Pronunciation as an aspect of communicative compet- 123docz.net

There have been various supports for the effectiveness of pronunciation training on learners’ achievement in communicative competence. According to Pennington (1996), the most important part of learning a second language rests on pronunciation. Morley (1998) also stated that pronunciation plays an important role in overall communicative competence. While, Kelly (2006) confirmed:

A learner who consistently mispronounces a range of phonemes can be extremely difficult for a speaker from another language community to understand. This can be very frustrating for the learner who may have a good command of grammar and lexis but have difficulty in understanding and being understood by a native speaker.

The inaccurate use of suprasegmental elements, such as stress or intonation can also cause problems… . (p.11)

In addition, Fraser (2000a) explained that being able to speak English includes a number of sub-skills, of which pronunciation is by far the most important

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(other sub-skills of speaking include vocabulary, grammar, and pragmatics). She argued that a speaker with good pronunciation is intelligible despite other errors;

with poor pronunciation, a speaker can be very difficult to understand, despite accuracy in other areas.

Hewings (2004) also emphasized that “difficulties with pronunciation might mean that students fail to get their message across, even when the correct words are being used, or they might fail to understand what is said to them.” (p.10)

Yong (2004) confirmed that from the traditional ways of learning English, students neglected the basic knowledge of speaking. This may have been enough to meet the demands of English in the years when we had less communication with foreign countries. However, oral communication began to be more important when they arrived in this century with extended forms of communication with Western countries. He asserted that understanding by reading or writing would no longer be sufficient for the development of the economy and that communicating face to face personally or through the Internet needed to be understood. Yong also indicated that pronunciation is the foundation of speaking. English, both written and spoken, has been accepted as the dominant means of communication for most of the world but some misunderstandings have been caused by inappropriate pronunciation. Poor pronunciation can condemn learners to less social, academic and work advancement than they deserved.

Furthermore, Dan (2006) claimed that language competence covers many aspects. Phonetics, both in theory and practice, constitutes the basis of speaking above all other aspects of language and pronunciation is the foundation of speaking.

Good pronunciation may make the communication easier, more relaxed and more useful. Almost all learners rate pronunciation as a priority and an area in which they need more guidance.

In short, pronunciation plays a vital role in our modern world, particularly in oral communication. Therefore, acquiring good pronunciation is very crucial for those who are learning foreign languages in general and in English in particular.

1.2.1 Consonants and vowels Consonants

Roach (2000) defined: “Consonants sounds are the sounds in the production of which two articulators come together to form an obstruction of some type so that the air-stream cannot get out freely.” (p.10).

In English, there are 24 consonants, whereas Vietnamese has only 21. Some phonemes exist in English but not in Vietnamese and vice versa, which are challenging for both Vietnamese teachers and learners.

Vowels

“Vowels are the sounds in the production of which there is no obstruction to the air so the air can get out freely.” (Roach, 2000, p.11). There are 20 vowels in English (12 simple vowels and 8 diphthongs).

1.2.2 Word stress

According to Hubicka (1980), Word stress is the magic key to understand spoken English; incorrect stress can lead to a communication breakdown. Not only the correct stressing but also “de-stressing”, and consequently the reduction of vowel duration and quality play a major role in the production and perception of words and their meaning. Therefore, improving students’ ability of using correct word stress is an important part of teaching speaking.

What’s word stress?

According to Tam & Quang (2006), “The syllables of a word which stands out from the remainder are said to be stressed, to receive stress.” (p.ix).

The production of stress is generally believed to depend on the speaker using more muscular energy than is used for unstressed syllables. From the perceptual point of view, all stressed syllables have one characteristic in common, and that is called prominence; stressed syllables are recognized as stressed because they are more prominent than unstressed syllables (Tam & Quang, 2006, p.ix).

Tam & Quang (2006) also pointed out that prominence is produced by four factors: loudness, length, pitch and quality.

Sentence level stress is described by the term intonation. In this case, not syllables but whole words are emphasized to maintain a natural rhythm. This research does not aim to deal with sentence stress.

Levels of word stress

According to Roach (2000) there are three levels of stress which are distinguished, namely: primary (tonic or nuclear), secondary and unstressed. The prominence that results from the pitch movement gives the strongest type of stress;

we called the tonic strong stress when we wish to refer specifically to this type of stress. It is also called primary stress. The syllable that is also quite prominent, but it is not as strongly stressed as the primary stress is called secondary stress (or non- tonic stress). The syllable that is called unstressed and regarded as being absence of any recognizable amount of prominence is unstressed syllable (p.95-96).

Placement of stress within the word

Roach (2000) presented a summary of stress placement in nouns, verbs and adjectives and noted that all rules have exceptions and readers may feel that the rules are so complex that it would be easier to go back to the idea of learning the stress for each word individually. From his own practical experience of teaching English to high school students, the researcher also realizes that students seem not apply the rules well in learning, especially in speaking English. Therefore, websites were chosen for the research with a hope of improving students’ pronunciation.

Pronunciation as an aspect of communicative competence