How an understanding of modifications in connected speech helps improve listening comprehension skill in ielts preparation classes at the hcmc university of industry

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HCMC THE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES Candidate: Chau Thi Bich Van HOW AN UNDERSTANDING OF SUPRASEGMENTAL FEATURES HELPS IMPROVE LISTENING COMPREHENSION SKILLS IN IELTS PREPARATION CLASSES AT THE HCMC UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY Submitted In Partial Fulfilment Of The Requirements For The Degree Of Master Of TESOL Supervisor: Ivon Katz HCMC October 2007 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY Months of diligent work and effort having gone into my research, I herein assure you that the research is done by the very author, me myself More importantly, at no time it has been taken advantage of to secure any other certificates, nor turned into any academic account HCMC, October 5th, 2007 Chau Thi Bich Van ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is accomplished with the assistance and support of many people to whom I feel very deep gratitude First of all, I would like to send my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor – Mr Ivon Katz With a strong sense of responsibility, a single-minded devotion, and a wide knowledge of the professional field, he has continuously given me encouragement and invaluable ideas towards the completion of the thesis Then my appreciation goes to my colleagues for sharing with me their teaching experience and my students for being disposed to be in on my work as the participants And finally, I feel indebted to Mr Pham Tri Dai – my husband as well as my colleague – for his support and encouragement during the course of completing the thesis ABSTRACT The research was assiduously conducted with an eye to drawing the attention from those who are taking charge of listening skill teaching in IELTS preparation classes in Vietnam With the intention of bearing out that imparting suprasegmental features in general and sentence stress in particular is of paramount importance and, thus paves the way for an enhancement of listening skills for students in IELTS classes, the research described in this paper quantitative approach That is, the author carried out herself an experiment to testify that teaching sentence stress does help L2 learners to develop their listening comprehension skill With this end in view, the subjects were chosen of sixty-six freshmen majoring in Business Administration in the HCMC University of Industry (HUI), who were required to attend IELTS preparation classes over the course of two years They were split into two separate classes: DBA9A1 – the control group (CG) and DBA9A2 – the experimental group (EG) The groups are both obliged to sit for a pre-test and a post-test The results of the two tests, to be precise, are processed by SPSS – the Statistical Package Software System Between the two tests is a special treatment given only to the EG, not the CG Whereas the pre-test shows similar listening capacities in both groups before the special treatment, the post-test differentiates between the CG and the EG in regarding listening proficiency After the treatment, the EG outperforms the CG remarkably LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS CG: the control group DBA: the Diploma of Business Administration EG: the experimental group HUI: the HCMC University of Industry IELTS: the International English Language Testing System L2: second language SPSS: the Statistical Package Software System TafeSA: the Technological And Further Education, South Australia TOEFL iBT: the Test of English as a Foreign Language (Internet-Based Test) TOEIC: the Test of English for International Communication TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS iv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1-8 1.1 Background to the study 1-2 1.2 Definitions of terms 3-4 1.3 Statement of purpose 4-7 1.4 Importance of the Study 1.5 An overview of the organization of this study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 8-14 2.1 The effect of linguistic knowledge on listening competence 2.2 The effect of sufrasegmental features on listening competence 10 2.3 Remedies for listening barriers 11-13 2.2.1 What a listening teacher should before the listening session 12 2.3.2 What a listening teacher should during the listening 12-13 2.4 A critical look at the literature review 13-14 CHAPTER 3: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 15-18 3.1 Participants 15-17 3.2 Procedure 17 3.3 Instrumentation 18 CHAPTER 4: RESULT AND DISCUSSION 19-36 4.1 Result of the pre-test 19-22 4.2 Result of the post-test 22-24 4.3 Discussion 25-34 4.4 Pedagogical implications for teaching procedures in an Ielts preparation class 34-36 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 37-39 5.1 Conclusion 37-38 5.2 Recomendations for further research 38-39 REFERENCES 40 APPENDIX A: List of tables 41-44 APPENDIX B: List of figures 45-46 APPENDIX C: The pre-test paper 47-50 APPENDIX D: The listening transcript for the pre-test paper 51-55 APPENDIX E: The post-test paper 56-59 APPENDIX F: The listening transcript for the post-test paper 60-64 APPENDIX G: The lesson plan for the experimental treatment 65-75 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY Qua a teacher, and like many other counterparts , upon teaching listening in an IELTS preparation class, I the author used to give it a simple thought that teaching listening was as easy a task as anything, and then started off without delay Having provided a few items of vocabulary and a little background knowledge apropos of the forthcoming tape recording, the author set about playing the recording, in the normal course of things let them listen again and again, up to several times, and then proceeded to examine their understanding to make comprehension questions Some gave wrong answers; some others are right; the majority produced no feedback at all, far from uttering anything and looking more than confused Finally, the listening session seemed to turn out less than expected, to turn out no intended results at all And that was the usual way it came to an end The outcome did not, as things stood, live up to expectations The answers having been catered for, there still lay the rub, which came as a surprise to me And it was all too easy to notice that there was a shade of disappointment and grimaces on the students’ faces A moment of silence wore on and they brought the problem to my notice “Teacher, we fail to understand anything in the recording”, they said “They speak so fast that we can hardly get the meaning” Those pressing words of complaint set the author thinking It turned out that the author, as well as most of the other listening teachers, had not really done anything except for controlling the tape during the listening process to help with the listening improvement for the students; in this regard, the author followed the lead of most of her colleagues teaching listening in IELTS preparation classes Academically, to deal successfully with IELTS listening tests is in want of many factors put together: the calibre of the teacher, the intellectual faculties of the learner, the listening materials, the teaching facilities, and so forth And it is the high calibre on the part of the teacher that is first and foremost an ingredient It is time for listening teachers to stop teaching listening as a series of tests and embark on teaching listening strategies instead What most teachers of this time call “teaching listening” in fact is not authentic “teaching listening” Brown (1977) maintains that “many courses which purport to ‘teach’ listening comprehension in fact consist of exercises which expose the students to a chunk of spoken material on a tape and then ask ‘comprehension questions’ to try to find out whether or not the student has understood the language of the text” (p 8) Therefore, teachers should begin to restore the true meaning of teaching listening by getting down to teaching Many a thing is quite expected to be passed down in the listening classes such as suprasegmental features in general, and sentence stress in particular That is, suprasegmental features should methodologically be put in the forefront Evidently suprasegmental features comprise many components such as sentence stress, intonation, rhythm, etc, however, relating to the problem stated above, sentence stress shoud be the most highlighted The reason is simple Whereas Vietnamese, the students’ native language, is syllabic, English is stress-timed Because this nature of the target language is completely strange to the students, the notion of sentence stress should be taken into consideration Once it conveyed, the learner can to a much greater extent listen to the recorded utterances with comfort and then take a good grasp of their meaning Therefore, it is a great disservice to ignore teaching sentence stress to Vietnamese students 1.2 DEFINITION OF TERMS To begin with, the notion of suprasegmental features (which are also known as prosodic features) should be defined According to Richard (1993), a suprasegmental is “a unit which extends over more than one sound in an utterance, e.g STRESS and tone” (p 366) Also, Miller (2006) refers to suprasegmental features as stress, intonation, and speech rhythm They play a very important role in conveying the meaning of spoken language since “it is the suprasegmentals With the above definition, it is clear that stress is the most prominent features “Stress” in suprasegmental phonology refers to sentence stress, not word stress as in segmental phonology With the presence of sentence stress, English has stress-timed rhythm Richard (1993) suggests that stress-timed rhythm is “a speech rhythm in which the stressed syllables are said to recur at equal intervals of time” (p 356) As said above, the “stress-timed nature” of English is difficult to comprehend for Vietnamese learners According to Avery (1992), “In a stressedtimed language, there is a tendency for stressed syllables to occur at regular intervals” (p 73) In contrast, Vietnamese has syllable-timed rhythm Avery ( ) defines it as “the amount of time required to say a sentence depends on the number of syllables, not on the number of stresses” (p 73) Also, Richard (1993) refers to this notion as “a speech rhythm in which all syllables are said to recur at equal intervals” (p 367) Finally, since “listening comprehension” is the very terminology for the research, it behoves us to know what it really is According to Underwood (1989), the definition of listening in a foreign language is presented in comparison with listening in the first language by stating that “it is a skill which seems to develop GAVIN I see Well, I’ve got a fridge and a stereo system which I’ve just bought from a friend DIANE And how much did you pay for the fridge? GAVIN Er, $450 DIANE 50 or 15? GAVIN 50, and the stereo system cost $1,150 DIANE Have you got a television? GAVIN Yes, but it’s very old and not worth much DIANE OK Well, is there anything else you want to insure? GAVIN Yes, I’ve got a couple of watches and my CDs and books DIANE How much you think they’re worth? GAVIN The watches are worth $1,000… DIANE For both of them? GAVIN No, each one and, all together, the CDs and books cost me about $400 DIANE OK, so the value of everything you want to insure is $4,000 GAVIN How much will the insurance cost? DIANE Let me see, $4,000 divided by… plus 10% right, so this kind of insurances, er , that’s Private Contents insurance, it comes to $184,00 for a twelve-month period GAVIN $184,00 Well, that sounds pretty good OK, I’ll take that policy GAVIN Can I arrange the policy over the phone? DIANE Sure, just let me get the details down So that’s Mr… GAVIN Gavin Murray, that’s M-U-R-R-A-Y DIANE And the address is? GAVIN It’s 16C Biggins Street, South Hills DIANE OK (writing) 16C Biggins Street, South Hills? 61 GAVIN That’s right, it’s two words, “South Hills” DIANE And your date of birth is? GAVIN 12 November 1980 DIANE And your contact number? GAVIN Home phone number is 9872 4855 DIANE Right… and er, … you’re Australian? GAVIN No… I was born in London, although my mother is from Tasmania DIANE Really? Whereabouts? GAVIN Hobart DIANE I see… interesting place Now, are you working at the moment? GAVIN No, I’m a full-time student at Sydney University DIANE Right, good Section COLLEGE PRESIDENT Well, good morning, everyone, it’s good to see you all here Welcome to Smith House, Smith House as you may or may not know is one of the oldest residential colleges of the university As you can see, the building you’re in now which contains this main lounge, the dining room, the recreation room, the kitchen and the offices was part of the original old house, built in the 1840s to be used by the family of George Smith That’s of course how the house and college got their names The original house was converted into a residential college for the university in 1940 and since then has continued to be added on to and modernised You’ll notice when you receive your room allocation in a few minutes that your room number either begins with the letter N, S or W like this one here The first letter refers to the three wings of the college which come away from this 62 main building Of course the letters represent the three directions – in this case – north, south, and west Each wing has two floors, and so the next number you see is either one, or in this case two, and this indicates which floor your room is on The number after that is your individual room number So it’s quite simple to find any room by going to the right wing, then floor, and then room number You’ll also notice, when you receive your orientation pack shortly, that there are two keys One is the key to your room and only you have that key – and the other is a key to the front door which you’ve just come through here from the street This door is closed and locked at pm every night and opened again at 7am You’ll need your key if you’re coming back to the college between those times We ask our students to always enter and leave the college through the front door You will notice at the end of each corridor that there is another door but these are fire doors and are kept locked from the outside They should only be opened from the inside in case of emergency In your fees you’ve paid a laundry fee which covers the cleaning of bed linen and towels All bed linen and towels are clearly embossed with the name Smith House so it’s easily identifiable If you want your other laundry to be done by the college this can be arranged for a small extra fee There are only a few rules here at Smith House and we have these rules so that we can all live comfortably together The most important rule is that there must be no noise after pm There is also no smoking in the rooms or anywhere inside the college but smoking is permitted on the balconies All meals are served in the dining room Meal times are listed in your orientation pack Please read these carefully as meal times cannot be changed and if you arrive late I’m sorry to say you’ll just go hungry 63 If you’re unsure about things, each floor has an elected “floor senior” who is usually a student in their third or fourth year of study who’s been at Smith House for a while The floor seniors will introduce themselves later today and answer any questions you have But for now I’m going to hand you over to Marney who is going to give you the orientation packs and keys Thanks Marney 64 APPENDIX G LESSONS PLAN FOR THE EXPERIMENTAL TREATMENT SENTENCE STRESS Sentence stress is a very popular phenomenon happening in nativespeaker speech Nevertheless, few L2 learners have a good command of it This lesson is therefore conducted with an aim to enable them to undestand spoken English and perceive the sounds better Then, their listening competence in an IELTS listening subtest can be improved Age: Adults Level: Intermediate Length: 12 periods Focus: How words are stressed in a sentence Teaching facilities: board, marker, tape-recorder, etc I LEAD-IN T (teacher) begin awareness raising activities by reading an example sentence aloud to the Ss (students) For example: I FOUND a DOLlar in my POCKet Next, T read the sentence the first time pronouncing each word carefully, and then read the sentence a second time in natural speech 65 Then, T ask Ss which reading seemed more natural and why it seemed more natural Finally, T uses the ideas students come up with, explains the idea of English being a “stress-time” language If the students speak a syllabic language like Vietnamese, points out the difference between Vietnamese and English II PRESENTATION Step 1: T tells the Ss that there are three levels of stress in English sentences: (1) strong stress (focus word), (2) normal stress (content words), and (3) unstress (structure word) The stressed words, levels and 2, are important They tell most of the meaning Then he goes back to the above example sentence and tells that: FOUND DOLlar POCKet are all content words They tell the meaning POCKet gets the strongest stress It is the focus word Next, T lets the Ss figure out which parts of speech are content words by asking them whether they are nouns, pronouns, verbs, articles or adjectives And after a few minutes of discussion, he tells the Ss that content words are often nouns, verbs, or adjectives In some other cases, they can be adverbs, question words, or numbers and negatives Step 2: After stressed words are defined, now it is time to mention unstressed words T tells the Ss that the unstressed words in between content words are called structure words They are important to the grammatical structure of speech and to the rhythm Structure words can be hard to hear clearly because the vowels are weak and short He writes the following example sentences on the board and asks the Ss to identify which words are structure words: 66 I am PLANning to Take a TRIP She LIKES SALT and PEPper on her EGGS After a fews minutes of discussion, T tells the Ss that in the above example sentences, the structure words are I she her his you am are have to the and from and that they are often pronouns, prepositions, helping verbs, and other small grammatical words Next, T helps the Ss to consolidate the knowledge by asking them to the following two exercises: Exercise 1: T let the Ss to listen and repeat the following sentences several times in unison The the Ss underline the content words and circle the focus words I put my foot on the brakes What would you like for dessert? I haven’t received the bill yet Our professional staff will be happy to assist you He planted a variety of vegetables in his garden Ethnic foods such as bagels and pizza are popular Exercise 2: T asks the Ss to add structure words to the following sentences and tells them that there may be several good choices _ CALLED _ _ TELephone WHAT _ Think _ MOVie? CAR FLAT TIRE _ BOUGHT _ BOX _ CANdy _ _ MOther 67 _ SAILED _ BOAT _ LAKE MOONLIGHT _ _ FIND _ SHORTCUT _ AIRPORT? _ BIG DENT _ DOOR _ _NEW CAR STOPPED HOME WAY LIbrary _ LISTENS _ PHONE MESSAGES _ _ MORNing Then T asks the Ss to whisper the structure words to themselves and say the content words out loud This will highlight the contrast between the stressed and unstressed words Step 3: T provides the Ss with necessary guidelines for sentences and then asks them to some additional exercises Guideline 1: The focus word is usually the last content word in each thought group or short sentence Exercise: Add focus words to the incomplete sentences: We DROVE in the _ I SAT in the LAST _ I WALKED to the _ I WENT to the She WORKS at the He inVITed his _ Guideline 2: The focus word is an important part of speech 68 Exercise: Add focus words to the incomplete sentences Say the sentences The focus word is a :Noun JIM is a GOOD _ My FAvorite CIty is I forGOT to CALL my The focus word is a : Verb It’s TIME to _ She JUST LEARNED how to _ The focus word is an: Adjective The FLOWer is DELicate and The MOvie was VEry His MONTHly rePORT was _ The focus word is an: Adverb She FINished She SPEAKS TELL me the ANSwer Guideline 3: If there are several content words in a row, the last one gets the focus Example: A BUsy SCHEDule It STOPPED SNOWing RED, WHITE and BLUE ReCOver QUICKly The LAST YELlow BUS BLUE, WHITE and RED 69 Guideline 4: Adverbs at the end of the sentence that answer the questions where and when are often unstressed and fall in pitch Exercise: Add focus words to the incomplete sentences Say the sentences I’m planning to _now Should we _now? I’ve never there There are a lot of _ here We’re expecting _ today I’m planning to _ today I yesterday There are a lot of _ trees here They keep _ here It should have already He didn’t _ it yet Guideline 5: Structure words at the ends of sentences in the basic pattern are unstressed and fall in pitch Example: I’ll WAIT for you What BANK is it in? There’s a lot of CREAM in it We bought FOUR of them Exercise: Add focus word to the incomplete sentences Say the sentences I took of it I’d like _ of them Whose _ is this? He it to you 70 Guideline 6: Speakers usually divide longer sentences with more than five or six words into more than one thought group with a focus word in each Example: Some credit card COMpanies offer low INterest but they charge an annual FEE She wants to become an inTERpreter and work for an international COMpany Exercise 1: Listen and underline the focus word in each sentence in the diaglogue A: What’s the matter? B: My roof is leaking A: Why don’t you fix it? B: It’s raining I don’t want to get wet A You could wait until it stops raining B: Then I won’t have to fix the roof Exercise 2: Underline the focus word in the following short conversations and compare answers with your partner Listen and check your prediction Practice saying the short conversations A: We’re expecting visitors today B: I would like to meet them A Why did your friend decide to go to Guatemala? B: Because he’s never been there 71 A: Do you have any information about skiing in Utah? B: Yes Here are some brochures for you A: I hope you’ve considered all the possibilities B: I’ve considered all of them A: We are not quite prepared for the meeting today B: Perhaps we should cancel it A: We have to install a new phone line here B: I hope we won’t have to wait a long time for it A: Did the check come? B: No The mail hasn’t arrived yet Guideline 7: As conversations proceed, speakers use focus to respond appropriately to the previous statement or question They shift away from the basic pattern to highlight new information The speakers may stress words that would not normally receive strong stress at the end of the conversation For example, we use focus to highlight new information A: I need to borrow some MOney (Basic pattern: money is new information and the last content word.) B: How MUCH money? (money is old information; much is new) A: Well, not TOO much money (much and money are both old information) B: I have about ten DOLlars (dollars is new information, basic pattern) 72 A: I was hoping to borrow TWENty dollars (ten dollars is old; twenty is new information and shows contrast) Guideline 8: Use focus to respond to a question We stress the word that answer the question A: Jerry lost his BOOK (basic pattern) B: WHO lost his book? (book is old information) A: JERRY lost his book (answers the question who) A: Jerry lost a BOOK (basic pattern) B: WHOSE book? (book is old information) A: He lost HIS book (answer the question whose book) Guideline 9: Use focus to disagree We stress the word that highlight the disagreement A: I think that the movies ends at NINE-THIRty (basic pattern) B: I read that the movie should end at TEN-THIRty A: Monica is going to win the gold medal for gymNAStics B: I think JANE is going to win the gold medal for gymNAStics A: I don’t aGREE I think Jane is going to win the SILver medal Guideline 10: Use focus to emphasize agreement We stress the helping verb A: That was a marvelous FILM B: That WAS a marvelous film 73 A That sounds like a great iDEa B: That DOES sound like a great idea Guideline 11: Use focus to return a question We stress the pronoun A: How is your FAMily? (basic pattern) B: Fine, thank you How’s YOUR family? A: What would you LIKE? (basic pattern) B: An apple What would YOU like? Guideline 12: Use focus to show contrast A: That shirt would look good with a green TIE (basic pattern) B: I don’t HAVE a green tie What you think of this BLUE one? (shows contrast) A: I like to swim in hot WEAther (basic pattern) B: I’d rather swim in HOT weather than in COLD weather That’s for SURE? A: Let’s buy DINner tonight I’m tired of COOKing B: I LIKE to cook I’d rather COOK dinner than BUY it Guideline 13: Use focus to show compound noun contrast A: Here is the CAR phone charger that you LOST (basic pattern) 74 B: I lost the car PHONE, not the car phone CHARger (constrasting stress) A: Let’s park in a PARKing lot (basic pattern) B: I don’t see a parking LOT, but there is a parking gaRAGE (contrasting stress) III CONTROLLED PRACTICE In this section, T provides ear-training exercises for the Ss They are asked to the three following things simultaneously: looking at the transcript, listening to the recording and underlining (or circling) the words that are stressed This really helps since reading, listening and writing are what Ss must at the same time in an authentic IELTS listening subtest 75 ... majoring in Business Administration in the HCMC University of Industry (HUI), who were required to attend IELTS preparation classes over the course of two years They were split into two separate classes: ... stress in IELTS preparation classes Having the same listening ability at first, however, the EG then does better than the CG Why is that? The answer is the special treatment Accordingly, listening. .. downplayed and the Communicative Approach which emphasizes the importance of listening teaching is dominating the language teaching and learning situation In a word, many educational changes happen and