INTRODUCTION
Rationale
In recent years, English has been widely used in Vietnam It has become a compulsory subject at school Theoretically, there has been a remarkable change in methods of teaching and learning English However, in fact, teaching and learning English at the secondary school don‟t prove their own real competence Teaching and learning English only focus on grammar and vocabulary with an aim at getting the high scores in examinations For instance, in speaking lesson, teachers seem not to focus on teaching some significant factors such as rhythms, phonetics and intonation…
Individually, I first became interested in intonation of English language after my first year at university At one of the seminars, I completely misunderstood a question that a native speaker asked because of the difference in intonation The other students and I did not recognize that was said as a question and nodded our head as we might respond to a statement we did not understand even though we were getting the gist of the conversation The teacher stopped all conversation and let us know that this is a big problem for English – speaking learners This sparked my interest in intonation in different types of questions Since then, intonation and how it relates to miscommunication is an area I have focused on in teaching
Because intonation pattern differences could hinder students‟ lives outside the classroom in various ways such as making friends, meeting needs, and job advancement
All of these motivated me to conduct this research “ An investigation into the teaching and learning of intonation to the 9 th grade students at a secondary school in Thai Binh province” , which will go into details of intonation mistakes in different types of English questions of the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang School and then recommend solutions in order to mitigate the problems.
Aims of the research
The specific aims of the study are:
- To investigate the most common mistakes committed when using intonation in different types of English questions by the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh
- To identify the causes of students’ problems when using intonation in different types of English questions
- To recommend possible solutions to their intonation mistakes.
Research questions
Based on the above purposes, this investigation was designed to answer the following questions:
- What are the intonation mistakes commonly committed by the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh?
- What are the causes of students’ problems when using intonation in different types of English questions?
- What are possible solutions to their intonation mistakes?
Scope of the research
The research was conducted on the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh Regarding its scope, the research focused on finding out the most typical mistakes which the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh commonly commit when using intonation in different types of English questions Hence, the research results cannot be true to all Vietnamese learners That is to say, the study works well only for teachers and learners who are teaching and learning at such schools with similar English syllabus or education training or for the ones who are concerned
Moreover, due to both limited time and experience, this study only mentions the mistakes in using intonation in different types of English questions Any attempt to study English intonation mistakes on other aspects, such as statement sentences intonation…, is beyond the scope of this thesis.
Significance of the research
This research provides an insight into the teaching and learning of intonation to the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh
Furthermore, the research results would be used as useful references for English teachers while they teach intonation to their students not only in Pham Huy Quang School but also in other schools.
Structure of the research
The research consists of 5 chapters as follow:
Chapter 1 is the INRODUCTION, which provides an overview of the research with specific information about rationale, aim and objectives of the research, the research questions, the scope and structure of the research
Chapter 2 is the LITERATURE REVIEW, which presents a review of theoretical background about using intonation in different types of English question and a review of previous studies related to the research
Chapter 3 is the METHODOLOGY, which gives a detailed discussion of the method used in the study It presents the subject of the study, the instruments used to collect the data and the procedure of the data collection
Chapter 4 is the FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION, which is a detail description of data analysis and a discussion of the findings of the study
Chapter 5 is the CONCLUSION, which includes the recapitulation of the main points presented in the thesis and concluding remarks The limitations of the study and some recommendations for further research are also discussed in this chapter.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Review of theoretical background
Intonation is a part of prosody and it often cooperates with other prosodic features such as duration and amplitude in order to convey or supplement meaning (Haan, J 2002) Nevertheless, pitch, or, in acoustic terms, fundamental frequency (F0) is usually assumed to be the main correlation to intonation (Bolinger, 1986, Cruttenden, 1986, Beckman, 1995b) Stress is also an integral part of intonation In the present thesis, intonation will be defined as the meaningful variation of pitch in the course of an utterance (Haan J., 2002)
Do Tien Thang in “Vietnamese Intonation” defined that “Intonation is the phenomenon of language that is made up of the action of the acoustical features in certain allomorph in the sentences Intonation makes the sentence realized and becomes the unit of communication" [3, 59] Brazil (1997) stated that “one of the traditional concepts of intonation is variation in the pitch of the voice and proposed an innovative approach to production and reception of speech called Discourse Intonation theory”
In all languages, intonation is used as a means of expressing semantic and emotionally stylistic differences of an utterance Intonation may be presented as raised or lowered pitch that in an expression usually means a completed or uncompleted idea, question or statement Prosodic features, such as a tone and a pitch, can distinguish important ideas from less important ones and can show a speakers‟ personality and attitude towards what he/she is saying The pragmatic role of intonation can be potent in conveying the speakers‟ intention with speech acts (Searle 1969) Speech acts can be loosely described as actions of speaking whereby the speaker sends a message to a hearer with an intention
Ladd (1980) presents five major intonations, while Levis (1999) divides intonation into three categories However, according to majority of authors, intonation in English is divided into two key types such as raising intonation and falling intonation
+ The raising intonation is symbolized as
+The falling intonation is symbolized as However in daily communication, there are many types of sub-intonations in order to exactly express the speakers‟ different viewpoints such as low fall, high wide fall, high narrow fall, low rise, high wide rise, high narrow rise, rise – fall, fall – rise, rise – fall – rise The England in Australia even uses 13 different sub- intonations in their daily communication
In the English questions, two types of intonation of raising and falling intonation are used widely Looking at the following examples:
We can conclude that for the “Wh-question” questions, the end of the sentence must fall intonation and for Question-No question, the end of the sentence must raise intonation
The phrase people often use to illustrate the importance of intonation is, “It‟s not what you said, it‟s how you said it!” The “how you said it” refers to the pitch level, accent, length, or intonation contour – all aspects of suprasegmentals – of what was said Suprasegmentals can carry meaning not found in individual sound segments Segmentals are individual phones whereas suprasegmentals operate above the level of the segmentals The pitch level, accent, or intonation contour of words or a whole phrase sometimes carries more pragmatic meaning than just words as written These suprasegmental features express intent, emotion, and inquisitiveness and as such are a critical component of language competence and proficiency
Each intonation group has a typical pitch contour which changes in predictable ways, for example when emphasis is added Intonation can provide attitudinal meaning in English and other languages (Cruttenden, 1986, p.14) The example in Figure 1 illustrates two different intonation contours for the same words, each conveying a different attitude toward what is being said Native speakers of American English can interpret differing intonation patterns to convey slight or great differences in meaning
Figure 1: One question pronounced with different intonation patterns (Ladefoged, 2006,p 120)
Above are examples of how English speakers may pronounce the same question with different intonation patterns The top intonation contour is a falling contour and is considered more neutral The bottom contour, which is considered more argumentative has two rising phrases, the second having a large pitch increase (Ladefoged, 2006, p 120)
Given that intonation contours can distinguish attitude or pragmatic force, intonation functions importantly in cross cultural communication “A failure to make full 6 use of English prosodic features has crucial consequences in NS/NNS [native speaker/non-native-speaker] oral interaction” (Clennell, 1997, p 118)
Overall, more native-like intonation will help non-native speakers have their intentions perceived more accurately in conversation
2.1.2 Intonation in different types of English questions 2.1.2.1 Intonation in Yes- No questions
The unmarked English contour for yes-no questions has a final rise as is the case for many intonational languages (Cruttenden, 1986, p.163) Pierrehumbert
(1980, p 16, 262) describes yes-no questions in English with more detail, as having a rise-plateau-rise She shows an F0 pattern which is commonly used on yes-no questions The pitch accent is low, then the contour rises, makes a plateau, and then rises again to a high tone Pierrehumbert also cited Sag and Liberman (1975) and Rando (1980) as describing yes-no questions as having a rise-plateau-rise configuration when there is enough distance from the pitch accent to the end of utterance for this to occur We see this rise-plateaurise in the question if the contour is long enough, but what I am looking for to determine if an utterance is target-like is the final rise at the boundary tone This is sufficient to distinguish an utterance from being native-like Figure 2 illustrates the unmarked contour for yes-no questions (Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg, 1990)
Figure 2: Illustration of an unmarked yes-no question (Pierrehumbert &
The intonation contour in Figure 2 shows a low pitch accent on the first syllable of “vitamins” and the contour rising from there to a final high tone Figure 3, below, shows another example of the yes-no question, this time with the rise-plateau-rise
Figure 3: Illustration of rise-plateau-rise in the contour (Pierrehumbert &
In Figure 3 the boundary tone is far enough from the final pitch accent to allow for the rise-plateau-rise in the contour This contour shows a low pitch accent on “good” and a rise-plateau-rise from there (Pierrehumbert, 1980)
Although there are grammatical structures that align with such intonation contours to indicate interrogatives such as English aux + S + V (Do you like apples?), speakers (and especially English language learners) don‟t have to use these grammatical forms to make yes-no questions and can rely on high rise of the boundary tone of unmarked intonation contours to express that action This can be typical of beginning language learners (Pienemann, 1998) (2) A: You work full time (with high rising pitch at the end) B: yes In example (2) the language learner does not use grammar to form a question by using the auxiliary verb „do‟ and moving the subject after the verb The question is in statement form and the final rise in intonation indicates that it is a question For this study I looked at fully formed syntactic yes-no questions as well as those that were indicated by intonation alone such as in example (2)
In contrast to yes-no questions, wh-questions in English, also known as information questions, have the same unmarked falling contour as declaratives Pike
(1956) describes the general tendency of question contours to be falling and refers to them as the “chief contour” (pp 168-169) Wh-questions in English have also been 12 described more specifically as having a final falling tone (Couper-Kuhlen,
1996 citing Armstrong/Ward, 1931) Pierrehumbert & Hirshberg also described wh- questions this way stating that “the H* L-L% tune used with simple declaratives is also frequently used with wh-questions” (1990, p 284)
Review of previous studies
So far, there have been a quite number of studies about Vietnamese‟s mistakes in using intonation They are the valuable references for further researches, especially, for this thesis
Tran Thi Thanh Dieu (2015) studied about “A case study of solutions to some intonation mistakes made by Vietnamese students – a phonetic experimental research” This study focuses on the importance of combining phonological knowledge with rhythm, melody and syntax rules in teaching English intonation affected by stress for Vietnamese students, verified by Experimental Phonetics The hypothesis is that the English Rhythmic patterns and melodic aspect will help students to identify their intonation mistakes and change from negative to positive attitude towards practicing intonation melodically affected by stress The final target is to improve Vietnamese students‟ pronunciation skill as well as catching the main idea in the conversation in order to have successful communication in English To solve this problem, the author carried out with 90 Vietnamese students in two universities namely University of Social Sciences and Humanities and Ho Chi Minh City Open University The study gave seven common intonation mistakes such as mistake of rhythmic pattern, mistake of tonic syllable identification, mistake of rhythm and tonic syllable identification, mistake of intonation pattern, mistake of rhythmic and intonation pattern, mistake of tonic syllable identification and intonation patter and mistake of rhythm, tonic syllable identification and intonation patterns
In the study of “Contrastive Analysis of English and Persian Intonation Patterns: An Error Analysis Study on Iranian Undergraduate EFL Students” of Mojtaba Eghlidi (2016), the author highlighted importance of intonation pattern In particular, intonation patterns play a significant role in successful direct communication i.e speaking in the target language Some language learners generalize their native language patterns while speaking target language, in other words, they make some pronunciation errors In the present study, firstly, intonation patterns of English and Persian have been analyzed and discussed contrastively
Secondly, an error analysis study of intonation patterns on Iranian undergraduate EFL students carried out In order to collect data the voices of thirty Iranian undergraduate EFL students while reading aloud an authentic English text have been recorded Then their errors while using English intonation patterns have been identified The results confirmed the predictions and showed that the subjects erred in using rise-fall pattern in the sentences containing two clauses more than other patterns; whereas they did not err while applying rise intonation
According to Claudia Pesce (2014) in “Do Your ESL Students Make These Stress and Intonation Mistakes?, the author identified two most common mistakes of intonation namely no rising pitch and using the wrong pitch Therefore, he recommended some suggestions such as Yes/No questions have the rising pitch towards the end; questions that begin with wh-words have a falling intonation; statements have a falling intonation; question tags may have either depending on the intention of the speaker; questions tags that are comments or observations have a falling intonation while questions tags used to check information or express uncertainty have a rising intonation; using rising intonation to express surprise and using falling intonation to express sarcasm or disbelief
Koichi Kumaki (2003) studied about “A study of English intonation in high school textbook in Japan” The study stated that teaching intonation is usually neglected in teaching English at high school and upper secondary school in Japan
Therefore, the study attempted to find out which intonation features are commonly taught and how they are treated in the context of TEFL at high school in Japan The results pointed out the main intonation approaches, especially discourse intonation and the intonation treatment in the authorized English textbooks largely takes the grammatical approach rather than attitudinal or discourse, and the teachers‟ view on intonation treatment is almost in line with that of the textbooks, though they rarely teach intonation in lessons
Obviously, there are many problems in relation to teaching and learning of intonation for students at secondary school and high school I hope that these are useful references to develop my topic in this thesis
All the theoretical background of the research was presented in this chapter with the purpose of giving a general view to readers to get information about English intonation, intonation in different types of English question, and some studies on related topics It was believed that the 9 th grade students participating in this study would struggle with the intonation in different types of English questions The next chapter will present the research methodology.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research questions
The study was carried out to address the following three questions:
- What are the intonation mistakes commonly committed by the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh?
- What are the causes of students’ problems when using intonation in different types of English questions?
- What are possible solutions to their intonation mistakes?
The participants of the study
The study was conducted with the participation of 100 students around 14 years old (64 males, 36 females) in two classes 9G and 9H at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School These two classes with 100 learners were selected randomly from a population of 7 classes with 362 students of the basic program They were mixed-ability classes in which some students had limited proficiency in English
The students had low intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for learning English
Besides, the study has in-depth review with two teachers who are leader of English group and English teacher at 9 th grade They were reminded that the data gathered would not be utilized for any assessment purposes and that personal details would be kept confidential.
Research method
In order to find out common intonation mistakes that the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh commit, I use two methods of qualitative and quantitative methods for gathering data The data is collected from two sources: secondary data and primary data (questionnaires and in-depth interview) Based on these data, the current mistakes commonly committed by the
9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh in using intonation in different types of English questions would be identified, analyzed and assessed in order to find out the limitations And then the solutions and recommendations would have been proposed for overcoming the mistakes commonly committed by the 9th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh in using intonation in different types of English questions.
Data-related issues
In addition, I collected from a wide range of sources, which were published (called secondary data), such as Internet databases, former research studies and so forth in order to help me set up my own questionnaires and theoretical background of developing the thesis The information was collection from Internet (other relevant websites, news and publishes) and from journals (general information related to mistakes commonly committed by students in using intonation; information of students talking about intonation use and information of intonation provided by the news or reporters or media in general)
Questionnaires are the main instrument For the purposes of the study, I delivered questionnaires to 100 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh (Appendix 1) These were used for three main purposes namely finding out students‟ attitudes towards intonation mistakes in different types of English questions; getting their opinions on the causes of their mistakes, getting to know reality in the classes and materials and means of support of teaching intonation and exploring students‟ expectation towards their teachers in intonation classes
The questionnaires designed consisted of the following parts:
Part 1 : Introduction of the survey purpose and commitment terms
Part 2 : General information (name, class, habits,…) Part 3: Main body of the survey consisting of the specific multiple – choice questions in accordance with using intonation Accordingly the author will collect and give conclusion and solutions to enhance mistakes in using intonation of the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh
Part 4 : Open questions are designed to collect students‟ detailed feedbacks about intonation
Part 5: Direct interviews with 9 th grade students by let them practicing some dialogues including types of English questions
Moreover, the study also collected data by in-depth interview with Leader of English group and English teacher at 9 th grade at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh The aims of conducting the in-depth interview were to get their viewpoints about using intonation, difficulties of students using intonation in different types of English questions, the habits of the 9th grade students‟ intonation use, how the students are desiring and developing orientation of the school and their ideas of building a proper survey questionnaire
The data which was collected was pre-processed using the Microsoft Excel for Microsoft Professional Windows XP and create many useful and effective charts, diagrams and pies that support the my analysis and discussion
The data was analyzed to find out mistakes commonly committed by the the
9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh in using intonation in different types of English questions and some suggested solutions and then, I did utilize to analyze and discuss mistakes commonly committed by the the
9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh in using intonation in different types of English questions and some suggested solutions.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Objectives of teaching and learning intonation
Intonation that needs to be mentioned is one of the important factors in speaking lessons Intonation is not defined as a specific subject at Secondary and High Schools Here are some typical objectives set forth the teaching of intonation:
- Understanding principles of intonation in different types of English questions such as tag questions, WH-question or Yes-No question
- Practicing accurately and correctly intonation in different types of English questions
- Using intonation in general and intonation in different types of English questions in particular
- Building good intonation for students as a good foundation in the higher education.
Report on the results collected in survey questionnaires
The survey was carried out with 100 9 th students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School All students were supportive and totally 100 respondents are the final and successful ones of the survey
The questionnaire includes 10 questions for measuring 03 independent variables and 03 questions for measuring 03 dependent variables 3 independent variables are: “Methods of teaching intonation (TI)” includes 04 items from TI1 to TI4; “Methods of assessing intonation (AI)” consists of 03 items from AI1 to AI3 and “Materials and means of support (MS)” includes of 03 items from MS1 to MS3
03 dependent variables are “Methods of teaching intonation”, “Methods of assessing intonation” and “Materials and means of support”, the rating scale from 1 to 5 (1: completely disagree, 2: disagree, 3: neutral, 4: agree and 5: completely agree)
For the question in Part 1: General information, 100% of respondents are at grade 9 at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School When being asked “Do you like
English subject?” there are 75 respondents or 75% with “Yes” answer and the rest of 25 9 th grade students said that they don‟t love English subject Obviously most of
9 th grade students in this school have good awareness of importance of English subject and they are fond of this subject
4.3.2 Students’ perception on intonation teaching by teachers at English lessons
Table 4.1: Students’ perception on intonation teaching by teachers at English lessons
Completely disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Completely agree
1 The teachers regularly find out intonation mistakes, especially in different types of English questions
2 The teachers pay more attention to correct mistakes in using intonation in different types of English questions
3 The teachers teach you principles of intonation in different types of English questions
4 The teachers give interesting intonation lessons about different types of English questions lesson to students
Figure 5: Students’ perception on intonation teaching by teachers at English lessons
For the first dimension, methods of teaching intonation, the following table represents the responses of 100 respondents for the survey toward mistakes commonly committed by the 9 th grade students using intonation in different types of English questions
Looking at the results gained from the survey, we can have the following analysis
In overall, the methods of teaching intonation of English teachers at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School are at average due to its good - average mean score of 2.92
The attribute takes the highest mean score of 4.22 is that “The teachers teach you principles of intonation in different types of English questions” This is quite high mean score, which proves that the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School have been taught intonation principles in different types of English questions As mentioned above, there are three main types namely WH- question, Yes-No question and tag-question and two main types of intonation such as rising intonation and falling intonation According to the 9 th grade students‟ responses, their teacher teach them that they have to use rising intonation for Yes-
No question and Tag-question when speakers would like to show doubt and falling intonation is used in WH-question and Tag-question in case speakers want to affirm a fact is true If paying more attention, when taking in English, students correctly apply these principles
Table 4.2: Results of Methods of teaching intonation at Pham Huy Quang
The next attribute scored at 3.14 is that “The teachers pay more attention to correct mistakes in using intonation in different types of English questions”
According to the principles mentioned above, the teachers and peers can be easy to find out mistakes students commit in using intonation in different types of English questions However, in daily communication or speaking lessons, the teachers don‟t really focus on students‟ intonation mistakes Many students only focus on correctly pronouncing vocabulary and pronunciation, sometimes stress for good students
They normally use a monotonous voice to read a sentence, a paragraph or practice speaking For them, correct pronunciation is good enough and they pay attention to nothing Moreover, the number of students in a class up to nearly 50 ones and duration of a lesson is limited in 45 minutes; it is difficult for the teachers to correct each student‟s mistakes They only focus on correcting when they incorrectly pronounce in some aspect of vocabulary, sometimes pronunciation or stress It is the common teaching way of schools in rural areas
A mean score of 2.76 was given to the attribute number one, which describes
“The teachers regularly find out intonation mistakes, especially in different types of
English questions” It is understandable when in this attribute most of students only give the average mean score Due to limited lesson duration and number of students, the teachers don‟t have enough time to correct each student‟s intonation mistakes
Actually, in speaking lessons, the teachers don‟t focus more on intonation mistakes so finding out intonation mistakes is irregular Maybe only in intonation lesson, the teachers spend more time in teaching, finding out and correcting intonation mistakes for students However, after that these works are not regularly applied
The last attribute of “The teachers give interesting intonation lessons about different types of English questions lesson to students” was given a mean score of
2.56 In English unit, there is one lesson or 45 minutes for speaking skills, so intonation lessons are only spent a small duration, about ten to fifteen minutes In this duration, the teachers just give some intonation principles for students and call some of them to practice and correct immediately As the result, when being asked about interesting intonation lessons, most of 9 th students suppose their teachers don‟t give many interesting intonation lessons
4.2.3 Students’ perception on finding out teachers intonation mistakes and use of intonation as one of the important assessment criteria in examinations
Table 4.3: Students’ perception on finding out teachers’ intonation mistakes and use of intonation as one of the important assessment criteria in examinations
Completely disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Completely agree
1 In assessing scale of speaking, intonation is one of the important and necessary assessing criteria in different types of English questions
2 There are many methods used to assess intonation in different types of English questions, especially in examinations
3 Intonation mistakes are included and specified as one of criteria in speaking examinations
Figure 6: Students’ perception on finding out teachers’ intonation mistakes and use of intonation as one of the important assessment criteria in examinations
As mentioned in the above, the method of assessing intonation dimension consists of 03 attributes; the results gained from the survey are as follows:
Table 4.4: Results of Methods of assessing intonation at Pham Huy Quang
The overall mean score of this attribute is 2.87 or at the average level
The highest mean score of 3.03 was given to the attribute “In assessing scale of speaking, intonation is one of the important and necessary assessing criteria in different types of English questions” Practically, in rural areas, oral tests are not focused more In recent years, at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, orals tests have been carrying out in the first-semester examinations and final-semester examinations However, assessing criteria for a good presentation include contents, good communication, good body languages, various vocabulary, fluent pronunciation, intonation and good stress and so on; of which intonation only accounts for a very small score It can conclude that intonation is one of the necessary assessing criteria, not important assessing criterion
The mean score of 2.80 was given to the attribute of “There are many methods used to assess intonation in different types of English questions, especially in examinations” As mentioned above, intonation is not regarded as significant criterion of assessment Therefore, in the 9 th grade in Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, there are some methods used to assess intonation in different types of English questions such as rising intonation at the end of sentences, falling intonation at the beginning of the sentence or so on Depending on each sentence and each type of question, English teachers shall discuss and give the proper assessing methods
However, these assessing methods for the 9 th grade students are used methodically and are not paid more attention Only good contents and fluent presentation as well as correct pronunciation and good stress can students get high score
Finally, the attribute of “Intonation mistakes are included and specified as one of criteria in speaking examinations” was given a mean score of 2.79 As explained above, intonation is specified as criteria of examinations but intonation mistakes are not included in examinations These mistakes are only specified and corrected in speaking lessons or intonation lessons However, due not to be organized practices, students are quick to forget intonation principles and intonation mistakes After each speaking examination, English teachers should collect intonation mistakes commonly committed and specify as one of the criteria in the next speaking exams English teachers also can collect intonation mistakes and learn from experience for their students after speaking exams
4.2.4 Students’ perception on materials and means of support that are currently applied for teaching intonation
Table 4.5: Students’ perception on materials and means of support that are currently applied for teaching intonation
Attributes of materials and means of support
Completely disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Completely agree
1 In-class document for intonation lesson is sufficiently provided for students by the teachers
2 There are many materials provided for teaching intonation such as video, radio, PowerPoint and so on
3 Materials and means of support for teaching intonation in different types of English questions are various, interesting and inspiring
Figure 7: Students’ perception about materials and means of support that are currently applied for teaching intonation
The possible solutions to intonation teaching problems
In accordance with the above findings, the followings will be some recommendations for English intonation teaching for secondary school the teachers of English
As mentioned above, the teachers‟ methods of intonation teaching play a very important role in motivating and improving students‟ English in general and students‟ intonation in particular If the techniques employed in the lessons are various and suitable, they will make the lessons easier to understand and more interesting to follow As a result, the students will be motivated to study With the fact that most classes in Vietnamese secondary schools are large and heterogeneous, it is very difficult for the teachers to individualize their teaching Therefore, the teachers should be aware of this difficulty and very their techniques and activities so that they can involve more students in the lessons By doing so, they can also reduce the boredom of the lesson at the same time There are many various techniques for the teachers to choose and saying says that “no method is best” so the teachers need to be more flexible in choosing the suitable techniques for different purposes of teaching intonation The author shall recommend some possible solutions for the teachers to help students overcome problems in leaning intonation in different types of mistakes as follows:
4.3.1 Teaching intonation on the level of accuracy
The first requirement for using accurate intonation is teaching principles of intonation The teachers should comprehend principles of intonation There are some ways to create intonation as follows:
- Emphasizing adverbs, nouns and adjectives in sentence:
+ Adverbs: are used to indicate the strength and weakness of the verbs that it modifies Adverbs may stand behind TO BE, before normal verbs, and the beginning of the sentence Therefore, when speaking, foreigners often emphasize it
For example: His ideas were absolutely wrong (The word “absolutely” is emphasized in this sentence, and when it is emphasized, the “wrong” is not spoken so fast and uses falling intonation)
For example: I do not have the money to study at an English center
In this sentence, “money” and “English” are emphasized and they are emphasized by adding “acute accent” on them
- Emphasizing and stopping for a while for some words such as so, that, but, however, Words like so, that, will be emphasized when you want to emphasize something
For example: I like driving car, but my mom don‟t (When it comes to the
“but”, you emphasize and stop a bit; listeners will understand that they will then hear information contrary to the information before)
- Emphasizing on negative thoughts: In English, negative meanings are always emphasized when talking
Example: I have a car (The word will be emphasized as “I” and “car”) Negative sentence: I don‟t have any car (The word “don‟t” and “any” shall be emphasized)
For questions, we use rising intonation for Yes-No question We use falling intonation for WH-question Question tags may have either depending on the intention of the speaker Questions tags that are comments or observations have a falling intonation while questions tags used to check information or express uncertainty have a rising intonation
Besides, it is necessary to remember some following rules:
- Use rising intonation to express surprise
- Use falling intonation to express sarcasm or disbelief
4.3.2 Teaching intonation on the level of fluency
For this level, after giving intonation principles, the teachers must organize practice activities for students The teachers can divide class into small groups of five to six students and assign group leader depending on their pronunciation ability First of the teachers must convey their monitoring and correcting ways for students Accordingly, groups will practice types of sentences using correct intonation under group leaders‟ directions Group leaders are those who directly correct intonation mistakes for their peers Thanks to that, the teachers can save their time and students have more chance to practice intonation
The teachers also give group lessons which require students to practice intonation in different types of English questions by recording their voice in a tape and the teachers can collect and score For students‟ incorrect intonation, the teachers can note and specify all and represent in front of class for learning from experience
Importantly, intonation lessons are practiced regularly and the teachers can be flexible to teach their students intonation principles for more types of sentences
After teaching intonation principles all types of sentences in English, they can conclude and help students compare amongst them
4.3.3 Organizing training courses for English teachers
As explained above, most of English teachers in Pham Huy Quang Secondary School are middle-aged and they are not good at using computer or information technology in planning lessons and teaching For using intonation, many of them even speak incorrectly and they don‟t really focus on using intonation in communication Therefore, to overcome and improve students‟ intonation mistakes, first of all is to talk the teachers over to importance and necessity of intonation In secondary level, they have not used and paid more attention to intonation in communication but in the higher levels, it is very important as it directly involves to meanings of the sentences and foreigners can‟t understand what they are talking about
The Head of Pham Huy Quang Secondary School should plan to send Group Leader or the most qualified teacher to learn about speaking course that consists of skills such as pronunciation, stress, rhythm and intonation Depending on the school‟s scope with 07 English teachers, there is only one teacher to be sent After that, that teacher shall train others and the teachers also must seriously learn and practice However, the Head of this school must plan to regularly send the teacher to learn and maintain training course frequently
In addition, the Head of the school also encourages their teachers to use technological methods in teaching such as teaching on PowerPoint, teaching with video and radio and so on For serious implementation, the Head must plan to attend lessons with an aim of observing and assessing learning and teaching intonation of the teachers and students and then the Head learns from experience for better deployment in the future
This is one of the most urgent issues for teaching at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School Besides basic facilities such as textbooks, boards, chalks and so on, facilities support teaching activities especially lessons such as listening and speaking lessons to be invested namely radios, videos, computers, projectors, micro and loudspeakers and so on However, implementing and applying such facilities must be done regularly and seriously The Head of school must make monitoring plans teachers‟ implementation in order to avoid using reluctantly by the teachers and students The entire investment for a new school as Pham Huy Quang certainly deals with many difficulties in term of financial aspect so the Head can invest single facility based on the necessary level for teaching and learning activities.
CONCLUSION
Recapitulation
In conclusion, the study was carried out to investigate the teaching and learning of intonation to the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary Schoo It sometimes causes some unexpected misunderstanding in communication
Furthermore, the factors that caused the problems were identified, so that possible solutions to solve the problems were proposed The instrument of this study included tape records and survey questionnaires I hope this study is a useful reference for further researches.
Concluding remarks
* For the first research question: “ What are the intonation mistakes commonly committed by the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh?”
For investigating mistakes in using intonation in different types of English questions of the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh, the thesis was conducted to convey and deliver 100 9 th grade students studying at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh I gave them some short dialogues to practice and I directly listens and writes down their common mistakes
After directly surveying, I found it was easy to write down the mistakes because most of the 9 th grade students read aloud the sentences contingently without intonation principles In addition, I conducted in-depth interview with some English teachers and leader in this school to get more opinions about using and practicing intonation and the common intonation mistakes
5.2.2 Concluding remarks on the second objective
* For the second research question: What are the causes of students’ problems when using intonation in different types of English questions?
After analyzing, I identified some common mistakes which are committed by the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary, Thai Binh Most of them found intonation in speaking English difficult because they aren‟t taught about intonation principles In some specialized classes, they are taught about intonation principles but due not to practice regularly, they quickly forget In different types of English questions, students cannot identify which types of English questions they have to raise their voice and which types of English questions they have to use falling voice and where in the questions they have to use raising or falling voice
5.2.3 Concluding remarks on the third objective
* For the third research question: What are possible solutions to their intonation mistakes?
The findings of the research show that there are many deficiencies about teaching materials as well as the teachers‟ unsuitable approach Most of the teachers and students in this secondary school have not realized importance of using intonation in communication so intonation lessons have not focused and attached special importance Thenceforth, I proposed some suitable recommendations with a view of assisting students and the teachers at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School to gradually improve their pronunciation, especially intonation in different types of English questions to express their various purposes.
Limitations and suggestion for the further studies
Nevertheless due to limited time and space, there are some issues that have not been studied Depending on the findings and shortcomings of the research, the author would like to give some recommendations for further researches First of all, due to limited time, the author could not study to find which techniques of teaching intonation would be proper for the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School Therefore, an investigation into appropriate techniques to apply for teaching the 9 th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School and intonation should be conducted Second, as mentioned above, Pham Huy Quang Secondary School is a rural and newly-established school, provision of modern and suitable facilities for teaching intonation and other skills Thus, further studies on this issue should be conducted in many other schools in different areas
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APPENDIX 1 APPENDIX 1: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES FOR 100 9 TH GRADE STUDENTS
My name is Nguyen Thi Diem, and I am completing my research of teaching and learning of intonation to the 9 Th grade students at Pham Huy Quang Secondary School, Thai Binh I would love you to spend some time answering my questions below Please answer accurately and completely the questions in the attached questionnaires
Your information shall be used only for this thesis
We sincerely thank you very much for your supports!
This survey is designed in order to get students‟ feedback about intonation in different types of English questions This information shall help the teachers improve more about this aspect and then student‟s ability is enhanced
2 Which class are you in? ………9………
3 Do you like English subject?
Please tick „√‟ into the following boxes, each question is selected once only and scored by the following criteria:
The question shall be based on the mentioned theoretical framework of intonation
1 How are currently the teachers teaching intonation in English lesson?
Attributes of teaching methods Completel y disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Complet ely agree
1 The teachers regularly find out intonation mistakes, especially in different types of English questions
2 The teachers pay more attention to correct mistakes in using intonation in different types of English questions
3 The teachers teach you principles of intonation in different types of English questions
4 The teachers give interesting intonation lessons about different types of English questions lesson to students
2 How do the teachers find out intonation mistakes and Is intonation used as one of the important assessment criteria in examinations?
Attributes of assessing methods Completely disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Completely agree
1 In assessing scale of speaking, intonation is one of the important and necessary assessing criteria in different types of English questions
2 There are many methods used to assess intonation in different types of English questions, especially in examinations
3 Intonation mistakes are included and specified as one of criteria in speaking examinations
3 What are materials and means of support the teachers use to teach intonation?
Attributes of materials and means of support Completely disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Completely agree
1 In-class document for intonation lesson is sufficiently provided for students by the teachers
2 There are many materials provided for teaching intonation such as video, radio, PowerPoint and so on
3 Materials and means of support for teaching intonation in different types of English questions are various, interesting and inspiring
1 What do you think about the teachers (qualifications, experience and enthusiasm)?
2 Do you find any difficulties when learning intonation?
3 Do you distinguish between rising intonation and falling intonation in different type of questions?
4 Do you realize mistakes commonly committed in using intonation in different types of question?
Part 4: Could you read aloud some following dialogues, please?
Dialogue 1: Hoa is going shopping at the supermarket
Hoa: How does this pen cost?
Shopkeeper: This pen is VND 30,000
Hoa: This red pen is VND 30,000, isn‟t it?
Shopkeeper: Yes, it is It is made of special material It is US‟
Dialogue 2: The boy calls his girlfriend
The boy: Do you like going to the cinema tonight?
The girl: Tonight? Yes, I do I really like
The boy: What time can I pick you up?
The boy: Ok, see you
The girl: See you soon
Dialogue 3: Mom talks to her son
Mom: Do you like visiting your grandparents in this summer?
Son: Why not? I want to go to countryside
Mon: Why do you love countryside?
Son: Well, it very peaceful and healthy and I love to go fishing with my cousins It‟s so fantastic!
APPENDIX 2 IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW WITH GROUP LEADER OF
ENGLISH GROUP AT 9 TH GRADE
1 How long have you been working as Group Leader of English Group at 9 th grade?
2 How many English teachers are there in 9 th grade?
3 How often does the Head of School attend English teachers‟ lessons?
4 How does the Head of School invest materials and means of teaching support for English teachers at 9 th grade?
5 How often does the Head of School organize trainings for English teachers to improve their teaching skills and knowledge?
6 Did you pay attention to intonation mistakes in different types of English questions of students?
7 Did you direct English teachers to try to find out mistakes and correct them?
8 Did you require English teachers to submit list of common intonation mistakes and recommendations to fix them?