SKKN A few software programs to assist teachers in teaching English for student in Grade 5 at Mao Dien 1 Primary school

I. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The importance of English for current economic and social development is undeniable. It's gradually becoming a recognized second language in our country. English has become one of the three main subjects in the curricula, starting from elementary school. The government as well as the Ministry of Education have provided timely and comprehensive directives, guidelines, and support regarding teaching methods and teaching aids. However, in the teaching process, I have noticed that traditional teaching methods and tools no longer fully utilize the students' potential. Students feel bored and exhausted with the worksheets and their parents also find it difficult to check their children's results and keep track of their study programs. A lot of parents who have never been exposed to English also find it difficult to guide their children in reading and pronouncing English vocabulary. 
Living and working in the era of digital technology and AI, I spent time researching and thinking whether I can do something to improve the situation. I proposed a few software applications that could help teachers more easily in creating enthusiasm for learning and doing English homework at primary students especially students in grade five through the following measures: “A few software programs to assist teachers in teaching English for student in grade 5 at Mao Dien 1 Primary school”.
II. THE PROBLEM SOLUTIONS 
1. The real situation and the reason to choose this research 
1.1.Advantages
- Regarding to the school: The school administration and the specialized department regularly pay attention to and create favorable conditions for teaching and learning English in the school.
- Regarding to the teachers: I am enthusiastic and passionate about my work. I have a university degree, meet the B2 standard according to the European reference framework. I am willing to learn to enhance my skills, and constantly learn and exchange experiences with colleagues through teaching demonstrations courses.
- Regarding to the students: Most of them are diligent, conscientious about their studies. 100% of students have complete sets of textbooks and exercise books.
- Regarding to the parents: Students are increasingly receiving more attention from parents regarding to English.
1.2. Disadvantages
The target audience is elementary school students, who are very easy to engage in learning but also easily distracted and quickly bored. 
They are not able to remember for long. They learn something and then forget it at a glance.
Since all of them are newbie to. They are weak at pronunciation. They also don’t have enough vocabulary which causes difficulties for you in the process of doing exercises. 
The students have not yet realized the importance of learning English and are still neglectful. 
Moreover, not all parents are familiar with English, so teachers also face considerable difficulties in testing or guiding students to study independently at home. 
 Some parents are still not concerned about their children's English learning. Therefore, it significantly affects their learning.
 	 The equipment for the English subject is not yet sufficient to meet the needs of teaching and learning foreign languages. The lack of projectors causes significant difficulties in teaching and learning foreign languages.
From the above situation, I have researched and used the following applications and software to enhance interested and support students in learning English at home.
2. A few software programs to assist teachers in teaching English for student in grade 5 at Mao Dien 1 Primary school”.
2.1.Design worksheet using Canva software 
* Aim: Design lively, easy-to-understand worksheets with clear layouts to engage students when completing their assignments. 
* How the solution applied:
Step 1: Access the website through the link: 
Step 2: Register an account using Gmail address
Step 3: After having an account, I proceed to design the exercise sheet by selecting the create design option → exercise sheet.
For example: At this step, I want to design an exercise on the topic of my future job for 5th-grade students. I will type into the search field: My future job → the software will display sample worksheets. If I find a suitable sample worksheet, I will select it and then click the share button to download it to my computer. If I need to redesign, I choose a template with a layout that suits my lesson objectives and then freely edit, add images, modify images, add text, etc.
If I have two suitable exercise sheets and want to swap images or text from one sheet to another. I can choose the add page button to add that page and then freely drag images and vocabulary from this card to that card. After I am satisfied, I just click on share to download the card. 
 Advantages:
- The software is completely free 
- Beautiful, cute images, suitable for the psychology of elementary school students
 - The software supports aligning images and lines, so there's no need to worry about misaligned or messy layouts because the characteristic of English exercise design involves a lot of images, making it difficult to align lines when designing 
Disadvantages:
- The sample question bank is not extensive, and it takes multiple searches to complete a test paper. 
To overcome this limitation, I have to create many exercise sheets myself. There are not many available for the topics in the Global Success student books.
2.2.Design and assign exercises using the Wordwall software
* Aim: Design exercises for students and assign them online
* How the solution applied 
Step 1: Access the website through the link: 
Step 2: Register an account and log in via Gmail 
Step 3: I click the blue button: create activity to select the appropriate exercise type. 
This software provides a variety of exercises suitable for different review purposes. If I want students to review new vocabulary, I will choose quiz, group sort, and find the match exercises. 
If I want students to review sentence structures, I will choose the match-up exercise. When I want students to review the written form, I will choose the anagram exercise.
When designing exercises to enhance listening skills, I will choose quiz formats for students to listen and select the correct answer this format also suitable when I want students to do reading comprehension exercises. In addition, the exercise type "complete the sentences" will help students review sentences and sentence structure. In addition, I also use exercise types like unjumble, group sort, matching pairs, etc.
Advantages: I personally really appreciate this platform because it truly provides almost all the basic types of exercises that elementary school students can access.
Students will know the results of their work directly through the answers the teacher has prepared in advance. In addition, the software provides excellent support for students' listening and pronunciation skills because it includes a function to create audio files (words, sentences, paragraphs). Teachers need to type the desired dialogue to create a high-quality audio file, including male and female voices, British, American, and Australian accent. Teachers can also easily check the list of students who have completed the exercises through the "my result" section. The software even supports teachers in ranking students based on criteria such as: the quickest completion, the highest score, or fastest completion with the highest score. Teachers will show students to motivate them to strive for a higher ranking.
Disadvantages: There is only one drawback to this software, which is that they offer only five free activities, after which users will have to pay to continue using it.However, to overcome this limitation, we can subscribe for an extension and only need to pay for the first month, then create hundreds of thousands of exercises from the available files. then we will be able to use these exercises freely. 
2.3 Assign homework to students through the your homework platform
* Aim: Design vocabulary exercises and assignments for students 
* How the solution applied:
Step 1: Access the platform through the link: 
Step 2: Create an account and log in to the platform using Gmail
Step 2: I choose the exercise creation section to create exercises according to my own preferences. This platform allows teachers to design exercises related to vocabulary, multiple-choice questions, and essays. 
At each step, there are very careful and detailed instructions on how to design the exercises. This software also supports students by providing the ability to create audio files for each vocabulary word. 
Especially in this software, after students submit their assignments, the software will immediately display the correct and incorrect answers through colors. students can directly observe their mistakes to correct them. If incorrect, it will appear in red; if correct, it will appear in blue.
Mistakes will be displayed and corrected immediately in the students' exercise section. Very convenient for students and parents to check and compare answers
Advantages:- This software is completely free.
 - There are many model exercises available on this website. Teachers can use it directly to assign to students for review. 
Disadvantages: The process of creating exercises is quite complicated. Teachers also cannot check the process of students' work as well as the results of the students. To solve this problem, teachers can ask students to take screenshots and send them back to the teacher.
3. Achieved results 
After a period of applying the above measures in the teaching process, I noticed a significant increase in students' enthusiasm whenever the teacher mentioned the exercises. I frequently organize vocabulary review games at the beginning of class or during lesson 3. The students play with great enthusiasm, and their vocabulary has noticeably increased. The incidence of spelling mistakes has significantly decreased. For the sentence arrangement games to review sentence structures, I see that the students play much faster and more accurately. Especially, every time I give them review exercises before each exam, their performance improves significantly. Specifically, the results are shown in the table below: 
The survey results table shows the level of interest of 5th-grade students in the English subject.
Table of survey results on vocabulary and sentence patterns of 5th-grade students:
Here is the survey data of 35 students in class 5A3 which did not apply above solutions. 
 Mark
Period
9-10
7-8
5-6
<5
No.
%
No.
%
No.
%
No.
%
Start of term
10
28,5
13
37,1
10
28,5
2
5,7
End of term
12
34,2
15
42,8
8
22,8
0
0
Here is the survey data of 35 students in class 5A2 which applied above solutions.
 Mark
Period
9-10
7-8
5-6
<5
No.
%
No.
%
No.
%
No.
%
Start of term
7
20
15
42,8
10
28,5
3
8,5
End of term
18
51,4
12
34,2
5
14,2
0
0
By continuously keep studying, I have gained some experience to help students increasingly love and passionate in English. Students are able to do various types of exercises in listening reading, writing and different types of exercises. Their enthusiasm for learning has increased, which has also led to noticeable improvements in their results. I am particularly pleased that the students have a suitable and relaxing zone to review vocabulary. Having a good foundation in vocabulary and sentence structure also helps students improve all listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, encourages them to actively participate in learning, become more confident in practicing and communicating in English. I believe that if these measures are continued to be implemented seriously throughout the teaching process, the quality of English learning at my school in particular and in the whole district in general will achieve more positive results. 
4. Recommendations, proposals: 
a. Regarding the professional group/team: 
- Organizing some professional meetings to help teachers learn from their colleagues. 
b. For the school leadership: 
- Create more favorable conditions for English teachers in their teaching work. 
- Pay attention, encourage, and promptly reward students who make progress in their studies. 
- Provide smart teaching tools and aids for classrooms. 
c. Regarding the Department of Education and Training: 
- Provide more facilities and functional rooms to support teaching activities. 
- Provide more reference materials 
- Organize training sessions on teaching methods 
Above are some measures to support teachers in assigning and checking homework for elementary school students that I have derived from my teaching experience. I sincerely hope to receive the attention and feedback from the leadership at all levels and the exchange of ideas from colleagues regarding the measures I have boldly proposed. 
 Mao Dien, October 6th,2024

 SCHOOL CONFIRMATION
TEACHER