Using English traditional songs to improve students' pronunciation Sử dụng bài hát truyền thống Anh để cải thiện khả năng phát âm của học sinh một nghiên cứu h

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** TRẦN THỊ TUYẾT MAI USING ENGLISH TRADITIONAL SO

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

TRẦN THỊ TUYẾT MAI

USING ENGLISH TRADITIONAL SONGS TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION: AN ACTION RESEARCH AT

DUY TIEN C HIGH SCHOOL

SỬ DỤNG BÀI HÁT TRUYỀN THỐNG ANH ĐỂ CẢI THIỆN KHẢ NĂNG PHÁT ÂM CỦA HỌC SINH: MỘT NGHIÊN CỨU

HÀNH ĐỘNG TẠI TRƯỜNG PTTH C DUY TIÊN

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10

Hanoi - 2010

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

TRẦN THỊ TUYẾT MAI

USING ENGLISH TRADITIONAL SONGS TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION: AN ACTION RESEARCH AT

DUY TIEN C HIGH SCHOOL

SỬ DỤNG BÀI HÁT TRUYỀN THỐNG ANH ĐỂ CẢI THIỆN KHẢ NĂNG PHÁT ÂM CỦA HỌC SINH: MỘT NGHIÊN CỨU

HÀNH ĐỘNG TẠI TRƯỜNG PTTH C DUY TIÊN

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10

Supervisor: Mai Thị Loan, M.A

Hanoi - 2010

Table of contents

Acknowledgements i

Declaration ii

Abstract iii

List of abbreaviations iv

List of charts and tables v

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Method of the study 2

6 Design of the study 3

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Definition of pronunciation? 4

1.2 The teacher’s and students’ role in teaching and learning pronunciation 4

1.2.1 The teacher’s role 4

1.2.2 The students’ roles 6

1.3 Pronunciation and communicative teaching 6

1.4 Review of traditional methods and approaches for teaching pronunciation 7

1.4.1 Traditional methods of teaching pronunciation 7

1.4.2 Approaches for teaching pronunciation 8

1.5 Songs as motivator for students to improve pronunciation 9

1.6 Aspects of pronunciation that can be improved through songs 10

1.6.1 Sounds 10

1.6.2 Word stress 11

1.6.3 Rhythm 11

1.6.4 Intonation 11

1.7 Choosing songs 11

1.8 Summary 12

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 13

2.1 The context of the study 13

2.1.1 Physical conditions which affect students’ participation in a pronunciation lesson 13 2.1.2 Teaching and learning conditions at Duy Tien C high school 13

2.1.3 Background information of the phonetics lessons at upper secondary school 14

2.2 Data collection instruments 15

2.2.1 Questionnaires 15

2.2.2 Tests 16

2.3 Data collection procedures 16

2.4 The use of songs in the lessons 16

2.5 Summary 17

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 18

3.1 Questionnaires 18

3.1.1 Questionnaire for students 18

3.1.1.1 Aims 18

3.1.1.2 Participants 18

3.1.1.3 Data analysis 18

3.1.1.3.1 Students’ attitude towards English songs 18

3.1.1.3.2 The improvement of students’ pronunciation after they had been taught with the use of songs 19

3.1.1.3.3 Activities students do during the pronunciation lesson 20

3.1.1.3.4 Students’ favourite tasks while learning pronunciation lesson with the use of songs 21

3.1.1.3.5 The effectiveness of using songs in teaching pronunciation 21

3.1.1.3.6 Some disadvantages of using songs in teaching pronunciation 23

3.1.2 Questionnaire for teachers 24

3.1.2.1 Aims 24

3.1.2.2 Participants 24

3.1.2.3 Data analysis 24

3.1.2.3.1 Teachers’ frequency of using songs to teach pronunciation for students 24

3.1.2.3.2 Kinds of songs teachers used to teach pronunciation 25

3.1.2.3.3 Kind of task(s) the teachers usually designed to teach students with the use of songs 25 3.1.2.3.4 The sources of songs 26

3.1.2.3.5 Difficulties of designing the pronunciation lesson with the use of songs 26

3.2 Tests 26

3.2.1 Aims 26

3.2.2 Participants 26

3.2.3 Test description 26

3.2.4 Data analysis and finding 27

3.2.4.1 Pre-test (At the beginning of the term) 27

3.2.4.1.1.Frequency distribution 27

3.2.4.1.2 Correlation 28

3.2.4.2 At the end of the term (Post-test) 29

3.2.4.2.1 Frequency distribution 29

3.2.4.2.2 Correlation 30

Chapter 4: implication 31

4.1 The effectiveness of using songs to teach pronunciation for high school students 31

4.2 How to use songs to teach pronunciation for students 31

4.2.1 Suggestions for task designing 31

4.2.2 Suggestions for choosing the topic of the songs 32

4.2.3 How to select the songs 32

4.3 A sample lesson plan 33

4.4 Summary 34

Part C: conclusion 35

1 Summary of the results 35

2 Limitations of the study 35

3 Suggestions for further study 36

4 Conclusion 36

References 38

APPENDIces i

Appendix 1: Survey questionnaire for students i

Appendix 2: Survey questionnaire for teachers iii

APPENDIX 3: Pre-test v

APPENDIX 4: Post-test vi

Appendix 5 : Sample tasks vii

LIST OF ABBREAVIATIONS

1 EFL: English as Foreign Language

2 CLT: Communicative Language Teaching

3 CFL-VNUH: College of Foreign Language- Viet Nam National University, Hanoi

4 L2: Second Language

5 No: Number

6 Std Deviation: Standard Deviation

LIST OF CHART AND TABLES

Chart 1: Students’ attitude towards English song

Chart 2: Students’ improvement after they had been taught with the use of songs

Chart3: Activities students do during the pronunciation lesson

Chart 4: Kind of task(s) the teachers usually designed to teach students with the use of songs Chart 5: Raw marks in pronunciation test ( Pre-test)

Chart 6: Raw marks in pronunciation test (Post-test)

Table 1: Students’ favorite tasks while listening to songs

Table 2: The effectiveness of using songs in teaching pronunciation

Table 3: Teachers’ frequency of using songs to teach pronunciation for students

Table 4: Kinds of songs teachers used to teach pronunciation

Table 5: The sources of songs

Table 6: Frequency distribution (pre-test)

Table 7: Mean and Std Deviation (pre-test)

Table 8: Frequency distribution (post-test)

Table 9: Mean and Std Deviation (post-test)

Part 1: introduction

1 Rationale of the study

Nowadays, English plays an extremely important role in helping people communicate with the rest of the world It also becomes a golden key to open the door of many fields such as commerce, communication, science, and technology throughout the world Therefore, English has been taught and learnt in all schools in our countries

One of the most important goals of learning a foreign language is to communicate The fact

is that communication of human beings bases on sounds If people do not pronounce correctly, they will have many difficulties in exchanging information or it may lead to misunderstanding or the communication breakdown Therefore, teaching and learning pronunciation becomes one of the most important parts in studying a foreign language Traditional ways of teaching phonetics to non-native speakers of English have usually followed the same way First, the segmental level of phonetics description is introduced, then the suprasegmental features (such as stress, rhythm, and intonation) are presented In most pronunciation courses, teachers spend a lot of time teaching vowels and consonants and ask students to practice these segmentals individually, in words and in sentences However, this approach leaves little time for suprasegmentals and they are usually treated with less depth and concentration then the segmental features The good sides of this method are that students know how to produce and distinguish the vocalic and consonantal contrast of English, yet when they speak the language, they still have the very strong foreign accent which sometimes causes misunderstanding or no understanding at all Therefore, the questions what teachers should do to teach pronunciation effectively and how teachers do to make students become interested in learning pronunciation are really big issues that need to be answered Lightbrown, P.M.and Spada, N (1999:57) state that:

“If we can make our classrooms places where students enjoy coming because the content is interesting and relevant to their age and level of ability, where the learning goals are challenging yet manageable and clear, and where the atmosphere is supportive and non-threatening, we can make a positive contribution to students‟ motivation to learn.” They also show that students never learn everything they are taught, they only learn what they are interested in However, interest is something very unstable and unpredictable because

it depends on many factors Sesnan, B (1997 :33-35) describes a good teacher as the one

who does not only use a good teaching method, but also takes into consideration of how to teach students, how to learn effectively by themselves and helps them to involve themselves with interest in the learning process, suggests some main ways to hold students‟ interest such as: audio-visual aids including objects, pictures, language activities like games, songs, story-telling, project Of all the items, songs seem to be the most interesting to exploit to the author Therefore, the researcher chooses songs to teach pronunciation for students at Duy Tien C high school

2 Aims of the study

The study aims at:

(1): finding out whether the use of English traditional songs to teach pronunciation for high school students is effective or not

(2): working out the most effective ways of using English songs to teach pronunciation for high school students

4 Scope of the study

The study mainly focuses on exploiting English songs as supplementary material to improve the pronunciation of the 10th -form-students

Moreover, the theory of English te aching pronunciation is complex comprising a number of components However, as this study is concerned with the study of using English traditional songs, it is confined with only some basic elements such as sound, stress and linking

Songs may include many types such as: pop, rock, rap, hip-hop, jazz, classical, traditional

or country songs, etc This present study focuses on the use of famous traditional songs that have soft music with quite simple words, catchy tunes and are easy to listen to

5 Method of the study

In order to achieve the aims of the study, the following data collection instruments were used:

(1): pre-test and post-test for both experimental and control groups

(2): a survey quetionnaire for experimental group

(3): a survey questionnaire for English teachers at Duy Tien C high school

The collected data come from 6 teachers of English and 90 students at Duy Tien C high school The data collection time lasted 13 weeks during the second term of the school year 2009-2010

6 Design of the study

The study includes three parts:

Part 1: Introduction presents rationale, aims, reseach questions, scope, method, and design

of the study

Part 2: Development consists of 4 chapters:

Chapter 1: Literature review sets up some theoretical background that are relevant

to the purpose the study: pronunciation and communicative teaching, review of traditional methods and approaches for teaching pronunciation, songs as motivator for students to improve pronunciation, aspects of pronunciation that can be improved through songs and choosing songs

Chapter 2: Method of the study focuses on the present conditions of teaching and learning at Duy Tien C high school, data collection instruments, data collection procedures and the use of songs in the lessons

Chapter 3: This chapter include data analysis and findings

Chapter 4: Implication of the study

Part 3: Conclusion summaries the major findings discussed in part 2, gives out the limitation of the study and suggestions for further study

In addition, Jones (1998:5) defines that pronunciation is “the way in which people pronounce words.”

Pronunciation is also defined in an article on the internet as follows: (http://www.en.wikipedia org/wiki/pronunciation): “Pronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word.”

Since pronunciation is a complicated concept that involves many aspects, it is difficult to make clear what definition is the most precise one In this paper, the definition by Jones (1998) is picked up for the purpose of the study that is using songs to teach pronunciation

1.2 The teacher’s and students’ role in teaching and learning pronunciation

1.2.1 The teacher’s role

There is still a debate in the language teaching world about the effectiveness of teaching pronunciation Some researchers (Purcell and Suter (1980: 271-87); Morley (1991: 485-6)) claim that teachers can make little or no difference in improving students‟ pronunciation

In other words, the attainment of accurate pronunciation in a second language is a matter of substantially beyond the control of educators However, Pennington (1989: 203-227) indicates that teachers can make noticeable difference if certain criteria are fulfilled

The fact is that teachers play a very important role in teaching and learning pronunciation Kenworthy, J (1996:1) has mentioned some roles of a typical teacher of teaching pronunciation as follows

Helping learners hear

Teachers of pronunciation have very important roles in helping learners perceive individual sounds Learners often have a strong tendency to hear the sound of English in terms of the sounds of their native language Teachers should describe the position of the tongue and show how these foreign language sounds are physically articulated They also

need to check that their learners are hearing sounds according to the appropriate categories and help them to develop new categories if necessary

Helping learners make sounds

Another important role of the teachers in teaching pronunciation is to make sounds, especially sounds of English that donot occur in the mother tongue Moreover, teachers help students to imitate the new sounds or give some hints which may help them to make new sounds

Providing feedback

Besides helping students produce sounds, teachers are also required to tell learners how they are doing In other words, the teachers must provide them with information about their

performance because learners cannot be aware of whether they have got it right

Pointing out what is going on

Learners need to know what to pay attention to and what to work on Because speaking is for the most part unconsciously controlled, learners may miss something important Teachers need to make learners aware of the potential of sounds the resources available to them for sending spoken massages

other researchers (Moore, 1992: 173; Pintrich and Strunk, 2002: 245) also claim that the desire to do well is a kind of “achievement motivation”, if one does not care about a particular task or does not see the value of it, one will not be motivated to do well

In brief, it is very clear that a formal teacher plays a very important role in the students‟ learning process The teacher should always bear in mind the above duties so that the pronunciation lesson will be made enjoyable and effective

1.2.2 The students’ roles

Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Ngoc (2001: 7-15) have mentioned some roles of students as follows: They have to perceive the model as exactly as they can because failing to do so, students will not be able to pronounce the model correctly In addition, they need to respond to the recognition, imitation and repetition activities Finally, students should do self-correction of their pronunciation mistakes

Moreover, it is also proved that ultimate success in pronunciation will depend on how much effort the learners put into it (Morley, (1991: 481-520)) The teacher may be highly skilled at teaching but if the learners take no action and do not try to monitor their own efforts, then the change or improvement is minimal Therefore, the very important role of learners is to respond actively during the lesson

Generally speaking, in teaching a foreign language, it is hard to find the improvement of the learners if they take no notice or no action in the study Therefore, the teacher should find the best way to motivate students to learn

1.3 Pronunciation and communicative teaching

In grammar-translation method, there is no place to teach pronunciation because high emphasis was put on grammar and vocabulary In fact, pronunciation is not an optional extra for the language learners, any more than grammar, vocabulary or any other aspects of language (Tench (1981: 22-32)) With the purpose of communication, pronunciation correctly is of vital importance, because “a learner who consistently mispronounces a range of phonemes can be extremely difficult for a speaker from a language community to understand” (Gerald, K., 2000:12) Therefore, “a major goal of all English teaching classes should be to enable learners to use English effectively, as far as possible accurately, in communication” (Davies, P (2000:15)) Therefore, teachers should bear in mind that memorizing language forms and rules is valid as a short term objective, but not as the main goal In the past, the goal should always be native-like pronunciation; however, most

people now think that this is an inappropriate goal for most learners Kenworthy, J

(2000:3) suggested that “for a majority of learners, a far more reasonable goal is to be comfortably intelligible”

Castillo (1990: 4) shows that in order for students to do well in the pronunciation of English, the pronunciation lessons need to be taught in conjunction with communicative practices Nooteboom (1983: 183-94) has also suggested that speech production is affected

by speech perception; the hearer has become an important factor in communication discourse Therefore, there should be the need to integrate pronunciation with communicative activities, to give the students situations to develop their pronunciation by listening and speaking

The communicative approach to pronunciation teaching requires teaching methods and objectives that include “whole person learner involvement”(Morley, 1991:501) Three important dimensions are also suggested to focus on in any pronunciation programs: the learner‟s intellectual involvement, affective involvement and physical involvement In the communicative learning program, the teacher also has a special role to play- supplies information, sets high standards, provides a wide variety of practice opportunities and overall supports and encourages the learners

All students can do well in learning the pronunciation of a foreign language if they have set the learning goals for themselves Pronunciation must also be viewed in the same light as grammar, syntax, and discourse, which is a crucial part of communication The content of the course should be intergrated into the communication class If these criteria are met, learners can be expected to do well in learning pronunciation of a foreign language

1.4 Review of traditional methods and approaches for teaching pronunciation

1.4.1 Traditional methods of teaching pronunciation

The role of pronunciation in foreign language teaching is very different among various schools of language teaching In grammar-translation method, there is no place for teaching pronunciation In contrast, pronunciation is the main focus in audio-lingual method where emphasis is on the traditional notions of pronunciation, minimal pairs, drills and short conversations During the late 1960s and the 1970s, many questions were raised about the effectiveness of teaching pronunciation in an EFL curriculum However, there has been a move from teacher-centered to learner-centered classrooms Morley (1991: 481-521) states the need for the integration of pronunciation with the oral communication;

emphasis changes from segmental to suprasegmental, more emphasis on individual learner needs, meaningful task-based practices, development of new teacher strategies for the teaching

The language teaching world has now witnessed a change from the teacher centred to learner centred classrooms The emphasis of every course also shifts to meaningful communication Consequently, intelligible pronunciation must be the goal for any courses

1.4.2 Approaches for teaching pronunciation

Tench (1981), Pennington (1989), Jones and Evans (1995), Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994) mentioned two approaches to teaching pronunciation: bottom- up and top-down

In bottom-up approach, the teaching of pronunciation begins with the articulation of individual vowels and consonants and continues with intonation A bottom-up model of speech perception assumes that “We perceive speech by building up an interpretation in a series of separate stages, beginning with the lowest level unit and gradually working up to

a larger unit (Anderson and Lynch (1988: 22)) The basic idea is that if you teach segments, the suprasegmental features will be learnt naturally This approach has been considered as traditional way of teaching pronunciation focusing more on segmental elements than suprasegmental ones The benefit that learners get from this approach is that they could personalize individual sound correctly However, they could lack the idea of contextualized sounds in connected speech Therefore, this approach should be focused from the very beginning of a course

In contrast with the bottom-up approach, the top-down one which “uses knowledge and expectation to guess, predict or fill in the perceived event or message” (Pinker (1994: 474)) emphasizes on the idea of contextualized sounds in connected speech The assumption is that once the prosodic features of pronunciation are in place, the necessary segmental discriminations will follow naturally Wrong (1993: 45) reminds us that the most relevant features of pronunciation- stress, rhythm, and intonation- play a greater role in English communication than the individual sounds themselves Therefore, teaching speech from the perfective of suprasegmentals seem indispensable in a CLT setting Yule, G., Hoffman, P and Damico, J (1987:768) also claim that “learning pronunciation should not be limited to finding primary stress and comparing individual vowel and consonant sounds in a given word Focusing on individual vowel and consonant sounds is only the first step in learning English speech.”

1.5 Songs as motivator for students to improve pronunciation

Since our motivation in language teaching has shifted from grammar-translation method to communicative approach, the teaching and learning pronunciation is considered to be vital

in language classroom However, teachers should take into consideration that students can

be expected to do well in the pronunciation of English if the pronunciation class is taken out of isolation and becomes an integral part of the oral communication class (Morley, (1991: 496)) The goal of pronunciation should be changed from the attainment of perfect pronunciation to the more realistic goals of developing functional intelligibility, communicability The main aim of this change is to develop spoken English for learners‟ individual needs

There have been a lot of researches on the role of attitudes and motivation in second language learning The overall findings show that positive attitudes and motivation are related to success in second language learning (Gardner (1985: 10)) Motivation is believed

to play an important role in the process of acquiring an additional language because motivated students are usually those who participate actively in the class, express interest

in the subject matter and study a lot Davies, P (2000: 13) states that most teachers consider motivation essential for successful language learning However, motivation is difficult to define and measure and is a complex phenomenon, and not all learners respond

to teaching in the same ways Therefore, it is not easy to motivate students in a

pronunciation lesson

Moreover, students are those who still like playing, so the teacher is expected to be imaginative and creative in developing their teaching techniques to make the English lessons more exciting Teachers should make students feel they need English and English

is interesting Davies, P (2000: 12) also mentions that more important factors for successful language teaching and learning are plenty of opportunities for learners to participate in class and an atmosphere in which they feel motivated to learn One way to arise their enthusiasm is by the use of songs

English songs are widely used in language teaching for a number of outstanding features Firstly, songs make learning enjoyable and fits with the aim of English They also have great attraction to the students that other forms of the mass media lack Secondly, the use

of songs makes learning enjoyable and fits with students‟ psychological features and emotional requirements Students are often willing to learn to sing a song in a foreign

language even if they do not fully understand or partially understand the meaning of the words Learning songs allows them a chance to feel relaxed from the pressure of the study Songs have been an amusing companion for human beings for a long period of time As an integral part of our language experience, it can be of great value to foreign language teaching Thirdly, various types of songs are produced for learners of different levels of language proficiency No matter what kind of language class, appropriate songs materials can always be found Lastly, using the present authentic materials like English songs can provide a lot of cultural background which has proved to play an important role in second language learning Zhu Weifang (2008: 2-3) states that “Being a combination of music and language, songs have innumerable virtues that deserve our attention Their richness in culture and themes, their idiomatic and poetic expressions, their therapeutic functions and

so on make them an impeccable tool for language teaching.”

1.6 Aspects of pronunciation that can be improved through songs

Many authors all over the world provide different point of views about elements of teaching pronunciation According to Gerall, K (2000: 10-15), teaching pronunciation concludes: vowels, consonants, words and sentence stress, intonation, other aspect of connected speech and spelling On the other hand, Colin, M (1985:4-27) argues that elements of teaching pronunciation are weak forms, clusters, linking-up, contractions and stress time Moreover, Grant, L (1995:118-120) provides a more comprehensive and authentic elements of teaching She organized the teaching elements from sounds to

syllables and words, to sentences and finally to discoursal segments

However, within the boundaries of this thesis, only very basic elements will be considered

to be taught The author of this study found that students like to imitate singers; therefore, students would likely to imitate their ways of making sounds In addition, the tune of songs go from low to high, up and down, which is a very good condition to practice stress and intonation in English To be brief, elements of pronunciation needs to be taught in this study are as follows:

1.6.1 Sounds

According to Gimson (1962), English sounds consist of two types, they are vowels and consonants Vowels and consonants have different functions in a syllable Since English has borrowed a lot of words from other languages such as: Eskimo, Farsi, ancient Latin, Greek and France, sounds and phonetic transcription are confusing aspects of English

pronunciation Homographs and homophones are two typical examples of unequivalence

of sound and phonetic transcription Therefore, the most important elements need teaching are vowels and consonants, syllables, phonetic transcription and ending sounds

1.6.2 Word stress

In English, stress is one of the most prominent features that cause difficulties to learners In words of two or more syllables, one of them is stressed and stronger, louder and longer than the other(s) This stressed syllable is very important because speakers rely on patterns

of stress to identify the words and phrases they hear (Grant, L (1993: 241)) Therefore, word stress must be highly focused on at the beginning of any pronunciation course to help learners to have understandable pronunciation

1.6.3 Rhythm

According to Kenworthy (2000:30) rhythm is characterized by the alternation of strong and weak syllables Rhythm is, therefore, a product of word stress and the way in which important items are fore-grounded through their occurrence on a strong beat

1.6.4 Intonation

Being aware of intonation in English is very important because the ways the speaker puts stress and intonation in a sentence can carry different meanings “Intonation in English is the rise and fall of pitch in order to convey a range of meanings, emotions or situation” (www American accent com) So, students need to know about intonation right from the start of any courses In this point, songs seem to give a great help to improve English intonation and stress

1.7 Choosing songs

Choosing songs is one of the most important stages since song materials are related to the success of teaching pronunciation in an EFL class This step can be done not only by teachers but also students Students always select songs that are popular or easy to listen to

As a guider, the researcher in this study compares these songs, and tries to find out the most suitable songs to teach pronunciation for students, especially students at Duy Tien C high school When choosing songs, the following aspects are considered: songs can be clearly listened; some words of songs are submerged in music, even the teachers can not hear the lyrics clearly; the content of the songs should be filled the wholesome thought and without negative influence; there should not be any new vocabulary or out-of-date slangs (Eken, D.K (1996: 46-47)) There are various types of western songs, such as: pop music,

jazz music, classical music, rock music and traditional songs In my opinion, traditional songs are the ones which best suit to the age of 10th-form-students because their melody is wonderful and their lengths are suitable for the time of teaching pronunciation in secondary schools

is very important in the communicative curricular nowadays Therefore, the question that how to teach pronunciation effectively has been answered by the use of songs in this thesis The reason for using songs is that songs seem to motivate students very well However, due to the time limitation of each pronunciation lesson, only short and simple songs are chosen to improve students‟ word stress, intonation, rhythm and so on

Chapter 2: methodology

2.1 The context of the study

2.1.1 Physical conditions which affect students’ participation in a pronunciation lesson

The environment in which students learn can greatly influence their performance and being at school The learning environment can be seen as physical conditions including class size, chairs, desks, tables, lights, boards Harmer, J (1992:271) argued that physical conditions have great impact on students‟ learning as well as their attitudes towards the subject matter In fact, the better learning environment is, the more it inspires the people inside it

well-Furthermore, the text books and authentic materials can be considered important resources Textbooks specify goals and objectives of a language teaching program so they are considered greatly important Krashen, S (1981:126) states that “children progress by understanding the language that is a little beyond them” It means that if the contents of the textbooks are suitable and up to the students‟ knowledge, they will be of great benefit to develop students‟ language competence Authentic materials can be seen as an important factor affecting students‟ learning situation Authentic materials may include: tapes, tape-recorders, language laboratories, wall-pictures, wall charts, other display facilities, slides, film trips, films, televisions, radios, record players, video recorders, and libraries It is true that authentic materials motivate students much, particularly when they are too tired of doing many exercises Students realize that learning with authentic materials is so interesting and they will continue more on the lesson When talking about this, Bowen, B

M (1982:1) says that authentic materials “encourage the learners to lift their eyes from their books, which makes it easier and more natural for one to speak to another” In fact, different types of authentic materials can help to change the atmosphere of a classroom and bring in the „real world‟ which makes students think and act just as in daily life

2.1.2 Teaching and learning conditions at Duy Tien C high school

The study was conducted at Duy Tien C high school, which was founded 20 years ago and situated far from the centre of Phu Ly town English is comparatively new subject at this school and was just introduced into the school curriculum around 10 years ago

Although founded not long ago, the school has enough classrooms but does not have a language lab for English classes In the school, there is a serious shortage of modern

facilities such as overhead projectors The school has only 2 overhead projectors for 23 classes and nearly 50 teachers of 12 different subjects

Since 2006, the school has used the new syllabuses published by the ministry of education and training which are regarded as updated but difficult ones The difficulties in teaching and learning come firstly from students In general, students in the school differ in their level of language proficiency Most students have been learning English since grade 6, but

a small number of students who come from the centre of the town started in grades 3 to 5 All of the students live in the remote rural area where the living and learning conditions are difficult

Although most of the students started learning English at the early age, many of them have low proficiency of English because of their wrong attitudes towards English learning as well as the shortage of time for English Besides, all the new syllabuses of other subjects which are considered difficult and overloaded have greatly affected students‟ English learning

Despite of the above difficulties, the English teachers at Duy Tien C high school are young, well-trained and energetic which is the very good condition for CLT The school has 6 English teachers consisting of 5 females and 1 male They are from 22 to 35 years old Of all the English teachers who got the B.A degrees, four from the CFL-VNUH, one from Hanoi university and one from Thai Nguyen university The youngest teacher finished university last year, so she has nearly one-year teaching experience The oldest has over 10 years of teaching experience

In terms of language teaching method, most of the teachers at Duy Tien C high school are familiar with the traditional teaching method which put a great emphasis on grammar and vocabulary and there is no place for teaching pronunciation When working with the new syllabus, they feel it difficult to initiate activities and manage the class Fortunately, all of them are young teachers and have just graduated from the college and they have great desire and motivation to acquire knowledge of communicative competence to apply in teaching English

2.1.3 Background information of the phonetics lessons at upper secondary school

Phonetics is designed to be taught together with grammatical items All these two items take up of 45 minutes teaching Frequently, the author spends about 7 to 10 minutes teaching phonetics because grammatical items are always considered to be more important and need more concentration During five years of teaching English at Duy Tien C high

school, the reearcher has found that the students pay little or no attention to phonetic part Some students are not motivated and others are not absorbed in the lesson Later, after talking with some of the students, the author realized that the students found the class boring and didnot feel they had learnt much in the class Basing on feed backs from the students, some changes were introduced to the phonetic lessons

2.2 Data collection instruments

Both questionnaires and tests were employed in this research so as to get the accurate data These two interuments help the researcher get more in-depth data for analysis

2.2.1 Questionnaires

The questionnaire is exploited in this research since it is one of the most popular instruments in gathering data Questionnaires are easy to prepare and can be given to large groups of subjects at the same time It also help the researcher get a large amount of information within a short period of time

The questionnaire for students aims at finding out their opinions and attitudes towards the use of English songs It consists of six questions which focuses on six main aspects that the researcher would like to investigate as follows: question 1 aimed at finding students‟ attitude towards English songs in general; question 2 worked out the degrees in which songs can help students to improve their pronunciation; question 3 found out the activities students do while they listening to songs; question 4 clarified what type of tasks students like to do in the pronunciation lesson with the use of songs; question 5 clarified students‟ awareness of using songs in teaching and learning pronunciation; question 6 worked out the drawback of using songs

When delivering the questionnaire, students were encouraged to make questions and to have these questions answered to make sure they understood the questions completely Especially, students were allowed to write in Vietnamese about the drawbacks of using songs to make sure that they could express their feeling completely

The questionnaire for teachers consists of five questions which aims at finding out the ways and what kind of songs the teachers used to teach pronunciation: question 1 aimed at finding out the frequency the teachers use songs to teach pronunciation; question 2 made clear about the kind of songs the teachers use to teach; question 3 found out the tasks which the teachers designed to teach with the use of songs; question 4 found out the available sourses the teachers use to exploit songs question 5 clarified difficulties the

teachers encountered while designing the lessons

2.2.2 Tests

The aims of the tests were to answer the question that how songs can help students progress in their pronunciation lesson The time allowance for each test was fifteen minutes The test consists of two parts with different levels for both class 10 A2 and 10 A3 The first test was delivered to students as pre-test after the first week of the second term and the second test were finished by the students as post-test at the end of this term

2.3 Data collection procedures

The author carried out this study in 2 10th-grade-classes during the second term of the school year 2009-2010 There were 45 students in each class with various levels of English Phonetics is only a small part in a language focus lesson and the author applied English traditional songs in the pronunciation part just in class 10 A2 and class 10 A3 was taught without using English songs The data was collected in the following steps:

Step 1: 2 classes (10A2 and 10A3) were given a pronunciation test as a pre-test

Step 2: a post-test was used in both classes to find out the results of the teaching and learning pronunciation

Step 3: the survey questionnaire for students was delivered to the experimental class to find out what they thought, how much they enjoyed the effectiveness of using songs in pronunciation lessons In addition, a survey questionnaire was also delivered to the English teachers at Duy Tien C high school to find out how they used songs in the class

2.4 The use of songs in the lessons

In this study, English songs were designed in the form of tasks for students to perform at the beginning of each language focus lesson They were commonly taught in about ten to fifteen minutes via the following steps:

In the first step, the teacher presented briefly the background of the songs (the composer, the singers, or the circumstance in which it was written), explained some new words of the tasks Secondly, the teacher put students into groups and asked them to skim through the handouts and made some guess about the tasks Finally, the teacher played the songs and let students to listen once from the beginning to the end to get the general picture, tones of the songs The tape was played for the second time, pausing at the key words so that the students had time to do the tasks After three times, teacher asked students to give the answers and then corrected them

2.5 Summary

In this chapter, the author presents the context of the study, the teaching and learning conditions at Duy Tien C high school The physical conditions which affect students‟ participation in pronunciation lesson are also made clear in order to find out the most effective condition for the learning pronuciation of English In addition, the researcher gives some background information about the phonetics lessons at upper secondary school Tests and questionnares are the data collection instruments of this study In the last part, the author describes the use of songs in the pronunciation lesson