(SKKN 2022) some suggestions to teach pronunciation and do the phonetic questions in high school english tests

THANH HOA OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING DAO DUY TU HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE SOME SUGGESTIONS TO TEACH PRONUNCIATION AND DO THE PHONETIC QUESTIONS IN HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH TESTS Implementer: Ly Thi Nguyet Minh Position: Teacher Subject: English THANH HOA 2022 TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 Reasons for studying 1.1 Reasons for the theoretical side 1.2 Practical reasons 1.3 Reasons for the condition and capacity of the instructor Aims of the study Methods of the study Scope of the study .5 4.1.Subjects of study 4.2 Scope of study .5 PART II: CONTENT 1.The components of Speaking .6 1.1 What Is Phonetic symbol .6 1.2 The Speaking Process Curent situation of the research issue 2.1 General difficulties in the process of teaching and learning speaking: 2.2 Limitations in the process of teaching and learning speaking skills .8 2.2.1 Subjective limitations .8 2.2.2 Objective limitations: 12 2.3 Types of questions in speaking comprehension and steps to cope with the two basic speaking exercises 11 2.3.1 Types of questions in English pronunciation 11 2.3.2 Specific steps in teaching the speaking and filling section 15 PART IV CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS 18 Conclusion 18 Suggestions 19 REFERENCES: 22 APPENDIX PART I: INTRODUCTION Reasons for studying 1.1 Reasons for the theoretical side The current teaching is still mainly based on knowledge transfer, and does not pay much attention to ability training Throughout the whole process of phonetics teaching, the problem of overemphasizing knowledge imparting and neglecting ability training is quite serious First of all, many teachers still follow a step-by-step and follow the script in their teaching, and often neglect to cultivate students' learning abilities We know that language acquisition mainly depends on the learners themselves to imitate and use However, from the current situation of pronunciation teaching, many teachers have not really cultivated students' learning abilities Teachers are still the main body of the classroom, instilling knowledge into students in the way of "adding ducks" Teachers are used to reading new words in the classroom instead of letting students practice spelling independently, which causes most students to develop the bad habit of talking without thinking Many students simply not have the habit and ability to preview and learn by themselves Obviously, teachers only know how to "give a man a fish" but not "teach a man how to fish” Secondly, most English teachers trained under the traditional education model lack comprehensive phonetic knowledge, and they have no chance to receive systematic phonetic training Due to the influence of regional dialects, some English teachers cannot even pronounce 48 phonemes accurately They teach students according to their own feelings Some teachers regard phoneme teaching as the whole of phonetic teaching They often focus on the teaching of a single phoneme and ignore the teaching of super phonetic segments (stress, rhythm, and intonation) In order to meet the needs of exam preparation, teachers think that pronunciation teaching is "more laborious and less effective", so they ignore the teaching of theoretical knowledge of pronunciation, which makes students also think that pronunciation is not important because the exam is not taken 1.2 Practical reasons Voice is the material shell of language, and it is the basis for mastering language knowledge and acquiring language skills, so language learning must start with the voice According to the newly promulgated "English Syllabus for Secondary Schools" issued by the Ministry of Education, an ordinary high school graduate must master six phonetic items including alphabets, international phonetic symbols, basic spelling rules, consonant splices and twosylläble word stress, intonation, and rhythm But most high school students now have many phonetic problems, especially those in ethnic areas who are learning "dumb English" or "flavored" English These phenomena show that there are still many phonetics teaching in our country Problems existing in English phonetics teaching in middle and high schools in ethnic areas Basic problems (1) Although many students have learned phonetic symbols, their grasp of phonetic symbols is not accurate and solid, and many students not even know how many phonetic symbols are in English Most students are accustomed to using the Vietnamese pronunciation to deal with the pronunciation of English phonemes, for example: replace [a] with "A", replace [r] with "E", and use "A instead of [a] "Touch" instead of [m] "Oh" instead of [wl, "So get Maoning" instead of "Good morning!" in [p], [bj [t], [d] [k], [gl, [m] [n] and other consonants are often followed by a vowel The biggest weakness of many high school students in pronunciation is not the pronunciation of single phonemes and the pronunciation of consonant groups, but the problem of stress and rhythm Many students not use the pronunciation methods and rules they have learned at all when pronouncing Learning English relies on parroting, and reciting words also relies on rote memorization The result did not achieve the expected effect (2) Most high school teachers pay more attention to grammar teaching and the rate of admission, but not pay much attention to the pronunciation of students In addition, the class size of high school is relatively large, and it is impossible to notice the pronunciation mistakes of each student I didn't even notice it myself When many teachers teach, they pay more attention to the speed of speaking, and they only want students to read fluently and proficiently and ignore the rhythm As everyone knows, English is an accent language, and the time spent in an English sentence is determined by the number of accents The interval between two accents is roughly the same no matter how many words there are in between Examination system problems The current high school entrance examination system has few tests for spoken English and pronunciation The test of pronunciation ability in the high school entrance examination can only pass the listening question Some areas in Vietnam use the national paper (2), and the examination of pronunciation only accounts for points on the paper, and the degree of emphasis is not high, which creates a misunderstanding for students , I think that as long as students can guess a few simple ones correctly, it doesn't matter whether students spoken language is good or not Many high school students would rather spend their time practicing grammar, vocabulary, speaking, and writing every day, not realizing how much good pronunciation can mean to them in learning English 1.3 Reasons for the condition and capacity of the instructor 1.3.1 Teaching progress In most cases, the specific content of phonetic symbols is not involved in both the textbook and the examination process Therefore, the phonetic symbols are not included in the teacher's teaching progress The teacher's teaching progress is also relatively fast, and they must follow the overall plan of the school It can be said that most English teachers not have time to teach It is good to finish the course according to the teaching progress Where will there be time to arrange other things? What about the course content? 1.3.2 Teaching atmosphere The teacher's salary is stable, whether she attends more classes or class according to the progress as before, the remuneration is the same To put it bluntly, it means that teachers work more without raising wages In addition, many school teachers now have the ethos of finishing the class In such a teaching atmosphere, it is difficult for teachers to take the initiative to work overtime to teach And sometimes they don’t work hard enough, and they will be disgusted by the students if they are well-intentioned and take more classes, and they may also be disgusted by other teachers There is still a stumbling block in the teaching of phonetic symbols: junior high school teachers think that phonetic symbols are taught by elementary school teachers, high school teachers think that they are taught by junior high school teachers, and elementary school teachers believe that they should be taught by junior high school teachers Blaming each other, it is difficult to take the initiative to teach 1.3.3 Teaching skills It is no exaggeration to say that many English teachers not necessarily learn phonetic symbols well Many English teachers have no confidence in pronunciation, so they can only avoid it Some teachers can't even read the simple word apple correctly, and even 40% of teachers even read flower wrong The correct pronunciation is to pronounce only four phonemes /f/, /l/, /aʊ/, /ə/, Many teachers will add an extra /w/ Aims of the study First of all, the research sought the understanding of English pronunciation and phonetic practices as the theoretical bases The framework shaped after the review of journal articles and books has informed a design of a minor survey into the practice of pronunciation learning activities in language classrooms in Đào Duy Từ High School, in a typical Vietnamese province The questionnaires first aimed at collecting factual evidence about difficulties facing teachers while applying the cooperative learning technique Research question 1: What difficulties teachers face in typical Vietnamese classrooms while teaching pronunciation techniques? Next, a type of action research has been carried out by experimenting with the application of the modified literature circle technique in that context Data gathered was analyzed to decide the level of appropriateness of the technique in enhancing cooperative learning activities Research question 2: Do the adapted phonetic questions in the high school graduation exam help enhance awareness about English pronunciation in Vietnamese classrooms? All those practical exercises and lessons learned from the study helped extend the use of the techniques to a larger geographical region for future research Methods of the study This study is conducted as an action research because action research is the best choice for the purpose of improving the current state of affairs within educational context in which the research is carried out In order to get data, a combination of different instruments, namely: - Observe speaking classes - Consult many documents, especially methods of study - Study colleagues’ experience - Students’ tests Scope of the study 4.1.Subjects of study The research has been carried out in classes of grade 11: 11B3 (in the controlling group) and 11B9 (in the experimental group) at Đào Duy Từ High School 4.2 Scope of study The study was conducted on 87 students from classes 11B3 and 11B9 at Đào Duy Từ High School during the first semester and restricted to the first semester of 2021-2022 The study focused on exploring the current state of pronunciation learning activities and then experimented with the adapted phonetic questions in grade 11 in an average upper secondary school in North Vietnam, especially for the effectiveness in improving students’ speaking skills We used the practice test and semester exam questions for the research PART II: CONTENT 1.The components of Speaking 1.1 What Is Phonetic symbol Phonetic symbols are the basic elements of English and the basic skills that must be played in learning English However, many people don't know much about phonetic symbols This should be the sadness of exam-oriented education Students have been exposed to English since elementary school (Trazo, & Abocejo, 2019) From the first lesson, students were always the kind of English scumbag that directly marked the transliteration of Vietnamese characters afterwords Later, students also realized that if students want to learn English well and improve their speaking, students have to start over with phonetic symbols and correct their phonetic symbols one-on-one 1.2 The Speaking Process English pronunciation can be confusing As students know, there are no strict pronunciation rules in English, so if students see an unknown English word, students will not know how to pronounce it The same English letter or combination of letters may be pronounced differently in different words Also, the same English word may be pronounced differently by native English speakers from different countries or even from the same country (Rao, 2018) At present, the prevalent and popular phonetic symbols include the International Phonetic Alphabet, the British Phonetic Alphabet and the American Phonetic Alphabet But among the three phonetic symbols, the international phonetic symbols and the American phonetic symbols are more popular in the market, because these two are slightly easier than the British phonetic symbols, but there are also many fans who love the British accent and learn the British phonetic symbols In fact, different paths lead to the same goal, no matter what kind of phonetic symbols, the ultimate goal is to speak fluent English (Carley, & Mees, 2021) Curent situation of the research issue 2.1 General difficulties in the process of teaching and learning speaking: On the learner's side: In order to shorten the learning process of high school students' phonetic learning, change the status quo that students are in a passive learning position from the beginning of high school, give full play to students' learning intelligence, and develop students' learning ability, the monophonic part of phonetic teaching in the current high school English textbooks is reviewed It is practical and feasible to implement the teaching principle of first concentration and then decentralization (McKay, & Brown, 2015) The concentration mentioned here is to first use about hours to focus on memorizing 26 letters (26 letters have been exposed in the junior high school curriculum and daily life) and their accurate pronunciation (Hayati, 2010) During this period, some daily expressions and Short and easy-to-learn articles, the content basically matches the teaching materials, and teachers can also have appropriate maneuvers; secondly, use 2-3 weeks to teach letters, phonemes, and phonetic symbols, and the focus of teaching should be on understanding letters, phonemes, phonetic symbols the internal connection between the three is clear, the role of each in spelling words is clear, and the teaching of 48 phonemes, phonetic symbols and their corresponding letters and letter combinations are completed so that students can initially pass pronunciation and spelling At the same time, practice spelling in combination with the words on the vocabulary list in the textbook, and master the correct method of combining sound, shape, and meaning to memorize words (it can be some words in the vocabulary list, especially some words with pronunciation rules), so that students can form the ability of independent spelling so that students' English learning can enter a positive and active learning state from the beginning of high school (Rao, 2018) Then there is decentralized teaching, that is to teach one by one according to the phonetic appendix compiled in the textbook, so as to further disperse and consolidate the letters, phonemes and phonetic symbols learned earlier in the teaching, and indeed form a proficient spelling ability, and further learn and master the monophonic part of the other learning content (Abdelkader, 2015) On the teacher's side While teaching alphabets, phonemes, and phonetic symbols to master the ability of spelling and reading, cultivate the ability High school students' knowledge and understanding of English cannot be zeroed, and their learning and mastery of their mother tongue inevitably affect their English learning The practice has proved that it is impossible for high school students to master English entirely by acquisition because they lack the necessary language environment Therefore, it is not allowed to simply rely on behavioral habits, mechanical imitation, and parroting to learn and master English Otherwise, it will underestimate students" cognitive ability, inhibit students' initiative, and make students develop the habit of learning English without thinking (Hayati, 2010) Therefore, in phonetics teaching, teachers should guide students to compare English-English and English-Vietnamese phonemes appropriately, and pay attention to the connection between letters and phonemes, letters, and phonetic symbols Develop students' ability to observe, discover, connect, compare, summarize, and summarize cognitive learning, transfer learning, and behavioral habit learning As soon as possible, students can form the spelling ability that students can spell and read when students see a word Such as a comparison of similar sounds in English and Vietnamese: y-[i:] r-[r], w-[w], h-[h], g-[gl, etc.; comparison of similar sounds in English and English and the connection between letters and phonetic symbols: such as some vowels, and most consonants The letters are similar to their corresponding vowel phonetic symbols and consonant phonetic symbols: such as p-[p] f-[f], h[h] and so on Learning English cannot rely on simple mechanical imitation and rote memorization Only by "twisting cognitive learning, transfer learning and behavioral habit learning into a three-strand rope of English learning ability" can we truly learn English well Therefore, from high school to learning English, we must pay attention to cultivating students' ability to learn English Combining pronunciation teaching with listening and reading teaching, and insisting on language flow teaching for a long Learning pronunciation is the foundation and key to learning English well Phonetics teaching is actually a highly operational subject, and its phoneme pronunciation skills and theories can be applied to all aspects of English teaching Using phonetic teaching in listening and reading teaching, from the beginning, let students pay attention to the connection between pronunciation and context and content, and pay attention to the changes of pronunciation in speech flow, which can effectively improve students' sensitivity to pronunciation, and can also make students more familiar with a range of pronunciation techniques Such as monophonic, word, sentence combination; word, sentence, and discourse combination Through reading aloud, consciously use these phonetic skills to artistically process written language, turn visual images into auditory images, and accurately and vividly reproduce the thoughts and feelings expressed in written language Therefore, the combined teaching of pronunciation, listening, and reading can make boring pronunciation teaching lively and interesting; it can help students grasp the main information conveyed by language, and overcome the need to pay attention to the accuracy of phonemes but not the pronunciation skills incoherent discourse The problem of "seeing the tree but not the forest" is so that high school students can unknowingly correct their pronunciation problems and learn more authentic English This not only improves their enthusiasm for learning English, but also enhances their self-confidence in learning English and can cultivate their sense of English 2.2 Limitations in the process of teaching and learning speaking skills 2.2.1 Subjective limitations As we all know, speech is the physical shell of language When learning any language, the accuracy of pronunciation is an important indicator of the learner's language level Most of the objects of teaching Vietnamese as a foreign language are adults from different countries, who have already formed a set of habit of pronunciation in their native language Therefore, in the teaching of Vietnamese as a foreign language, it is extremely important to pay attention to teaching methods and improve learning efficiency, so that foreign students can have a good start in Vietnamese learning, lay a solid foundation for their future Vietnamese learning, and truly improve their oral Vietnamese ability (Nguyen, 2013) - sluggish tailIn Vietnamese, all words are monosyllabic and end with a vowel at the beginning of tutoring Excessive ending sounds are a common phenomenon among Vietnamese students when they express themselves in spoken English The so-called procrastination is the addition of a vowel after the consonant at the end of the word For example, for words ending in a voiced consonant, such as bed/red/, big /big/ , students especially like to stress the letter d to emphasize the pronunciation of the word, and the pronunciation of “bed” becomes "Bed" Words that end in unvoiced consonants, such as “cat”, also have some students' preference for the accented –t- For this problem, practice capitalizing the first few letters of the word to emphasize the pronunciation, such as SPORT (sport) Then, keep telling themself to be "breathless and silent" and practice more - Wrong accent on word English learners in China often make stress displacement errors when reading English words The most common word with stress displacement is “interesting”, and its stress is on the first syllable instead of the second syllable Here are a few words for students to read along with them: photography, celebrity, and industrial The stress of some English words will change with the vocabulary, such as research, as a noun, the stress is at the front /'riːsɜːtʃ/ and as a verb, the stress is at the second syllable /rɪ'sɜːtʃ/, and the same type of vocabulary is 'content (n)content (adj.) ;'object (n.)- object (v.) and 'record( n.) - record (v.) …etc - Add "er" in random pronunciationIt is suggested that when students memorize words, they must not only pay attention to the meaning of the word, but must check the pronunciation of the word, and strive to read the word correctly when they first come into contact with the word Is it the American accent with the "er" syllable? The answer is obviously no Many examinees unilaterally interpret American pronunciation as indiscriminately rolling the tongue and making childish sounds For example, "because" is not the same as "of course", the latter has "r" that can be "children"; another example, famous, this word is really 90% of the students will mispronounce it, once again, don't pronounce this word with childish accents Words like banana, Christmas, August, and idea are all typical examples There is no "r" in the spelling of the word, but the test taker has to pronounce the sound of "r" inexplicably Usually what we call childish sounds only occur when the letter r appears in the word - Inaccurate consonants The first thing to is the pronunciation of –th- Whenever we encounter th, we have to bite our tongue, such as think, both, three, through, month When most students encounter th, they use /s/ or /z/ instead, without sticking out their tongues The result of this is that students are comfortable speaking, but the examiner will definitely hear the error There is also a group of very common mistakes: /l//n/ is not divided, this problem usually occurs in the students in the south If students usually have this problem, students must pay more attention and practice more, and don't underestimate this pronunciation problem The examiner will not deduct points for students because students are from the south - Diphthong not fullThere are diphthongs in English: [ei], [ai], [ɔi], [ɛə], [uə], [iə], [au], [əu] So what are the common mistakes Vietnamese students make? For example, there is no difference between the pronunciation of fight and fat, the [au] sound of the mountain is pronounced, and the mouth is not open In the pronunciation of diphthongs, the shape of the mouth will undergo changes Generally speaking, the gums will change from open to half-open, and from large to small If students don't have this change when students pronounce it, then there must be something wrong Pay attention to the above five tips in the usual practice, I believe that the students' English pronunciation will be significantly improved In addition to being aware of the problem, the correction of oral pronunciation should be further strengthened by listening to the correct pronunciation more All listening and speaking complement each other Pay more attention to the pronunciation in the audio and follow it, correct the minor problems, and eventually, students will get a good pronunciation 2.2.2 Objective limitations: *For teachers: Due to the limited time of 45 minutes with so many tasks to carry At this stage, many high schools not recognize the importance of English phonetics teaching, and even not carry out phonetics teaching and practice in English teaching Many high school teachers believe that students have already learned and mastered a wealth of phonetics knowledge before entering high school But in fact, many students have not received comprehensive and systematic English pronunciation education before entering university Exam-oriented education is still the main development model of the country's education industry, so in English teaching in primary and secondary schools, no great emphasis has been placed on phonetic teaching (Van, 2010) As a result, many students have not formed a solid foundation of pronunciation and intonation, and even many high school students are unable to pronounce the correct pronunciation of the 48 International Phonetic Alphabets, and ultimately cannot use English flexibly to express their views Furthermore, students with poor pronunciation skills have relatively poor listening skills Although some students can master the correct pronunciation of English, they mainly use rote memorization and cannot flexibly apply English knowledge If the teaching of English pronunciation is ignored in high school English teaching, the students' English communication ability cannot be improved significantly in a short period of time In the actual English pronunciation teaching, teachers pay more attention to the pronunciation of a certain word or part of the word, ignoring the intonation, sense of language, and pronunciation of the students If the status quo cannot be changed in time, the students will not be able to master the correct pronunciation method and intonation *On the student's side: There are questions that require students to handle a lot of techniques 10 It is a phonetic teaching method in which teachers use various teaching methods to effectively correct students' pronunciation errors In the phonetic learning stage, students will make a lot of phonetic errors In order to enable students to master the correct pronunciation, correcting phonetic errors is a very important part of phonetics teaching Correcting wrong pronunciation should pay special attention to the method Correct pronunciation correcting method can play a multiplier effect with half the effort Incorrect and inappropriate methods will not only have no good pronunciation correcting effect but may also dampen students' enthusiasm for learning 2.3 Types of questions in speaking comprehension and steps to cope with the two basic speaking exercises 2.3.1 Types of questions in English pronunciation Type 1: Multiple-choice questions about Stress generally have answers (A,B,C,D), which are diverse, complete, and super good to help students practice well the Stress section Example Mark the letter A, B, c or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word that differs from the other three in the position of primary stress in each of the following questions A doubtful B solidify C politics D stimulate A economics B sociology C mathematics D philosophy A climate B attractive C graduate D company A satisfy B sacrifice C apology D richness A activity B allergic C volunteer D employer A automatic B reasonable C mathematics D preservation A dangerous A specific B successful B coincide C physical C inventive D gravity D regardless A habitable B famously C geneticist D communist 10 A abnormal B initial C innocent D impatient Type 2: Phonetics test questions with answers with multiple choice questions on the Phonetics section, which is full and super good to help students practice well the Phonetics section Example Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word whose underlined part differs from the other three in pronunciation in each of the following questions 11 11 A islander B alive C vacancy D habitat 12 A stone B top C pocket D modern 13 A volunteer B trust C fuss D judge 14 A gossip B gentle C gamble D garage 15 A daunt B astronaut C vaulting D aunt 16 A clear B treasure C spread D dread 17 A about B shout C wounded D count 18 A none B dozen C youngster D home 19 A crucial B partial C material D financial 20 A major B native C sailor D applicant 2.3.2 Specific steps in teaching the speaking and filling section Graph Result of the experiment after a year with the controlling group (11B3) *Test in September 2021, the beginning of the experiment *Test in May 2022, the final test after the experiment’s time 20 test in Sept test in May 20 18 18 16 14 14 12 11 12 10 very weak weak average good The graph shows and compares the results of the two tests taken at the beginning of the experiment in September 2021 and in May 2022, after one year of school for the controlling group with 44 students in class 11B3 12 As can be seen from the column graph, most of the students (30 students =68,1%) in the controlling groups get very low marks after a school year, from to 4,5 points when doing the tests in the experiment and a moderate percentage (11 students = 25%) could get the average mark because the teacher still uses the traditional methods in teaching speaking lessons Only students (6,8%) get good marks after a school year with the speaking test It is obvious that without innovative techniques to practice during speaking classes, little progress is seen in this group after a school year Graph Result of the experiment after a year with the experimental group (11B9) *Test in September 2021, the beginning of the experiment *Test in May 2022, the final test after the experiment’s time test in May 20 15 test in sept 24 25 18 14 10 10 very weak weak average good The graph shows and compares the results of the two tests taken at the beginning of September 2021 and at the end of the experiment in May 2022, after one year of school in the experimental group with 43 students 13 As can be seen in the graph, this group of students has made great progress in speaking tests after one year of school thanks to the applying the new methods during speaking lessons both in class and at home From the compared numbers, it is clear that the number of students with very weak and weak points has reduced from 32 (74,4%) to 13 students (30%) While the number of students getting average grades has significantly increased, from 10 students (23%) to 24 students (55,8%) students (20%) got good marks on the speaking test at the end of the year, compared with only student (2,3%) at the beginning Graph Compare the results of two groups through the test in May 2022 *Group 1: the controlling group *Group 2: the experimental group group test in May 24 25 20 group test in May 18 15 12 11 10 very weak weak average good With respect to the phonetic skill during the pre-test, the control group is having a lower percentage of passing (average) at 25.86% where the experimental group is showing a better range of passing scores at 55.86% For 14 this level, this is a substantial gap of 15.2% of passing students between these two groups This is the same for outcomes of the good level (outcome) where the experimental group achieves 19.95% students at passing score where the control group is at a significantly lower rate of 6.97% of achieving students However, very weak skill and weak level of score are showing the opposite results For very weak level, the control group results in a higher rate of 27.9% of passing where the experimental group is having a slightly lower outcome of 9.06% The weak level is having a significant gap between the two groups where 41.86% of the control group is having a final score while the experimental group is only having 20.93% of students getting at this level PART IV CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS Conclusion In the process of pronunciation learning, students' interest is very important In order to mobilize students' enthusiasm for learning and improve the efficiency of pronunciation teaching, teachers should rationally use various teaching skills in teaching There are various specific methods of English pronunciation teaching, such as the demonstration method, contrast method, gesture method, pronunciation method, mouth positioning method, imitation method, and recording method Each teaching method has its own scope of application Teachers should give full play to the advantages of various methods to mobilize students' interest in learning pronunciation With the wide application of modern teaching technology, teachers introduce multimedia teaching methods into speech classrooms, which will definitely play a role in activating the classroom and mobilizing students' enthusiasm for learning In short, the quality of pronunciation teaching is directly related to the success or failure of English teaching Under the current situation of attaching great importance to the cultivation of language practice ability to listen, speak, read, and write, it is imperative to pay attention to and strengthen and boldly reform the phonetic teaching in high school Especially in the high school teaching in minority areas, teachers should continuously improve their teaching quality, actively carry out teaching research, and creatively control the teaching materials, so as to truly change the current situation of time-consuming and inefficient pronunciation teaching It is necessary to twist "cognitive learning, transfer learning, and behavioral habit learning" into a three-strand rope of English learning ability, and strive to turn the existing phonetic teaching problems into a booster to achieve the goal of English teaching in high schools in ethnic areas 15 Phonetic questions in graduation exam As shown above, phonology is the foundation of English language learning The learning of pronunciation is related to the memory and mastery of a large number of vocabularies; it is related to the comprehension of listening; it is related to the expression of spoken language; it is more related to the confidence and ability of classroom performance and interpersonal communication Therefore, phonetics plays a pivotal role in English language learning, and teachers should adopt a variety of strategies to promote students' learning and improvement of English phonetics Therefore, the phonetic questions can be very critical for determination of fluencies of language levels of high school students where they are necessary to be included in the graduation exam Suggestions 2.1 Understand the essentials of pronunciation and imitate the teacher's mouth When learning pronunciation, students must pay attention to the mouth shape, and carefully figure out the pronunciation of each phonetic symbol, especially the pronunciation difference of similar phonetic symbols For zerobased students, don’t think it’s enough to just stare at the teacher’s mouth shape In fact, many pronunciations are invisible to the internal organs Therefore, the teacher needs to demonstrate the correct pronunciation Students read along with the teacher, and then add some skills given by the teacher, continue to read, the teacher feels that there is no problem, and then helps students to correct, such a series of processes is the secret to practicing standard pronunciation The sound method: The sound method is to use a phoneme that has been learned or a phoneme that exists in the learner's native language to bring out another phoneme related to another pronunciation part and method, or to bring out another pronunciation part with an easy-to-pronounce sound The more difficult sounds are similar For example, e is a difficult sound to pronounce, students can first teach students to pronounce o, then lengthen the interval of o, finger the mouth, and then slowly open the corners of the mouth to both sides, so that the lip shape changes from round to flat, and e is issued For another example, the rhyme u is a difficult sound to pronounce Students can teach i first After the i is pronounced accurately, the teacher extends the sound length of i with the finger to the mouth Circle, the u sound is brought out (Tergujeff, 2012) 2.2 Word spelling combat, one-to-one correction of mistakes 16 The most important thing to develop a purely spoken language is to practice, practice and practice, and practice spelling and reading to consolidate studentsr pronunciation Keep reading, keep correcting, train a single phonetic symbol to train multiple words, and master some basic vocabulary in the process of learning pronunciation Simulation method: After the teacher's correct pronunciation demonstration, the students repeat the teacher's pronunciation, which is the most basic method of pronunciation teaching Used to imitate initials, finals, tones, accents, sentence tones, and other phonetic practice items Students can imitate collectively (read together), and the whole class can repeat the teacher's pronunciation together It can also be imitated individually (single reading), a student imitates the teacher's pronunciation alone (Agarwal, & Chakraborty, 2019) 2.3 Pronunciation practice, correct mistakes, and master pronunciation rules The training difficulty will continue to increase with the depth of the course, but the same content is still trained, and there is much similar training content in one class There are many similar pronunciations in the phonetic symbols, and the wrong meaning of a word is likely to be completely different We will compare similar sounds together and practice, the tongue, and ears are very important here 2.4 Persistence There is no quick way to learn phonetic symbols It takes 1-2 months to learn phonetic symbols honestly As long as students persevere, they will find that when they speak English in the future, their friends will be amazed at their pronunciation standards and admire their voice Postural method: It is a phonetic teaching method in which teachers use the body and gestures to help correct and adjust pronunciation parts and pronunciation methods For example: use the finger-biting method to teach the tongue zh ch sh, the method is to tilt the tip of the tongue, but the index finger into the mouth, press the tip of the index finger against the back of the tip of the tongue, and then gently bite the first joint of the index finger with the teeth, and then pronounce zh ch For the syllables of sh, let the students experience the position and degree of the raised tongue tip when pronouncing this group of sounds Pull out students’ fingers, keep the tongue position unchanged, and say zh ch sh again Repeat this several times, and the students will gradually learn to make tongue sounds (Çimenli, 2015) THE PRINCIPAL'S CONFIRMATION Thanh Hoa, June 2th 2022 Undertaking not to copy 17 Lý Thị Nguyệt Minh 18 REFERENCES: Campbell, A., McNamara, O & Gilroy, P (2004) Practitioner Research and Professional Development in Education London: Sage Ellis, R (2005) Instructed second language acquisition: A literature review Wellington: New Zealand Ministry of Education Harmer, J (2007) The Practice of English Language Teaching, th Ed London: Pearson Education Ltd Ho Chi Minh city University of Education (2010) Speaking teaching methods Knight, T (1996) Learning vocabulary through shared speaking tasks The Language Teacher 20, 1: 24-29 Misnistry of Education and Training (MOET), (2008) Instructions of teaching EFL MOET, (2004) English Language Teaching Methodology Trazo, S P., & Abocejo, F T (2019) International phonetic alphabet (IPA) front vowel sound recognition of beginner foreign learners European Journal of Education Studies Carley, P., & Mees, I M (2021) American English Phonetic Transcription Routledge 10 Rao, V C (2018) English spelling and pronunciation: a brief study J Res Sch Profess Eng Lang Teach, 2, 1-10 11 McKay, S L., & Brown, J D (2015) Teaching and assessing EIL in local contexts around the world Routledge 12 Hayati, A M (2010) Notes on Teaching English Pronunciation to EFL Learners: A Case of Iranian High School Students English Language Teaching, 3(4), 121-126 13 Nguyen, H T M (2013) Primary English language education policy in Vietnam: Insights from implementation In Language planning in primary schools in Asia (pp 131-156) Routledge 14 Abdelkader, M (2015) English segmental sounds pronounced by Tunisians 15 Van Van, H (2010) The current situation and issues of the teaching of English in Vietnam 立立立立立立立立立, 22(1), 7-18 16 Tergujeff, E (2012) English Pronunciation Teaching: Four Case Studies from Finland Journal of Language Teaching & Research, 3(4) 17 Agarwal, C., & Chakraborty, P (2019) A review of tools and techniques for computer aided pronunciation training (CAPT) in English Education and Information Technologies, 24(6), 3731-3743 18 Çimenli, B (2015) On pronunciation teaching and semiotics ProcediaSocial and Behavioral Sciences, 199, 634-640 Appendix The Phonetic questions used in the test in September 2021 19 Exercise 1: Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word whose underlined part differs from the other three in pronunciation in each of the following questions A captain B table C lazy D base A teammate B reading C seaside D creating A vegetation B destination C adventure D detective A risky B imprison C wildlife D victory A orphan B torch C afford D oxford A relieve B believe C thief D ancient A ghost B lost C post D mostly A crowded B towel C towed D vowel A globe B emotion C official D lonely 10 A changes B durables C privileges D marches Exercise Mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the word that differs from the other three in the position of primary stress in each of the following questions A recipe A conceal A advantageous A inflation A compulsory A struggle A offer A pollution A financial 10 A prepare Answers: Exercise B candidate B contain B oceanic B maximum B biography B anxious B canoe B computer B fortunate B survive C instrument C conserve C compulsory C applicant C curriculum C confide C country C currency C marvelous C finish D commitment D conquer D influential D character D admirable D comfort D standard D allowance D physical D appeal 1.A 2.D Exercise 3.A 4.C 5.D 6.D 7.B 8.C 9.C 10B 1.D 3.C 4.A 5D 6.C 7.B 8.C 9.A 10C 2.D Appendix The Phonetic questions used in the test in May 2022 20 Exercise 1: Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word whose underlined part differs from the other three in pronunciation in each of the following questions A Mars B particular C superstar D charter A preschool B preposition C presence D pressure A postponed B received C attached D mingled A oxygen B typist C syllable D typical A breakfast B bread C reason D meant A design B preserve C physical D basic A fund B unusual C volunteer D muddy A fake B amaze C framework D merchant A requires B widens C scores D attacks 10 A laugh B plough C fought D height Exercise Mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the word that differs from the other three in the position of primary stress in each of the following questions A bamboo B forget C deserve D channel A endanger B furniture C determine D departure A teacher B lesson C action D police A importantB happinessC employment D relation A possible B cultural C confident D supportive A office B nature C result D farmer A difficult B popular C effective D national A answer B reply C singer D future A medical B essential C dangerous D regular 10 A doctor B student C advice D parent Answers Exercise 1.B 2.A Exercise 3.C 4.B 5.C 6.D 7.C 8.D 9.D 10.A 1.D 3.D 4.B 5.D 6.C 7.C 8.B 9.B 10.C 2.B 21 ... is to tilt the tip of the tongue, but the index finger into the mouth, press the tip of the index finger against the back of the tip of the tongue, and then gently bite the first joint of the index... ability to listen, speak, read, and write, it is imperative to pay attention to and strengthen and boldly reform the phonetic teaching in high school Especially in the high school teaching in minority... learning ability, and strive to turn the existing phonetic teaching problems into a booster to achieve the goal of English teaching in high schools in ethnic areas 15 Phonetic questions in graduation