A study on using phonics method in teachingppronunciation to the beginners of english at tienganh123 english center

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES -*** - LƯƠNG THỊ HOÀI PHƯƠNG A STUDY ON USING PHONICS METHOD IN TEACHING PRONUNCIATION TO THE BEGINNERS OF ENGLISH AT TIENGANH123 ENGLISH CENTER (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ SỬ DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP GHÉP VẦN TRONG VIỆC DẠY PHÁT ÂM CHO NGƯỜI MỚI BẮT ĐẦU HỌC TIẾNG ANH TẠI TRUNG TÂM TIẾNG ANH 123) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 HA NOI, 2015 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES -*** - LƯƠNG THỊ HOÀI PHƯƠNG A STUDY ON USING PHONICS METHOD IN TEACHING PRONUNCIATION TO THE BEGINNERS OF ENGLISH AT TIENGANH123 ENGLISH CENTER (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ SỬ DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP GHÉP VẦN TRONG VIỆC DẠY PHÁT ÂM CHO NGƯỜI MỚI BẮT ĐẦU HỌC TIẾNG ANH TẠI TRUNG TÂM TIẾNG ANH 123) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm HA NOI, 2015 CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY I herby certify that thesis entitles “A study on using Phonics method in teaching pronunciation to the beginners of English at TiengAnh123 English center” is my own study in the fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts at Faculty of Post- Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi Hanoi, 2015 Luong Thi Hoai Phuong i ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to explore whether using phonics to teach pronunciation can help English beginners better at pronunciation It has two foci One is to investigate whether phonics method can help English better in pronunciation or not The other is to identify the situation when the phonics instruction is implemented in the classroom This study employed a qualitative and quantitative approach in which it primarily relied on the use of action research Eighteen students from English123 center participated in the study The findings of the current study revealed that phonics instruction has positive effect on English beginners in leaning pronunciation; however, it is still problematic Even though Phonics could help students pronounce consonant well, most of students feel confused with pronouncing the vowels and diphthongs The reason is that there are too many spelling rules for each sound to remember ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to my respectable supervisor, Dr Ha Cam Tam, for her restless and sympathetic encouragements, valuable advice and patient guidance until the completion of this study My sincere thanks also go to my dear colleagues at Tienganh123 English Center for all their help, support and encouragement when I encountered difficulties I wish to acknowledge my thankfulness to the pronunciation class for their enthusiastic participation in this project Finally, I am deeply indebted to my beloved parents, my siblings and my postgraduate friends for their sacrifice, encouragement and care iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Certification of originality i Abstract ii Acknowledgement iii Table of contents iv Tables vi Figuresv vii PART A: INTRODUCTION 1.Rationale Research hypothesis 3.Aim of the study 4.Significance of the study 5.Scope of the study 6.Methodology of the study 7.Organization of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Phonetics 1.2 English phonetics 1.3 Phonics 1.3.1 Definitions of phonics 1.3.2 Review of previous studies 10 1.4 Action research 11 1.4.1 Definitions of action research 11 1.4.2 Steps of action research 12 CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 13 2.1 The setting of the study 13 2.2 Research design 13 2.2.1 Participants 13 iv 2.2.2 Data collection instruments 13 2.2.3 Data collection procedure 15 2.3 Data analysis and discussion 18 2.3.1 Observation 19 2.3.2 Reflection 22 PARTC: CONCLUSION 24 1.Major findings 24 2.Implications 24 3.Limitations of the study 25 4.Suggestion for further studies 25 REFERENCES 26 APPENDICES Appendix A: Pre-test I Appendix B: Test II Appendix C: Test III Appendix D: Test IV Appendix E: Test V Appendix F: Post-test VI Appendix G: Lesson plan sample VII v TABLES Tables 1: English consonant sounds……………………………………………….7 Table 2: Comparison of Phonics and Phonetics……………………………………7 Table 3: Comparison of Phonics and Phonetics……………………………………8 Table 4: Examples of spelling rules in phonics instruction ………………………17 Table 5: Examples of list of words without initial consonants……………………18 vi FIGURES Figures 1: English vowel sounds………………………………………………… Figure 2: Comparison of the mean scores of four regular tests……….………… 22 Figure 3: Comparison between the mean scores of Pre-test and Post-test……… 23 vii PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale Pronunciation instruction is important factor in foreign language teaching As sounds play a crucial role in communication, foreign language teachers must attribute proper importance to teaching pronunciation in their classes It is evident that communication is a mutual relationship between the speaker and hearer This means that one must comprehend what he/she hears in the target language and must produce the sounds of the language he/she must trying to learn accurately Unless he has sufficient knowledge of the sounds of the target language, he can neither encode a message to anybody nor decode the message sent by another person by learning the sounds of the target language within his mother tongue Therefore, pronunciation instruction is of great importance for successful oral communication to take place since it is an important ingredient of the communicative competence (Hismanoglu, 2006) Hamers (2007) identifies the importance of pronunciation instruction as “Pronunciation teaching not only makes students aware of different sounds and some features, but can also improve their speaking immeasurably” (p.248) Celce-Murca, Brinton, and Goodwin (1996) claim that none-native speakers of English need to achieve a “threshold level of pronunciation” to be understood and minimize oral communication problems (p.3) Pronunciation needs to be taught and deserves more attention in a language course However, without a systematic syllabus, many students have difficulties in single word pronunciation Even though some students have learned English for years before they enter junior high school, they were unable to read orally and spell out most of the words Very often, when teacher asked them to read words or sentences, they just closed their mouths and kept silence There have been many approaches to teach English pronunciation discussed and elaborated worldwide, and these include whole language, phonetic symbols and computer assisted programs Yet there is no research that has been taken in Vietnam PART C: CONCLUSION The major findings, implications, limitations of the study and the suggestions for the future studies were included in this chapter Major findings As stated in the first part of the research, the hypothesis is that phonics instruction can help English beginners better at pronunciation Major findings were as follows: Firstly, phonics instruction in some extent has positive effects on students’ pronunciation, however using phonics to teach English pronunciation is still problematic Specifically, students could pronounce consonant sounds well however they still had difficulties in pronouncing vowels and diphthongs The reason is that almost each consonant letter can be presented an English sound It means that the spelling rules for consonants sounds are simple and easy to memorize On the contrary, there are many spelling rules or letter combinations presenting diphthongs or vowels, which makes students confused to remember and pronounce Secondly, students’ English learning attitudes differed significantly after the study At first, the English beginners at TiengAnh 123 English center were poor of English pronunciation performance without confidence in pronunciation With the help of phonics instruction, they all became more confident and active in pronouncing words Implications The present study provided some insights towards the using of the Phonics pronunciation teaching methods to English beginners at TiengAnh 123 English center Based on the results to the study, several implications could be drawn: Firstly, regarding students’ learning attitudes after the phonics instruction, results indicated these participants had positive responses to the teaching method This suggested that phonics instruction could enhance English beginners’ learning attitudes Secondly, regarding students’ pronunciation competence, the results revealed that phonics instruction could help students pronounce consonant sounds well, but they 24 still found it hard to pronounce long vowels and diphthongs It suggested that teacher should take consideration into making decision of choosing phonics as a method of teaching pronunciation Limitation of the research There are three limitations in this study First, the study was conducted in an English center with a small number of students Therefore, the participants cannot be the representative of all English beginners Also the results deprived in this project may not be generalized to all English beginners in Vietnam Second, due to restriction of time, the duration of this study was limited with one classes This is to say, the present study was a short-term instruction In other words, if the duration may be longer and the effects of the instruction may lead to more effective learning effects to the participants Thirdly, the study basically bases on observation and results of the test, which might be subjective on the side of the informants, so the reliability of the collected data may not be guaranteed Despite the above mentioned limitations, this study shed some light in effects of phonics instruction in teaching pronunciation to English beginners Suggestions for further studies As a result of the limitations above, I hope that the next researchers who share the same interest in phonics instruction should have a larger scale with more participants and tests In addition, pronunciation mistakes should also be analyzed and discussed more specifically At the same time, the next researcher should also cover using phonics instruction in teaching pronunciation to students at different levels, not only the beginners 25 REFERENCES Adams, M.J (1990) Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print Cambridge, MA: MI Press Armbruster, B.B., & Osborn, J (2003) Put reading first: The research building blocks for teaching children-kindergarten through grade The National Institute for Literacy Retrieved August 15, 2009, from http://www.nifl.gov/publications/pdf/PRFbooklet.pdf Belvin, W (1998) Phonics from A to Z –A practical guide New York: Scholastic Brown, H.D (2007) Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language rd pedagogy (3 ed.) New York: Addison Wesley Longman Carr, Philip (2003) English Phonetics and Phonology: An Introduction Massachusetts, USA; Oxford, UK; Victoria, Australia; Berlin, Germany: Blackwell Publishing Celce-Murcia, M.,Brinton, D.M., & Goowin, J.M (2007) Teaching pronunciation: A reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages New York: Cambridge University Press Chou, H Y (2010) Effects of phonics, dictionary use and memory strategy instruction on EFL elementary students’ vocabulary performance Unpublished master’s thesis, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Yunlin, Taiwan Chu, C F (2006) A comparison study of the effectiveness of teaching English phonics and K K phonetic symbols on word pronunciation (Unpublished master’s thesis) National Chengchi Uuniversity, Taipei, Taiwan Deterding, D & Poedjosoedarmo, G (1998) The sounds of English: Phonetics and phonology for English teachers in Southeast Asia Prentice Hall th 10 Durkin, D (1993) Teaching them to read (6 ed.) 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In E.Funnell & M.Stuart (Eds.), Learning to read: Psychology in the classroom (pp.30-60) Cambridge, Ma: Blackwell 29 APPENDIX A: ORAL PRONUNCIATION PRE-TEST Read aloud the following words: Clerk Phone Thunder Without theatre I APPENDIX B: ORAL PRONUNCIATION TEST Read aloud the following words: Church gym machine dentist Cartoon II APPENDIX C: ORAL PRONUNCIATION TEST Read aloud the following words: gate sad Before jacket mushroom III APPENDIX D: ORAL PRONUNCIATION TEST Read aloud the following words: choose bull dozen Gangster weapon IV APPENDIX E: ORAL PRONUNCIATION TEST Read aloud the following words: what job afraid chubby Cowboy V APPENDIX F: ORAL PRONUNCIATION POST-TEST Read aloud the following words: bang Stair Sunshine Noisy Murder VI APPENDIX G: LESSON PLAN SAMPLE Session 7: Diphthongs: /eɪ/, /aɪ/, /ɔɪ/ I- Objectives: Students will be able to recognize and pronounce words containing the sounds /eɪ/, /aɪ/, /ɔɪ/ II- Materials: - A chart of words containing the target sounds - A chart of words containing the spelling rules and examples of the target sounds III- Procedure Part - disp - Instr - introduces the spelling rules of the target sounds with the examples Written patterns ai, ay, ae igh, i-e, y, ie oi, oy - asks Sts to give more example of words - find the example of the target sounds with the corresponding spelling rules - Practice of VIII - Gives each group a set of - words, asks them sort out the words and put them words containing /eɪ/, /aɪ/, into the /ɔɪ/ and then put them into corresponding the corresponding categories categories Sort out the Set of words /eɪ/ taste shape skateboard debate - Aks Sts to read the words out loud - - Correct the mistakes words aloud - IX Read the Listen and correct ... system was classified according to place and manner of articulation According to the slide shared by Goodwin (2006), place of articulation was defined as ? ?the location of the obstruction of the air... stream in the articulation of consonants It describes the point at which the articulators actually touch or at their closest.” Here under is the chart of classification of English consonant sounds... reading and spelling based on the phonetic interpretation of ordinary spelling Table 2: Comparison of Phonics and Phonetics (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English language) Phonics The