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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ********* NGUYỄN THỊ HOÀI THU INTEGRATING PRONUNCIATION ELEMENTS INTO LISTENING LE[.]
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********* NGUYỄN THỊ HOÀI THU INTEGRATING PRONUNCIATION ELEMENTS INTO LISTENING LESSONS FOR FIRST YEAR NON ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY (KẾT HỢP DẠY CÁC YẾU TỐ NGỮ ÂM TRONG GIỜ HỌC NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT KHÔNG CHUYÊN TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CÔNG NGHIỆP HÀ NỘI) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Hanoi, 2015 z VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********* NGUYỄN THỊ HOÀI THU INTEGRATING PRONUNCIATION ELEMENTS INTO LISTENING LESSONS FOR FIRST YEAR NON ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY (KẾT HỢP DẠY CÁC YẾU TỐ NGỮ ÂM TRONG GIỜ HỌC NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT KHÔNG CHUYÊN TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CÔNG NGHIỆP HÀ NỘI) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Hoàng Thị Xuân Hoa, Ph.D Hanoi, 2015 z DECLERATION I declare that this thesis and the work presented in it are my own and have been generated by me as the result of my own original research I confirm that this thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts and that this thesis has not previously been submitted for a degree or any other qualification at any other universities or institutions Hanoi, August, 2015 Nguyễn Thị Hoài Thu i z ACKNOWLEDMENTS First and foremost, I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep sense of gratitude and indebtedness to my supervisor Hoàng Thị Xuân Hoa, Ph.D for her extraordinary help, valuable advice and outstanding support Secondly, my special thanks go to all the teachers in the faculty of Post Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies for their useful lectures, materials, guidance and enthusiasm during my course I also highly appreciate the cooperation of my students in class CK2.2- K9 at Hanoi University of Industry, without them this thesis would not be at all possible Finally, my grateful thanks and gratitude extend to my family and my friend, who have always encouraged me and supported me to fulfill this study ii z ABSTRACT Proper pronunciation makes significant contribution to successful communication Despite its importance, it is often ignored and neglected in EFL classes The study involves an action research on integrating pronunciation elements into listening lessons However, since pronunciation comprises a variety of elements, in this study, the researcher just concentrates on intonation teaching The aim of this study is to investigate how integrating intonation teaching into listening lessons improves students’ intonation and students' attitudes toward the teaching method The participants were 45 first year non English major students at Hanoi University of Industry The treatment was conducted in eight weeks with eight intonation lessons which were integrated in the post-listening stage of the listening lessons The major source of data for the research came from two sets of instruments including tests and questionnaire The results of the study show that after the treatment, students’ intonation significantly improved and the majority of them had positive attitude toward intonation and the teaching method Therefore, it can be said that the intonation teaching integrated with listening lessons helped to improve the students’ intonation iii z TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration i Acknowledgments ii Abstract iii List of abbreviations vi List of tables vi List of figures vi List of charts vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE OF THE STUDY 1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY 1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 PRONUNCIATION IN TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE 2.1.1 The importance of pronunciation and pronunciation teaching 2.1.2 Pronunciation elements 2.2 INTONATION IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 2.2.1 Definition of intonation 2.2.2 System of intonation 2.2.3 Tone unit 13 2.2.4 Functions of intonation 14 2.2.5 The importance of intonation 16 2.3 APPROACHES TO TEACH PRONUNCIATION 17 2.3.1 Bottom-up and top-down approaches 17 2.3.2 Intuitive-imitative and analytic-linguistic approaches 17 2.3.3 Integrated approach 18 2.3.4 Integrating teaching intonation into listening 18 2.4 SUMMARY 20 iv z CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 21 3.1 THE CONTEXT OF THE STUDY 21 3.2 SUBJECTS 22 3.3 THE ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT 22 3.3.1 Action research 22 3.3.2 Action research procedure 24 3.4 SUMMARY 27 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 29 4.1 RESULTS FROM THE TESTS 29 4.1.1 Results from the pre-test 29 4.1.2 Results from the pre-test and four progress tests 30 4.1.3 Results from the pre-test and post- tests 32 4.1.4 Discussion of the test results 33 4.2 RESULTS FROM THE STUDENTS’ QUESTIONNAIRE 34 4.2.1 Attitude toward studying English intonation 34 4.2.2 Attitude toward the integrated approach of learning intonation 35 4.2.3 Other opinions 36 4.2.4 DISCUSSION OF THE QUESTIONNAIRE RESULTS 37 4.3 SPECIFY LEARNING 37 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 39 5.1 MAJOR FINDINGS AND IMPLICATIONS 39 5.2 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 40 5.3 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH 40 5.4 CONCLUSION 40 REFERENCES 41 APPENDICES… I v z LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL : English as a Foreign Language ESL : English as a Second Language HaUI : Hanoi University of Industry LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Results from the pre-test ……………………………………………… 28 Table 2: Comparison of the scores of the pre-test and progress tests………… 30 Table 3: Comparison of the scores of the pre-test and post-test ……………… 31 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Features of English pronunciation ………………………………… Figure 2: Detailed action research model……………………………………… 23 LIST OF CHARTS Chart 1: Student's mean sores in pre-test and progress tests ………………… 29 Chart 2: Attitude toward studying English intonation ………………………… 33 Chart 3: Attitude toward the integrated approach……………………………… 34 vi z CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study English is regarded as the main language of international communication Good communication in English depends considerably on the proper pronunciation In other words, pronunciation is considered the bridge through which the message is delivered; proper and correct pronunciation is the soul of comfortable and successful communication Moreover, good pronunciation is considered to be more essential than perfect knowledge of grammar It is believed that a learner with poor pronunciation is less likely to be understood than a learner who makes many mistakes in grammar When dealing with pronunciation, it is necessary to mention two main features of pronunciation- the segmental and suprasegmental features Segmental features are sets of distinctive sounds of particular language and the suprasemental features are related to intonation; stress and change of sounds in connected speech In this study, the researcher just focuses on intonation since it is an essential part of pronunciation Furthermore, intonation is very important for communication as it helps the addressee interpret the message Intonation choices made by speakers carry linguistic information and the various elements of intonation are seen to perform a variety of functions Despite the significance of pronunciation as well as intonation, it is complained that pronunciation including intonation have often been ignored and received little explicit focus in the ESL classes (Griffiths, 2011; Woolard, 1993) A lot of English teachers seem to feel uncomfortable with intonation and they tend to treat it as a difficult subject: difficult to isolate, difficult to describe, and difficult to formulate rules In the context of Vietnam, pronunciation along with intonation is still neglected or ignored at many universities and colleges It is mostly taught in separated lessons or by traditional approaches such as top-down approach, bottom-up approach, intuitive-imitative approach and analytic-linguistic approach However, with those traditional approaches, the English pronunciation teaching and learning seem to be not as effective as expectation z Like many universities in Vietnam, Hanoi University of Industry (HaUI) considers English as a necessary skill beside other professional skills which the students should be welltrained In order to help the students be able to communicate in English, the course syllabus is designed with general objectives to get the learner to be mastered in oral communication The main content of syllabus focuses on improving students’ listening and speaking skill However, as my observation during two years teaching here, the poor pronunciation is the big challenge for students to master those skills Many teachers complain that improper pronunciation leads students in being unconfident in speaking and confused with listening comprehension For two years working with non-English major students at HaUI, the researcher recognizes that a large number of them mispronounce separated words and words combined in a sentence Other pronounces a sentence with equal stress, flat intonation and no rhythm at all Especially, with the flat intonation, students speak English like reading their script There was almost no emotion, no change in pitch when they are speaking Consequently, it is difficult to understand their expressions and thoughts that go with words In addition, with the limited knowledge of intonation, many students have difficulty in understanding and interpreting speakers’ expression in listening tasks For instance, if a positive sentence is spoken with the rising tone, the speaker has tendency to put a query rather than make a statement However, the students hardly understand clearly speaker’s purpose so they generally give incorrect answer Since pronunciation is the most complicated aspect of language to obtain, most English teachers, especially non-native speakers like at HaUI, feel unconfident in teaching pronunciation Furthermore, because of some reasons such as the shortage of instructions or guidance dealing with pronunciation in textbooks, too few pronunciation exercises as well as the lack of time, teachers at HaUI often ignore pronunciation teaching Therefore, teaching pronunciation by integrating it into other lessons is suggested As Morley (1991:486) stated “the need for the integration of pronunciation with oral communication was soon realized with a shift from specific linguistic competencies to broader communicative competencies as goals for both the teacher and the learner” In this study, z ... year Non English major students at Hanoi University of Industry? ?? However, as pronunciation comprises a lot of elements, the research just concentrates on teaching intonation with the hope that... integrating intonation teaching into listening lessons - Investigating students? ?? attitudes toward integrating intonation teaching into listening lessons Besides the main aim at finding out how integrating. .. were 45 first year non English major students at Hanoi University of Industry The treatment was conducted in eight weeks with eight intonation lessons which were integrated in the post-listening