(SKKN 2022) TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATIONTO 10th GRADESTUDENTS AT NONG CONG I HIGH SCHOOL

Thanh Hoa Education and Training Department Nong Cong I High School TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION TO 10th GRADE STUDENTS AT NONG CONG I HIGH SCHOOL (DẠY VÀ HỌC PHÁT ÂM TIẾNG ANH CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRƯỜNG THPT NÔNG CỐNG I) Presented: Bui Thi Le Lan Professional team: Foreign language Thanhhoa, 2022 Contents Contents .2 DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1.Definition of pronunciation 1.2.The importance of teaching and learning pronunciation 1.3.The teacher’s roles and student’s roles in teaching and learning pronunciation .4 1.3.2.The student's roles in learning pronunciation 1.4 Factors affecting pronunciation learning .5 1.5.Teachers’ and students’ problems in teaching and learning pronunciation .5 -Class setting .5 -Teaching model -Intelligibility .5 CHAPTER TWO: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .5 2.1.Methodology 2.1.1.The research questions: 2.1.2.The participants: .5 2.1.3.The instruments 2.1.4.Data analysis process .6 Teachers and students’ attitude towards teaching and learning English pronunciation .6 3.1.3The purpose of teaching and learning pronunciation 3.1.5 Pronunciation teaching and learning time 3.1.6 Teachers’ and students’ problems in teaching and learning vowels and consonants 3.1.7Teachers and students’ problems in teaching and learning pronunciation 10 3.1.8 The causes of the difficulties in teaching and learning Pronunciation 12 3.1.9.Causes of the difficulties in teaching and learning pronunciation in English 10 13 3.1.10 Classroom approaches, techniques and activities used by teachers .14 3.1.11.Students’ expectations and teachers’ recommendations to teaching and learning pronunciation 15 3.2 Classroom observations .16 3.2.1Teaching and materials and curriculum 16 3.2.2Students’ activities and their mistakes in producing long, short vowels and fricative consonants 17 4.Data analysis and discussion 19 CONCLUSIONS 22 1.Summary of the findings .22 2.Pedagogical implications .22 2.1 Increasing teaching and learning time for pronunciation 23 2.2.Motivating students in learning pronunciation 23 2.3.Increasing teacher’s and student’s roles in teaching and learning pronunciation 23 3.Limitations of the study 23 4.Recommendations for a further study 24 REFERENCES 25 INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study Despite the fact that pronunciation is one of the most important skills in English Language Teaching, incorrect pronunciation leads to occasional misunderstandings, at the upper-secondary school level in Vietnam, in language teaching and learning, compared with vocabulary, grammar and language skills, pronunciation has so far been paid less attention to In the official textbooks used for teaching English at high school level, there are few exercises for pronunciation practice To make the matter worse, all important English exams at schools as well as the entrance exam to universities are always in written form so most teachers as well as students have little motivation to teach and to learn pronunciation, therefore they generally spend little time on teaching and learning pronunciation in order to spend valuable class time on other area of language As a result, students are often shy and unconfident to speak in English Many students cannot pronounce English words and sentences correctly English pronunciation seems has become the most serious problem that students meet when they learn English This is happening at almost upper secondary schools in Vietnam And that is the reason why the effectiveness of teaching pronunciation still remains one of the most widely problematic subjects in the field of language teaching Situated in a countryside area in Thanh Hoa province, Nong Cong I High School is even far weaker than other schools in terms of learning different school subjects, of which English language teaching seems to be the worst And if some students are said to be good at English, it means they are good at English grammar Most of them find it hard to express themselves orally If anyone can, he has problems in pronouncing English words and sentences In the English lessons, only teachers speak, and most of the time, teachers have to speak Vietnamese because they are afraid that their students not understand what they are speaking Students often complain about difficulties they get in learning English speaking skill in general and in pronunciation in particular And we ourselves realize that our students really have bad pronunciation This is a serious problem not only at Nong Cong I High School but also at many other countryside schools In addition, no research on teaching English pronunciation at Nong Cong I High School has been done so far Coping with this pressing fact, as a language teacher teaching English at Nong Cong I High school, the writer always thinks of some questions: What are the attitudes of teachers and students towards teaching and learning pronunciation? What are the problems teachers and students face in teaching and learning pronunciation? How to find suitable methods to teach pronunciation? What should teachers to teach pronunciation effectively? How should teachers make students become interested in learning pronunciation? The answers to these questions will help language teachers improve their students’ pronunciation as well as help them make progress in effective communication For the above reasons, the author decides to carry out the study entitled: “Teaching and learning English pronunciation to 10th grade students at Nong Cong I High school” with the focus on the reality of teaching and learning pronunciation, problems then suggests some solutions Aims of the study This study mainly focused on discovering the reality of teaching and learning pronunciation at Nong Cong I High school, especially to find out problems that teachers and students often have in pronunciation lessons The writer also hopes to make some suggestions that can help the English teachers overcome those problems and improve students’ pronunciation In order to achieve this aim, some objectives are posed for exploration as follows: - To find out the teachers’ and students’ attitude toward teaching and learning pronunciation at Nong Cong I High School - To find out the difficulties and the causes of difficulties in teaching and learning pronunciation - To suggest some recommendations Research questions The above aims of the study can be realized by answering the following research questions: (1) What is teachers’ and students’ attitude toward teaching and learning pronunciation at Nong Cong I High School? (2) Which problems the teachers and students at Nong Cong I face in pronunciation lessons? From the findings, the researcher would recommend some pedagogical implications with the hope to help teachers and students at Nong Cong I identify their problems and self-improve their pronunciation Scope of the study This study investigated the difficulties of teaching and learning pronunciation at Nong Cong I High school with the focus on two aspects of English pronunciation: short, long vowels and fricative consonants for the 10th form students at Nong Cong I High school The subjects of the study are 10th form students those are beginner with learning pronunciation at high school English pronunciation would not be deeply investigated in this research Method of the study This is a qualitative piece of research including such techniques as: survey questionnaires, classroom observations and interviews Firstly, the survey questionnaires were delivered to both teachers and students to investigate the difficulties in teaching and learning pronunciation at Nong Cong I High School Then, some classrooms observations and interviews with some English teachers have been also conducted to get supplementary information Finally, the results obtained from questionnaires, observations and interviews have been discussed and analyzed with a hope for providing language teacher with some teaching techniques to work successfully with their students Significance of the study Because the study was conducted on a small scale with a group of 10th grade students at a high school, the writer hoped to make contribution to teaching pronunciation at Nong Cong I High School The result of the study is considered to be useful for teachers and students at this school Thus, this study will be an interesting reference material for teachers of English at Nong Cong I High School, especially for those who are in favor of improving their students' pronunciation This research will help teachers and students identify their problems in teaching and learning pronunciation and self- improve their pronunciation The design of the study The study was designed with the first part as an INTRODUCTION to the rationale, the aims, and the significance of the study, the research questions, the method, the scope and the design of the study The next part provides the DEVELOPMENT of the thesis with chapters Chapter presents the theoretical background with definition of pronunciation; the importance of teaching pronunciation; the teacher's and student's roles in teaching pronunciation; the pronunciation components, factors affecting pronunciation learning, , teachers’ and students’ problems in teaching and learning pronunciation, intelligibility, and some techniques of teaching pronunciation Chapter is research methodology In this chapter, the focus will be on background information of the subject of the study, the instruments used to collect data and the procedure of data collection as well Chapter is the body of the study, presents a description of data analysis and discussions With the description of data analysis through three instruments: questionnaire, classroom observation and the interview, I explored some interpretations of the findings The last part CONCLUSION is devoted to the summary of the findings and some pedagogical suggested recommendations to help teachers and students in upper secondary schools to overcome difficulties in learning and teaching English pronunciation This chapter also provides the limitations of the study as well as some recommendations for further study provides the summary of the thesis, limitations and some suggestions for further study Previous studies on teaching and learning English pronunciation The 16th Educational Conference held in Melbourne in 2003 by Germana Eckert, In search Language Centre concerning Productive Skills in the Academic English Curriculum showed that the importance of good writing ability in academic English and teachers spend more time working on students’ writing and grammar skills in order that students are best prepared for exams and especially written exams together with main focus of the current academic English curriculum are factor which cause students and teachers to leave little time for pronunciation in the classroom (Germana Eckert, 2003) Most of the literature on pronunciation deals with what and how to teach, while the learner remains a silent abstract in the classroom Morley (1994) underlines that the prevalent focus on pronunciation teaching nowadays should be on designing new wave instructional programs Moreover she stresses that these instructional designs should take into account not only language forms and functions, but also issues of learner self-involvement and learner strategy training In other words, students who have developed the skills to monitor and modify their speech patterns if necessary should become active partners in their own learning DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Definition of pronunciation The notion of pronunciation has been defined in many different ways by writers Generally speaking, pronunciation is simply defined as “the way in which a word is spoken” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Encyclopedic, 1992) or “the way in which a word is usually pronounced” (Longman dictionary of contemporary English, 1978) In the book “Pronunciation” published in 1994, Christiane Dalton and Barbara Seidlhofer (1994:3) consider pronunciation “as the production of significant sound” They look at the word in two senses First, it is used as part of a code of a particular language That is the reason why English sounds are distinguished from sounds of other languages In this sense, pronunciation can be told as the production and reception of sounds of speech Second, sound is used to achieve meaning in contexts of use Here the code combines with other factors to make communication possible In this sense pronunciation is referred with reference to acts of speaking In the scope of this study, the concept of pronunciation can be described as “a way of speaking a word, especially a way that is accepted or generally understood” (American Heritage Dictionary, 1992) 1.2 The importance of teaching and learning pronunciation Sound is the core of the language so that is the reason why when teaching a language the first thing the teachers should is to let the learners have chances to explore to the sounds of that language Moreover, communicative approach is considered as the major language teaching in the twenty first century as what the learners really need after graduating is that they can communicate successfully in their work and their life That is the reason why pronunciation teaching has been paid more and more attention by all the teachers Pronunciation is as important as any other aspects of language like syntax and vocabulary Speech is much more than pronunciation of course, but speech is impossible without it Correct pronunciation, in fact, is considered to be a prerequisite to develop the speaking skill That is why teaching pronunciation should occupy an important place in the study of any language 1.3 The teacher’s roles and student’s roles in teaching and learning pronunciation Because of the importance of teaching pronunciation mentioned above, teachers play a key role in teaching and learning pronunciation Many authors share this idea and they all give out the similar roles of teacher's and students' in pronunciation practice However, in this study, the literature of Kenworthy (1987: 1-2) about the teacher's role was chosen The roles of the teacher and students can be derived in the following parts 1.3.1 The teacher's roles in teaching pronunciation -Helping students hear and perceive the model as exactly as possible -Helping students make sounds intelligible -Providing students with feedback of their pronunciation -Pointing out what is going on -Establishing priorities -Devising activities -Assessing progress 1.3.2 The student's roles in learning pronunciation In teaching a foreign language in general, and in teaching pronunciation in particular, whatever the teacher does, the learner's improvement and prospects of change are minimal if the learners take no action and not try to monitor their own efforts What all learners are required to in pronunciation learning is response But it is not as simple as that Ultimate success in pronunciation will surely depend on learners' attitude and how much attempt the learner puts into In other words, the most decisive factor of improving pronunciation is the learner's willingness to take responsibility for his/her learning process In addition, students also have some following roles: Firstly, they have to perceive the model as exactly as they can If cannot acquire it, they will not be able to pronounce the model correctly Students need to respond as much and as well as they can to the recognition, with repetition activities because "practice makes perfect" Finally, students should correction of their pronunciation mistakes 1.4 Factors affecting pronunciation learning There are many factors affecting the learners' pronunciation According to Kenworthy (1987:4-9), factors such as the native language, the age factor, amount of exposure, phonetic ability, attitude and identity, motivation and concern for good pronunciation have great influence on Pronunciation learning 1.5 Teachers’ and students’ problems in teaching and learning pronunciation Both teachers and students encounter various problems in the process of teaching and learning pronunciation These problems not only arise from the nature of pronunciation itself, but from various subjective and objective factors In the light of the previous and current studies, some major problems that teachers and learners face in teaching and learning pronunciation are: -The nature of pronunciation -Class setting -Teaching model -Intelligibility CHAPTER TWO: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The research methodology was presented briefly in the first chapter, the Introduction In this chapter, once again, it will be discussed in more details 2.1 Methodology 2.1.1 The research questions: The study was designed to seek the answer to the three following questions: (1) What is teachers’ and students’ at titude toward teaching and learning pronunciation at Nong Cong I High School? (2) Which problems the teachers and students at Nong Cong I High School face in pronunciation lessons? With these two research questions, the study will investigate teachers’ and students’ attitude toward teaching and learning pronunciation as well as their difficulties in teaching and learning pronunciation at Nong Cong I High School in English 10 together with the causes of these difficulties then giving some pedagogical implications 2.1.2 The participants: With the questionnaire and classroom observation instruments, the participants are 92 randomly selected students at 10B7, 10B10 They are both male and female Among 100 respondents, 56 were girls and 36 were boys All of them are 10th grade students who are going to finish their 10th grade school year They have learned English for nearly five years These 92 students were chosen randomly without any criteria set before With this random selection, the writer hopes to receive the most reliable and honest data from the questionnaires In the questionnaires, I explained that their answers would be anonymous and my aim at giving them the questionnaires are just to get the data for the research without any other aims With another questionnaire and interview instrument, the participants were five teachers of English at Nong Cong I High School Among them, there was one male teacher and four female ones They have been teaching at that school from one to six years 2.1.3 The instruments As I stated in the Introduction part, the research will be carried out by classroom observation, questionnaires and interviews The questions and interviews are designed into investigate these main following categories: - General attitude to teaching and learning English pronunciation - Teachers’ and students’ main difficulties in teaching and learning English pronunciation - The main causes of those difficulties The questionnaires: As we know, one of the most popular means of collecting data is using questionnaires The reason for this is that, firstly, it is easy for us to construct and it does not either consume time or cost money Secondly, questionnaires can help us to collect data in field setting, and the data themselves are more amenable to quantification then discursive data such as free-form field-notes, participant observers’ journals or transcripts of oral language (David Nunan 1992:143) Furthermore, we can achieve respondent anonymity when applying this type of instrument There are two types of questions, closed and open-ended questions The former kind of questions are often used to get answers which are factual or fairly predictable, meanwhile openended questions are preferred when the researchers expect to get answers which are in terms of opinions, beliefs or judgments Furthermore, open-ended questions also give the respondents chances to express more opinions individually Because of these above reasons, both two types of questionnaires were employed to get the data To get the data reliably and avoid problems such as respondents’ shyness, the questionnaires were started with explanations about its aims as well as its respondent anonymity In order that the students had no pressure of time and freedom, they were let to finish the questions at home for one day Furthermore, all the questions were written in Vietnamese so that they could be at their best to understand the questions and express their thoughts and ideas With the aims stated in the Introduction part, I handed out the questionnaires to the teachers and students These questions were aimed at exploring the reality of teaching and learning pronunciation and teachers’ and students’ general attitude towards learning English pronunciation 2.1.4 Data analysis process The data collected from three different sources, the questionnaires, interview and classroom observation, were classified into different categories to analyze: Teachers and students’ attitude towards teaching and learning English pronunciation - Teachers and students’ difficulties in teaching and learning English pronunciation - The causes of the difficulties All the data were gathered to analyze both descriptively and interpretively factors preventing students from gaining good pronunciation are students’ motivation and teaching time 25 % student respondents said that they had no motivation in learning pronunciation and that maybe one of the reasons why they difficult to learn pronunciation while 10% teachers thought that students’ 11 motivation affected their pronunciation learning, 20% of the teachers and 18% of the students said that they not have enough time on pronunciation 10% of the teachers considered that their students’ competence in pronunciation is too low and 14% students also agreed with that idea Class setting is the next factor that 20% teachers chose In contrast, only 10% of the students agreed with this It is clear that quality of teaching staff is not good enough to come over all the difficulties in teaching pronunciation 3.1.8 The causes of the difficulties in teaching and learning Pronunciation TEACHERS 90 80 70 60 50 40 Strongly agree 30 20 Agree 10 Neutral STUDENTS 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 Chart 6: The causes of the difficulties in teaching learning pronunciation and 12 It is clear that almost teachers and students agree that these factors have influence on the teaching and learning pronunciation process However, the levels of the effects are different Most of teachers and students (more than 50%) strongly agree that amount of exposure is one of the most main causes of difficulties in teaching and learning pronunciation All of them believe that if a learner is ‘surrounded’ by English and this constant exposure should affect pronunciation skills People who speak English more often at school or at work will have better pronunciation skills than those who not Attitudes and motivation also have strong agreement If a learner has good attitudes and motivation towards learning pronunciation, he will try to learn it more As a result, he will have better pronunciation One of the causes which have great influence in teaching and learning pronunciation is the differences between English and Vietnamese There are some sounds in English that Vietnamese does not have, which makes it difficult for the Vietnamese to pronounce like native speakers Especially, there are few teachers and students paying much attention to age and phonetic ability Maybe they think that it is never too late to learn and everyone has ability to learn pronunciation well 3.1.9 Causes of the difficulties in teaching and learning pronunciation in English 10 TEACHERS Strongly agree Agree 70 Neutral 61 Not strongly agree 51 41 31 21 13 STUDENTS 100 0 0 ■0 0 0 Strongly agree Agree Neutral Not strongly agree Chart 7: Causes of the difficulties in teaching and learning pronunciation in English 10 The finding shows that, nearly all the teachers (80%) and students (90%) agree that one of the main causes of difficulty in teaching and learning pronunciation in English 10 is the time for each lesson is too short The time for each lesson is so short that teachers not have enough time to list the main rules and practice them While there are too many relative rules for students to remember (60% teachers and 93% students) In addition to that, reference books for pronunciation are not as available as those for other language skills such as reading, listening and writing Remarkably, all the teachers (100%) and students (100%) agree that practice activities in the book are so boring and monotonous 80% teachers and 92% students strongly agree with this cause There are only two kinds of practice activities through unit to unit 16 (in language focus periods) This explains why many students find the lessons not interesting enough In addition to that, there are some teachers and students say that the teaching techniques are not attractive enough to make the lessons more interesting What is more, the number of students in each class is about 45 to 50, it is too crowded for a language class, and pronunciation class in particular Moreover, with the teaching and learning condition in Vietnam in general and at Nong Cong I High School, a lab for studying foreign language is not available 3.1.10 Classroom approaches, techniques and activities used by teachers 14 Chart 8: Teachers' activities in pronunciation lessons As seen from the chart, 40% of the teachers used different techniques including listen and imitate, drilling, reading aloud etc to teach pronunciation; however; 20% of the teachers also said that they often ignore teaching pronunciation No one uses authentic materials as well as on-going assessment to attract students in learning pronunciation 40% of the teachers choose their own ways in teaching pronunciation Most of the teachers teach pronunciation through teaching vocabulary They often read the words, and then ask students to repeat Sometimes during the lessons, if their students make pronunciation mistakes, they will correct them 3.1.11 Students’ expectations and teachers’ recommendations to teaching and learning pronunciation Chart 9: Teachers’ suggestions and students’ expectations in teaching and learning pronunciation 15 From the chart above, we can see that both teachers and students share nearly the same ideas about the way to improve teaching and learning pronunciation They agree that it is necessary to many things at the same time and it is a must to improve teaching methods Although ideas are different, percentage of choosing ideas is nearly equal All of them agree that combining all these factors is the best way to get the target in teaching and learning pronunciation When being asked detailed about techniques can be used in pronunciation, teachers and students have the following choices: Table 2: The favorite techniques of teaching and learning pronunciation used in teaching and learning pronunciation lessons at Nong Cong I High School Techniques Teacher Student Listen and imitate 100% 90% Drilling 60% 50% Minimal pair drills Reading aloud 80% 100% 90% 80% Phonetic training Tongue Twisters 80% 60% 80% 90% Recording students’ production 20% 40% Chaining 20 % 10% Visual aids 40% 50% Others: (Please specify) 0% 0% Table 2: The favorite techniques of teaching and learning pronunciation used in teaching and learning pronunciation lessons From the table above we see that almost teachers and students vote for some techniques those are often applied in teaching pronunciation such as: listen and imitate, reading aloud and Tongue Twisters after that is minimal pair drills (80% for teachers and 90% for students), and phonetic training (80%) Then drilling with 60% teachers and 50% students choose 3.2 Classroom observations classroom observations were done in two weeks to get more practical information During the process of observations, the author focused on some aspects taking in class as: teaching and learning materials used in class, students’ activities and their mistakes in producing pronunciation, and teachers’ approaches and techniques used in teaching pronunciation 3.2.1 Teaching and materials and curriculum As observed, all the materials used for teaching and learning are in the textbook: “English 10”, published by Vietnamese education publisher In only 1/6 teaching sessions the teacher used a cassette to teach listening However, the teacher did not focus on checking pronunciation of the students The teacher did not use any additional materials for the teaching pronunciation They complained that there are so many things to teach and train for the tests and exams while the teaching time is 16 limited Similarly, the students’ learning materials are also in the students’ textbooks Only a small number of them own some dictionaries to check pronunciation at home 3.2.2 Students’ activities and their mistakes in producing long, short vowels and fricative consonants As a matter of fact, during classroom observations, the author could see few activities carried out by teachers or students Their main duties of students in these lessons are listening to and writing down what the teacher said Sometimes, they nothing Regarding to speaking and pronunciation learning, there is a few chances for them to stand up and express their ideas in English Therefore, the teacher has almost no opportunities to check their students’ pronunciation Because of the fact that students not spend much time on speaking in class, it is very difficult for the observer to discover mistakes and errors that the students produced However, there are some main mistakes that the students often make in pronouncing long, short vowels and fricative consonants They often pronounce long and short vowels with the same manner They meet difficulties in distinguishing vowels pairs such as /e/ vs /æ, /Λ/ vs /a/, short “I” vs long /i:/, /ə/ vs /ɜ:/, /ɒ/vs /ɔ:/ This can cause misunderstanding to listeners Moreover, the problems that they have with English consonants seem to be many more than the ones that they have with English vowels They often omit fricatives: /f/, /v/, / θ/, /ð/, /s/,/z/, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ at the ends of the sounds Many students are unable to distinguish voiced and voiceless fricatives Most commonly, they will be able to produce voiceless fricatives but not voiced ones For example, /f/ may be substituted for /v/ so that a word such as “leave” is pronounced as “leaf’ Similarly, /s/ may be substituted for /z/, so that a word such as “peas” is pronounced as “peace” Students also find it difficult to distinguish with these / θ/ and /ð/ That is why they often substitute a /d/ for /ð/ and a “t” for / θ/ 3.3 Interviews and discussions After collecting data from the survey questionnaires and classroom observations, the author used the post interviews in order to get the in-depth discussions about Students’ difficulties in learning English pronunciation as experienced by teachers at Nong Cong I High School and techniques that the teachers used to improve students’ pronunciation With eleven questions in the questionnaires, I investigated students’ attitude towards learning English and English pronunciation The instrument also helped me to confirm that students’ difficulties in learning English pronunciation exist However, with the students' level, it is very difficult for them to express their problems That is why I employed the third instrument, the interview, to the teachers, to get more data about problems that students here often meet when learning English pronunciation with my belief that the teachers are better at grouping and expressing the pronunciation problems In order to obtain more in-depth data, five teachers of English teaching at Nong Cong I High School School were selected for a structured interview The questions of the interview were made in Vietnamese so that the teachers had no difficulties in expressing their ideas Moreover, giving those interviews in Vietnamese made them more confident and natural to answer the questions in order to guarantee the truthfulness of the information for data analysis All the interviews were audio-taped and transcribed for translation The full transcript of the interview is given in the Appendix All the interviewees were asked five same questions in the structured interview: 17 Do you find that your students have difficulties in learning English pronunciation? In your opinion, what are the main problems that students often meet when they learn English pronunciation? Do your students have difficulties when they learn English vowels? What are they? Do your students have difficulties when they learn English consonants? What are they? Can you think of the possible reasons for these difficulties? For question 1, all of ten respondents agreed that their students have difficulties in learning English pronunciation According to these teachers, their learners make a lot of mistakes when producing any English, from single words to complex utterances These teachers also added that their students made so many mistakes in pronunciation when they spoke English that they daren’t speak English in the class With question which investigated students’ main difficulties in learning English pronunciation as experienced by the teachers, the respondents gave a lot of problems that their students often meet However, the following are some main ones: • Teacher 1: It is very difficult to talk about all the problems that my students have in English pronunciation I am just able to give out some main ones such as ending word sounds, long and short vowels That’s the main ones; there are a lot to talk about For example, they also get difficulty in distinguish the two pairs /æ/ and /e/ or between /ð/ and /dʒ/ • Teacher 3: I not know what to talk about this because there are so many mistakes those students often make in my English lessons The main ones may be the mistakes in producing fricative consonants, long and short vowels Question concerns vowel problems that students here often meet According to these ten teachers, the main vowels that were problematic for their students were the vowel pair / æ / and /e/ They also expressed that the students here often made mistakes between the pairs /ɒ/ and /ɔ: /, /ɪ/ and /i: /, /ǝ/ and/ɜ: /, /ʊ/ and /u: / They complained that their students often substitute the long vowels by the short ones, except the last pair, the /ʊ/ and /u: /, the students there often have a long /u: / substitute for the short /u/ Teacher also added more examples as below: -“good” is pronounced /gu:d/ -“see” is pronounced /si/ -“read” is pronounced /rid/ Question number of the interview regards to the problems students at that school often meet with English consonants With the question “Do your students have difficulties when they learn English consonants?” all the five answers were “yes” The teachers gave many mistakes that students often made with English consonants After doing analysis from the record, I had some main conclusions as followings: - The most serious problems with English consonants for the students there, according to five interviewed teachers, are final position consonants The students often ignored the last consonants, especially the six consonants /p/, /t/, /k/, /f/, /v/, /ð/ - Many students also substitute Vietnamese consonants for some English ones such as /t/ for /t/ for /θ/, /d/ for /ð/, /z/ for / dʒ/, /ʃ/ for /s/ and /f/ for /p/ Question concerns the main reasons for these above difficulties With this 18 question, the respondents seem to get difficult to express their ideas although the questions were given in Vietnamese I audio taped and then found their main thoughts as followings: - Most teachers thought that the main reason for this was lack of opportunity for students to practice English They all shared a common thought that their students did not have much time to practice English - Furthermore, some respondents here also added that the students were very lazy in speaking English They just studied for exams which focused much on grammar The objectives of the exams also made them lazy in learning English pronunciation - Another negative reason that the respondents gave for students’ bad pronunciation is that teachers’ pronunciation seemed to be not good enough for them to listen They also complained that some teachers did not pay much attention to teaching pronunciation In short, from the interview, we can get some brief conclusions as followings: - According to these teachers, students at Nong Cong I High School have difficulties in learning English pronunciation - The main problems, as experienced by these teachers, are fricative consonants and short and long vowels The main reasons for pronunciation problems, in the teachers’ opinions, are the influence of the mother tongue, the limited time used in teaching and learning pronunciation, students motivation and the lack of opportunity to practise speaking English Data analysis and discussion This study is into the difficulties of teaching and learning pronunciation at Nong Cong I High school The author examined the aspects of teaching and learning overview, classroom techniques and activities, difficulties in teaching and learning pronunciation; students’ expectations and teachers’ recommendations in teaching and learning pronunciation All these aspects were analyzed to answer two research questions What is teachers ' and students ' attitude toward teaching and learning pronunciation at Nong Cong I High School? Firstly, the findings show that a great number of teachers and students at Nong Cong I High School believe that teaching and learning grammar is more necessary than teaching and learning pronunciation Only 20% of teachers and 15% of the students think that learning pronunciation is necessary This comes to a fact that students and teachers not spend time on pronunciation but on grammar and vocabulary Regrettably, 80% of the teachers and 43% of the students said they did not have time on pronunciation The reason for this fact may come from the influence of the teachers’ habits on teaching pronunciation at this school for a long time Teachers tend to pay great attention, time and energy on grammar In contrast, teaching and learning pronunciation as well as developing skills including listening, speaking or reading not receive time and energy equally Some teacher’s blame that they not have much time to cover all aspects in pronunciation, the priority is how to help students get general knowledge in English that help them deal with the tests and pass the exams Moreover, teaching and learning facilities are poorly equipped There are no authentic materials but the textbooks and some cassettes Only a small number of students have their own dictionaries That is the reason why pronunciation sessions not receive good results To make the matter worse, techniques and activities used in 19 teaching and learning pronunciation are not widely applied Which problems the teachers and students at Nong Cong I High School face in pronunciation lessons? Teachers' problems in teaching pronunciation The first problem that most of the teachers meet in teaching pronunciation is the teaching time The teaching time spent on pronunciation is limited On average, each pronunciation session lasts less than 20 minutes They cannot meet the students’ demands to deal with all problems appearing in pronunciation lessons Because of the limited time, they could not apply many classroom activities, use authentic materials or various techniques to increase the effectiveness of the lessons, even to increase students’ motivation The worst influence of limited time is that there is no pronunciation lesson in the best meaning of these words The teachers only teach pronunciation through reading new words, and deal with some errors in pronunciations when they appear There is no plan, no strategy, and no assessment in teaching pronunciation The second problem that some teachers meet comes from the nature of pronunciation There are many consonants that exist in English but not exist in Vietnamese So, Vietnamese learners of second English language often have many problems with the system of English consonants In Vietnamese, fricatives /f/, /v/, / θ/, /ð/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ not occur at the final position of a word, but in English, they That is why Vietnamese students often omit these fricatives at the ends of the sounds and students at Nong Cong I High school is not an exception The only thing they can in teaching pronunciation is reading, and then asking students to repeat They even not know techniques in teaching pronunciation The only two techniques that the teachers often use are drilling, listen and imitate Thirdly, students’ competence and learning motivation in pronunciation are matters causing teachers difficulties in teaching pronunciation As a matter of fact, the teachers have to teach mixed level classes, in which students with high and low levels of language competence study together Thus, the teachers have to encounter many difficulties in shortening a big gap among these students And in one class, there are some students who always want to speak out in English while there are some others who never want to speak It is difficult for the teachers to encourage these students to practice speaking and to correct their mistakes Class setting is a problem that most teachers meet in teaching pronunciation A lot of problems in teaching and learning pronunciation come from class setting: large classroom size, low quality of the teaching staff, poorly equipped teaching facilities, etc As a matter of fact, not all teachers have been well trained enough to meet deal with problems in teaching pronunciation and this is the reason why they often ignore teaching pronunciation These teachers not feel confident in pronouncing a word or use phonetic alphabet to guide students how to pronounce They not welcome correcting students’ mistakes, or provide them with feedback Students’ problems in learning pronunciation When learning pronunciation, most students find some barriers that impede their pronunciation competence These barriers include the nature of pronunciation; class setting and students’ ability The collected data shows that most of the students reveal that their background knowledge especially pronunciation ability is at low level although they have learned English for at least more than six years The biggest problem they pointed out is that 20 pronunciation nature is too difficult, especially in long and short vowels as well as fricative consonants From the questionnaires, interview and classroom observation, I found out that students have difficulty in distinguishing long and short vowels such as /e/ vs /æ, /Λ/ vs /a/, short “I” vs long /i:/, /ə/ vs /ɜ:/, /ɒ/vs /ɔ/ or mispronounced /d/ vs /ð/, /t/ vs / θ/ The next barrier is the students’ language competence 14% of the students said that they not have ability in pronunciation Lack of confidence in pronouncing prevents them from practicing pronunciation in class, and getting expected results in pronunciation Pronunciation learning time is another problem 22% students said that time on teaching and learning pronunciation does not meet the demand There is no time to practice and correct pronunciation in class Some students also complain that class setting and students’ themselves motivation are problems preventing them from teaching and learning pronunciation They said that the class size is too large and the number of students is too high, they could not hear what their teachers is saying, and even, they feel bored with the teachers’ accent and unvaried teaching methods In conclusion, problems that teachers and students meet are nearly the same such as: teaching and learning time; nature of pronunciation; class setting; students’ competence and students’ motivation Though percentage of opinion is different; these problems are still the main barriers those prevent teachers and students at Nong Cong I high school in teaching and learning pronunciation Finding solutions for these problems are essential needs to improve and increase students’ pronunciation 21 CONCLUSIONS Summary of the findings With the aims stated in the first Introduction part, I did my research with some issues concerning English pronunciation teaching and learning These issues include teachers and students’ general attitude towards teaching and learning English pronunciation, teachers and students’ difficulties in teaching and learning English pronunciation Firstly, the findings show that most of the teachers and students at Nong Cong I High school have negative attitude toward teaching and learning English pronunciation Although all of them said that the purpose of their teaching and learning pronunciation is to help students to communicate better, most of them considered grammar is the most important and concerning aspect in teaching and learning at high school The time they spend on pronunciation is little and they find teaching and learning pronunciation not very interesting To make the matter worse, the traditional English tests and teaching have not focused much on pronunciation, so they are not familiar with teaching and learning it That is why they want to neglect it The second findings to the question proposed is that both teachers and students have difficulties in teaching and learning English pronunciation From the questionnaires, interview and classroom observation, I found out that the main problems are long and short vowels and fricative consonants They can’t distinguish clearly the differences between long vowels and short ones They also make mistakes with some English couples such as /e/ vs / æ /, /I/ vs /i: / /z/ vs /ð/, /t/ and / θ/ Thirdly, there are many causes of these difficulties They are both internal and external reasons The causes which there are strong agreement of teachers and students are the differences between English and Vietnamese, the influence of mother tongue, phonetic ability, students’ motivation and attitude toward learning pronunciation and amount of exposure Another cause is the time for each lesson It is rather short Especially the practice activities for each lesson in English 10; they are too boring and monotonous Some teaching techniques are used but they are not interesting and effective enough to attract students The last issue that was investigated from the study was about teaching English pronunciation methods From my observation and interview, I found out that although the teachers at the school did some attempts to help their students overcome pronunciation problems, they did not employ enough various techniques to make the lessons more interesting and easier to understand The lessons seemed to be rather boring, and even I heard some teachers make serious pronunciation mistakes So the problems here may be not only for the students but also for the teachers of English to think Teachers should try to improve their pronunciation and their teaching methods to help their students overcome the problems Pedagogical implications As a matter of fact, pronunciation plays an important role in teaching and studying foreign language However, teaching and learning pronunciation does not receive the appropriate attention and the expected results Therefore, it is an essential need for teachers teaching English a foreign language to find out solutions in improving the reality of teaching and learning pronunciation The analysis of the problems that teachers and students meet in teaching and learning pronunciation is very useful This study convinces the author that teaching and learning pronunciation is an on-going process which requires all the efforts of both teachers and students Language teachers should spend more time teaching pronunciation and correcting their students’ pronunciation mistakes With the help of concerned and responsible teachers, students will have more motivation and positive attitude towards learning pronunciation, and consequently, they will be more successful in language learning and in real communicative situations 2.1 Increasing teaching and learning time for pronunciation The findings show that most of teachers and students at Nong Cong I High School believe that teaching and learning grammar is more necessary than teaching and learning pronunciation The teaching time spent on pronunciation is limited This comes to a fact that students and teachers not spend time on pronunciation but on grammar and vocabulary Teachers tend to pay great attention, time and energy on grammar The teachers only teach pronunciation through reading new words, and deal with some errors in pronunciations when they appear There is no plan, no strategy, and no assessment in teaching pronunciation Therefore, it is necessary to increase the time for teaching and learning pronunciation Teacher should spend more time on pronunciation part as well as increase the time for correcting students’ mistakes in pronunciation during all the English lessons 2.2 Motivating students in learning pronunciation Among barriers preventing students from acquiring good pronunciation are students’ language competence, students’ negative attitude toward learning pronunciation and their lack of motivation The learner's attitude and motivation towards the language they are learning or going to learn affect the process of learning pronunciation Their positive attitudes and motivation will help students a lot in learning this language, including learning its pronunciation So that teachers should help students aware of the importance of learning pronunciation What is more, teachers need to make the pronunciation lessons more comfortable and interesting by using different techniques such as reading, listening, playing games 2.3 Increasing teacher’s and student’s roles in teaching and learning pronunciation Teachers play a very important role in teaching and learning pronunciation They not only help students hear and perceive the model as exactly as possible, but also help students make sound intelligible, providing students with feedback of their pronunciation and assessing their progress Therefore, teachers should be the perfect model to provide students with correct pronunciation of sounds and encourage their learners to study pronunciation What is more, teachers need to make the pronunciation lessons more comfortable and interesting by using different techniques such as reading, listening, playing games In teaching a foreign language in general, and in teaching pronunciation in particular, whatever the teacher does, the learner's improvement and prospects of change are minimal if the learners take no action and not try to monitor their own efforts Success in pronunciation will surely depend on learners' attitude and how much attempt the learner puts into In other words, the most decisive factor of improving pronunciation is the learner's willingness to take responsibility for his/her learning process So it is crucial to increase the students’ role in learning pronunciation Limitations of the study Although the study has obtained its objectives, like many other studies, there are some limitations From the scope of the study, the results of the study are only applied for grade 10 students at Nong Cong I High School The study only focuses on investigating teachers’ and students’ attitude toward teaching and learning English pronunciation, finding the difficulties and the causes in the pronunciation teaching and learning process at Nong Cong I High School Only some implications are suggested for teachers and students at Nong Cong I High School In addition, ability of the students, the differences between English and Vietnamese are also the causes of difficulties Which sounds are the most difficult to the Vietnamese and how to overcome it have not been mentioned carefully in this thesis What is more, the findings of the thesis and suggested techniques are only based on the opinions of the teachers and students Recommendations for a further study On the basis of the findings and limitations of the study, the following recommendations are made for further research: First, the subjects of the study were teachers and 92 10 th-grade students at Nong Cong I High School so the results would not be applied in all high schools It would be interesting to conduct a similar study on teachers and students from other schools Second, the study only comment to techniques received highly recommendation from teachers and students at the survey questionnaires and the interviews Other techniques such as: visual aids, recording students’ pronunciation should be studied to find out the best techniques in teaching and learning pronunciation Third, the suggested techniques are based on the results selected from the questionnaires and interviews So experiment research should be carried out to check students’ pronunciation improvement REFERENCES Avery, P and Ehrlich, S (1992) 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