Luận văn thạc sĩ VNU ULIS english intonation errors made by third year students at english department, chu van an university

Rationale of the study

Intonation is a helpful tool to achieve effective communication Speech without intonation features is no more than a machine output Therefore, a proficiency in intonation is a requirement for non-native learners of English English intonation operates a trio of systems including tonality (the choice of intonation unit), tonicity (the choice of the tonic syllable or the nucleus) and tone (the choice of pitch movement on the nucleus) Each subsystem itself, however, is a fairly complicated phenomenon It is why when teaching and learning English, both Vietnamese teachers and students pay more attention to grammar, vocabulary, individual sounds; and pay very little attention to intonation This prevents learners from comprehending spoken English Neglect of intonation in the past, nonetheless, is now no excuse for neglect in the present

For students at English Department, Chu Van An University, who will become translators or interpreters of English in the near future, knowledge of English intonation is extremely essential Especially, those who intend to work as interpreters are obliged to work mostly with spoken English If they are not good at intonation, they are unable to interpret meaning implied under what the native speakers say Likewise, they may cause some misunderstanding due to wrong use of intonation From the teaching reality, I have realized that my students encounter no few problems in speaking English intonationally They even find it difficult to identify correct intonation units, more difficult to determine the nucleus among stress syllables in an intonation unit, and much more difficult to put a right pitch movement on the nucleus As a result, their speech is either jerky or monotonous or both

Apart from that, I myself have a couple of difficulties with English intonation I am aware of the importance of English intonation However, the amount of knowledge gained before my post graduate course is not sufficient for me to feel confident about communicating in English Especially, I cannot escape from feeling that my speech is not natural

With a hope that I can make some contributions to solving my own problems and my students‟ difficulties in communicating in English I choose the study on “English

Intonation: Errors made by Third Year Students at English Department, Chu Van

Scope of the study

Intonation is a vast topic in English teaching and learning Thus, it is too ambitious to cover so many aspects of English intonation in the study That is the reason why the area investigated in this thesis is the units of intonation - tonality

Furthermore, second language learners are various and different in the ways of making errors However, due to limited size and time strain, subjects of the study concentrates on a limited number of 20 third year English majors of Chu Van An University.

Aims and objectives of the study

Aims of the study

The ultimate aim of this thesis is, to the possible extent within the findings established, to provide an account of the errors commonly committed by third year students at Chu Van

An University and on this basis, to facilitate the mentioned students in improving English intonation unit usage.

Objectives of the study

 Detect common errors in relation to English intonation units made by third year

English majors of Chu Van An University;

 Find out the causes of these errors;

 Investigate the relationship between participants‟ perceptive and productive ability;

 Identify the correlation between third year students‟ language proficiency and their ability of dividing speech into word groups;

 Explore learners‟ beliefs and attitudes towards learning English intonation as well as their solutions to the problems they made with English intonation units.

Research Questions

The specific objectives of the study can be elaborated into the following groups of research questions:

1.1 What are the common errors in dividing speech into tone units at the perception and production stage encountered by third year majors of English Department, Chu Van An University?

1.2 What are factors that lead to errors of English tonality?

2.1 What is the relation between the perceptive and productive capacity for intonation units?

2.2 What is the correlation between the students‟ language proficiency and their ability of speech division into intonation units?

3 Attitude and behavior assessment 3.1What are students‟ beliefs and attitudes towards English intonation learning?

3.2 What do students do to resolve their own difficulties in learning intonation?

Significance of the study

The study is significant for the following reasons:

(1) The study is implemented to investigate students‟ errors when dividing utterances into minor word groups – tonality Therefore, it is hereby expected that the study contributes to raising students‟ awareness of perceiving and producing intonation units

(2) It will help teachers to predict the learners‟ difficulties in learning intonation unit and be aware of the problems so that they will have effective methods to deliver their lectures on the issue in a way that it minimizes the tonality errors

(3) More importantly, it offers some possible suggestions to solve the problems and the pedagogical implications for further applications of teaching English intonation in general and English intonation unit in particular in the classroom.

Design of the study

Alongside with the References and Appendices, the thesis is structured into three main parts, namely Introduction, Development, and Conclusion The Development part consists

The Introduction offers the rationale for choosing the topic, the scope, the aims, the objectives, the research questions, the significance as well as the design of the study

The Development consists of three chapters in which

Chapter 1 - Literature Review - addresses the literature review of previous studies and the theoretical issues related to English intonation Within the chapter, nature, system, structure and functions of intonation are discussed Then one of the intonation systems namely tonality system is specifically addressed After that is coming to a section of error analysis

Chapter 2 - Methodology - presents an analytical framework used in the research to reveal problems encountered by students including the instruments to collect data, the procedures for data collection as well as data analysis applied in the study

Chapter 3 - Data Analysis and Findings – is the most important part of the study in which the data collected from such instruments as the perception and production tasks, the academic result, and the questionnaire are analyzed one after another The findings from the data collected are presented and discussed in this chapter

The third part of the study - the Conclusion represents the review of the study with the summary of the thesis, concluding remarks, recommendations, and suggestions for further study.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Previous works related to the topic of the study

As far as the researcher concerns, not many studies on intonation errors are found There are a few studies on intonation involving Arabic and Japanese language as follow:

Binghadeer (2008) investigated Saudi EFL learners‟ pitch range and compared it to that of native speakers The results revealed that non-native speakers differed significantly from native speakers in the mean of the pitch range for utterances with falling intonation

However, the study is the contrastive analysis of English with Arabic language, not with Vietnamese Moreover, pitch is just a component of intonation

Ohata (2004) examined some of the characteristic phonological differences between Japanese and English Comparing segmental and supra-segmental aspects of both languages, this study also discusses several problematic areas of pronunciation for Japanese learners of English including intonation Nonetheless, the problems made by Japanese learners of English are surely not the same as those encountered by Vietnamese ones

The article “Teaching English intonation to EFL/ ESL Students” by Mehmet Celik, Hacettepe University, Turkey proposed a framework of English intonation as a second or foreign language to non-native speakers of English It is proposed that a framework of English intonation should include four major intonational features including rhythm units, stress, tones, and pitch range It also emphasizes the need to teach intonational features in meaningful contexts with realistic language and point out the need to consider intonation not as a luxury but a necessity for an efficient interchange in English Although this framework may approve to be useful and workable for practitioners in the field of ESL/

EFL, it seems to be fairly general and theoretical

In Vietnam, it seems that the issues related to English intonation attract little attention of authors and scholars In one of the scare books of intonation in English and Vietnamese entitled “English intonation by the Vietnamese” (Ngữ điệu tiếng Anh ở người Việt) by Dr

Nguyen Huy Ky (2006), a number of clear descriptive demonstrations on intonation made relating to English intonation contours, subjective and objective factors leading to the errors and solutions to limit errors committed as well The book is a valuable source for Vietnamese learners who wish to learn or to do research on English intonation contours made by Vietnamese learners

Beside the book, the researcher found few studies on common errors related to English Intonation made by Vietnamese learners There are studies on intonation of yes-no questions, or studies on separated elements of intonation The following is the summary of their findings

Tam Dao Thi (2007) dealt with intonation in terms of functions and form with contrastive analysis of three main components namely rhythm, stress and pitch Nonetheless, the study focuses on the similarity and differences in intonation of English and Vietnamese Yes-no questions only The study claimed that those differences surely cause problems to Vietnamese learners of English, but the researcher find no information about what the problems are

In Nga Vu Thi‟s paper (2004) pitch – a component of intonation – has been considered one of modality markers in English Wh-question However, no information about the relation between pitch and errors made by Vietnamese students are found

Actually, there have had few studies related to tonality errors in intonation learning, there, obviously, do exist a large gap in taking a step into creating a picture of intonation error analysis Intonation is important but complicated However, it is systematic, too In order to become competent in intonation, it is the first system of intonation – tonality - that is elementary to be acquired by students and that tonality errors are essential to be analyzed

For that reason, it is necessary to have an overview of English intonation in general and in English tonality in particular.

English intonation

Different linguists have different definitions for intonation According to Paul Tench (1996: 1) “intonation refers to the rise and the fall of the pitch of voice in spoken language” This definition to a certain extent shares the same content with Gerald Kelly‟s definition He (2000: 86) emphasizes that “the term intonation refers to the way the voice goes up and down in pitch when we are speaking” From the words of these two authors, it can be seen that intonation is closely associated with speech and a feature of the spoken language Despite being represented by two different terms which are “the rise and the fall of the pitch” in Tench‟s definition and “the way the voice goes up and down in pitch” in Kelly‟s definition, pitch variation is a key element to identify intonation The terms “pitch variation” is also found with intonation in other definitions from other authors For example, Peter Roach (2001: 33) considers that “intonation is the melody of speech, and is to be analyzed in terms of variations in pitch” or O‟ Connor (1973: 1) states that “when we talk about English intonation we mean the pitch patterns of spoken English, the speech tunes or melodies , the musical features of English”

In the present study, the researcher adopts the definition from the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (1992: 190) that is

“When speaking, people generally raise and lower the pitch of their voice, forming pitch patterns They also give some syllables in their utterances a greater degree of loudness and change their speech rhythm These phenomena are called intonation Intonation does not happen at random but has definite patterns which can be analyzed according to their structure and functions

Intonation is used to carry information over and above which is expressed by the words in the sentence”

From the definition, it can be seen that pitch variations, stress, and speech rhythm seem to be closely related to intonation That is to say, they are three key components forming three sysytem of English intonation nanely tone, tonicity, and tonallity Additionnally, the definition reveals that English iontonation has its own structure and functions, and one function is to carry information In the following sections, systems, structure, and functions of English intonation are clearly discussed

Opposite to the idea that intonation is so subjective, in the view of Tench (1991:84)

“Intonation is admittedly personal, but it is also conventional” The statement is clearly demonstrated by the fact that intonation is systematic, and the systems can be described

There are three primary subsystems of intonation, namely, tonality, tonicity and tone

Nonetheless, due to the focus of the present thesis, system of tonality is gone into more

Paul Tench (1996:31) considers tonality as the system in intonation that divides spoken discourse into its separate individual intonation units, each of which represents one unit of information Spoken discourse may be only one word, even only one syllable, a sentence or the whole text It may consist of only one message, one or more than one piece of information which is conveyed by an intonation unit Thus, if a spoken discourse consists of only one syllable, one word, or represents one message, there is no problem Otherwise, learners of English will face with difficulties in identifying intonation units which correctly represent the speaker‟s management of the organization of information

It is generally the case that what informs the hearers most will receive the most prominent stress – “tonic stress” Moreover, stress clung to syllable Thus, the syllable receive the tonic stress is called “tonic syllable”, “nucleus”, or “tonicity”

System of tonicity is the range of choices in the position that the tonic syllable can have in a given intonation units Tonicity or tonic syllable is the focal point of intonation, the heart of an intonation unit, so it is the tonic syllable that is the compulsory part of each intonation unit

Tonic syllable is characterized by phonetic prominence in intonation units Of the stressed syllables in any given intonation units, the tonic syllable is made most prominent by a combination of pitch, volume and length As tonic represents the focus of each unit of information, when the tonic is changed, so is the focus of information Therefore, if the speaker does not reach the tonic syllable in any given intonation unit, then we do not have enough clues to decide on the structure and the focus of information in that particular part of the message

Consider the following, in which the contrastive nucleus is capitalized and underlined:

(1): SHE played the piano yesterday (It was her, not him or anyone else.) (2): She PLAYED the piano yesterday (She only played not harmed.) (3): She played the PIANO yesterday (It was the piano not violin.) (4): She played the piano YESTERDAY (It was yesterday not today.)

Of all the aspects that intonation covers, tone plays a vital role English is considered as intonation language, that is, the language that does not use tone for a change in lexical meaning but for intonation meanings In English, tones can only be identified on a small number of particular prominent syllables Therefore, English tone has been defined as “the contrastive pitch movement on the tonic syllables” (Tench, 1996: 73) or “the main movements of pitch within a tone unit” (Kelly, 2000: 89)

Each linguist has their own classifications of English tones Crystal (1969) recognizes four basic tones (fall, rise, rise-fall, and fall-rise) Brazil (1997) and Roach (1983) identify five tones (fall, rise, rise-fall, fall-rise, and level) whereas O'Connor and Arnold (1973) distinguish seven tones (high-fall, low-fall, high-rise, low-rise, fail-rise, rise-fall, and mid- level) In the words of Tench (1996) it appears that three primary tones can be efficiently taught to non-native speakers of English, namely, falling, rising, and falling-rising tone

Celik (2001) adds one more tone, the high rise tone

I have an idea to begin this section with a very familiar saying (1) “A ′dog is a ′man‟s ′best

′friend.” It is most likely to be said with the word “friend” being most prominent and the pitch of the voice falling to a low level on that word With these features, the word “friend” is said to be tonic syllable or nucleus The part from “a” up to “best” is considered the “pre tonic segment” which can be divided into the “pre-head” with the unstressed word “a” and the “head” which begins with the first stressed syllable “dog” up to the word right before the nucleus “best”

The sentiment of the above saying could be rendered as (2) “′Dogs are ′men‟s ′best

′friends.” In this case, the utterance has only nucleus (friends) and head (Dogs are the men‟s best) If we put the wording on a different situation (suppose the topic of the conversation is different, say, which animals are men‟s best friend, and someone says (3)

“′Dogs are ′men‟s ′best ′friends” with a contrastive emphasis on “dogs” Instead of having pre-tonic segment with pre-head and head, this intonation unit has only the tonic (dogs) and the tail (the words subsequent to the word “dog”)

From three examples, we have a table as follows:

(1) A ′dog is a ′man‟s ′best ′friend

(2) ′Dogs are ′men‟s ′best ′friends

(3) ′Dogs are ′men‟s ′best ′friends

From the table, it is acknowledged that each intonation unit has one and only one obligatory tonic syllable The other parts of the unit can appear no not The structure of an intonation unit can be generalized in the following diagram:

Structure of intonation here is shown through structure of each intonation unit in an utterance According to Paul Tench (1996:12), structure of an individual intonation unit consists of pre-tonic segment and tonic or nucleus and tail Among those, the tonic is obligatory and the most prominent word; the head, pre-head and tail are optional

English Tonality

Paul Tench (1996:31) considers tonality as the system in intonation that divides spoken discourse into its separate individual intonation units, each of which represents one unit of information Spoken discourse may be only one word, even only one syllable, a sentence or the whole text It may consist of only one message, one or more than one piece of information which is conveyed by an intonation unit Thus, if a spoken discourse consists of only one syllable, one word, or represents one message, there is no problem Otherwise, learners of English will face with difficulties in identifying intonation units which correctly represent the speaker‟s management of the organization of information The term

“intonation unit” can be called by different names by different authors In the present study the terms like “tone unit” (according to Roach), “tone group” (in the word of Halliday),

“word group” (stated by Tench), “sense group” (called by O‟ Connor), and “pause group” (in the view of Pennington) are used to refer intonation unit

Generally, when people communicate in speech, they must organize and manage their information into discrete pieces of information which are worded into clauses and pronounced in intonation units Tonality in such cases is said to be neutral; otherwise, tonality is said to be marked

Halliday (quoted in Tench 1996:31) draws attention to the observation that very often intonation units coincide with clauses In fact, when a message is given, it is conveyed as a single unit of intonation, but it has to be worded, and this is where grammar comes in The clause is an obvious unit of grammar to handle a typical piece of information since the subject represents the theme (what the message is about), and the predicate represents the rheme (what the message actually is)

For example, the syntax of “A dog is a man‟s best friend” shows the theme is “a dog” - the subject of the clause; and the shows the actual message-the rheme is “is a man‟s best friend” - the predicate The utterance is pronounced in one tone unit as follows:

// A dog is a man‟s best friend //

Therefore, neutral tonality appears when there is congruence between phonology with grammar and semantics The coincidence of tonality and clause, however, is by no means a hard and fast rule In spoken English, intonation units do not always coincide with whole clauses In such cases, marked tonality will count to identify intonation units

As mentioned above, when a tone group correspond in extent with the clause, the group is regarded as the neutral term That is to say, a clause that consists of one and only one tone group will be considered as neutral in tonality As a result, whenever a clause is larger or smaller than a tone unit, it is taken as a marked case Marked tonality occurs either when two (or more) clauses fit into a single intonation unit, or when two (or more) intonation units are needed to cover a single clause Of the two cases, the latter is much more frequently than the former To be more precise, tag questions, listed items, long themes, marked themes, non-defining appositional items, initial and medical adjuncts have their own tone unit The case of two (or more) clauses fitting into a single unit can be found with report clause, negative domain, and common object complement for two verbs

Specific cases of marked tonality are illustrated as follows:

1.3.2.2.1 Two (or more) intonation units are needed to cover a single clause 1.3.2.2.1.1 Tags

Clauses may be concluded with a tag which has a particular form with only an operator and a subject pronoun It is always in inverted order Tags may be either positive or negative

Tags are categorized into checking tags and copy tags which are discussed in details as follows:

Checking tags, those with reverse polarity to that of the main clause – in other words, if negative follows positive or positive follows negative – can be accompanied by either a falling or a rising tone Checking tags imply an actual checking of the proposition in the main clause The speaker is pretty certain of the validity of the proposition if the tone on the tag falls, whereas the speaker is less certain about the proposition and needs confirmation if the tone rises Checking tags always have separate intonation units for themselves

Copy tags, those with identical polarity, can be only accompanied by a rising tone The copy tag implies more of a realization of the significance of the proposition They do not necessarily require their own, separate intonation unit If there is no separate tonality for the copy tag there is added a note of irritation Here are some examples for illustration:

(1) // Do you like it? // (yes-no question)

(2) //You like it, // don‟t you? // (checking tag with a rising tone)

(3) //You like it, // don‟t you? // (checking tag with a falling tone)

(4) //You like it, // do you? // (copy tag in a separate tonality)

(5) //You like it do you? // (copy tag with no separate tonality)

The same wording but with different ways of dividing into different word groups makes different meanings In (1), the speaker does not know whether the listener likes something or not (2) represents a degree of uncertainty while (3) shows a degree of certainty When the speaker chooses (4), he means he (suddenly) realizes the importance of the information With (5), he implies with a touch of irritation

A list is a special kind of long clause List items are all contained, grammatically, in one listed items is contained in a separate unit For instance, consider the following utterance uttered with separated tone units for separated items:

(6) // We need milk / some bread / and butter //

Another case of marked tonality relates to the length of the clause concerned is long theme

According to Tench (1996:35), intonation units have an average of between two or three feet each, that is to say, two or three word stresses The usual maximum number of stresses in a unit is five, and this corresponds to the maximum number of elements in a single simple clause including subject, verb, direct object, indirect object, and adjunct If a clause breaches that maximum, it seems that it is automatically converted into two or even more intonation units The tonality division depends on the structure of the clause, and the often case is that the theme has been separated intonationally from the rheme Tench (1996:35) also gives examples to illustrate this point:

(7) //The train arriving at platform two/ is ten twenty from Swansea to

In the example (7), the first unit is the theme, the second is the rheme with four word stresses each

Apart from deviations to the length of the clause, marked tonality is also occasioned by deviations to the structure of a clause One deviation is to have a clause element becomes the theme, instead of the subject If anything (apart from conjunctions) precedes the subject, then that takes over the role of theme Cases of such marked theme always have a separate intonation unit This deviation is known as marked theme as opposed to the more usual, neutral theme in which the subject coming first in the theme Such deviation is indicated in the following examples:

(8) // Students must wear uniform on Monday // (neutral tonality)

(9) // On Monday, // students must wear uniforms // (marked theme)

The other kind of structural deviation that affects tonality is the addition of certain kinds of adjunct either at the beginning or in the middle of a clause These items generally have their own intonation unit The adjuncts that affect tonality include linking adjuncts, viewpoint adjuncts and vocatives

(10) // However / he ran the smile in four minutes // (initial adjunct)

(11) // He ran the smile / however / in four minutes // (medical adjunct)

(12) // He run a smile in four minutes however // (neutral tonality)

Error and error analysis

By nature, error is a complicated concept In this thesis, the researcher adopts Chaudon‟s definition In his view (1986: 66), errors are defined as “linguistic forms or content that differed from native speaker norms or facts and any other behavior signaled by the teacher as needing improvement.” The definition presents one implication that regards error as

“deviation” from the native-speakers‟ norms However, what the native-speakers‟ norms are is a problematic question since English is an international language and there exist numerous varieties The researcher selected Received Pronunciation as the norm in the present study

Errors are of great important, and making errors is unavoidable in the process of mastering a language In the view of Corder (1967), errors play a significant role for not only teachers but the researchers and the learners themselves as well For teachers, error supplies them with information about how much the learners had learnt For the researchers, errors provide them with evidences of how language was learnt For the learners themselves, errors are indispensable devices by which learners discovered rules of the target language Therefore, errors are not something to be avoided but are an inevitable feature of the language learning process, which is the great discovery of error analysis

Thanks to error analysis, errors are made respectable

Error analysis is the study of the errors made by second language learners It provides a methodology for investigating a learner‟s language level Abbott emphasizes that “the aim of any error analysis is to provide a psychological explanation.”

Corder (1967 & 1974) identified a model for error analysis which included three stages:

In order to identify what the errors are made by second language learners, it is essential to clarify the distinction between error and mistake since error analysis should be restricted to the study of errors only A mistake refers to a performance deficiency It is a failure to make use of a known system It is not a result of a deficiency in competence, but the result of imperfection in the process of producing speech It arises from lack of attention, slips of memory, or anxiety They are not systematic, and it is self correctable Differently, errors are deviances that are due to deficient competence, lack of knowledge which may or may not be conscious As they are due to deficient competence, they tend to be systematic and not self correctable

As have been mentioned, error analysis is considered as a comparative process, so as to describe errors, in a way, researchers can use the case of contrastive analysis to compare synonymous utterances in the learners‟ dialect and the target language According to Corder‟s model (1974), if a researcher can make a plausible interpretation of the utterances, she should make a reconstruction of the utterance in the target language and compare the reconstruction with the original native utterance, and then describe the differences

1.4.2.3 Explanation of errors (Tracing errors to their sources)

In order to arrive at effective remedial measures, a full understanding the mechanism that triggers each type of errors is necessary Second language learners‟ errors occur for many reasons According to Richard (1974), there appear two main types of errors They are interlingual and intralingual errors Out of the two types, interlingual errors are caused by negative transfer from the native language, and intralingual errors are caused by the target language with four main sources namely overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restrictions, incomplete application of rules, and false concepts hypothesized

Interlingual errors - interference errors occur when learners transfer one item or structure of their native language into second language whereas the two languages are different in nature in many aspects There are interlingual errors when the learner‟s native language habits (patterns, systems or rules) interfere or prevent him/her, to some extent, from acquiring the patterns and rules of the second language (Corder, 1974) Additionally, the deficient knowledge of the target language also leads to interlingual errors This factor, normally, emerges at the early stage of learning when the second language is new to the learners, so they must use the item available in their first language to perform the second language

To overcome the obstacles of the mother tongue on the second language learning is fairly difficult as the core reason lies deep in learners‟ awareness and their psycho-linguistic structure Therefore, they sometimes make errors instinctively without consciousness and reservation However, with a great effort to recognize the differences between the two languages they can minimize the negative influence of the mother tongue

Intralingual errors are those due to the language being learned itself, independent of the native language Intralingual errors are caused by the deficient knowledge of the target language Lack of knowledge is the common reason why learners forget the exception (over-generalization), ignore the rules restriction, apply the rules incompletely, or build up wrong hypothesis

In the terms of Richards (1974: 174) Over-generalization is defined as

“Instances where the learner creates a deviant structure on the basis of his experience of other structures in the target language.”

In this process learners extend the uses of a linguistic rule beyond its accepted uses, generally by making words or structures follow a more regular pattern without paying attention to its exceptions According to Richards (1974), over-generalization often involves two of learner‟s learning strategies The first strategy is that the learner often creates a deviant structure in place of two regular structures This happens because the learner tries to simplify the language he is using The second one is that over- generalization involves is redundancy reduction The learner tends to omit some items in a sentence when it seems to carry no meaning for him

Over-generalization is considered a major source of intralingual errors Thus, making learners aware of exceptions of rules in the target language learning will surely help them restrict the quantity of errors to the lowest level As regard English intonation tonality, acknowledge the marked units will contribute to avoiding a remarkable number of faults

Another cause of intralingual errors is that learners ignore the restrictions of existing rules

He does ignore the application of rules to contexts where they do not apply Failure to observe restrictions of intonation can be seen clearly in the misuse of rules of tonality and tonicity The learner attempts to use the neutral tonality and tonicity where marked tonality and tonicity must be employed For example: // Would you like coffee? // leads to //would you like coffee or tea?// instead of //would you like coffee// or tea?//

Learners sometimes apply rules incompletely There are two factors leading to this kind of errors The first one is that the learner is more motivated by achieving communication than by producing grammatically correct sentences He can achieve quite efficient communication without the need for mastering grammatical rules The second factor is classroom use of questions as elicitation techniques The use of questions may be unrelated to the skills it is meant to establish

A learner often tries to build up hypotheses about the English language from his limited experience of it in the classroom or textbook These hypotheses correspond neither to the mother tongue nor to the target language Derived from faulty comprehension of distinction in the target language, false concepts are hypothesized, which leads to developmental errors

For instance: rising tone may be misunderstood as a marker of all question types Thus, students may say “what do you like?” with a rising tone instead of a falling tone.

Summary of the chapter

Learning English intonation is not easy, and using intonation skillful in communication is far more from easy That is why this chapter has mentioned many definitions of intonation to help learners get an insight into intonation Dealing with intonation involves exploring its system (what makes up intonation?), its structure (how is it organized?), and its functions (what is it used for?) Apart from that, as the focus of the present study tonality with its nature, identification, and components is specifically discussed in this part And to facilitate the process of analyzing data, theory of error analysis is also made This chapter has presented error analysis as a method to collect and analyze data The method involves three stages like error identification, error description, and error explanation I do hope that these preparations will be sufficient to reach the objectives set in the thesis.

METHODOLOGY

Research Setting

The study was conducted at Chu Van An University, English Department which is intended to provide training for translators and interpreters During four years at tertiary education, students of English Department have to go through 210 credits of all subjects including 60 credits for English subjects Normally, students of English Departments in different universities and colleges have certain credits for just four English skills in their first three academic years However, due to quite low entrance marks at 14 for all three subjects (mathematics, literature and English), beside 60 credits of four English language skills, students of English Department, Chu Van An University have gone to 19 credits for general English and four credits for basic practical grammar with a hope to increase general linguistic knowledge for students They are allowed to study four English language skills in first two years instead of in three years In the fifth semester, students have 13 credits for English linguistics including 3 credits for English phonetics and phonology

Due to the time constraint, the schedule of teaching this subject is arranged mostly for the explanation of terms and theory Thus, testing focuses only the students‟ ability to remember the definitions and rules of pronunciation.

Subjects

The higher the level of English proficiency, the more essential the knowledge of supra- segmental patterns especially intonation That is the reason why participants of the study are 20 third year students (17 female and 3 male students) with the average age from 21 to

24 All are at English Department, Chu Van An University In the near future, these students will become translators or interpreters, a job greatly influenced by intonation, so they are all managing to improve their English pronunciation especially with intonation

All of them are exposed to the same learning situation and teachers at university They have gone through a minimum of five years of English; three before college and two at college While in University they have taken credits of English language and literature including three in English phonetics and phonology that covered vowels, consonants, stress, rhythm and intonation

Based on the results of the first five semesters for the four language skills including listening, speaking, reading and writing with some linguistics subjects as grammar, phonetics and phonology, the participants are assigned into two groups of high and mid ability students The two groups of students differed significantly in terms of the English language competence.

Speech material

Instead of taking samples from native participants the researcher chose to use speech material including a conversation and a phonetic transcription The conversation is used to design perception and production tasks (refer to appendix 1, 2) It is an extract from Conversational Pages, Better English Pronunciation (O‟ Connor, 1980: 128) In the conversation of the speech material, there were 10 turn-takings designed for the task within

21 sentences which were divided into 32 intonation units of all types In the view of O‟Conner and Tench, an intonation unit has an average of 5 to 6 syllables, so the researcher of the study considered medium tone units to be those of five to six syllables, short units of less than 5 syllables, and long units of more than 6 syllables In terms of the length of units, the number of syllables in each word group, there were twelve short units, four medium units and sixteen long units According to the second criteria, the way of dividing tonality, there were 25 neutral units, which left only 7 marked ones including unit

3, 5, 8, 14, 18, 25 and 30 The specific details about the number of syllables and the number of the stresses in each unit were presented in the following table:

Of all the three groups of tonality in terms of length, it was a big potential for students to make errors of splitting with long units On the contrary, students by no mean split short units but might encounter the errors of joining them Another potential source of difficulties might be marked units

The phonetic transcription is used as samples to compare with what the learners perceive and produce The phonetic transcription taken from the Conversational Pages (O‟Conner, 1980: 129) covers three major components of English intonation namely intonation units (marked by single bars for closely grammatically connected units, and double bar for not closely grammatically connected units), tonic syllables and their proper tones (marked by symbols before the nucleus of each tone unit) However, this research focused on dividing utterances into intonation units, so only the first component was paid attention (refer to appendix 3).

Instruments

To meet the demands of the study, three sets of instruments including intonation tasks, academic results, and a survey questionnaire were chosen as the main tools for data collection All the findings, suggestions and conclusions were fundamentally based on the analysis of the statistical data collected from these instruments Aims of each instrument were summarized in the following table:

- Detect errors relating to tonality

- Discover the correlation between perceptive and productive ability

- Help to explore the relationship between participants‟ proficiency and their ability of intonation

Research question 1.1 Research question 1.2 Research question 2.1 Research question 2.2

- Classify students into groups of different ability

- Help to show the relationship between participants‟ proficiency and their tonality ability

- Find out factual information of participants

- Investigate students‟ belief and behavior of intonation learning and intonation errors

- Make out participants‟ reactions to the problems in intonation

2.4.1 The intonation tasks 2.4.1.1 The perception task

As the main instrument to collect data on errors relating to English intonation units, a task with two stages of perception and production (refer to appendix 1, 2) was adopted in this research Of which the perception task is employed with a hope to check whether one needs to perceive correctly in order to produce correctly

The task was employed to help assess the students‟ ability to recognize and comprehend system of intonation units in English The task contributed to providing data on common errors relating to students‟ perception of tone unit division With the perceptual task, after receiving the printouts the participants listened to the tape three times While listening to the tape they were expected to divide utterances into word groups as they perceived

It was designed to examine the students‟ ability to produce utterances in real communication context with right pause after each sense group They were expected to utter intonation units continuously with no break or pause during them

Within the productive stage, the subject were asked to (1) divide the utterances into intonation units, and allowed time to rehearse the dialogue before (2) playing the roles of the speakers and recording them Although this rehearsal might seem counterintuitive to many, the goal of assessment of the pronunciation was for the researcher to obtain as true a presentation of the subjects‟ typical patterns as possible Practicing a conversation in advance allowed the subjects to avoid some of the unnatural reading features that might otherwise occur Clearly, the conversations would never truly represent the participants‟ spontaneous speech, thus did not provide the most natural evidence of a speaker‟s pronunciation In other words, it might induce certain types of errors However, allowing them to rehearse until they felt comfortable acting out the dialogue would allow the researcher to obtain the truest sampling of individual errors

Refer to Appendix 6, this instrument was the academic results of first five semesters of the course The results were fairly reliable in showing the students‟ level of proficiency because the results were based on the continuous assessment, This way of assessment has been widely used in assessing the students‟ achievement results for the advantages over the traditional way which bases only on the end-of-term examinations In fact, continuous assessment was the combination of the three level of assessment: the teacher‟s-in-charge assessment, the results of mid-term examinations, and the results of the end-of-term examination In this kind of assessment, the students got 10% of the total mark from their regular attendance and active participation during the class hour, 30% from the mid-term examinations, and 60% from the end-of-term examination After being calculated according to the appropriate proportion, marks ranging from 1 to 10 were given for each individual subject of each student

For the purpose of this study, only the results of the examinations for four English skills, general English, grammar, and phonetics and phonology were recorded High ability students were supposed to be the ones who got 7.0 marks upward Those who got 6.00 to 6.99 fell to the group of mid ability students Low ability students consisted of those who got lower marks

2.4.3 Survey questionnaire 2.4.3.1 The questionnaire items adopted in the present study

 Dichotomous questions Dichotomous questions are useful, for it compels respondents to come off the fence on an issue They provide a clear and unequivocal response since dichotomous questions are treated as nominal data Further, it is possible to code responses quickly, there being only two categories of response and one of the two can be selected

The layout of a dichotomous question can take several forms It either requires a „yes‟/ „no‟ response or asks to tick one of the two provided options For example:

Gender (please tick): Male  Female 

 Multiple choice questions This is the most useful instrument used in the survey questionnaire of the study as it can be quickly coded and quickly aggregated to give frequencies of response due to the collected nominal data Multiple choice questions are the range of choices designed to capture the likely range of responses to given statements It enables participants to select the response that most closely represents their view; hence a pilot is needed to ensure that the categories are comprehensive, exhaustive and representative The categories not only would have to be discrete, that is to say, having no overlap and being mutually exclusive but also would have to exhaust the possible range of responses

Guidance would have to be given on the completion of the multiple choices, clarifying whether respondents are able to tick only one response or several responses

2.4.3.2 Structure of the survey questionnaire

The survey questionnaire involved three sections:

Part 1: The demographic information consisting of student number, age, gender, and duration of English learning

Part 2: (from question 1 to 6): Attitudinal data including the opinions, attitudes and interests of the participants on English intonation and English intonation learning

Part 3: (from question 7 to 9): Behavioral data detecting the problems in learning intonation and their reactions to those problems

Data Collection and Data Analysis Procedure

The study was conducted in the second semester of the academic year 2010 – 2011 (from April to August 2011) The data was collected and analyzed in the following steps:

At the first stage, the results of the first five semester‟s achievement tests (Appendix 6) were collected Scores of English subjects were averaged, and then were used to place the students into three groups of ability However, among all 23 third year students of the department, only three students got the average results below 6.00 Therefore, in order to ensure the reliability of the data analysis, the researcher had a decision to choose 20 participants assigned into two groups instead As a result, by means of the average score, those who got 6.00 to 6.99 were supposed to be in the mid ability group and those who got 7.00 marks upward fell to the high ability group

Then, one day of April 2011, 20 students were gathered in their lecture hall under the supervision of the researcher and another teacher to ensure all kind of cheating could be avoided In the lecture hall, the participants were required firstly to do the perception task

 After receiving printouts, having time to grasp the meaning of the dialogue, subjects were allowed to listen to the tape three times, while listening they were asked to divide the utterances into tone units

 When the participants finish their task, the researcher collected the printouts for later analysis

 In the perception task, there were 32 intonation units including 25 neutral units and 7 marked ones One error will be counted in the event that participants have wrong division of tone units on the handouts

 Participants‟ division of utterances into tone units was then compared to the key of the speech material Based on the results in the printouts, the researcher counted and categorized errors related to intonation unit division later

After the perception task came to the production task At this stage:

 The printouts one again were distributed to the participants Then they had time to rehearse the dialogue until they felt confident enough to act out the conversation in pair twice After each time, players in each pair would change their roles of the two speakers of the dialogue

 Participants‟ role-playing was recorded onto a tape for later analysis

 The recordings were then carefully checked and converted by the researcher and two other teachers at Chu Van An University Any disagreement between the researcher and her colleagues were treated with the help of her supervisor to detect errors in producing intonation units

 Based on results from the recordings, the researcher counted and categorized productive errors related to intonation unit division later

When the tasks were completed, the researcher conducted a survey questionnaire (Appendix 5), which had been carefully designed and delivered to all the 20 participants

They had 20 minutes to complete it Before the participants fulfilled the questions, purposes of doing the research was clearly explained The participants were encouraged to raise questions if there would be something in the questionnaire they did not understand

Next, with the results of task analysis and information from the questionnaire the researcher gave out suggestions to help students improve their competence in English intonation

The data collected from the instruments were presented in tables and charts.

Data Analysis

Both qualitative and quantitative methods are exploited in the research for data analysis

Qualitative analysis: analyzing the participants‟ recordings and handouts Quantitative analysis: analyzing the questionnaire and academic results

2.6.1 Data obtained via the intonation tasks

The data on intonation unit division including splitting and joining errors at two such stages as perception and production were analyzed on two main areas: error analysis and correlation investigation

The error analysis was based on the three main steps Error identification was the first one which was based on the phonetic transcription of the speech material Within the step of error identification, twenty handouts of perception task were marked according to the transcription Then all the recordings of the participants at the production stage were scored and compared with the results of the perceptive stage The difference between the two scores was quite large Therefore, it is necessary to assess students‟ intonation ability at both stages The second step, error description, looked into: (1) joining errors at perception and production stage and (2) splitting errors at the two stages These errors occurred at both neutral and marked intonation units Based on the errors found in the area, the third step - error explanation - further looked into the factors that caused the joining and splitting intonation units The causes were identified by studying the nature of the errors

The correlation was investigated first between perceptive with productive ability of tone unit division to discover how perceiving capacity supported producing ability, and second between learners‟ language proficiency with their intonation ability to make out whether students with higher scores at university can produce intonation unit better or not

2.6.2 Data obtained via the academic results

The data obtained by this instrument was given by the teacher in charge of the Training Department of Chu Van An University As mentioned above, the results were relatively reliable in showing the students‟ language proficiency level To make it simple for the classification, the researcher of the study calculated the average marks of the English subjects for each student before grouping them

As can be shown in Appendix 6, the participants‟ average marks ranged from 6.14 to 7.90

These results were used to place students in the different ability level The participants were supposed to be divided into three ability groups, but based on the actually results, only two groups of high and mid ability were formed

(1) Mid ability students had the average marks ranging from 6.14 to 6.67

(2) High ability students had the average marks 7.14 to 7.90 The data collected from this instrument and from the intonation tasks were used to discover the correlation between the participants‟ language proficiency and their tonality ability

2.6.3 Data obtained via the survey questionnaire

Each survey questionnaire was analyzed by the researcher of the study to avoid any mistakes The frequency of the responses given by the students was in the form of tables and percentages Then they were examined carefully to make out learners‟ beliefs in English intonation, their attitude to intonation learning, and their reactions to their own problems with English intonation In other words, with information from the survey questionnaire the researcher assessed the subjective reasons leading to errors committed

Data from the survey helped the researcher to determine the proper suggestions so as to assist teachers and students in teaching and learning English intonation in general, and English tone units in particular.

Summary of the chapter

In the very first parts of the chapter, the research setting, the speech material, and information about participants are shown in details It also refers to three set of instruments employed in this thesis, including the aims of the instruments They are intonation tasks, academic results, and a survey questionnaire Among those, intonation tasks are employed to detect common tonality errors and the relation between perceptive and productive ability, academic results are used to classify students into groups of different ability to discover the correlation between their language proficiency and their tonality ability, and the survey helps investigate students‟ attitudes to English intonation learning and their solutions to their problems Finally, the two last parts point out the procedures of collecting data as well as the methods of analyzing data.

DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

Research Question 1 – Error Analysis

What are the common errors in dividing speech into tone units at the perception and production stage encountered by third year majors of English Department, Chu Van

For a deep investigation into the tonality errors made by the participants, the researcher made a list of the different types of errors, the concrete number with the percentage of errors, and the details of errors committed in both intonation tasks as shown in the table below:

Types of errors Number of errors Percent

Details Per Task Pro Task

1.2 Joining closely grammatically connected units (Jc)

2.1 Splitting marked tonality at clause boundary, without comma

2.2 Splitting marked tonality at clause boundary, with comma

2.3 Splitting tonality in the head, at the place of the stressed syllables

1 (quit,U15) 2.4 Splitting in the head, at the place of the unstressed syllables (Shu)

1 (very,U13) 2.5 Splitting tonality after the nucleus (Sn)

1 (wear, U25) 2.6 Splitting tonality after direct object (So)

6 (it, U10) 2.7 Splitting tonality at the changing point in the dive (Sd)

7 (rarely, U13) 2.8 Splitting tonality after subject

4 (one, U29) 2.9 Splitting tonality after the pre- head (Sp)

1 (or, U11) 2.10 Splitting tonality at unstressed syllables of tail (Stu)

Table 06: Types of errors made in two intonation tasks

The errors in table 06 were divided into two main groups They were errors of joining and splitting tonality Within each group, errors types were ranked from the most to the least frequent errors in both tasks Data from the above table then was charted so as to see the difference in the rate among them Following are two charts of proportion of error types

Chart 01: Proportion of joining and splitting errors

Chart 02: Proportion of error types

Take a look at the chart 01, it is clear that a great difference is seen in the proportion of joining and splitting errors with one fifth (14.74%) for the former and four fifth (85.26%) for the latter This means that the errors of splitting outnumber the other, which in turn implied that errors of joining seem not a major problem among students but splitting ones

The splitting various units is actually a problem due to the influences on meaning of these word groups The word groups coincide with clauses, so by splitting them, the utterances become a lack of meaning

Within these two main types of faults, in the analysis of errors relating to tonality twelve types of errors were found referring to chart 02 They were errors of joining short units

(Js), joining closely grammatically connected units (Jc), splitting marked tonality at clause boundary without comma (Sbwc), splitting marked tonality at clause boundary with comma (Sbc), splitting tonality at the place of the stressed syllables in the head (Shs), splitting tonality at the place of the unstressed syllables in the head (Shu), splitting tonality after the nucleus (Sn), splitting tonality after the direct object (So), splitting tonality at the changing point in the dive (Sd), splitting tonality after the subject (Ss), splitting tonality after the pre-head (Sp), splitting tonality at unstressed syllables in the tail (Stu) Following, each type of error was examined in details

3.1.1.1 Errors of joining more than one word group into one intonation unit

There were 60 errors of joining tone units which appeared among either short units (covering 58.3%) or closely grammatically connected units (representing 41.7%) A majority of joining faults (42 out of 60 errors, making up to 70% in total) was committed in the perceptual task, and the remainder was found in the productive task

3.1.1.1.1 Errors of joining closely grammatically connected units (Jc)

All 25 errors of joining closely grammatically units were found with unit 22 and unit 23 of which 18 errors were made with the combination the entire unit 22 and unit 23, 7 errors were detected with the linking part of unit 22 and the whole unit 23 It was not too difficult to explain for this because these two units were closely grammatically connected without any markers of separation between them In this case, each unit here is a clause, but they are closely related Grammatically, they have subordinated relation Additionally, no punctuation or discourse marker is found between them It is understandable why students tried to connect them together despite their length

Key //U22// U23// //Do you really mean to tell me // you haven‟t had a suit since then?//

Errors //U22+U23// //Do you really mean to tell me you haven‟t had a suit …//

//Do you really // mean to tell me you haven‟t had a suit …//

//Do you // really mean to tell me you haven‟t had a suit …//

3.1.1.1.2 Errors of joining short units (Js)

More problematic was the combining two short separated clauses into one unit Despite the appearance of a comma between unit 2 and unit 3, and between unit 30 and unit 31, there were 31 errors caused by joining these two pairs The errors of joining short units could be added with 4 faults caused by unit 7 and unit 8 Listed below are some typical errors of joining more than one short word groups into one tone unit:

// I haven‟t seen it before, // have I? //

// I haven‟t seen it before, have I? //

// You like it, // do you? //

// You like it, do you? //

The joining of three pairs of word groups took the author by a little bit surprise The participants were expected to make a pause right in the place of commas as the rule of pausing in Vietnamese and as the rules of marked tonality in English Only one explanation came about that lied in the shortness of units These marked units are so short that students found it too easy to utter them together with others nearby short word groups without any hesitation In turn, it was the ease in uttering two neighboring short units that made students forget the exceptions that tag questions and initial adjunct must be split into their own intonation units

3.1.1.2 Errors of splitting one intonation unit into more than one word group

Errors of splitting more frequently occurred among marked and long units, especially those with more than 5 stressed syllables

3.1.1.2.1 Splitting marked tonality at clause boundary without comma (Sbwc)

It can be seen clearly from the table, the frequency of this type of errors is the highest compared to others There are 62 errors, accordingly 15.23% of the total At both stages of perceiving and producing the units, almost all students had problems with tone units constructed by two clauses without a comma between them The errors of Sbwc appeared when the participants divided long marked units including unit 5, unit 14, and unit 18 at the boundary between their two component clauses Wrong divisions were found in unit 5, 14, and 18 as follows:

// It‟s the first time I‟ve worn it, actually.//

// It‟s the first time // I‟ve worn it, actually.//

// So I thought I‟d have it tailored, //

// So I thought // I‟d have it tailored, //

// May I ask where you got it? //

// May I ask // where you got it? //

Students are taught that each clause itself can make an intonation unit called by another name – neutral tonality However, students might not have been taught or might not remember that there exist some other kinds of marked tonalities, one of which is the case of reported clauses One again, forgetting exceptions is responsible for errors committed

3.1.1.2.2 Splitting marked tonality at clause boundary with comma (Sbc)

Different from the above group of marked tonality which are composed of two clauses but without a comma in between, the second group of marked tonality bringing about errors of splitting involves unit 5 and unit 25 which share one common feature That is the appearance of a comma in each of the two units While the comma appears right in between two clauses of unit 25, it isolates two clauses of unit 5 with the final adjunct functioning as a comment

The table 06 shows that 60 out of 407 errors committed belong to this type (equal to 14.74%) Although Sbc takes the second largest percentage in terms of the number of error in each type, it is considered the most problematic factor for students in terms of the average number of errors on each marked tone unit On average, each of the two units caused 30 errors, while the number for each unit in the previous group is 21 (62 errors on 3 units) More faults were found in unit 25 (37 errors) in comparison with 23 errors in unit 5

The researcher found no more plausible reason for this sort of errors than the negative influence of Vietnamese where pause appear with a comma while in English, pausing appears not with a comma (Snell, 1918: 18) Here are examples extracted from the participants‟ handouts and recordings:

// It‟s the first time I‟ve worn it, actually.//

// It‟s the first time I‟ve worn it, // actually.//

// I don‟t often wear a suit, you see //

// I don‟t often wear a suit, // you see //

3.1.1.2.3 Splitting tonality at the place of the stressed syllables in the head (Shs)

Research Question 2: Correlation Investigation

With an objectives to examine whether students‟ ability to perceive tonality and to produce tonality relate to each other or not, the researcher (1) compared the scores awarded by students in the two tasks, (2) compared the number of errors committed, and (3) compared the number of students making faults

(1) Marks attained in the two tasks were treated in terms of (a) the mean score, (b) the different mark ranges in two tasks, and (c) the difference in the score of each student in two tasks with aims at discovering students‟ ability in English tonality

(2) The number of errors encountered was tackled to determine the degree of seriousness of tonality errors in general

(3) The number of students made faults was handled to determine the extent of the matter on students and to find out what elements need to be consolidated most

3.2.1.1 Better scores in perception task than in production task

The mean for the perception task was 7.02 while that of the production task was 6.55 (referring to table 09) The mean score indicated that there was a relative difference in the performance and quality of the two tasks In the following part, the researcher compared scores attained in two intonation tasks to address students‟ intonation ability specifically, to check whether they perceived tone units better than did they produce or vice versa Also, a comparison in difference of each student‟s score awarded in two intonation tasks to examine the relation between the perceptual ability and productive ability

Range of marks Perception Task Production Task

(6 ≤ * < 7) Be quite good at tonality 6 (30%) 7 (35%) Above 5 and below 6

(5 ≤ * < 6) Be not very good at tonality 4 (20%) 7 (35%)

Table 08: The allocation of marks

Participants were divided into three groups according to their score of speech division

Those who got 7 and above were considered to be good at tonality, those who got above the average grades (between 6 and 7) were regarded quite good at intonation units, and those with average marks from 5 to 6 were not very good at tone unit division

As can be seen from the table, the number of students belonged to three groups of mark ranges in the production task was nearly a third each On the contrary, the percentage of students at three ranges of mark in the perception task was uneven with a half of participants were found with good grades, over a quarter with above the average scores and nearly a quarter with average marks

There were four students more with good marks and four less with average and above average grades in perceiving tonality than in producing word groups This implied that students did better in the former than in the latter task, which in turn represented the better perceptual competence compared to the productive ability

Better performance in perceiving than in producing word groups could be presented clearly in the difference in the scores awarded to the students‟ tasks as in the table below

Table 09: The difference in the scores of two intonation tasks

The comparison found that 15 participants (accounting for 75%) had higher scores in perceiving tone units than in producing tone units The spread of the grade difference between two tasks normally ranged from 0.3 to 1.2 except the case of P8 Only two students attained equal marks and three scored higher in production task from 0.3 to 0.6 mark Of 15 students who got above the average and good marks with perception task, 13 students (representing 86.67%) attained the same ranges of grade with production task

Therefore, it can be concluded that perceptive ability and productive ability are agreeable

The former supports the latter The findings from the comparison of the scores achieved by students in two intonation tasks indicated that students perform betters in perceptual task than in productive task and those who perceive well would produce well Accordingly, if a teacher wants students to produce tone units correctly, it‟s necessary to help student perceive them accurately

3.2.1.2 The smaller number and the less frequency of errors in the perception task than in the production task

The better competence in perceiving than in producing intonation units can be represented precisely in the frequency of errors made by participants in two tasks The table below showed the frequency of errors committed in the two intonation tasks

Table 10: Frequency of errors in perception and production task

According to the table 10, the total number of errors encountered by the students reached students made 103 more errors in producing tone units This higher number of errors influenced the meaning and fluency of utterances and dialogues, which made speech they uttered jerky On average, each student committed 13 errors (255 errors / 20 students) in producing tone units and 8 errors (152 errors/20 students) in perceiving tonality This stated that there was a quite large gap in the performance of the two tasks of dividing utterances into tone units

Refer to the table 11 below for the allocation of errors

Number of Students Range of errors

Table 11: The allocation of Errors

According to the table 11, in the speech division at perceptive stage, three fourth of the participants (15, represent 75%) encountered less than 10 errors The other 5 students made as many as 11 to 20 errors No one made more than 20 errors At productive stage, 7 students (35%) made less than 10 errors, 11 other students (55%) made as many as 11 to

20 errors, and 10% of the students encountered more than 20 errors

The number of students who made less than ten errors in dividing speech into word groups at perception task over doubled that at production task While there were 15 students (75%) at perceptive stage, there were only 7 (35%) at production stage The number of students made over 10 perceptive errors was over one third of that at productive stage

Therefore, more students did better in dividing speech into tone units at perceptive stage

In brief, third year students of Chu van An University have better perceptual ability than the producing ability This is demonstrated by the fact that students get more good marks, less errors at perception stage, and fewer students faced difficulties in perceiving tone units Therefore, teachers in the process of dealing with English word groups should invest more time and attention in production stage However, exercises and activities to consolidate students‟ perceptive ability are in need since perceptive ability supports productive capacity

3.2.1.3 The fewer number of students making different types of errors in perceptive task than in productive task

With a goal to make clear which the most serious problems in each stage are, the author implemented a comparison the number of students making each of different types of errors in two tasks The comparison was carried out with the help of the following tables where data is arranged according to the most serious errors to the least ones Table 12a is presented according to statistic collected from the perception task, and table 12b from the production task

Table 12a: Arranged by Per task Table 12b: Arranged by Pro task

Number of students making errors Per task Pro task

Splitting marked tonality at clause boundary, with comma

Joining closely grammatically connected units (Jc)

Splitting marked tonality at clause boundary, without comma (Sbwc)

Splitting tonality during the head, at the place of the stressed syllables (Shs)

Splitting tonality at the changing point in the dive (Sd)

Splitting tonality after the nucleus (Sn)

Splitting tonality after subject (Ss)

Splitting tonality after direct object (So) 6

Splitting during the head, at the place of the unstressed syllables (Shu)

Splitting tonality after the prehead (Sp)

Number of students making errors Per task Pro task

Splitting marked tonality at clause boundary, with comma

Splitting marked tonality at clause boundary, without comma (Sbwc)

Splitting tonality after the prehead (Sp) 0 18

Splitting tonality during the head, at the place of the stressed syllables

Splitting tonality after direct object (So) 6

Splitting during the head, at the place of the unstressed syllables

Splitting tonality at the changing point in the dive (Sd)

Splitting tonality after the nucleus (Sn)

Joining closely grammatically connected units (Jc)

Splitting tonality after subject (Ss) 9

Splitting tonality at unstressed syllables of tail (Stu)

Splitting tonality at unstressed syllables of tail (Stu)

Table 12: Types of errors made in two tasks

In both stages, students seemed to have the same problems However, the number of students who encountered faults varied greatly in perceiving and producing tone units The frequency of order was not similar in the tasks In general, students tended to make more errors of splitting in producing tone units than in perceiving them However, with regard to the errors of joining, it is a problem of perceiving sense groups

Sbc and Sbwc are problems almost students committed in both processes of perceiving and producing intonation units And Stu is the least

Research question 3 – Attitude and Behavior Assessment

3.3.1 Students’ beliefs and attitudes towards learning English intonation

In the questionnaire, part two is consisted of 6 questions designed to explore the students‟ beliefs in learning intonation (from question 1 to question 3) and investigate their attitudes to intonation (from question 4 to question 6) Participants were asked to tick ( ) the options that showed their beliefs and attitudes The responses were summarized in the table below

Question 1: How important is intonation in your English learning? a  very important b  quite important c  not very important d  unimportant

Question 2: Is it necessary to have more time for intonation in your course? a  yes b  no

Question 3: If you think it is necessary to have more time to learn English intonation in your course, what are the reasons? a  You need it to communicate successfully b  You need it for your future career c  It is included in your course at university d  It is a way to show your proficiency in English

Mentioning the importance of intonation in tertiary course, most of the participants appreciate its role While 90% (18) of the students assert the role of intonation, only 10% of them deny the role of intonation Among them, 65% (13) find intonation very important, 25% (5) suppose it was quite important The collected data shows that most students have positive attitude towards intonation

Realizing the importance of English intonation, 85% of the students think that more time is needed to deal with intonation in their course at university with different reasons For all of them, intonation is a vital element to help them communicate effectively in English 12 students think they need intonation for their future career, and 9 students wish to use intonation as a way to show their proficiency Only 6 students need to learn it more because it is a required subject in their course

The statistic data shows students‟ positive belief in English intonation and English intonation learning Most of the participants find it important to learn intonation, and it is necessary to spend more time on intonation at university because intonation helps them not only to communicate successfully but also to represent themselves well in English More importantly, their future job requires that they should be good at intonation

As shown in the following table, although most of them (90%) appreciate the important role of intonation, not most of them like learning it (60%) of students questioned assert that they like learning intonation because it is necessary Some of them (35%) believe learning intonation is interesting No one thinks learning intonation is easy Those who either do not like or do not mind learning intonation attribute their negative attitude to the complexity of English intonation itself (40% of the students) and the uneasiness in the way of teaching (30% of the participants) Only a small number of students (10%) think learning English is boring

Question 4: How much do you like learning intonation? a  like b  do not like c  do not mind

Question 5: If you like learning intonation, what are the reasons? a  It is easy to learn intonation b  Learning intonation is interesting c  Learning intonation is useful d  The conditions for learning intonation are good e  The way your teacher gives lessons on intonation is easy to understand

Question 6: If you do not like or do not mind learning intonation, what are the reasons? a  It is difficult to learn intonation b  Learning intonation is boring c  Intonation is not paid much attention at university d  The conditions for learning intonation are still deficient e  The way your teacher gives the lesson on intonation is not easy to understand

3.3.2 Students’ reactions to their problems

Question 7: Do you face with any difficulties with English intonation? a  Yes b  No

Question 8: When you have faced problems, what have you done to solve them? a  Ask your teachers for help b  Ask your friends for help c  You yourself search materials to learn and practice d  You do nothing e  You want to do something but do not know what to do and how to do

Question 9: At present, if your teachers are willing to help, what do you need them to help you? a  Give lectures on intonation deeply and clearly b  Provide you with activities and exercises to practice at class c  Assign you exercises for homework practicing d  Listen to you and give feedback

As a matter of fact, intonation is a complicated issue in the process of acquiring English, so it is understandable that all of participants face difficulties in learning intonation So as to overcome difficulties, the first way most students (55%) use is asking for help from their teachers 40% of the participants search material and practice themselves, some others (15%) ask for help from friends While 35% want to do something with tonality but do not know what to do and how to do, a few (10%) do nothing All mentioned data proved that many students wish to solve problems with tone units, so teachers should do more to provide help According to 90% of the participants, the most significant action a teacher can take is providing students with activities and exercises to practice at class Two third of the participants asked emphasized the role of a teacher‟s listening to students and giving feedback Half of the students want their teachers to give lectures on intonation deeply and clearly and assign them exercises for homework practicing

For the reasons and aims stated earlier, the study has been carried out to detect common errors in dividing speech into tone units made by third year students of English Department, Chu Van An University Final results in analyzing these errors have been found:

1 In dividing speech into thought groups, third year students still encountered various faults with both neutral unit and marked unit, both long and short unit They made both errors of joining and splitting

2 The major sources leading to students‟ errors were false concepts hypothesized and overgeneralization Negative influence from the mother tongue took the third place

Incomplete application of the rules and ignorance of the rule restrictions seemed not too serious obstacles for the students

3 Participants‟ perceiving ability was better than producing ability, which was demonstrated by the fact that more students had problems and more errors were found in the productive task than in the perceptual task In both perception and production stages, students had much difficulties with marked tonalities In addition, short and closely grammatically connected tone units caused much trouble for students to perceive word groups correctly, while stressed and unstressed syllables prevented most of students from producing intonation units fluently

4 The students‟ level of languages proficiency and their intonation competence were fairly correlated This was proved by a greater number of good grades and a much lower number of errors attained by the high ability students than by the mid ability students in both tasks

Recapitulation

Errors are obviously unavoidable in learning a foreign language, so error correction plays an essential role in teaching a language, especially in teaching difficult language elements like intonation

The thesis is carried out with the aims at finding out common errors in dividing speech into tone units made by third year students at English Department, Chu Van An University and clarifying the causes to these errors Moreover, the thesis wishes to discover the relationship between participants‟ perceptive and productive ability of tonality to find effective ways to support students‟ competence in English tonality Also, investigating the correlation between learners‟ proficiency and their tonality capacity is another significant goal of the thesis to offer suitable tasks in need as possible solutions to aid teachers in delivering lectures on tonality and on its elements

To achieve these aims, some literature review relating to the theme of the study is taken into consideration First of all, the researcher looks at the previous studies to find out how far the field has been studied and which aspects of the field have not been covered Second, English intonation, particularly the system of tonality – tone units – is cared about since it is the scope of the study which take the errors of tonality into account The study examines the errors in dividing utterances into tone units As a result, errors in language learning are studied from the views of both types of error and causes of errors

The study has been conducted with 20 third year students from Chu Van An University and three sets of instruments namely intonation tasks, academic results, and a survey questionnaire Data collected from these tools are analyzed, which help to answer all the research questions thoroughly

The analysis reveals important findings that third year students still face numerous difficulties in speech division into word groups The problems they have are caused by both their mother tongue and the English intonation itself However, the complicacy of the foreign language item seems to be far more problematic to Vietnamese learners Apart from that, a correlation between perceptive and productive ability and a close tie between learners‟ language proficiency and their intonation ability are investigated in the study

From data attained via the survey questionnaire, positive attitudes to English intonation and English intonation learning are discovered among participants However, intonation causes much trouble to the learners, and they are in need of the teacher‟s help especially with exercises and tasks for practice stage.

Concluding remarks

In the process of gaining successful communication in English, intonation is so important that it cannot be ignored, yet intonation itself is such a complicated issue that both teachers and learners have closed their eyes to it From what has been analyzed above, in this part I would like to draw some conclusions for the objectives set forth at the beginning of the thesis as follows:

My first objective is to detect common errors in relation to English intonation units made by third year majors at English department, Chu Van An University I think that this objective is done successfully with 12 types of errors that students commonly encountered

Of all the types, Sbwc, Sbc, Shs, and Shu are four most serious ones with the largest number of errors and the biggest number of students who made errors Specifically, they are:

 Errors of splitting marked tonality at clause boundary without comma (Sbwc)

 Errors of splitting marked tonality at clause boundary, with comma (Sbc)

 Errors of splitting tonality in the head, after stressed syllables (Shs)

 Errors of splitting tonality in the head, after unstressed syllables (Shu) From the above most frequently met problems, it can be implicated that marked tonality comprised of two clauses, stressed and unstressed syllables are attribute to the most problematic factors which hinder students from correctly dividing utterances into word groups

Errors coexist with learning a language They are useful for learners, teachers and researchers as well Nonetheless, errors are taken advantage only when we acknowledge the core causes leading to them That is the reason why the second objective of the study concerns the causes of these problems, which is tackled strictly with the most frequently sources of faults committed by the participants are:

 Negative influences from the mother tongue Having found out the underlined causes to the errors of tonality committed, implications emerge that English intonation unit alone is rather complicated for learners to acquire

Having investigated the relationship between participants‟ ability to perceive and produce tone units, it is found that perceptual competence relatively affects producing capacity, that is to say, they are agreeable This is stated in more details as follows:

 Students tend to perceive tonality better than producing tonality

 Those who perceive tone units well will produce them well

The next objective is to explore the relationship between third year students‟ language proficiency and their ability of dividing speech into word groups Participants were divided into two groups of ability, the high and the mid one Both groups faced the same problems, had the same difficulties, and committed the same types of errors, but the degree of their problems was not the same Students with higher proficiency level performed better than lower ones, which was represented by the following details:

 Higher ability students face less difficulties than mid ability students

 Fewer high ability students made intonation errors than do the others The mentioned facts provide the answer to our third research question That is learners‟

English proficiency is found correlated to their tonality competence and inverse to tonality errors

The final objective is to discover students‟ belief and attitudes towards English intonation and English intonation learning Data from the survey questionnaire indicates clearly that a majority of the participants are aware of the important role of learning English intonation in their process of acquiring the language and for the future career, and almost keep the intonation since it is too difficult for them, so they are in need of teachers‟ help with both theoretical knowledge and practice exercises and activities

On the whole, the thesis has fulfilled its objectives of the study Although it cannot fully cover all the aspects and components of English intonation, I do hope that this thesis would be of some value for those interested in English intonation in general and English intonation unit in particular.

Recommendations

So far, the errors found in the study have been discussed in much detail The causes of the errors have been found and explained clearly The relation between perceptive and productive, the correlation between language proficiency and tonality ability also have been discovered The findings of the study show that using English intonation is not easy any more for the third year students at English Department of Chu Van An University In the elementary system of intonation only – tonality – numerous errors are detected The question raised here is how to teach students English intonation effectively Intonation is a vast topic, so this section will nevertheless have given some ideas to tackle intonation in the classroom, and some recommendations to help learners with tonality I hope that they will be useful enough for teachers and learners to deal with this problem

(1) Concerning the errors made in the intonation tasks and the causes of these errors it is suggested that learners are in need of not only exercises and activities for further practice but also theoretical knowledge of English intonation unit As a result the teachers need to prepare for intonation lessons deliberately, so that they should be competent in approaches, techniques, and principles to teach English intonation (refer to appendix 8, 9, and 10) as well as prove their roles in the teaching process (appendix 11) In order to make the process of comprehending English intonation unit less hard, learners should be involved in lessons on components of a tone unit like stress, rhythm, and pause in advance And more attention and energy should be paid to these elements to make it easier for learners to acquire the language items During the process of lecturing, similarities and differences in intonation unit and in its components between the two languages are required to be handled too but in the form of warm up exercises to wake the awareness of the learners

(2) Regarding the importance of the perception ability to the production ability, it is demonstrated that they are agreeable Normally, students perceive intonation units better than producing, and those who perceive well tend to produce well

In other words, perceptual ability plays a part in reinforcing the producing competence of tonality The relation between perceptive and productive ability recommends that if a teacher wishes to improve his students‟ ability to produce intonation unit, he firstly need to consolidate their ability to perceive tonality with sufficient theoretical knowledge However, being good at perceiving tonality is not enough, since good capacity for tonality requires more than that

It is expected to produce tone units flowingly without any hesitation or pause in between The productive ability, nonetheless, involves much more effort and attention of the teachers to design suitable exercises and activities

Although the students learn in the same groups, their tonality ability is not homogenous This is due to the differences in each person‟s language competence and his own background Meanwhile, students‟ English proficiency is inverse to their tonality ability Therefore, in teaching a group of students who are at different levels of language proficiency, different tasks should be assigned to these different levels to ensure that all of the students can practice For higher ability students, the requirements should be harder Also, constant attention should be paid to low ability students to give any instant help so that they can catch up with the higher ones

(3) Learners are well aware of the importance of English intonation in the daily conversation, but the time they are allowed to study this subject is extremely little compared to the time on English practical subjects I presume to think that English intonation should become a separate subject so that both teachers and students have more time to investigate the nature of English intonation deeply enough to become more and more successful communicators of English

Moreover, it is rather complicated for students to acquire English intonation It is the complicacy of intonation that prevents the learners from being interested in learning English intonation in general and learning English intonation unit in particular Thus, teachers should facilitate them, enhance their confidence, and make sure that they feel relaxed when they learn intonation In this case, easy tasks at the beginning and game will count

For further development of the topic of the present study, the following directions should be considered in the future research:

(1) Intonation is considered as a vast topic which includes many minor components A need is raised here is that further researches on its elements as stress and rhythm should be conducted before hand

(2) This study mainly looked at errors committed with the elementary system of English intonation, tonality It is also essential to examine the two other systems namely tonicity and tone

(3) In order to discover underlined causes to errors relating to intonation, contrastive analysis between English and Vietnamese intonation is in need to help well predict students‟ errors

(4) The present study involved only a small sample size among third year students

There is a need for a more representative sample to get a more comprehensive picture of the English major students‟ intonation ability

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I would like you to take a few moments to complete the following tasks Your answers will help me with the error analysis of English intonation All the information provided by you is of great importance and solely used for the study purpose, not for any other purposes You can be sure that you will not be identified in any discussion of the data Thank you in advance!

You will listen to the tape three times For each time of listening, divide the utterances into tone units

A That‟s a nice suit I haven‟t seen it before, have I?

B No It‟s the first time I‟ve worn it, actually I only got it about four days ago You like it, do you?

A Very much Did you have it specially made, or did you buy it off the peg?

B I had it made I very rarely buy a suit, so I thought I‟d have it tailored, and I‟m quite pleased with it

A I should think so It‟s very handsome May I ask where you got it?

B The same place as I got my last one, nineteen years ago

A Nineteen years? Do you really mean to tell me you haven‟t had a suit since then?

B That‟s right I don‟t often wear a suit, you see, so they tend to last a long time

A Nineteen years is certainly a long time; and even if you don‟t wear them much, your old one must have lasted well

B Oh, it did They did a very good job on it

I would like you to take a few moments to complete the following tasks Your answers will help me with the error analysis of English intonation All the information provided by you is of great importance and solely used for the study purpose, not for any other purposes You can be sure that you will not be identified in any discussion of the data Thank you in advance!

1 Listen to the tape, divide the utterances into tone units

2 Rehearse the dialogue until you feel confident enough to act out the conversation Your speech will be recorded on to a tape

3 Take turns to play roles of speaker A, then the speaker B, respectively

A That‟s a nice suit I haven‟t seen it before, have I?

B No It‟s the first time I‟ve worn it, actually I only got it about four days ago You like it, do you?

A Very much Did you have it specially made, or did you buy it off the peg?

B I had it made I very rarely buy a suit, so I thought I‟d have it tailored, and I‟m quite pleased with it

A I should think so It‟s very handsome May I ask where you got it?

B The same place as I got my last one, nineteen years ago

A Nineteen years? Do you really mean to tell me you haven‟t had a suit since then?

B That‟s right I don‟t often wear a suit, you see, so they tend to last a long time

A Nineteen years is certainly a long time; and even if you don‟t wear them much, your old one must have lasted well

B Oh, it did They did a very good job on it

APPENDIX 3 KEYS TO INTONATION TASKS

A 1 //That‟s a nice suit.// 2 I haven‟t seen it before, // 3 have I?//

B // 4 No.// 5 It‟s the first time I‟ve worn it, actually // 6 I only got it about four days ago.//

7You like it,// 8 do you?//

A // 9 Very much.// 10 Did you have it specially made, // 11 or did you buy it off the peg?//

B // 12 I had it made.// 13 I very rarely buy a suit, // 14 so I thought I‟d have it tailored,// 15 and

A // 16 I should think so // 17 It‟s very handsome.// 18 May I ask where you got it?//

B // 19 The same place as I got my last one,// 20 nineteen years ago.//

A // 21 Nineteen years? // 22 Do you really mean to tell me // 23 you haven‟t had a suit since then?//

B // 24 That‟s right // 25 I don‟t often wear a suit, you see, // 26 so they tend to last a long time.//

A // 27 Nineteen years is certainly a long time; // 28 and even if you don‟t wear them much,

// 29 your old one must have lasted well.//

B // 30 Oh,// 31 it did // 32 They did a very good job on it.//

APPENDIX 4 PHONETIC TRANSCRITION OF INTONATION TASK

A: 1  \ ts nais /sju:t 2  ahvnt \ si:nt b f: 3 hva

B: 4  \ n 5 tsf:s  tam av \ w:nt ktl 6  anl \ gtt bat f:

dez  ga 7  ju: \ lakt 8  du:ju:

A: 9 ver \ mt 10  ddju: hvt spel med 11 : ddju: bat f  \ peg

B: 12 ahdt \ med 13  aver \ real  ba  sju:t 14  sa:t adhvt \ teld

A: 16 ad \ ks 17  tsver \ hnsm 18  mea a:sk we ju: gtt

B: 19 sem  ples zagt ma \ la:stwn 20  nanti:n \ jz   g

A: 21 nanti:n jz 22  dju:rl mi:n t telmi: 23 ju: hvnt  hd   sju:t

B: 24 ts rat 25  adnt fn \ wer sju:t ju: si: 26  setend tl:st

A: 27 nanti:n jz zs:tnl l tam 28  ni:vn fju:dnt

I would like you to take a few moments to complete the following questionnaire Your answers will help me with the error analysis of English intonation All the information provided by you is of great importance and solely used for the study purpose, not for any other purposes You can be sure that you will not be identified in any discussion of the data Thank you in advance!

Part 1: Please provide some information about yourself

Years of learning English:  5  9  12 Gender:  Male  Female

Please tick (  ) right answers to the following questions (You can tick more than one answer for each question) Part 2: At titudes towards the learning of intonation

1 How important is intonation in your English learning? a  very important b  quite important c  not very important d  unimportant

2 Do you think it necessary to have more time to learn English intonation in your course? a  yes b  no

3 If you find it necessary to have more time to learn English intonation in your course, what are the reasons? a  You need it to communicate successfully b  You need it for your future career c  It is included in your course at university d  It is a way to show your proficiency in English

4 How much do you like learning intonation? a  like b  do not like c  do not mind