Using videos to improve efl vietnamese learners english pronunciation

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY TRẦ N NGUYỄN NHƯ QUỲNH USING VIDEOS TO IMPROVE EFL VIETNAMESE LEARNER’S ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION Nghệ An , 2017 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY TRẦ N NGUYỄN NHƯ QUỲNH USING VIDEOS TO IMPROVE EFL VIETNAMESE LEARNER’S ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION Major: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Code: 60140111 MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION SUPERVISOR: Nguyen Gia Viet, Ph.D Nghệ An, 2017 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I herein declare that the thesis is my own work and that it has not been submitted for any other purposes before Works of others that are used in the thesis are properly cited and acknowledged Tran Nguyen Nhu Quynh i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to many people, from whom I have received valuable contributions for the completion of this work First of all, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my beloved supervisor, Mr Nguyen Gia Viet, Ph.D for his valuable support, guidance and timely, encouragement while I was doing this research Without his guidance, comment, and suggestions during all phases of the work, my thesis would still be far from completed Secondly, I would also like to express my gratitude to all lecturers and staff of the Department of Foreign Languages, Vinh University who supply me with the good conditions to conduct this thesis and finish this TESOL M.A cohort In addition, my special thanks also go to the non-English major students of grade 11th in Le Quy Don High School for their willingness to complete the survey questionnaire Without their help, this project could not been a success Last but not least, my warmest thanks go to my beloved family, my colleagues, my friends for their kindness, helpful supports and useful encouragements ii2 ABSTRACT In learning English, Pronunciation is an important skill because a word being pronounced incorrectly or wrong intonation may lead to misunderstanding from listeners Most of EFL Vietnamese learners have difficulties in pronouncing the words correctly in English The National University Entrance Exam delivered annually does not test oral and aural competencies of the prospective English language teachers As they not expected to have these skills, students automatically not focus on listening comprehension and pronunciation aspects of the target language, which leads to lose one of the components of an effective communication In order to eradicate this problem, this study aims to investigate the audiovisual method which means using videos to improve EFF Vietnamese learners’ English pronunciation The data were collected mainly through survey questionnaires, interview and tests Questionnaires are administered to 60 participants of the two non-major English classes whose ages 17, and then analyzed by means of descriptive statistics These learners were pretested through a number of pre-designed words which be rated in terms of pronunciation accuracy Based on the results of the pre-test, two groups, one as the experimental group and the other as control group, were formed Then, traditional method (drill) will be used for the control group in pronunciation practice Meanwhile, videos will be used to get the experiment group practice After three months, the two groups were posttested through similar in format and material to the pre-test The score of the participants demonstrated that experimental group outperformed the control group in terms of the average accuracy gains Finally, it was concluded that videos can lead to higher accuracy in improving EFL Vietnamese’s English Pronunciation iii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Bilabial Consonants in Phonetic Alphabet Table 2.2 Labiodentals Consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet Table 2.3 The Nasal Consonant Table 2.4 Classification of Fricatives in Terms of Voicing Table 2.5 Classification of Stops in Terms of Voicing Table 2.6 Classification of Affricates in Terms of Voicing Table 2.7 Classification of English Consonant Table 4.1: Pretest Score of Experimental Group and Control Group Table 4.2: The percentage of the pretest achievement of each final consonant Table 4.3: The improvement of the Cycle Table 4.4: Posttest Score Table 4.5: The improvement of the Cycle Table 4.6: Data test of two group iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABSTRACT LIST OF TABLES CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Rationale 2Research Questions Error! Bookmark not defined The Objective of the study .Error! Bookmark not defined Significance of the study Error! Bookmark not defined Scope of the Study Error! Bookmark not defined 6Methodology Error! Bookmark not defined CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW A The Nature of Pronunciation 1) The definition of Pronunciation 2) Definition of consonant 2.1 Place of Articulation 2.2 Manner of Articulation 2.3 Manners of Interference 3) Consonant in English Phonology 3.1 English sound class 3.2 Consonants 11 4) Teaching Pronunciation 18 4.1 The objective of teaching pronunciation 18 4.2 The problems of teaching pronunciation for EFL Vietnamese learners 19 4.3 Methods and techniques of teching pronunciation 20 B The Nature of Audio-visual aids 22 Kinds of Audio-visual aids 23 The Advantages of using Audio-visual aids 24 CHAPTER THREE METHODOLODY 24 A The setting and the subject of the Research 24 Time and place of the Research 25 The subject of the Research 25 B Action Research 25 Definition of Action Research 25 The steps in Action Research 26 The procedure of Action Research 27 3.1 Indentify a problem area 27 3.2 Planing the action 28 C Method of Research 29 D Research Instruments 30 Pretest 30 Questionnaire 30 Treatment 31 Posttest 31 E Data Collection Procedure 32 F Data Analysis 32 CHAPTER FOUR FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 32 A Research Findings 32 Cycle 32 1)Questionnaire A 32 2)Interview 33 3)Pre-test 35 4)Planning 38 5)Action 38 6)Observation 39 7)Reflection 40 Cycle 40 1) Revised Plan 40 2) Action 40 3) Posttest 41 4) Questionnaire B 42 5) Observation 43 6) Reflection 44 7) Interview 45 B Discussion 45 1) Videos are able to improve Students’ pronunciation ability 46 2) Videos are able to improve Students’ perception 46 C Hypothesis testing 46 CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION 46 A Conclusion 46 B Implication 47 C Suggestion 47 1) For the teachers 48 2) For the institutions 48 3) For other researchers 49 REFERENCES 50 APPENDIX A PRETEST 55 APPENDIX B POSTTEST 57 APPENDIX C DATA COLLECTION FROM PRETEST AND POSTTEST 58 APPENDIX D THE CYCLE1 TEST 60 APPENDIX E QUESTIONNAIRE A 61 APPENDIX F QUESTIONNAIRE B 63 APPENDIX G ENGLISH PHONETIC SYMBOLS 65 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Rationale English has been accepted as the dominant means of communication, both written and spoken in most of the world And because of the internet, the world becomes smaller and smaller so English learning is also every important to Vietnamese learners During daily communications, we often find some misunderstandings being caused by inappropriate pronunciation Sometimes such mispronunciation is significant and we should pay close attention to the problem I decided I would try to tackle the teaching of pronunciation in order to help my students with their English pronunciation and in turn they would be the best model for their future students as well According to A.G Gimson “All language are spoken and begun with ears Once a known professor notes that at speaking language a person should know exactly one hundred percent of its phonetics, ninety percent of its grammar and ten percent of the vocabulary may be sufficient” It seems obvious to me that phonetics constitutes the basic of all other aspects of language The students should first of all learn to hear the sounds accurately and listen to them closely and carefully The more and hear the differences between the various sound of English language, the better they will articulate them To this end, students should undergo ear-training and constant listening to English native speakers or some equally good models Then they should imitate they should heard, using their background knowledge to make the proper adjustment of their speech organs to reproduce the sound correctly Wrong practice does not only waste time and effort but also creative had habits, which will be extremely difficult to eliminate When speaking a foreign language, say English, pronunciation is of great importance If you cannot pronounce correctly you are not able to make yourself understood A language is a tool of communication but bad pronunciation can never be a good tool of communication For the reasons above, I have decided to this research named “ Using Videos to Improve EFL Vietnamese Learner’s English Pronunciation” I hope that this study will be helpful for Vietnamese teachers and students in some ways to find appropriate approaches to help students improve their pronunciation ... English pronunciation Secondly, EFL Vietnamese learners are easy to get more experience or use videos as an effective way to improve English pronunciation Next, it also helps EFL Vietnamese learners. .. effectiveness of using audio visual (videos) to develop EFL Vietnamese Learner’s English pronunciation The researcher wants to make an effort to improve Vietnamese EFL Learners? ?? six final consonants... questions Does the use of videos help students improve English pronunciation? What perceptions students have about using videos to help them improve pronunciation in English classes? The Objectives