Teaching English Pronunciation To 10th Grade Students At Thanh Liêm C High School = Dạy phát âm tiếng Anh cho học sinh lớp 10 trường trung học phổ thông Thanh L

To make the matter worse, all important English exams at schools as well as the entrance exam to universities are always in written form so most teachers as well as students have little

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES

TRẦN THÚY ANH

TEACHING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION TO 10th GRADE STUDENTS AT THANH LIEM C HIGH SCHOOL

(DẠY PHÁT ÂM TIẾNG ANH CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRƯỜNG THPT

THANH LIÊM C, HÀ NAM)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Code: 601410

Hanoi, 2012

8 Previous studies on teaching and learning English pronunciation 4

DEVELOPMENT

1.2 The importance of teaching and learning pronunciation 7

1.3 The teacher’s roles and student’s roles in teaching and

1.5 Factors affecting pronunciation learning 12

1.6 Teachers’ and students’ problems in teaching and learning

3.1.1 Teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards teaching and

3.1.6 Teachers’ and students’ problems in teaching and learning

3.1.7 Teachers and students’ problems in teaching and learning

3.2.2 Students’ activities and their mistakes in producing long,

2.1 Increasing teaching and learning time for pronunciation 40

2.2 Contracting various techniques and activities in teaching

2.3 Motivating students in learning pronunciation 43

2.4 Increasing teacher’s and student’s roles in teaching and

APPENDIX 1: SURVEY QUESIONNAIRE (for students) I

APPENDIX 2: SURVEY QUESTIONAIRE (for teachers) IV

INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Despite the fact that pronunciation is one of the most important skills in English Language Teaching, incorrect pronunciation leads to occasional misunderstandings, at the upper-secondary school level in Vietnam, in language teaching and learning, compared with vocabulary, grammar and language skills, pronunciation has so far been paid less attention to In the official textbooks used for teaching English at high school level, there are few exercises for pronunciation practice To make the matter worse, all important English exams at schools as well

as the entrance exam to universities are always in written form so most teachers as well as students have little motivation to teach and to learn pronunciation, therefore they generally spend little time on teaching and learning pronunciation in order to spend valuable class time on other area of language As a result, students are often shy and unconfident to speak in English Many students cannot pronounce English words and sentences correctly English pronunciation seems has become the most serious problem that students meet when they learn English This is happening at almost upper secondary schools in Vietnam And that is the reason why the effectiveness of teaching pronunciation still remains one of the most widely problematic subjects in the field of language teaching

Situated in a mountainous area in Thanh Liem district, Ha Nam province, Thanh Liem C High School is even far weaker than other schools in terms of learning different school subjects, of which English language teaching seems to be the worst And if some students are said to be good at English, it means they are good at English grammar Most of them find it hard to express themselves orally If anyone can, he has problems in pronouncing English words and sentences In the English lessons, only teachers speak, and most of the time, teachers have to speak Vietnamese because they are afraid that their students do not understand what they are speaking Students often complain about difficulties they get in learning English speaking skill in general and in pronunciation in particular And we ourselves realize that our students really have bad pronunciation This is a serious problem not

only at Thanh Liem C High School but also at many other mountainous schools In addition, no research on teaching English pronunciation at Thanh Liem C High School has been done so far

Coping with this pressing fact, as a language teacher teaching English at Thanh Liem C high school (TLCHS), the author always thinks of some questions: What are the attitudes of teachers and students towards teaching and learning pronunciation? What are the problems teachers and students face in teaching and learning pronunciation? How to find suitable methods to teach pronunciation? What should teachers do to teach pronunciation effectively? How should teachers make students become interested in learning pronunciation? The answers to these questions will help language teachers improve their students‟ pronunciation as well

as help them make progress in effective communication For the above reasons, the author decides to carry out the study entitled: “Teaching English pronunciation to grade 10 students at Thanh Liem C High school” with the focus on the reality of teaching and learning pronunciation, problems then suggests some solutions

2 Aims of the study

This study mainly focused on discovering the reality of teaching and learning pronunciation at Thanh Liem C high school, especially to find out problems that teachers and students often have in pronunciation lessons The writer also hopes to make some suggestions that can help the English teachers overcome those problems and improve students‟ pronunciation

In order to achieve this aim, some objectives are posed for exploration as follows:

- To find out the teachers‟ and students‟ attitude toward teaching and learning pronunciation at Thanh Liem C High School

- To find out the difficulties and the causes of difficulties in teaching and learning pronunciation

- To suggest some recommendations

3 Research questions

The above aims of the study can be realized by answering the following

research questions:

(1) What is teachers‟ and students‟ attitude toward teaching and learning pronunciation at Thanh Liem C High School?

(2) Which problems do the teachers and students at TLCHS face in pronunciation lessons?

From the findings, the researcher would recommend some pedagogical implications with the hope to help teachers and students at TLCHS identify their problems and self-improve their pronunciation

4 Scope of the study

This study investigated the difficulties of teaching and learning pronunciation at Thanh Liem C high school with the focus on two aspects of English pronunciation: short, long vowels and fricative consonants for the 10th form students at Thanh Liem C high school The subjects of the study are 10th form students those are beginner with learning pronunciation at high school English pronunciation would not be deeply investigated in this research

5 Method of the study

This is a qualitative piece of research including such techniques as : survey questionnaires, classroom observations and interviews Firstly, the survey questionnaires were delivered to both teachers and students to investigate the difficulties in teaching and learning pronunciation at TLCHS Then, some classroom observations and interviews with some English teachers have been also conducted to get supplementary information Finally, the results obtained from questionnaires, observations and interviews have been discussed and analyzed with a hope for providing language teacher with some teaching techniques to work successfully with their students

6 Significance of the study

Because the study was conducted on a small scale with a group of 10th grade students at a high school, the researcher hoped to make contribution to teaching pronunciation at TLCHS The result of the study is considered to be useful for teachers and students at this school Thus, this study will be an interesting reference material for teachers of English at TLCHS, especially for those

teachers and students identify their problems in teaching and learning pronunciation and self- improve their pronunciation

7 The design of the study

The study was designed with the first part as an INTRODUCTION to the rationale, the aims, and the significance of the study, the research questions, the method, the scope and the design of the study

The next part provides the DEVELOPMENT of the thesis with 3 chapters Chapter 1 presents the theoretical background with definition of pronunciation; the importance of teaching pronunciation; the teacher's and student's roles in teaching pronunciation; the pronunciation components, factors affecting pronunciation learning, , teachers‟ and students‟ problems in teaching and learning pronunciation, intelligibility, and some techniques of teaching pronunciation

Chapter 2 is research methodology In this chapter, the focus will be on background information of the subject of the study, the instruments used to collect data and the procedure of data collection as well Chapter 3 is the body of the study, presents a description of data analysis and discussions With the description of data analysis through three instruments: questionnaire, classroom observation and the interview, I explored some interpretations of the findings

The last part CONCLUSION is devoted to the summary of the findings and some pedagogical suggested recommendations to help teachers and students in upper secondary schools to overcome difficulties in learning and teaching English pronunciation This chapter also provides the limitations of the study as well as some recommendations for further study provides the summary of the thesis, limitations and some suggestions for further study

8 Previous studies on teaching and learning English pronunciation

There have been various arguments and support for the effectiveness of pronunciation t r a i n i n g on learners‟ achievement in communicative competence Morley (1998) states that pronunciation plays an important role in overall communicative competence Yong (2004) asserted that understanding by reading

or writing would no longer be sufficient for the development of the economy and

that communicating face to face personally or through the internet needed to be understood

Carter and Nunan (2001) describe the complexity of the process of second language acquisition as an organic rather than linear process and students need

to start pronunciation lessons early and continue through high-level Academic English levels In addition, pronunciation teaching methods should more fully address the issues of motivation and exposure by creating awareness of the importance of pronunciation and providing more exposure to input from native speakers (Jones, 2002)

Poor pronunciation can condemn learners to less social, academic and work advancement than they deserved (Fraser, 1999, 2000) Good pronunciation may make the communication easier and more relaxed and thus more successful (Dan, 2006) Almost all learners rate pronunciation as a priority and an area in which they need more guidance (Willing, 1993; Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1997) Although the study of foreign accents has always been a fascination for some researchers, the teaching of pronunciation and oral skills in general in foreign and second language classrooms has often been low on the list of priorities (Peterson, 2000)

The 16th Educational Conference held in Melbourne in 2003 by Germana Eckert, In search Language Centre concerning Productive Skills in the Academic English Curriculum showed that the importance of good writing ability in academic English and teachers spend more time working on students‟ writing and grammar skills in order that students are best prepared for exams and especially written exams together with main focus of the current academic English curriculum are factor which cause students and teachers to leave little time for pronunciation in the classroom (Germana Eckert, 2003)

Most of the literature on pronunciation deals with what and how to teach, while the learner remains a silent abstract in the classroom Morley (1994) underlines that the prevalent focus on pronunciation teaching nowadays should be on designing new wave instructional programs Moreover she

language forms and functions, but also issues of learner self-involvement and learner strategy training In other words, students who have developed the skills

to monitor and modify their speech patterns if necessary should become active partners in their own learning

Kriedler (1989) states that correct and clear pronunciation are considerably important in language learning Without them, learners may not be understood and may be poorly perceived by other English speakers They need to have confidence

in their ability to speak Good pronunciation takes time to build up, as there are many factors involved Learners need to hear a lot of English before they can develop a feel for the sounds of English The learners become more confident and motivated in learning the language because of the teaching aids and materials such

as tape recordings of native speakers, pictures of mouth and articulations used in the class along with the provision positive reinforcement (Phinit-Akson, 2002; Quilter, 2002; Estrada & Streiff, 2002; Wu, 2002; and Jay, 1966)

DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 Definition of pronunciation

The notion of pronunciation has been defined in many different ways by writers Generally speaking, pronunciation is simply defined as “the way in which a

word is spoken” (Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Encyclopedic, 1992) or “the way in

which a word is usually pronounced” (Longman dictionary of contemporary English, 1978) In the book “Pronunciation” published in 1994, Christiane Dalton and Barbara Seidlhofer (1994:3) consider pronunciation “as the production of significant sound” They look at the word in two senses First, it is used as part of a code of a particular language That is the reason why English sounds are distinguished from sounds of other languages In this sense, pronunciation can be told as the production and reception of sounds of speech Second, sound is used to achieve meaning in contexts of use Here the code combines with other factors to make communication possible In this sense pronunciation is referred with reference

to acts of speaking

In the scope of this study, the concept of pronunciation can be described as “a way of speaking a word, especially a way that is accepted or generally understood” (American Heritage Dictionary, 1992)

1.2 The importance of teaching and learning pronunciation

“A learner who constantly mispronounces a range of phonemes can be extremely difficult for a speaker from another language community to understand

A consideration of learners‟ pronunciation errors and of how these can inhibit successful communication is a useful basis on which to assess why it is important to deal with pronunciation in the class” Gerald Kelly (2000:11)

While saying about why it is important to teach pronunciation, Martin Hewings (2004:10) adds “Difficulties with pronunciation might mean that students fail to get their message across, even when the correct words are being used, or they might fail to understand what is said to them.”

Sound is the core of the language so that is the reason why when teaching a language the first thing the teachers should do is to let the learners have chances to

considered as the major language teaching in the twenty first century as what the learners really need after graduating is that they can communicate successfully in their work and their life That is the reason why pronunciation teaching has been paid more and more attention by all the teachers

Pronunciation is as important as any other aspects of language like syntax and vocabulary Speech is much more than pronunciation of course, but speech is impossible without it Correct pronunciation, in fact, is considered to be a prerequisite to develop the speaking skill That is why teaching pronunciation should occupy an important place in the study of any language

1.3 The teacher’s roles and student’s roles in teaching and learning pronunciation

Because of the importance of teaching pronunciation mentioned above, teachers play a key role in teaching and learning pronunciation Many authors share this idea and they all give out the similar roles of teacher's and students' in pronunciation practice However, in this study, the literature of Kenworthy (1987: 1-2) about the teacher's role was chosen The roles of the teacher and students can

be derived in the following parts

1.3.1 The teacher's roles in teaching pronunciation

1.3.1.1 Helping students hear and perceive the model as exactly as possible Students often have a strong tendency to hear the sounds of English in terms

of the sounds of their native language The teacher needs to check that their students are hearing sounds according to the appropriate categories and help them to develop

new categories if necessary

1.3.1.2 Helping students make sounds intelligible

Some sounds of English do not occur in Vietnamese Therefore, the teacher has to give some hints which help them to produce the new sounds intelligibly

1.3.1.3 Providing students with feedback of their pronunciation

Students need to be told how they are doing as sometimes they themselves cannot tell if they have pronounced correctly The teacher must provide them feedback about their performance

1.3.1.4 Pointing out what is going on

It is important for students to know what to pay attention to and what to work

on Because speaking is for the most part unconsciously controlled, students may miss something important For example, they may not realize that when a particular word is stressed or said in a different way this can affect the message that is sent to the listener Teachers need to make students aware of the potential of sounds - the

resources available to them for sending spoken messages

of some students better than others

1.3.1.7 Assessing progress

It is difficult for students to assess their own progress so teachers must provide the information about progress It is often a crucial factor in maintaining motivation

1.3.2 The student's roles in learning pronunciation

In teaching a foreign language in general, and in teaching pronunciation in particular, whatever the teacher does, the learner's improvement and prospects of change are minimal if the learners take no action and do not try to monitor their own efforts What all learners are required to do in pronunciation learning is

response But it is not as simple as that Ultimate success in pronunciation will

surely depend on learners' attitude and how much attempt the learner puts into In other words, the most decisive factor of improving pronunciation is the learner's willingness to take responsibility for his/her learning process

In addition, students also have some following roles: Firstly, they have to perceive the model as exactly as they can If cannot acquire it, they will not be able

to pronounce the model correctly Students need to respond as much and as well as

perfect" Finally, students should correction of their pronunciation mistakes

1.4 The pronunciation components

1.4.1 Gerald Kelly’s ideas about pronunciation components

According to Colin Mortimer (1985), elements of teaching pronunciation are weak forms, clusters, linking - up, contractions and stress time Linda Grant (1993) provided a more comprehensive and authentic elements of teaching She organized the teaching elements from sounds to syllables and words, to sentences and finally to discourse-segments According to Gerald Kelly (2000: 1), teaching pronunciation includes: phonemes, vowels, consonants, stress, intonation, other aspects of connected speech and spelling However, this study only emphasizes on phonemes aspect of this diagram

Phonemes are the different sounds within a language Although there are slight differences in how individuals articulate sounds, we can still describe reasonably accurately how each sound is produced

Vowels

Vowels are made by voiced air passing through different mouth-shapes; the differences in the shape of the mouth are caused by different positions of the tongue and of the lips The quality of vowels is determined by the particular configuration

of the vocal tract Different parts of the tongue may be raised or lowered The lips may be spread or pursed The passage, through which the air travels, however, is never so narrow as to obstruct free flow of the air stream Thus vowels have been traditionally classified according to the three questions:

How high is the tongue?

What part of the tongue is involved; that is, what part is raised? What part is lowered?

Is the vowel rounded or not?

Due to typographic difficulties, detailed description of vowels will not be

presented (refer to Tam, 1999 for more information)

Consonants are formed by interrupting, restricting or diverting the airflow in a variety of ways There are three ways of describing the consonant sounds: the manner of articulation, the place of articulation and the force of articulation

In English, there are twenty vowels and twenty-four consonants which are divided into groups according to the place, manner of articulation and voicing This study, basing on manner of articulation, does not aim at finding all the sounds causing Thanh Liem C students‟ difficulties but long and short vowels and fricative consonants /f, v, θ, ð, s, z, ʃ, ʒ/

Fricatives

Fricative occurs when two vocal organs come close enough together for the

movement of air to be heard between them (Kelly, 2000)

Fricatives are consonants with the characteristic that when they are produced,

air escapes through a small passage and makes a hissing sound (Roach,1998)

Below are the description and the characteristics of the fricatives sounds: Fricative

sounds Characteristics

/f/ and /v/

Labio-dental sounds The lower lip makes light contact with the upper teeth The soft palate is raised /f/ is unvoiced and fotis /v/ is devoiced at the end of the word

/θ/ and /ð/

Dental sounds The tongue tip makes light contact with the back of the top, front teeth Or, tongue tip may protrude between upper and lower teeth The soft palate is raised / θ / is unvoiced and fotis /ð/

is voiced and lenis / ð / is devoiced at the end of a word

/s/ and /z/

Alveolar sounds The tongue blade makes light contact with the alveolar ridge The soft palate is raised /s/ is unvoiced and fortis /z/ is voiced and lenis /z/ is devoiced at the end of a word

/ʃ/ and /ʒ/

Palato-alveolar sounds The tongue blade makes light contact with the alveolar ridge, and the front of the tongue is raised The soft palate is also raised / ʃ / is unvoiced and fortis / ʒ / is voiced and lenis / ʒ / is devoiced at the end of a word

1.5 Factors affecting pronunciation learning

There are many factors affecting the learners' pronunciation According to Kenworthy (1987:4-9), factors such as the native language, the age factor, amount

of exposure, phonetic ability, attitude and identity, motivation and concern for good pronunciation have great influence on Pronunciation learning

1.5.1 The interference from the mother tongue

The native language plays an important role in learning to pronounce English

as it is clearly seen that a foreign accent is influenced by some of the sound characteristics of the learner's native language These can be used to distinguish between the native speakers and non-native speakers (untrained as well as trained speakers) Due to the role of native language, there has been a great deal of research

on the differences between sound systems of English and other languages in terms

of sound system as well as problems, difficulties the learners face when studying English According to Kenworthy, (1992: 4): "To put it very crudely, the more differences there are, the more difficulties the learners will have in pronouncing English.”

1.5.2 The age factor

It is commonly assumed that people can pronounce a foreign language like a native if they start learning it as a child and vice versa even though the adults have a good knowledge of English or they live in the countries where the language is a native one This leads to a question that whether there is an age-related limit on the mastery of pronunciation There have been many studies on this question and the results are conflicting because these studies have assessed pronunciation in different ways and it is extremely difficult to control other factors which may be involved such as ability, motivation or opportunity to use and to hear the language

1.5.3 Amount of exposure

Another factor is the amount of exposure to English the learner receives Some people view this as a matter of whether the learner is living in an English-speaking country or not This means that the learner surrounded by English will have more advantages than who is not living in an English-speaking environment However, it

is difficult to get an accurate picture of how much exposure to English a learner has received, and of what kind Moreover, it is not merely exposure that matters, but how the learners respond to the opportunities to listen and use English Based on some recent studies, it seems that amount of exposure is not a necessary factor but a contributory factor for the development of pronunciation skills

1.5.4 Phonetic ability

Researchers demonstrate that some people are able to mimic sounds more accurately than others These abilities are innate, so this factor seems to be out of the teacher's control What the teacher can do is to investigate the abilities of the learners and provide a variety of tasks so that something will suit the needs and ability of each learner

1.5.5 Attitudes and identity

It has been claimed that factors such as a person‟s „sense of identity‟ and feelings of „group affiliation‟ are strong determiners of the acquisition of accurate pronunciation of a foreign language In many studies of attitude and motivation in language learning, it has been shown that those learners who show positive feelings towards the speakers of the new language tend to develop more accurate, native-like accents

1.5.6 Motivation and concern for good pronunciation

It cannot be denied that motivation is an important factor which determines the people's participation in every activity especially in language learning Motivation makes people more active in learning The more motivated the people are, the greater the cognitive process is The learner's attitude towards the language they

are learning or going to learn also affects the process of learning pronunciation

Their positive attitudes will help students a lot in learning this language, including learning its pronunciation

1.6 Teachers’ and students’ problems in teaching and learning pronunciation

Both teachers and students encounter various problems in the process of

teaching and learning pronunciation These problems do not only arise from the nature of pronunciation itself, but from various subjective and objective factors In

the light of the previous and current studies, some major problems that teachers and learners face in teaching and learning pronunciation are:

1.6.1 The nature of pronunciation

According to Nunan (1991), the problem of acquiring the phonology of a second or a foreign language presents a formidable challenge to any theory of second language acquisition In teaching and learning pronunciation, the biggest problem that most of the English teachers and students complain come from nature

of pronunciation English pronunciation itself contains so many complicated factors and invisible rules

In the light of this problem, Doff A (1988) listed some common problems that learners often make when they speak English The first is difficulties in pronouncing sounds which do not exist in the students‟ own language The second

is the problems with similar sounds that often cause learners‟ confusion The third is difficulties in pronouncing consonant clusters And the last problem mainly comes from English stress and intonation Students seem to have a tendency to give all syllables equal stress and “flat” intonation

1.6.2 Class setting

A lot of problems in teaching and learning pronunciation come from class setting such as classroom size, quality of the teaching staff, teaching and learning equipment Firstly, a large class causes difficulty in teaching pronunciation At high school, on average, there are over 50 students per class With such a high student-teacher ratio, it is impossible to make sure that the teacher could carry out successful teaching techniques and activities, and the learner is not able to listen and receive what the teacher is saying The quality of teaching staff is also a big problem Most teachers of English are non-native speakers, and a few of them can have a native-like pronunciation As a result, the language input that students receive every day is from non-native people Therefore, it is impossible to require students to achieve perfect pronunciation

1.6.3 Teaching model

According to Kelly (2000), in the past, the model of teaching English pronunciation was “received pronunciation”, the pronunciation of people in the

southwest England Today, there are a vast number of English: American English, Australian English, etc Thus, it is difficult for teachers to choose what model to teach In fact, each teacher often cannot produce a “perfect” accent without being affected by his own language This fact sometimes causes both teachers and students problems in teaching and learning pronunciation Some teachers do not feel confident with their own voice and students do not know what input language is perfect to receive

1.6.4 Intelligibility

Beside factors from the nature of pronunciation, class setting, etc teaching and learning pronunciation involves in its own problem that Kenworthy (1987) calls it

as “intelligibility” He defines “intelligibility” as “being understood by a listener at

a given time in a given situation” This means that intelligibility is affected by a number of factors: the speaker, the listener, the time, and the situation This also means that teaching and learning pronunciation depends on many factors, causing many problems for both teachers and students

CHAPTER TWO: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The research methodology was presented briefly in the first chapter, the Introduction In this chapter, once again, it will be discussed in more details

2.1 Methodology

2.1.1 The research questions:

The study was designed to seek the answer to the three following questions: (1) What is teachers‟ and students‟ attitude toward teaching and learning pronunciation at Thanh Liem C High School?

(2) Which problems do the teachers and students at TLCHS face in pronunciation lessons?

With these two research questions, the study will investigate teachers‟ and students‟ attitude toward teaching and learning pronunciation as well as their difficulties in teaching and learning pronunciation at Thanh Liem C High School

in English 10 together with the causes of these difficulties then giving some pedagogical implications

2.1.2 The participants:

With the questionnaire and classroom observation instruments, the participants are 100 randomly selected students They are both male and female Among 100 respondents, 59 were female and 41 were male All of them are 10th grade students who are going to finish their 10th grade school year They have learned English for nearly five years

These 100 students were chosen randomly without any criteria set before With this random selection, I hope to receive the most reliable and honest data from the questionnaires In the questionnaires, I explained that their answers would be anonymous and my aim at giving them the questionnaires are just to get the data for the research without any other aims

With another questionnaire and interview instrument, the participants were five teachers of English at Thanh Liem C High School Among them, there was one male teacher and four female ones They have been teaching at that school from one to six years

- General attitude to teaching and learning English pronunciation

- Teachers‟ and students‟ main difficulties in teaching and learning English pronunciation

- The main causes of those difficulties

2.1.3.1 The questionnaires:

As we know, one of the most popular means of collecting data is using questionnaires The reason for this is that, firstly, it is easy for us to construct and it does not either consume time or cost money Secondly, questionnaires can help us to collect data in field setting, and the data themselves are more amenable to quantification then discursive data such as free-form field-notes, participant observers‟ journals or transcripts of oral language (David Nunan 1992:143) Furthermore, we can achieve respondent anonymity when applying this type of instrument There are two types of questions, closed and open-ended questions The former kind of questions are often used to get answers which are factual or fairly predictable, meanwhile open-ended questions are preferred when the researchers expect to get answers which are in terms of opinions, beliefs or judgments Furthermore, open-ended questions also give the respondents chances to express more opinions individually Because of these above reasons, both two types of questionnaires were employed to get the data

To get the data reliably and avoid problems such as respondents‟ shyness, the questionnaires were started with explanations about its aims as well as its respondent anonymity In order that the students had no pressure of time and freedom, they were let to finish the questions at home for one day Furthermore, all the questions were written in Vietnamese so that they could be at their best to understand the questions and express their thoughts and ideas

With the aims stated in the Introduction part, I handed out the questionnaires to the teachers and students These questions were aimed at exploring the reality of teaching and learning pronunciation and teachers‟ and

2.1.3.2 Interview

Interview, as we know, is a very useful tool to get the data According to Hopkins (cited in McDonough & McDonough (1997:181), there are three applications of interview in classroom research The first application is to focus

on a specific aspect of classroom life in detail, the second is to get diagnostic information, and the third is to improve the classroom climate

Nunan also gives more uses of interview instrument such as needs analysis, program evaluation, individual case studies and mini- surveys

From these above uses of interview, we can see that with this study, using interview instrument is very suitable to be applied The questionnaires were used

to investigate teachers‟ and students‟ general attitude towards teaching and learning English, English pronunciation and their difficulties in teaching and learning English pronunciation, This second instrument, the interview, was used

to investigate what difficulties students meet when they learn English pronunciation

So, five teachers of English teaching at Thanh Liem C High School were selected for a follow- up interview for more details in difficulties that students often meet when learning English pronunciation

2.1.3.3 Classroom observation:

I also employed classroom observation for more data Certainly, classroom observation is instrument that can help researchers bolster the qualitative and quantitative results Hopkins (1993) described classroom observation as a “pivotal activity” with a crucial role to play in classroom research, teachers‟ personal professional growth, and school development as a whole ( as cited in McDonough, J and McDonough, S 1997:101) McDonough, J and McDonough also stated that observation with its associated, so it can help me test the validity of the data obtained about students‟ attitude towards learning English pronunciation and their difficulties

When observing the class, I did a lot of note taking To make the students feel comfortable in the lessons, I just sat at the last row and took part in five different lessons as a non-participant observer to have a naturalistic observation

2.1.4 Data analysis process

The data collected from three different sources, the questionnaires, interview and classroom observation, were classified into different categories to analyze:

- Teachers and students‟ attitude towards teaching and learning English pronunciation

- Teachers and students‟ difficulties in teaching and learning English pronunciation

- The causes of the difficulties

All the data were gathered to analyze both descriptively and interpretively

CHAPTER THREE: THE STUDY

on grammar In contrast, teaching and learning pronunciation as well as developing listening, speaking or reading skills do not receive enough attention to

3.1.2 Students’ pronunciation level

From the chart 2, we can see the reality of students‟ level in learning pronunciation at Thanh Liem C high school Being asked about this, all the teachers said that students‟ level is not equal Only 20% teachers said that their students‟ level at pronunciation is at average; and even 60% of the students get under average level None of the teachers evaluate their students‟ level at pronunciation is good or excellent

3.1.3 The purpose of teaching and learning pronunciation

Table 1: The purpose of teaching and learning pronunciation

To help students to communicate better 100% 100%

To provide students with the knowledge about

To help students distinguish the differences

between English and Vietnamese

It is obvious that there is a similarity between the teachers and students‟ purpose of teaching and learning pronunciation All the teachers (100%) agree that teaching pronunciation is to help students to communicate better and the most

purpose of learning pronunciation is also to communicate better 43% of the teachers and 48% of the students think that teaching and learning pronunciation is to get better results in the exam

3.1.4 The attraction of teaching and learning pronunciation

Chart 3: The attraction of teaching and learning pronunciation

The chart shows that there is a strong agreement of the teachers and students about the attraction of teaching and learning pronunciation 60% of teachers and 63% of students find teaching and learning pronunciation is not very interesting 19% of the students and 20% teacher respondents are neutral with it Only 20% of teachers and 18% of student respondents find teaching and learning pronunciation interesting Nobody considers it as very interesting We can see that the attitudes of teachers and students towards teaching and learning pronunciation are negative

3.1.5 Pronunciation teaching and learning time

Chart 4 presents time that teachers and students spend on teaching and learning pronunciation One more time teachers and students share the same ideas about the fact that too little time is on pronunciation 80% of the teachers and 43%

of the students said that they did not have time to spend on teaching and learning pronunciation in one teaching session (45 minutes); 20% of the teachers and 32% of the students spend less than 20 minutes on teaching pronunciation None of the teachers and a very small number of the students teaches and learns pronunciation for more than 20 minutes

The overall results indicate that the reality of teaching and learning pronunciation at Thanh Liem C high school is not positive as expected Both

teachers and students are not very optimistic towards teaching and learning pronunciation, students‟ level is not good as well as time spent on teaching pronunciation is limited during one normal teaching session

3.1.6 Teachers’ and students’ problems in teaching and learning vowels and consonants

4.1.6.1 Teachers’ and students’ problems in teaching and learning vowels

Question 6 was given to the students to check their understanding about English vowels It was shown in the result of this question that 18 % students understand clearly about short and long vowels while 42 % respondents said that they understand quire well with English short and long vowels 21% respondents said that they don‟t understand anything about English short and long vowels Noticeably, 19 % expressed that they understand quite well about short and long vowels but they still get problems in distinguishing and pronouncing these vowels

To the teachers this question used to address their difficulties in teaching English vowels 40% teachers find it is easy to teach English short and long vowels while 20% respondents said that it is neither difficult nor easy for them to teach this issue 20% other participants said that English vowels is quite difficult to teach while the rest thought that English vowels are very difficult to teach to students Despite the result, we should consider whether these respondents could realize their problems and express them or not This will be complemented by other instruments: classroom observation and interview

3.1.6.2 Students’ difficulties in acquiring English consonants

With the aim at investigating the problems that students may get when they

- Among English consonants, which ones do you find hard to learn?

And it can be clearly seen from the result that they had more problems with English consonants than vowels The most common problems with English consonants were fricative consonants / θ/, /ð/, /ʒ/ and /ʃ/ (86 respondents), two word- final fortis stops consonants /p/ and /t/ (61 respondents), /k/ and /g/ (35 respondents), and two dental consonant stops /f/ and /v/ (34%) They also expressed that they had difficulties with some similar pairs such as / θ/ in English

vs /t/ in Vietnamese and /ð/in English vs /d/ in Vietnamese

3.1.7 Teachers and students’ problems in teaching and learning pronunciation

Chart 5: Teachers and students’ problems in teaching and learning pronunciation

Chart 5 shows that both the teachers and the students face many problems during the process of teaching and learning pronunciation The biggest problem that both teachers and students face comes from the nature of pronunciation The next two factors preventing students from gaining good pronunciation are students‟ motivation and teaching time 25 % student respondents said that they had no motivation in learning pronunciation and that maybe one of the reasons why they difficult to learn pronunciation while 10% teachers thought that students‟

motivation affected their pronunciation learning, 20% of the teachers and 18% of the students said that they do not have enough time on pronunciation 10% of the teachers considered that their students‟ competence in pronunciation is too low and 14% students also agreed with that idea Class setting is the next factor that 20% teachers chose In contrast, only 10% of the students agreed with this It is clear that quality of teaching staff is not good enough to come over all the difficulties in teaching pronunciation

3.1.8 The causes of the difficulties in teaching and learning Pronunciation

Neutral Not strongly agree

Chart 6: The causes of the difficulties in teaching and learning

pronunciation

It is clear that almost teachers and students agree that these factors have influence on the teaching and learning pronunciation process However, the levels

of the effects are different Most of teachers and students (more than 50%) strongly agree that amount of exposure is one of the most main causes of difficulties in teaching and learning pronunciation All of them believe that if a learner is

„surrounded‟ by English and this constant exposure should affect pronunciation skills People who speak English more often at school or at work will have better pronunciation skills than those who do not Attitudes and motivation also have strong agreement If a learner has good attitudes and motivation towards learning pronunciation, he will try to learn it more As a result, he will have better pronunciation One of the causes which have great influence in teaching and learning pronunciation is the differences between English and Vietnamese There are some sounds in English that Vietnamese does not have, which makes it difficult for the Vietnamese to pronounce like native speakers Especially, there are few teachers and students paying much attention to age and phonetic ability Maybe they think that it is never too late to learn and everyone has ability to learn pronunciation well

3.1.9 Causes of the difficulties in teaching and learning pronunciation in English 10

NeutralNot strongly agree