An investigation into english intonation patterns performed by students in grade 9 at trung vuong lower secondary school in danang city

THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES Đ PHẠM LÂM NAM PHƯƠNG ại họ AN INVESTIGATION INTO ENGLISH INTONATION c PATTERNS PERFORMED BY STUDENTS IN GRADE Đ AT TRUNG VUONG LOWER SECONDARY SCHOOL IN DANANG CITY g ẵn N Major: ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING Code: 8140111 MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATIONAL STUDIES (A SUMMARY) Da Nang, 2022 This thesis has been completed at University of Foreign Language Studies, The University of Da Nang Supervisor: Ngũ Thiện Hùng, Ph.D Đ ại Examiner 1: Dr Trương Bạch Lê họ Examiner 2: Assoc Prof Dr Lưu Quý Khương c Đ The thesis was be orally defended at the Examining Committee Time: August 11th, 2022 N Venue: University of Foreign Language Studies g ẵn - The University of Da Nang This thesis is available for the purpose of reference at: - The University of Da Nang – The Center for Learning Information Resources and Communication - Center for Information Technology and Learning Resources, University of Foreign Language Studies – The University of Da Nang CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE In English communication, intonation is a key factor which contributes significantly to the success of conversational interaction As we may know, intonation, a means to express a tune or melody in the voice, is used to express different shades of meaning, and intonation patterns are the ways speakers adjust the pitch of their voice in order to convey meaning Intonation helps the speaker convey Đ information beyond just the basic meaning of the words This prosodic ại means can also help the speaker express his/her attitude or feeling about the proposition of the utterance or towards the listener, as well họ as distinguish between a statement and a question in the same sentence c In the Vietnamese educational context, English is a compulsory Đ subject in the national education program Thanks to the impact of the communicative approach, teaching objectives have recently turned N towards communicative competence that aims at increasing g ẵn Vietnamese students‟ capacity to communicate in English confidently Therefore, the importance of teaching and learning English pronunciation in general and intonation in particular has been entailed Since 2014, The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has issued the 6-level English Competencies Framework for Vietnam, based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) from A1 to C2 Therefore, many universities and colleges in Vietnam have raised the output standards Students, accordingly, are required to reach the level of C1 in CEFR or the level in the 6-level English Competencies Framework for Vietnam Moreover, one of the criteria for evaluating English proficiency is communication competence which focuses on speaking skill Thus, pronunciation is considered an important contribution factor in this skill which is required as one essential component for A2 or level at the lower secondary schools Along with my own teaching experience at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School, due to the lack of practice and the disregarding of teaching and learning English intonation, many students often produce Đ incorrect intonation and make their listeners confused in getting the ại correct message or information when they are involved in conversations họ Therefore, with a hope to give English teachers and learners some pragmatic information of students‟ perception and performance c of English intonation patterns as well as to point out common errors of Đ students when performing intonation and major factors leading to these errors to help students overcome their problems and improve N their communication skills, I decided to conduct a study with a title g ẵn “An Investigation into English Intonation Patterns performed by Students in Grade at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School in Danang City” 1.2 AIMS, OBJECTIVES AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1.2.1 Aims This study aims to examine how students in Grade at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School in Danang City experience English intonation patterns in order to provide practical knowledge to the teaching and learning concerning the enhancement of pronunciation of the English intonation patterns 1.2.2 Objectives The study intends to fulfil the following objectives: - To identify common errors and problems that students in Grade at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School encounter when performing English intonation patterns - To point out the factors affecting the performance of English intonation patterns of students in Grade at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School Đ - To offer some suggestions for the intonation performance of ại students in Grade at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School 1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS họ 1) What are the common errors and problems that students in Grade at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School encounter when c performing English intonation patterns? Đ 2) What are the factors affecting the students‟ performance of intonation patterns? N 3) What are the solutions to help students overcome these g ẵn possible errors in the performance of English intonation? 1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY This study focuses on the reality of teaching and learning English intonation patterns in Grade at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School in Danang City However, there is a wide range of aspects of teaching and learning English intonation That is the reason why the area investigated in this research focused on the students‟ perception and their performance of basic English intonation patterns in typical contexts of conversations in English textbook However, due to the limited size and time strain, subjects of the study concentrated on a limited number of students in Grade at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School in Danang City and data collection was conducted during the period of time from December 2021 to February 2022 ại Đ 1.5 SIGNIFICANCE/ JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY Even though there are a lot of research into the problems as well as difficulties that learners face in learning English intonation patterns, it is surprising that there is not much investigation into the reality of teaching and learning intonation The researcher thinks that essential features for communication such as stress and intonation should be paid attention and they should be a learning process in which learners need practice and guidance to master Thus, it is necessary for both teachers and learners to have an overall understanding about intonation patterns The results of this study are hoped to provide English teachers and learners at Lower Secondary schools, especially in Grade 9, with some pragmatic knowledge and information in order to help them deal with the problems in performing English intonation in classroom activities and in daily communication In addition, with the suggestions given to improve the capability of acquiring pragmatic competence, the study is also used as a reference for teachers and learners to be more confident in teaching and learning English pronunciation as well as in communicating c họ Đ g ẵn N 1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Literature Review Chapter 3: Research Design and Methodology Chapter 4: Results and Discussion Chapter 5: Conclusion and Implications Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 PRIOR RESEARCH There have been many studies into English intonation as well as English intonation patterns Binghadeer (2008) examined pitch range in the production of native and non-native speakers of English, particularly Saudi EFL learners The researcher pointed out that nonnative speakers were significantly different from native speakers in the mean of the pitch range for utterances with falling intonation Đ Purnami (2017) analyzed the intonation patterns of students‟ ại storytelling by analyzing tonality or unit of information, tonicity or focus of information, and tone or status of information using a họ qualitative method The analysis revealed that different uses of Rise Tone, Fall Tone, Rise-Fall Tone, and Fall-Rise tone can convey c different meaning Đ In terms of English intonation patterns, Le (2008) investigated some basic intonation patterns performed by the Vietnamese learners N at Ben Tre Continuing Center and pointed out some common errors g ẵn and difficulties that almost learners encounter when communicating in English The findings showed that learners have difficulties in identifying tone units, assigning tonic syllables, selecting tones and failing to perform basic intonation patterns such as Definite statements, Yes-No questions, Exclamation, Wh-questions, Question tags and Echoing questions And in the study of “Intonation Performance of First-year students at College of Foreign Languages – The University of Danang and Suggested Solutions to Improve their Performance of English Intonation”, Tran (2009) highlights some important features of the suprasegmental issue – intonation, indicates some difficulties faced by students when performing some basic English intonation as well as their underlying causes Some solutions are also provided in the study to assist students in improving their intonation performance 2.2 BASIC CONCEPTS OF INTONATION 2.2.1 Definition of intonation According to Tench (1996), intonation is defined the rise and the fall of the pitch of voice in spoken language Đ 2.2.2 Intonation Unit ại An intonation unit, known as an intonation group or intonation phrase, is a stretch of discourse which contains a tonic syllable họ 2.2.3 Pitch Pitch is one of the acoustic correlates of stress (Underhill, 1994, c p57) Đ 2.2.4 Pitch Range Pitch range is defined as the scale of pitch between its lowest g ẵn 2.2.5 Tone or Pitch Movement N and highest levels Tench (1996) defines tone as the level and movement of pitch within an intonation unit Pitch movement occurs when the quality of a speaker's voice changes during the process of communication 2.2.6 Tone Stress and Tonic Syllable An intonation unit almost always has one peak of stress, also called „tonic stress‟ and the syllable that receive the most stress in an intonation unit is called „tonic syllable‟ 2.2.7 Types of Tones in English a) Fall b) High-rise c) Low-rise d) Fall-rise e) Rise-fall 2.2.8 Tones in Vietnamese 2.3 THE DIFFERENCES OF ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SYSTEM Đ PHONETIC CONCERNING THE PROSODIC ại FEATURES First, English phonetic system is characterized in word stress, họ sentence stress, rising and falling intonations whereas Vietnamese is considered a tonal language where different words with different tonal c inflections will convey different meanings Đ Second, in English, intonation is the only means to distinguish between different types of sentences; meanwhile, in Vietnamese, N intonation is rarely used for this function Instead, certain grammatical sentences 2.4 SUMMARY g ẵn patterns are applied to form assertive, negative, and interrogative In this chapter, I have presented some basic concepts of intonation such as the definition of intonation in terms of pitch movement, tonic syllable, types of tones in English and other intonation related figures This chapter also made a sketch of prior research of famous and influential writers of intonation matters and showed an overview about the differences of English and Vietnamese phonetic system concerning the prosodic features Chapter 3: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY 3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHOD This study is a descriptive and predictive contrastive study using both qualitative and quantitative information 3.2 HYPOTHESES Students‟ failure in performing basic intonation patterns might be due to their insufficient awareness of intonation, including the role and knowledge of the use of intonation in learning and Đ communication, the practice and actual performance of intonation with ại greater frequency in learning and communication, and the effective selection of appropriate materials and supportive learning aids họ Students‟ incompetence in English intonation patterns might be attributed in part to the differences of English and c Vietnamese phonetic system concerning the prosodic features, the Đ lack of time, learning aid and appropriate learning strategies and even the teacher‟s awareness in teaching intonation and his/her method of g ẵn 3.3 METHOD AND PROCEDURE N teaching intonation Quantitative and qualitative data collection were done through questionnaires, diagnostic test, interview and direct recording, and they were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed 3.4 SUBJECT SELECTION AND DESCRIPTION The subjects involved in the research were students in Grade at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School in Danang City 3.5 THE SAMPLE AND POPULATION Along with four (4) teachers of English at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School answering the interviews, there were one hundred 10 questions based on the research questions and mainly focused on teachers‟ perceptions and practice in teaching English intonation patterns and their suggestion to enhance the effectiveness of intonation teaching and learning 3.7 DATA COLLECTION Stage 1: The students were required to speak out the sentences in the sentence list after being given ten minutes to read through and then complete the checklists ại Đ Stage 2: The researcher asked the students to choose the correct intonation patterns in the sentence list after they had ten minutes reading though it and then completing the checklists Stage 3: The students were required to listen to the CD player and circle the word(s) they had just heard on the materials delivered Stage 4: The students‟ intonation performance of diagnostic test was all tape-recorded The recordings were transcribed, and then were collated with the version produced by native speakers c họ Đ g ẵn N Stage 5: Teachers teaching English were interviewed with five questions Before answering the researcher‟s questions, the purposes of the interview were explained again to them The interviews were conducted and recorded in Vietnamese 3.8 DATA ANALYSIS The first part of the survey was done with the aim of eliciting information from the questionnaires about the current situation of the students‟ pronunciation of English intonation patterns at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School in Danang City The second part of the survey, diagnostic test, was to gather the information about the students‟ actual performance of pronunciation in English in terms of production and recognition and production 11 There were two parts to be completed in this test: - The first component of the diagnostic test attempted to detect intonation mistakes in students‟ recognition The qualitative information collected from this part was utilized to explore students‟ knowledge about the tone realization in utterances as well as their meaning in contexts - For the second part of the test which aimed at detecting students‟ errors when performing basic intonation patterns, students ại Đ were required to speak loudly given sentences and the recordings collected from this section were used to check the learners‟ actual performance in intonation patterns concerning the degree of their failure in performing intonation patterns in sentences The errors students actually made were concerned in two sides which were how serious the errors were and how comprehensible the utterances were I achieved this task by attentively and carefully listen to students‟ recordings in comparison with the native speaker‟s ones c họ Đ g ẵn N 3.9 VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY This study was done with the participation of teachers of English and 100 Grade students at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School in Danang City and 30 of them were randomly chosen to perform their pronunciation perceptive and productive skill without knowing their level in English Another limitation of the study is that the findings cannot be applied to all students in Vietnam in general or in Danang City in particular In addition, the researcher failed to get information students‟ actual performance in free talks and conversation, which was assumed to provide more reliable empirical evidence for detecting various kinds of pronunciation errors 12 Chapter : FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 RESULT PRESENTATION 4.1.1 The Analysis of Data Collected from Students’ Questionnaires 4.1.1.1 Students’ background One hundred (100) Grade students from Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School were chosen randomly as informants to both questionnaire and diagnostic test without considering their ability Đ in English Learning ại 4.1.1.2 Overview about the Practice of Teaching and họ 4.1.1.3 Students’ Actual Situation of Pronunciation Learning 4.1.1.4 Students’ Awareness of the Importance of Intonation Students’ Problems in Intonation in Oral Communication Đ 4.1.1.5 c in Communication N 4.1.1.6 Students’ Difficulties in Practising Intonation g ẵn 4.1.1.7 Students’ Focuses on the Spoken Discourse 4.1.1.8 Intonation Training by Students 4.1.1.9 Teaching Activities Used by Teachers Concerning the Practice of Speech Training 4.1.2 The Analysis of Data Collected from Students’ Perception and Recordings 4.1.2.1 Result of the Analysis of Students’ Perception 4.1.2.2 Result of the Analysis of Students’ Production 4.1.3 The Analysis of Data Collected from Teachers’ Interviews 13 4.1.3.1 Teachers’ Attitudes towards Teaching English Intonation Patterns 4.1.3.2 Teachers’ Opinions about Factors affecting Students’ Performance of Intonation Patterns 4.1.3.3 Teachers’ Suggestions to Enhance the Effectiveness of Intonation Teaching Due to space limitation, the data collected from the questionnaire, diagnostic test and interview for Result Presentation Đ section will not be presented here Please refer the full version of this ại thesis for more details 4.2 DISCUSSIONS OF FINDINGS họ 4.2.1 Students’ Opinions about Pronouncing Intonation Patterns c Most students confessed that they just read the sentences with Đ the tones they found the most familiar and comfortable with These tones might be heard during students‟ process of English learning N 4.2.2 Errors Made by Students in terms of Perception g ẵn The majority of students failed to correctly perform some basic intonation patterns in terms of recognition As an example, they mainly made errors with Tone used in a question tag and Tone used in a Yes/No question Also, students perceived the wrong patterns of intonation in exclamation, with up to 73.3% of students are wrong choosers From an overall view, students mostly made correct choices for sentences containing some basic tones such as Whquestion, or Definite statement 14 4.2.3 Errors Made by Students in terms of Production 4.2.3.1 Errors in the Performance of Intonation Patterns of Statements * Error with Tone – Definite Statement ại Đ Figure 4.7 The visualized wave form and pitch contour of “It’s raining” performed by the native speaker c họ Đ Figure 4.8 The visualized wave form and pitch contour of “It’s raining” performed by the student g ẵn N Figure 4.9 The representation of the pitch contour of the Tone Unit of It‟s rain- ing N T “It’s raining” performed by the native speaker Figure 4.10 The representation of the pitch contour of the Tone Unit of It‟s rain- ing N T “It’s raining” performed by the student 15 * Error with Tone – Listing items All the artisans here are my aunts, uncles and cousins PH H (body) N N T N T Figure 4.13 The representation of the pitch contour of the Tone Unit of “All the artisans here are my aunts, uncles and cousins” performed by the native speaker ại Đ họ All the artisans cousins H c PH here are my (body) aunts, N uncles N T N and T Đ Figure 4.14 The representation of the pitch contour of the Tone Unit of “All the artisans here are my aunts, uncles and cousins” performed N by the student Wh-Questions * Error with Tone – WH-Question g ẵn 4.2.3.2 Errors in the Performance of Intonation Patterns of Figure 4.15 The visualized wave form and pitch contour of “What’s for dinner?” performed by the native speaker 16 Figure 4.16 The visualized wave form and pitch contour of “What’s for dinner?” performed by the student Đ What‟s for din - ner ? ại H Figure 4.18 The representation of the pitch contour of the Tone Unit of “What’s for dinner?” performed by the native speaker (body) N T c họ din - ner ? (body) N H Đ What‟s for T g ẵn N Figure 4.19 The representation of the pitch contour of the Tone Unit of “What’s for dinner?” performed by the student 4.2.3.3 Errors in the Performance of Intonation Patterns of Yes-No Questions * Error with Tone – Yes-No Question Figure 4.21 The visualized wave form and pitch contour of “Are you baking?” performed by the native speaker 17 Figure 4.22 The visualized wave form and pitch contour of “Are you baking?” performed by the student Figure 4.23 The Đ representation of the pitch ại contour of the Tone Unit of Are you ba - king? “Are you baking?” H (body) N performed by the native họ T speaker c Figure 4.24 The Đ representation of the pitch T performed by the student g ẵn H (body) N “Are you baking” N Are you ba - king? contour of the Tone Unit of 4.2.3.4 Errors in the Performance of Intonation Patterns of Question Tags * Error with Tone – Question Tag (not certain) Figure 4.25 The visualized wave form and pitch contour of “Your village is also a place of interest of Hanoi, isn’t it?” performed by the native speaker 18 Figure 4.26 The visualized wave form and pitch contour of “Your village is also a place of interest of Hanoi, isn’t it?” performed by the student Figure 4.27 The Đ representation of the pitch , is N n‟t it? “isn’t it?” performed by họ ại contour of the Tone Unit of the native speaker T T c Đ Figure 4.28 The representation of the pitch T T “isn’t it?” performed by g ẵn N n‟t it? N , is contour of the Tone Unit of the student 4.2.3.5 Errors in the Performance of Intonation Patterns of Echoing Questions * Error with Tone – Echoing Question Figure 4.29 The visualized wave form and pitch contour of “Really?” performed by the native speaker 19 Figure 4.30 The visualized wave form and pitch contour of “Really?” performed by the student Figure 4.31 The Đ representation of the pitch ại contour of the Tone Unit of “Really?” performed by the Real - ly họ N T native speaker Figure 4.32 The c representation of the pitch Đ contour of the Tone Unit of “Really?” performed by the N student Real - ly N T Correcting Sentences g ẵn 4.2.3.6 Errors in the Performance of Intonation Patterns of * Error with Tone – Correcting incorrect information Figure 4.33 The visualized wave form and pitch contour of “No, I’m not into package tour” performed by the native speaker 20 Figure 4.34 The visualized wave form and pitch contour of “No, I’m not into package tour” performed by the student Figure 4.35 The representation of the pitch Đ contour of the Tone Unit of No, ại N H “No, I’m not into package I‟m not into package tour họ N tour” performed by the T native speaker c Figure 4.36 The Đ representation of the pitch contour of the Tone Unit of “No, I’m not into package N tour” performed by the N T g ẵn H N No, I‟m not into package tour student 4.2.3.7 Errors in the Performance of Intonation Patterns of ‘Before’ phrase * Error with Tone – Non-final phrases Figure 4.37 The visualized wave form and pitch contour of “Before going to the office, ” performed by the native speaker 21 Figure 4.38 The visualized wave form and pitch contour of “Before going to the office, ” performed by the student Figure 4.39 The representation of the pitch Đ contour of the Tone Unit of ại Before going to the H (body) office, “Before going to the N T office” performed by the họ native speaker c Figure 4.40 The Đ representation of the pitch contour of the Tone Unit of N “Before going to the H (body) N T office” performed by the g ẵn Before going to the office, student 4.2.4 Causes of Errors and Negative Transfers in Performing Intonation Patterns in English - Teachers‟ low priority to intonation lesson - Students‟ lack of chance to communicate with native speakers and peers for English intonation practising - Students‟ lack of time - Students‟ low personal determination of practising intonation patterns 22 - Differences between English phonetic system and that of Vietnamese 4.4 SUMMARY The data obtained eventually reveals students‟ true performance of English intonation It seems that the learners have actually made mistakes in terms of recognition and production, particularly in performing Tone 2, Tone and Tone While both students and teachers agree that intonation is important and essential for English Đ learning, students' actual intonation performance appears to be lower ại than predicted Therefore, the reasons mentioned above must be taken into reconsideration by both teachers and students in order to find out họ suitable solutions for the problem c Chapter 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS Đ 5.1 CONCLUSIONS The findings along with the empirical evidence about the N learners‟ situation of learning English and their actual performance of g ẵn intonation in English support our hypotheses: Regarding hypothesis 1: We can see that the qualitative and quantitative information collected from the questionnaire and diagnostic test revealed the fact that students had troubles when performing some basic intonation patterns was attributed to a lack of knowledge of intonation and lack of determination to learn and improve their English intonation It is also clear from the diagnostic test that almost students made mistakes with all kinds of sample sentences mainly picked out from their textbook Lack of intonation 23 materials and other learning aids also contributed to students‟ incompetence in intonation performance As regard to hypothesis 2: In particular, Vietnamese people who are native to a tonal language seems to have difficulties in acquiring intonation skills, which manifest themselves in the flexibility of tones in English Moreover, teachers‟ awareness of intonation and their current teaching methods also causes hinder students‟ performance in intonation Besides, lack of time and Đ learning aids for intonation learning also contribute to the students‟ ại incompetence in English intonation patterns 5.2 IMPLICATIONS họ 5.2.1 To teachers of English - change their awareness and approaches towards the teaching of c English intonation Đ - make use of the textbooks to the fullest - design various kinds of intonation teaching activities N 5.2.2 To students g ẵn - raise their knowledge of intonation concerns and not underestimate the importance of intonation in real-life communication - frequently try to use stress placement, especially sentence stress when performing English intonation - invest time and effort to self-study intonation at home to better their performance by using books and computer software… 5.3 LIMITATION AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH This study only investigates into the Vietnamese learners‟ perception and actual performance of English intonation patterns at 24 Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School in Danang City with the materials in the Grade English textbooks Due to time constraints, the study has been conducted on a relatively small scale which may give rise to the fact that the generalization of the findings may not be so high Therefore, the scope of the study should be expanded for future research to yield more reliable and valid results Moreover, the researcher failed to record students‟ actual performance in free talks and real communication, so the pieces of Đ recording of their production are less objective and far from the ại authenticity This is because the study just investigates the actual performance of basic intonation patterns in terms of recognition and họ production with the sample sentences in Grade English textbooks To achieve a more thorough and detailed study of intonation we c expect to look into these issues in a further study: Đ - How the Vietnamese perform English intonation patterns in different situations in real life communication? N - How to motivate students to learn intonation skill? g ẵn ... teaching and learning English intonation patterns in Grade at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School in Danang City However, there is a wide range of aspects of teaching and learning English intonation. .. with a title g ẵn ? ?An Investigation into English Intonation Patterns performed by Students in Grade at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School in Danang City? ?? 1.2 AIMS, OBJECTIVES AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS... that students in Grade at Trung Vuong Lower Secondary School encounter when performing English intonation patterns - To point out the factors affecting the performance of English intonation patterns