During the academic year 2010- 2011, the researcher observed 3 grade 10 teachers in class 10A1, 10A4, 10A8, at Me Linh high school when they taught Language focus which has the sub- section: Pronunciation. During the process of observations, the researcher focused on some aspects such as: teaching and learning materials used in class, students’ activities and their
mistakes in producing sounds, and teachers’ approaches and techniques used in teaching pronunciation.
In class 10A1
The lesson that the researcher was allowed to observe was Language Focus period of unit 3 in Tieng Anh 10 which focuses on minimal pair / e / - / ổ /. After settling down the students (there were 40 students in this class), the teacher asked them to look at the two columns of words / e / - / ổ /, then listened to the cassette player. Students had a chance to get all the sounds from the cassette twice, and then they had to repeat after the teacher. Then problems appeared that students sitting at the back of the room could not hear the cassette clearly, as a consequence, some read words in the way they thought right, some tried to imitate the sounds the teacher had just pronounced. The most significant mistakes were that students could not produce the sounds / ổ /in words man, sad, bad, sand, some pronounced / ổ / like /e/ and some pronounced it like /a/.
After one minute practicing reading the words, the teacher asked four students to read aloud individually and checked immediately. The teacher found that all four students make mistakes with the sound / ổ/, so she let the whole class listen again that sound and then required the whole class to repeat after the cassette twice. It took 7 minutes for those activities. The next 3 minutes were spent on practicing sentences. The teacher read all 6 sentences and students listened. After that, she called 6 students in turn read aloud 6 sentences in the textbook and checked. All six students made mistakes in producing the sound / ổ/ in the words: fat (sentence 1), handbag (sentence 2), apples (sentence 3), pans (sentence 4), cat (sentence 5), bad (sentence 6). There appeared other problems like some students just sat and listened to his/ her partner;
some just read sentences as required only when the teacher came near him or her. Then the teacher asked students to practice more at home and said that she would check it in the next lesson.
From the observation, we can see that pronunciation teaching and learning in class 10A1 still followed the traditional path of imitating and drilling which causes boredom for students.
Even though there was listening activity at the beginning, it did not help much because the room was too large for the students sitting at the back. All of the students make mistakes in producing
the sound / ổ/ in words and sentences. The lesson was far from satisfaction for both teacher and students.
In class 10A4
The teacher taught this section as warm up activities that makes students learn both vocabulary and pronunciation of unit 12 with two sounds: /s/ - /z/. Students were eager to learn because she gave them some picture and asked them to find the words for those pictures and pronounce those words. She checked immediately. Then, the teacher introduced these two sounds /s/ - /z/. It seemed that they are easy sounds that students can pronounce them correctly after listening to the teacher’s instruction and imitating her pronunciation. When asked, students were able to read the isolated words and sentences correctly. After 7 minutes students could distinguish these sounds without any difficulty. They seemed to be very happy. When checked, 5 out of 6 students read sentences correctly. The researcher saw that this minimal pair was not difficult for students to pronounce.
In class 10A8
The researcher had a chance to observe a Language Focus period in class 10A8 (A remarkable characteristic in this class is that there were 47 students) when they had been taught unit 15 which deals with /θ/ - /ð/. The steps carried out by the teacher were not very different from which the teacher teaching class 10A1 chose to introduce the sounds and then give time for students to practice. The different points were the challenges that the teacher had to deal with during the lesson. The emerging problem was that most students had difficulty in producing these sounds because they were not in Vietnamese sound system and they often confused with the sound /th/ in Vietnamese. The teacher let students listen to her introduction of the two sounds twice, and then the teacher read aloud and asked students to repeat. However, when students read aloud, most of them could not produce these sounds correctly. The teacher had to read aloud the words which have the sounds/θ/ - /ð/ again slowly and clearly and asked students to read in chorus twice. She let students 1 minute practice individually. However, students’ practicing was still unsatisfactory. When three students were asked to read aloud this minimal pair, they pronounce two sounds similarly; therefore, all three students made mistakes in producing this minimal pair. The teacher checked immediately for only these students. Then she moved to the
part practice the sentences. First the teacher read all the five sentences, then she had 2 minutes for students to practice reading them individually, next she called in turn 5 students to read aloud the five sentences. However, all five students make mistakes in these sounds. Each of five students was checked and made correction. Those activities took nearly 30 minutes that is why the teacher asked students to practice more at home, and moved to Grammar section. After the lesson, the researcher had informal talk with the teacher. She said that she herself was not satisfied with the result of her students’ practice; however, if she had continued checking and correcting students’ mistakes, there would have been no time for grammatical points which were supposed to be taught in the same lesson.
From the situation of class 10A8, the researcher is more aware of class size, time spent on pronunciation lessons, and the confusing sounds between Vietnamese and English. All these factors hinder students’ learning.
In conclusion, the present situation of teaching and learning pronunciation at Me Linh high school is not positive as expected. The researcher found that teaching and learning materials and equipment, limited teaching and learning time, unvaried teaching techniques and few chances for students to practice in class bring about trouble in teaching and learning pronunciation.