completion ………………………………….………22
Synonyms ……………………………………………….……..23
Matching ………………………………………………….… 24
Sentence Transformation …………………………...………...25
III. CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………… 25
APPENDIX …………………………………………………………………27
REFERENCE BOOKS …………………………………………………… 28
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TEACHING PHRASAL VERBS THROUGH ENGLISH SONGS AT BUON MA
THUOT UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL
I. RATIONALE
Special attention is always paid to education by the Communist Party of
Vietnam and the Vietnamese government because education can give us a chance
to get access to the civilizations of human races and the understanding of the
world. In addition, it helps improve the quality of life and brings various benefits
to individuals, collectives and the society. Via many sessions, the Communist
Party of Vietnam stated: “We need to continue enhancing the total quality of
education, innovating the
contents and methods of teaching and learning,
renewing the system of schools and classes and the system of educational
management;
implementing
the
standardization,
modernization
and
socialization.”. With the tendency of globalization and world integration, English
is regarded as an extremely important means of communication to make all the
people throughout the world get closer and understand one another regardless of
geographical distances, politics, religions and races. It plays an indispensable part
in almost every aspect of the society: politics, commerce, diplomacy, tourism,
economy, culture and education. What’s more, the year 2015 is the first year when
the general certificate of secondary education examination and the university
entrance examination are combined and mixed into the national general certificate
of secondary education examination (GCSE Examination). English is picked out
as one of the three compulsory subjects
for the provinces which meet the
requirements of learning and teaching English in a good condition. It is these
changes that have made a wide range of notable challenges to high schools,
especially teaching staff in equipping the learners with the language skills in order
to meet the higher and higher demands of the society. Hence, the teachers of
foreign languages in general and the teachers of English in particular can’t cease
improving their qualifications, innovating the methods of teaching and applying
more modern teaching method of foreign languages in the communicative
approach with a view to improving the language proficiency and communicative
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competence of students. In order to meet the tendency and needs of the society,
the teachers of English are required to come up with creative and impressive
teaching methods. Since then, the students can understand the lessons deeply and
apply them into their real-life conversations naturally.
The Ministry of Education and Training has had many sets of textbooks composed
in the communicative approach so that the learners can improve and develop their
language skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. Of the four
language skills, each skill is of a specific and equivalent importance. The four
skills have a close and reciprocal relationship and they help learners master their
target language. Thus, if the learner is not good at any skill, he/she will have to
cope with some obstacles in the process of using the language. After many years
of teaching English, I realize that the students find it very difficult to remember
English phrasal verbs. They often ask me to show some ways to remember the
phrasal verbs in different contexts. More interestingly, the phrasal verbs often
have quite distinct meanings when they are combined with different prepositions
e,g: look up, look after, look for, look into, look at.
Such difficult questions raised by the students make me think of the topic:
“Teaching phrasal verbs through English songs at Buon Ma Thuot upper secondary
school”. One of the most striking trends of the students nowadays, especially students at
Buon Ma Thuot high school is that they are absorbed in listening to music very much.
Let me illustrate an example extracted from a song to help students understand the
meanings of the phrasal verbs.
“Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
Oh I believe in yesterday
Suddenly, I’m not half the man I used to be
There’s a shadow hanging over me
……
Why she had to go I don’t know, she wouldn’t say
I said something wrong now I long for yesterday.
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Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh I believe in yesterday
……..
(extracted from the song YESTERDAY by the Beatles)
Thanks to music, they can remember the meanings of the phrasal verbs included in the
lyrics. From the reality, it is very hard for students to remember and apply the phrasal
verbs into real-life conversations; therefore, I decided to write this teaching initiative
with the purpose of not only stimulating the students’ learning English but also
improving their vocabulary. Additionally, students can use these phrasal verbs flexibly
in different contexts and situations and , more importantly, they can do written tests well.
II. CONTENTS OF THE TEACHING INITIATIVE
1. Theoretical Background
There exist a variety of definitions of phrasal verbs which are given in
different sources as follows:
A phrasal verb is the combination of a standard verb such as make or put
with one or two particles. In some cases the particle is an adverb such as away,
together; in others it is a preposition such as through, in. Here are a few
examples of the many hundreds of English phrasal verbs: pass away, pull
together, fall through, make do with, put down to.
A phrasal verb is a phrase (as take off or look down on) that combines a
verb with a preposition or adverb or both and that functions as a verb whose
meaning is different from the combined meanings of the individual words.
A phrasal verb is a verb followed by a preposition or an adverb; the
combination creates a meaning different from the original verb alone.
Example :
To get = to obtain
To get together = to meet
I need to get a new battery for my camera.
Why don’t we all get together for lunch one day?
Phrasal verbs are part of a large group of verbs called “multi-part” or "multiword” verbs. The preposition or adverb that follows the verb is sometimes called a
particle.
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Phrasal verbs and other multi-word verbs are an important part of the English
language.
However, they are mainly used in spoken English and informal texts. They should
be avoided in academic writing where it is preferable to use a formal verb such as
“to postpone” rather than “to put off”.
Since the Ministry of Education and Training brought out the English
textbook sets written in the communicative approach, many English teachers have
made several investigations and some teaching initiatives into the difficulties and
solutions in teaching and learning this subject so that students can understand the
lessons better and improve their abilities. Meanwhile, they hope that their creative
methods of teaching can motivate and arouse learners’ enthusiasm and passion for
English in particular as well as for foreign languages in general. Besides the
changes from traditional methods of teaching into learner-centered methods of
teaching, the experienced teachers are required to find out the difficulties of the
learners so that the learners will feel more absorbed in the subject and overcome
their difficulties in the process of study.
After nearly fifteen years of teaching English, I have partly known the
interests and psychology of high school students. It seems to me that what makes
them really excited can help them remember for so long. A survey has been
conducted to get to know what they often do in their free time. Most of the
students reply that they like listening to music when they have spare time and they
add that music helps relieve their stress and take it easy after hard days of study.
Being fully aware of the role music can play in entering the mind of the students, I
make full use of the most effective way to aid the memory of the students by
accompanying some phrasal verbs with the song.
It can be denied that phrasal verbs are really a big obstacle for high school
students. Students often have difficulty in making up their mind which answer is
the best one when they do multiple-choice tests. Therefore, I have come up with a
new idea as to how to help students remember the meanings of phrasal verbs
easily and deeply. I have chosen the English songs which contain phrasal verbs.
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When I play the songs, I put a stop to the sentences with the phrasal verbs and
then ask them to guess their meanings in the contexts. Moreover, in the curriculum
of the twelfth grade textbooks, phrasal verbs are in Language Focus of Units 14
and 15.
E.g: Remember to ……… your shoes when you are in a Japanese house.
A. take out
B. take after
C. take off
D. take over
It proves that phrasal verbs play an extremely important part in English
language. Once students know how to use them effectively and flexibly, their
writing style can move to a higher level of writing.
In recent years, it is obvious that most of the written tests contain a variety of
phrasal verbs in various exercise forms. This has made the learners, especially
those who are going to take part in the important exams fall into trouble.
Up to now many English teachers have written a big circle of research
papers which are mainly related to the language practice skills. In few research
papers is the method of teaching phrasal verbs via English songs employed. This
initiative is expected to create a more interesting and more impressive learning
atmosphere. It is this teaching method that gives students a great pleasure and
helps them memorize as many phrasal verbs as possible.
2. Research Method and Data Collection
Two research methods applied to conduct this study are quantitative and
qualitative.
The objects for this research are the twelfth graders at Buon Ma Thuot high
school because phrasal verbs are included in Language Focus of Units 14 and 15
and their needs are getting greater and greater when they have to take the national
GCSE examination.
Let me illustrate the steps of this research paper.
Firstly, I have read hundreds of English songs, categorized and picked up the
songs containing phrasal verbs.
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Secondly, I have had these English songs recorded in the high quality disk
and played the tape recorder for the students.
Finally, the sentences with phrasal verbs are picked out and analysed the
meanings of the phrasal verbs in pragmatic contexts. In addition, some kinds of
exercises and tests are suitably designed in order to check whether they
understand and remember the meanings of these phrasal verbs or not.
Different sorts of questions including information and yes/no questions related to
the contents of the topic have been delivered to more than 100 twelfth graders so
as to find out how effective this teaching method is. Since then, more efforts need
to be made to improve it.
3. Realities
Based on several sources of information such as test results and feedback
from students, it is a fact that students often cope with too much difficulty in
doing the tests with phrasal verbs. They say that phrasal verbs are confusing and
they can’t distinguish their meanings.
What are phrasal verbs? Why are phrasal verbs one of the most difficult aspects
for the learners of the English language?
It is the thought-provoking questions that make English teachers think a lot to find
out more creative and more effective teaching methods. Phrasal verbs are difficult
for learners of the English language for the following reasons:
The first reason is that in many cases the meaning of the phrasal verb can’t be
deduced from their elements. It means that is used idiomatically; therefore,
learners have difficulty in understanding the sentence. Let me show an example.
Ex: The teacher ticked off the student for being late, in which the phrasal verb to
tick off means to reprimand or to express disapproval.
The second reason is that many phrasal verbs are polysemous; i.e., they have
more than one meaning. The phrasal verb to put down has the literal meaning of
putting something down on the table or floor. But it also has the idiomatic
meanings:
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to make someone feel small, to criticize and humiliate them
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to kill as in the sentence I had to have my cat put down.
o
to stop, quash, put an end to as in the sentence The police put down
the riots with unnecessary brutality.
In order to meet the requirements of the current English teaching and
learning, teachers of English have to find out the most effective teaching methods
to apply them into the lessons and lectures flexibly and creatively so that their
students can understand the contents of the lessons profoundly. As the
communicative goal is presently an integral part of teaching and learning foreign
languages at school, it is very necessary for the students in general and for the
twelfth graders in particular to master both grammatical points and language
competence in different contexts and situations.
From the realities and the difficulties of the students in general and the
twelfth students in particular when they are on the point of facing plenty of
important exams in their life, something should be done to help them overcome
these difficulties. A survey has been conducted to collect more reliable and
veridical information from the students. After a list of questions has been
distributed to more than 100 twelfth students, the results are sorted and analysed
to get to know the reasons why they have chosen wrong answers when doing
multiple choice tests containing phrasal verbs.
4. Procedures and Findings
a. Procedures
More than one hundred English songs which contain phrasal verbs are
selected and then analyzed to give suitable meanings for each phrasal verb
according to pragmatic contexts and situations. I would really like to illustrate
how to teach phrasal verbs through the five English songs: Yesterday Once More,
Last Thing On My Mind, If We Hold On Together, We Are The World and
Papa.
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To begin with, the song Yesterday Once More written by the Carpenters is
played twice and the teacher asks his/her students to identify which phrasal verbs
are used in this song.
When I was young, I’d listen to the radio
Waiting for my favourite songs
When they played I’d sing along, it made me smile
Those were such happy times and not so long ago