MY OWN ARTICLE "Using Game in Teaching Reported Speech"

USING GAME IN TEACHING REPORTED SPEECH

Emi Nurniati

3A

Nusantara PGRI Kediri

ABSTRACT

            Being master and understand about English student should learn every element and material in English. Because English is very important. Reported speech is one of mataerial that should be mastered by student. Reported speech is used to talk about things other people have said (Tara : How to Teach reported Speech Alternative approach). Instead of introducing this topic using a range of different tenses, stick with a very simple structure for this first lesson. “He said he liked soccer.” where both verbs are past tense, would be ideal. A lesson on reported speech is the perfect opportunity to review different structures and vocabulary.

            This paper tries to bring about a discussion on the concept of  using game in teaching reported speech. These umbrella terms will be discussed under several explanation and theory about teaching reported speech using game.

Keyword : Reported speech, Game

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays using English is very important for many elements. English is very important for our daily. According to “Permendiknas no 22 tahun 2006 tentang Standart Isi untuk Satuan Pendidikan Dasar dan Menengah” as stated below:

“Bahasa Inggris merupakan alat untuk berkomunikasi secara lisan dan tulis. Berkomunikasi adalah memahami dan mengungkapkan informasi, pikiran, perasaan, dan mengembangkan ilmu pengetahuan, teknologi, dan budaya. Kemampuan  berkomunikasi dalam pegertian yang  utuh adalah kemampuan berwacana, yakni kemampuan memahami dan/atau menghasilkan teks lisan dan/atau tulis yang direalisasikan dalam empat ketrampilan berbahasa, yaitu mendengarkan, berbicara, membaca dan menulis. Keempat ketrampilan inilah yang digunakan untuk menaggapi atau menciptakan wacana dalm kehidupan bermasyarakat. Oleh karena itu, mata pelajaran Bahasa Inggris di arahkan untuk menggembangkan ketrampilan-ketrampilan tersebut agar lulusan mampu berkomunikasi dan berwacana dalam bahasa Inggris pada tingkat literasi tertentu”. (Permendiknas 2006:123)

In English there are many part that we can learn, one of them is about “Reported speech”.

Reported speech, also called inderect speech, is a means of expressing in the content of statements, questions or other without qouting them explicity as is done in direct spech. If we report what another person had said, we ussually do not use the speaker’s exact words (direct speech), but reported (inderect spech) . Therefore, we need to learn how to transform direct speech int reported speech. The structure is a little different depending on whether we want to transform a statement, question or request. When do we use reported speech ? sometimes someone says a sentence, for example “ I”m going to the cinema tonight”. Later, maybe we want to tell someone else about what the first person said. 

A conventional approach to teaching proper reporting of direct utterances may involve explanation of the grammar involved followed by oral or written exercises for reinforcement and confirmation that the student has mastered the form.

Many students still don’t know well about reported speech in learning proccess. Sometimes they make mistake in structure of sentence, how to use reported speech. So need some strategies in teaching reported speech. Many techniques that we can  use, one of them is using game. Using game is one of easy way to teach. Students are more happy and enjoy when doing teaching and learning reported speech using game. We can used the syntactic and lexical transformations involved are numerous, and though the situation is not as complex as the rules governing the use of the definite article in English, it is not that dissimilar. A much more effective approach involves utilizing a game format. Not only is this far more efficient; it is much more enjoyable for both learner and instructor. Reported speech is a very rich grammar area to teach because:

1. It can involve considerable manipulation of form
2. It’s a very easy piece of grammar to locate and exploit with texts.

REPORTED SPEECH

Reported speech, also called inderect speech, is a means of expressing in the content of statements, questions or other without qouting them explicity as is done in direct spech. If we report what another person had said, we ussually do not use the speaker’s exact words (direct speech), but reported (inderect spech).

Reported speech can be used in :

a.      Texts: reported interview

For this activity, search around the internet for an interview. This kind of activity works best if the interviewee is someone that your class is interested in, or at least someone they have heard about.

b.      Reporting back – famous interview

It is can be used when students want to report the result of interview with famous people.

c.       Texts : the news

Prepare for this activity by going to a *news website and looking around for short news stories with examples of reported speech. Don’t worry about not finding any, there are usually lots*.

1.                   Select examples of these texts and create a small worksheet. First ask students to read the excerpts and tick the stories they already know about.

2.                   Then ask them to speculate as what the direct speech was. Tell them to write in direct speech the reported speech. They can add more detail if they like.

3.                   At the end, have different students read their quotes and ask the others if they can see what story it came from.

Here some of strategies that we can used when we are teaching reported speech.

HOW TO TEACH REPORTED SPPECH

1.      Warm up

Use the warm up activity to get some simple sentences on the board. We can elicit certain sentence structures if students need more practice with something in particular. We  can do this by asking students to make groups and giving each group a different question to answer. This way you will get three to six sentences for each structure and can cover a range of topics. After giving students some time to discuss their questions and write individual answers, have volunteers read sentences aloud. Write some sentences and the names of the student volunteers on the board. Be sure to use at least one sentence from each group.

2.      Introduce Reported Speech

We may choose to have students stay in their groups or return to their desks for the introduction. We can try to elicit the target structure by asking a question such as “What did Ben say?” Try to use a sentence that is written on the board. Most likely students will search for the name Ben and then read the sentence exactly as you have written it but you can then say “You’re right! He said he was very tired. Good job!” You have now introduced the target structure. Write the sentence He said he was very tired. on the board next to Ben’s original sentence I am very tired. Use a few more sentences from the warm up as examples and encourage students to make reported speech sentences. Now play a short game such as Crisscross with the remaining examples to give students some practice.

3.      Practice

In their groups, students should trade sentences with group members and rewrite the sentences using the reported speech structure. Be sure to allow time for the majority of students to present their sentences to the class so that students can have lots of examples and some speaking practice. If students have questions, this is an excellent time to address them and review anything they are struggling with. Next use short video or audio clips for an exercise where students listen to material and complete a worksheet testing comprehension and practicing reported speech. You could also use a written dialogue for this type of activity but it will be more challenging if students have to listen to the material even if that means reading the dialogue aloud to the class. Check the answers as a class after several repetitions. If there is time, you can also play the material once more after the answers have been checked.

4.      Produce

Reported speech is a great opportunity for students to do interviews with classmates, teachers or family members so this activity may be best as a homework assignment. If students have never had the opportunity to conduct interviews before, it would be good to provide them with several questions to ask. It may also be helpful to provide the translations of these questions for the interviewees.

5.      Review

What students present depends on the amount of time you would like to spend on this activity. Students could either use the reported speech structure to talk about the response to one interview question or summarize their findings. This activity allows you to ensure that students are using the structure correctly. If students have difficulty with something, you can review and practice that in the warm up for the next lesson.

Being able to talk about things they have heard allows students to share more information. It is one thing to say what you think and totally different to talk about what other people have said. This will definitely be practiced further when you talk about giving advice because often someone will prompt advice giving by saying something like “I want to/think ~ but my parents said ~.” Covering this topic thoroughly now will give students the confidence to create this section of dialogue in giving advice dialogues and role plays later on.

PROCEDURE

It begin by composing or choosing representative quotations. Among the transformational features which cause the greatest difficulty for students are tense, auxiliary verbs, proper identification of subject and object; and time and place. Then use the cell (table) function in my word processing program to create cells into which each direct speech quotation is placed. For example: He said to her: "Did you come here by bus today"? Then type the corresponding reported speech expression on the corresponding reverse side cell: He asked her if she had come there by bus that day. A non-interrogative statement such as He said to her: "I didn't know that your sister was married" becomes He told her he hadn't known that her sister had been married. In this way, a set of double faced cards can be created.

FRONT

She said to him: “I’m tired.”	He said to her: “Are you a doctor?”	She said to him: “Will the train be late?”	He said to her: “I won’t be able to go to the meeting.”
She said to him: “Where is my husband?”	He said to her: “What time does the next bus leave?”	I said to him: “You can’t have any money.”	He said to me: “Can you swim?”
I said to her: “Maria doesn’t understand English.”	I said to him: “Does she know what she’s doing?”	She said to me: “How many people know about the plan?”	He said to me: “It takes about three hours to drive to Cambridge.”
She said to me: “Why do your parents live in Greece?”	He said to me: “I live a long way away.”	I said to her: “I’ve always thought your sister was married.”	I said to them: “When we’ve finished this game we’ll have dinner.”
He said to me: “Have you got a credit card?”	He said to him: “Do you work here?”	He said to me: “Do you know these are my lights?”	He said to her: “Can you give me your phone number?”

BACK

He told her he wouldn’t be able to go to the meeting.	She asked him if the train would be late.	He asked her if she was a doctor.	She told him she was tired.
He asked me if I could swim	I told him he couldn’t have any money.	He asked her what time the next bus left.	She asked him where her husband was.
He told me it took about three hours to drive to Cambridge.	She asked me how many people knew about the plan.	I asked him if she knew what she was doing.	I told her Maria didn’t understand English.
I told them when we had finished that game we would have dinner.	I told her I had always thought her sister had been married.	He told me he lived a long way away.	She asked me why my parents lived in Greece.
He asked her if she could give him her phone number.	He asked me if I knew those were his lights.	He asked him if he worked there.	He asked me if I had got a credit card.

These cards can be cut into sets; usually 20 or 25 cards works best. It should be easy for students to determine which side of each card is the direct quotation, and which represents the reported equivalent; but to make things a bit easier for them, distinctly different fonts may be used for each. As begining the lesson, it will provide three or four examples on the board just to help activate the students' memories; an affirmative, negative, and interrogative example of each. Students are then seated in groups of between three and five members. As these groups receive sets of the two-sided cards, they are directed to place them in a pile with the direct quotation sides facing up. In a predetermined order, a student looks at and reads the direct quotation on the top card in the pile. He/she must then say the equivalent reported speech form. Finally, the student turns over the card and checks the answer, which all group members are shown. If he/she is correct, the student may keep the card. If not, it is placed at the bottom of the pile. Then the following student repeats the procedure and once all the cards have been won by the group members, the student with the largest number of cards is declared the winner.

EXTENSION

This game can be repeated or, for more intensive practice, a different rule may be applied. In this version, students receive a point for each correct answer, rather than receiving the card. In addition to the above direct-reported speech quotations, functional equivalent expressions may be employed. For example, the direct quotation He said to her: "Will you give me your phone number"? corresponds to the reported expression He asked her to give him her phone number. Of course, this activity can be followed by oral drills or written exercises to confirm mastery of the transformational structure.
This two-sided card game format is also useful for other potentially problematic grammatical features, such as passive-active sentences and relative clause formation.

Discussion

The content of the cards and the difficulty of the expressions used should relate to the level of the class, of course. They should be designed to generate a high rate of errors, initially. Gradually, students learn from theirs and others' mistakes, and they become completely absorbed in the activity. Often, about 20 minutes of practice is sufficient to refresh and reinforce the grammatical form. During the activity, I will circulate around the classroom, monitoring students' progress. If some of the groups finish up early, I spot check their performance and if this is lacking, I direct them to repeat the activity.

ü  We can also used this strategy :

Fun ways of practising Reported Speech

This way is used by Alex Case for TEFL.net  December 2008. He wrote the article about teaching reported speech in his article.

Reported speech reversi Prepare cards with reported speech on one side and direct speech of the same sentence on the other. Students have to correctly say what is on the other side to turn it over and score one point. There are many games you can play with these cards, including the TEFL version of  :

1. Reported Speech Revisi

 Prepare cards with reported speech on one side and direct speech of the same sentence on the other. Students have to correctly say what is on the other side to turn it over and score one point. There are many games you can play with these cards, including the TEFL version of Reversi/ Othello that was first described by Mario Rinvolucri in Grammar Games and that is the subject of an upcoming article of mine.

2.      Go Between

This is also a game from a classic TEFL supplementary book that can easily be done without access to the book (in this case Intermediate Communication Games). Two students have such a problem with each other that they are refusing to speak, and another student shuttles between them trying to find a compromise. The two students need to be sitting so far apart that they can’t hear the other people speak and so really need to listen to the peacemaker, e.g. by sitting in different rooms or one half of the students sitting in the corridor. Making both sides have complaints about the other and giving out roleplay cards can also help set up this activity well, as can having different groups of students working on different situations so that they can’t listen into the neighbouring teams. Possible situations to roleplay include students who have problems with the other students’ behaviour in class (speaking too much, not speaking enough, holding up the lesson because they haven’t done their homework, distracting the teacher from the lesson plan by asking questions, etc- maybe leading onto discussion of good classroom behaviour), neighbours, neighbouring countries, married couples, or suppliers and customers who are near breaking point in their relationship. This can also be used for non-conflict negotiations such as premarital contracts or price negotiations. Note that students usually get into this activity so much that they completely forget about Reported Speech, so you might want to do this as a controlled activity where they must make an effort to use the structures you have presented.

3.      What they told you

  Give the students a list of people they have probably been spoken to by in their lives (e.g. teachers, policemen, future employers, immigration officers and market researchers) or brainstorm such a list onto the board. Students choose one of the people on the list and say things that this person really said to them, e.g. “He asked me whether I wanted a single or return”, and the other students guess which person from the list was speaking. As a more challenging extension, they can continue the game with people not on the list. This can also be done as Twenty Questions, e.g. “Has this person ever asked you whether you were carrying any drugs?” This game links well with the vocabulary of jobs or practising situational language such as “At the airport”. The same game can also be done with the vocabulary of relationships like “colleague”, “acquaintance” and “classmate”.

4. Reported speech pairwork dictation

 This idea lacks the fun element of the other games here (unless you choose or write an amusing dialogue or one with a surprising twist), but is easy to do and check and can lead to examination of things we usually leave out of reported speech such as “well” and “yes”. It can also be a lead in to the similar but more fun activities below. Student A has one person’s part of a dialogue and Student B has the other person’s part, and they convert their part into reported speech and tell their partner what the person on their worksheet said so that their partner can convert it back into direct speech (in their heads) and write it down in the gaps on their sheet. At the end when they check their worksheets with each other they should have identical dialogues written down. This activity can be made more challenging by one of the students having their half of the dialogue in mixed up order.

5. Reported speech pairwork dictation same or different

 A more intellectually challenging version of pairwork dictation is giving students similar but not identical direct speech sentences on Student A and Student B sheets. They dictate them to each other in reported speech and work together to decide if the original two sentences were the same or not, e.g. Student A reports “Do you feel happy?” as “He asked me whether I felt happy” and Student B reports “Are you feeling happy?” as “He asked me if I was feeling happy”, and they decide together that the original sentences were different (without ever telling their partner exactly what is on their sheet). You can add some trick questions where the direct speech sentences are different but the reported speech versions are the same, e.g. “I have been there” and “I was there” or “I was there that day” and “I have been there today”. They might feel robbed if you include sentences like this as it will stop them finishing the game successfully, but they will really pay attention when you bring that grammar point up later!

6.      Pairwork dictation match the sentences

 Another good way of using sentences that sound similar when converted into reported speech (either correctly or wrongly) is to put the same direct speech sentences on Student A’s and Student B’s worksheets but mixed up and labelled 1 to 10 (for example) on one student’s and a to j on the other. They then dictate them to each other in reported speech and decide which ones are the same.

   7. Pairwork dictation match the sentences the dialogne pair

 Rather than matching identical sentences as above, you can add extra language and challenge by the students trying to match up typical functional language sentence pairs such as “Would you like anything else?” on Student A’s sheet and “No, that’s all thanks” on Student B’s. The sentences on their worksheets can be given in reported speech for them just to read out and convert back to direct speech in their heads while trying to work out which typical sentences or (more challenging) be given as direct speech for them to convert to reported speech when they tell them to their partner as in the games above.

8. Reported Speech sentence completion guessing gamae

 Give the students a list of sentence stems that should be completed with reported speech such as “I forgot to tell someone…”, “ or “Someone told me that I…”. They complete as many sentences as they can and then read out only the part they have written for the other students to guess which sentence that comes from.

9. Guess the backshift

Students tell their partner(s) something that was said to them in direct speech (maybe using the air speech marks gesture), and their partner(s) convert it into reported speech, using the right kind of backshift or not by guessing whether it is something that is generally true about them, whether it is something their brother always says to them or whether it was a one off thing that is no longer true, e.g. choosing to convert “My brother said ‘You look sad’” to “Your brother said that you looked sad” or “Your brother (often) says that you look sad/ your brother once said that you always look sad” depending on whether they think that is generally true or not.

10. The thing he ever said

Give prompts containing superlatives for real things people said to them, e.g. “The worst thing your siblings have said to you” or “The best advice you have ever had”. Students tell their partner(s) one of these things, and their partners guess which prompt it refers to.

11. Referring to who guessing game

Students report something they said or heard about someone else, e.g. gossip about someone famous, news about a politician, a reviewer’s opinion on someone’s acting or a colleague slagging off their boss, and the other students guess who was being spoken about.

12. Which occasion

Students tell their partners something that was said to them at an important time, e.g. when they graduated from university or the first time their parents talked to them about sex, and their partners guess which occasion that thing was said at. The list of occasions can be given as a worksheet or brainstormed onto the board. This topic can easily be extended into an interesting cross cultural discussion on the traditional lack of school graduation ceremonies in the UK etc.

13. And this is how I felt sentence completion

Students report something that was said to them or they heard that they had a strong emotional reaction to and the other students guess what their reaction was. This ties in well with a lesson on adjectives, and you can maybe give them a worksheet with some suggested adjectives on or brainstorm them before the activity, such as “… and I felt sad/ hungry/ romantic/ nostalgic/ old/ young/ flattered”

14. Reported mingling

Almost any mingling activity (e.g. Find Someone Who) can be extended to include reported speech by people reporting back to their partners or the class what they learnt. Before doing this you will need to decide whether you want to encourage them to use Reported Speech or whether it is something you hope will come up naturally and that you might bring up later in an error correction stage.

15. Real or imagined reported speech

This one works well with students whose memories freeze under the stress of speaking English or who don’t want to give away too much personal information. Students report something from prompts such as those described above, and then the other students guess whether that was really said to them or whether it was just made up.

Conclussion

To know the important of teaching reported by using game is very important because to know it is effective or not if teaching reported by using game. It can help to the teachers in learning proccess. In writing, grammatical accuracy is especially important, and the reported dialog form represents a major element of this. The activity and game format described in this article is definitely both an effective and enjoyable way for students to master the use of reported speech in English writing. Using some strategies, here is game can make the ability of students in reported speech. They can practice not in writing but also in speaking using reported speech.

REFERENCES

http//www.google.com.How to Teach Reported Speech  Alternative Approach.htm

http//www.google.com.Reported speech/Fun ways of practising Reported Speech _ Teflnet.htm

http//www.google.com.Reported speech – tips and activities _ Onestopenglish.htm

www.TESL.com

Case,Alex(2008). Fun Way of practising Reported speech. TEFL.Net

Tara(2008). How to teach reported speech :reported speech. TESOL