A study on activities to increase motivation to learn pronunciation for the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers'''' Training College

1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES - - TRỊNH PHƯƠNG LIÊN A STUDY ON ACTIVITIES TO INCREASE MOTIVATION TO LEARN PRONUNCIATION FOR THE FIRST – YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANAM TEACHERS’ TRAINING COLLEGE (NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG NHẰM TĂNG CƯỜNG HỨNG THÚ HỌC PHÁT ÂM TIẾNG ANH CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT HỆ CAO ĐẲNG TIẾNG ANH TẠI TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG SƯ PHẠM HÀ NAM ) M.A Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Methodology Code: 60.14.10 HANOI – 2010 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES - - TRỊNH PHƯƠNG LIÊN A STUDY ON ACTIVITIES TO INCREASE MOTIVATION TO LEARN PRONUNCIATION FOR THE FIRST – YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANAM TEACHERS’ TRAINING COLLEGE (NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG NHẰM TĂNG CƯỜNG HỨNG THÚ HỌC PHÁT ÂM TIẾNG ANH CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT HỆ CAO ĐẲNG TIẾNG ANH TẠ I TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG SƯ PHẠM HÀ NAM ) Field: ENGLISH METHODOLOGY Code: 60.14.10 Supervisor: NGUYỄN HUYỀN MINH, M.A HANOI - 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study Statement of the problem Purpose of the study Research questions Method of the study Significance of the study Definition of terms CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Researches into pronunciation teaching 1.1.1 Approaches to pronunciation teaching 1.1.2 Teaching Pronunciation: Segmentals or Suprasegmentals? 1.1.3 Factors affect pronunciation learning and teaching English 1.2 Researches into motivation in teaching and learning 1.2.1 Role of motivation to students‟ learning 1.2.2 Factors affect students‟ motivation 1.2.3 Framework to increase and sustain students‟ motivation 1.3 Researches into the ways to motivate students in pronunciation lessons 10 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 12 2.1 Context of the study 12 2.2 Participants of the study 13 2.3 Instruments 13 2.3.1 Diagnostic test 13 2.3.2 Post test 14 2.3.3 Final oral examination 14 2.3.4 Questionnaire 14 2.3.5 The students‟ journals 14 2.3.6 Teacher‟s observations and anecdotal notes 14 CHAPTER 3: DATA PRESENTATION 3.1 Pronunciation orientation and diagnostic test 15 3.2 The students‟ journals 16 3.3 Dictation usage 16 3.4 Games 16 3.5 Songs 22 3.6 Software 23 CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Results 24 4.1.1 Diagnostic test, posttest and final oral examination 24 4.1.2 Questionnaire 25 4.1.2.1 Areas of investigation 25 4.1.2.2 Analysis and findings 26 4.1.3 The students‟ journals 29 4.1.4 Teacher‟s observations and anecdotal notes 31 4.2 Discussion 4.2.1 The roles of motivating activities 32 4.2.2 Factors influencing the students‟ motivation and performance 33 CONCLUSION Summary of major findings 34 Implications 34 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study 36 REFERENCES 37 APPENDICES INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study In the process of globalization, the ability to communicate in English plays an important role in fostering the development of the whole nation in general and of Phu Ly city - Ha Nam province in particular In order to communicate well in English, one advantageous point is to have an intelligible pronunciation However, from the first day of my career as a teacher, I faced a disillusion to find that the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College had serious problems in pronunciation They mispronounced many words; paid very little attention to stress, intonation and rhythm Therefore, it is my desire to improve the situation of the students‟ pronunciation I registered to teach the subject “Practical Pronunciation” with the coursebook “Ship or Sheep” by Ann Baker (1997) After the first courses, I was delighted to witness certain improvements in students‟ pronunciation However, it seemed to me that my students were not very motivated in the course and their efforts faded quickly after the examination This fact dawned on me that my teaching was not interesting and motivating enough From the experience of the previous courses of pronunciation, I wished to apply more stimulating activities to increase the students‟ motivation and intelligibility Moreover, I find that the time for students to study pronunciation in the class is limited, thus in order to obtain good pronunciation requires much self-study time of students The way to promote students to self-study pronunciation is by making them have great motivation in learning pronunciation Because I strongly agree with Lightbrown, P.M and Spada, N (1999) that students never learn everything they are taught, they only learn what they are interested in The researchers also added that students are unlikely to be very successful at learning anything unless they enjoy the process Being urged by the situation and motivated by the idea of finding interesting tools to teach pronunciation in an effective and systematic way, I would like to avail myself of this opportunity to conduct a research on activities to motivate first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College to learn pronunciation Statement of the problem At Hanam Teachers‟ Training College, up to now there are four classes major in English, with the aim of training teachers of English for secondary schools in the province, providing office workers specializing in English for joint-venture companies in the industrial zones in the province, training some male interpreters and translators to work in the Middle-East countries in Asia With the above aims, it is required that students must have an intelligible pronunciation However, as a teacher of English at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College, I found that students had serious problems with English pronunciation Most of them come from rural areas of Thanh Liem, Binh Luc, Kim Bang, Ly Nhan, where there is no emphasis on learning pronunciation Therefore, it is easy to find that students have so many problems with pronunciation Moreover, in my previous courses of teaching pronunciation, I realized that my students seemed not to be highly motivated in learning with activities in the coursebook From the current situation of Hanam Teachers‟ Training College, I would like to conduct a research on activities to motivate first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College to learn pronunciation Purpose of the study This research is designed to bring a new air into the pronunciation class of the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College In general, the purposes of this study are: + to seek activities to motivate the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College to learn pronunciation + to have empirical evidence of motivating activities on learning pronunciation of the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College Research questions What are motivating activities for the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College to learn pronunciation How much motivating activities in the research account for changes in students‟ pronunciation and motivation? 10 Method of the study The method employed in this study is an action research, using a number of instruments as questionnaire, the students‟ journals, teacher‟s anecdotal notes, along with diagnostic test, posttest and final oral examination to collect data Significance of the study Despite the fact that pronunciation plays an important role in learning a foreign language, so far there have been few researches on the ways to motivate students to study pronunciation compared to other skills such as speaking, listening, writing and reading The study suggests motivating activities in teaching pronunciation to facilitate the students‟ learning process Therefore, this study contributes to enriching the researches on strategies to promote students to learn pronunciation The results of this study will be of much benefit to both teachers and students of English Definition of terms Motivation Among many definitions of motivation stands out Gardner‟s one (1985) “Motivation refers to the combination of effort plus desire to achieve the goal of learning the language plus favorable attitudes towards learning the language” Gardner (1985, p 10) Intelligibility “Intelligibility may be broadly defined as the extent to which a speaker’s message is actually understood by a listener” (Munro & Derwing 1999, p 289) 11 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Researches into pronunciation teaching 1.1.1 Approaches to pronunciation teaching The approaches to pronunciation teaching have swung in and out of favor through the years in the history Two general approaches to the teaching of pronunciation described by Celce-Murcia et al (1996) have been adopted by many researchers, which are intuitiveimitative approach and analytical-linguistic approach An intuitive-imitative approach assumes that students will develop acceptable pronunciation and speaking skills when exposed to the target language through accurate models This approach relies heavily upon imitation and repetition, without any explicit information provided by the teacher The early method of pronunciation training called Direct Method, which gained acceptance in the late 1800s and early 1900s, was formed from observations of children attaining their first language In this method, students would listen and imitate a model of the target language that was spoken by the teacher (and later by recordings) (Celce Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 1996) From the late 1960s and the early 1980s, there was a decline in explicit pronunciation teaching with the invention of the language lab During this time intuitive-imitative approach was more popular in the pronunciation training with Total Physical Response by Asher‟s (1977) and Natural Approach by Krashen and Terrell‟s (1983) In Total Physical Response, students would begin to speak when they were ready and they were expected to make errors in the initial stage The main initial focus of Natural Approach was listening, which gave students the opportunities to internalize the target sound system Indeed, many contemporary researchers still adopt this view but it is still needed to further investigate if the method has the persuasive foundation An analytic-linguistic approach recognises the importance of an explicit intervention of pronunciation pedagogy in language acquisition The approach employs a variety of pedagogical aids including phonemic chart, contrastive exercises and articulatory descriptions In this approach, students are given explicit information about how to produce the sounds and rhythms of the target language This approach was developed to complement rather than 12 replace the intuitive-imitative approach In the 1890s, Henry Sweet, Wilhelm Viëtor and Paul Passy the creators and developers of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), led a movement in language teaching that was generally called the Reform Movement These phoneticians had great influence on the teaching of pronunciation with their contribution to the development of a system for describing and analysing the sound systems of languages The 1940s and 1950s witnessed a noticeable movement emphasized on explicit instruction of phonetics with Audiolinguism in the United States and the Oral approach in Britain These two methodologies competed with the Direct Method by relying on a recording or the teacher to model the target language followed by the students‟ repetition of that language However, teachers also drew from their knowledge of phonetics and for the first time used simplified charts of the IPA and articulatory models in the classroom The audiolinguism relied much on drilling sound contrasts and minimal pairs, with very little attention to intonation and conversational speech The technique of minimal pairs drill was used extensively by Baker (1977) in her very popular course book on contrastive segmental instruction “Ship or Sheep.” The Silent Way (Gattegno, 1972) dominated in the early 1970s In this method segmentals and suprasegmentals are paid attention from the very beginning of instruction The teachers‟ talk is kept to a minimum using gestures, and visual aids such as the sound-colour chart, Fidel wall charts, and Cuisenaire rods, which were used to demonstrate pronunciation instruction The 1980s witnessed the significant shift with discourse based communicative approach with the ultimate goal was communication The communicative approach dealt with tasks that focus on meaning, using activities such as role play, problem solving and games in a relaxed and supportive classroom environment By focusing more on active communication, it has been recognised that pronunciation competence below a certain threshold caused unintelligible, even for the most grammatically and lexically advanced students (Hinofotis & Bailey, 1980) Technique used to teach pronunciation included listening and imitating, phonetic training, minimal pairs drilling in context, visual aids, reading aloud, recording the students‟ production with more focus on suprasegmental aspects of pronunciation It can be seen that the communicative approach seems to be a more balance approach, with the focus on 13 both fluency and accuracy The approach perhaps has characteristics of both intuitive-imitative approach and analytical-linguistic approach 1.1.2 Teaching Pronunciation: Segmentals or Suprasegmentals? The categorization of pronunciation into segments (discrete sounds), and suprasegments (features that organize streams of speech into meaningful units such as stress, rhythm, intonation, linking, assimilation and deletion) is accepted by many researchers (Kelly, 2003; Kenworthy, 1987; Celce-Murcia et al., 1996; Morley, 1999) The tradition debate relating to which features of pronunciation - segments or suprasegments - should be focused on in teaching pronunciation has still been hold A brief review of the debates between segments and suprasegments is presented as following Teaching segmental features started with a concentration on phonetic alphabets during the Reform Movement (Celce-Murcia et al., 1996) Phonetic training was used in order to help learners establish good speech habits Minimal pair drills were used extensively to distinguish phonemes in listening practice and oral production (Celce-Murcia et al., 1996) However, after Anderson-Hsieh introduced the researches on “Teaching suprasegmentals to international teaching assistants using field-specific materials” (1990) and “Pronunciation factors affecting intelligibility in speakers of English as a foreign language” (1995), the focus of pronunciation teaching shifted dramatically from segmentals to an emphasis on suprasegmentals Following Anderson-Hsieh, abundant researches have investigated the extent to which suprasegmentals contribute to speakers‟ intelligibility and its pedagogy Underhill (1994) stressed the necessity of designing syllabuses mainly focusing on major features of communication - superasegmental features of speech for teaching English McNerney and Mendelsohn (1992, p 186) suggested “a short-term pronunciation course should focus first and foremost on suprasegmentals, as they have the greatest impact on the comprehensibility of learners‟ English” So far a lot of books for teachers have largely encouraged the teaching of suprasegments at the production level to improve learners‟ intelligibility In spite of the trend focusing on teaching superasegmentals, hesitation has still arisen from the trend Because of the close relation between suprasegmental features and the nature of native accents, which are unlikely for learners to achieve, one question raises is that if ... motivate first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College to learn pronunciation 9 Statement of the problem At Hanam Teachers‟ Training College, up to now there are four classes... motivate the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College to learn pronunciation + to have empirical evidence of motivating activities on learning pronunciation of the first-year. .. first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College Research questions What are motivating activities for the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College to