VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LAGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ************************* NGUYỄN THANH VÂN AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF SHADOWING ECHNIQUE IN LISTENING LESSONS TO IMPROVE THE PRONUNCITION OF 3RD- YEAR STUDENTS AT HUBT (HANOI UNIVERSITY OF BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY) (NGHIÊN CỨU VIỆC SỬ DỤNG THỦ THUẬT NGHE VÀ NHẮC LẠI ĐỒNG THỜI TRONG GIỜ HỌC NGHE ĐỂ CẢI THIỆN VIỆC PHÁT ÂM CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ BA TẠI ĐẠI HỌC KINH DOANH VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ HÀ NỘI) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 HANOI – 2016 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LAGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ************************* NGUYỄN THANH VÂN AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF SHADOWING ECHNIQUE IN LISTENING LESSONS TO IMPROVE THE PRONUNCITION OF 3RD- YEAR STUDENTS AT HUBT (HANOI UNIVERSITY OF BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY) (NGHIÊN CỨU VIỆC SỬ DỤNG THỦ THUẬT NGHE VÀ NHẮC LẠI ĐỒNG THỜI TRONG GIỜ HỌC NGHE ĐỂ CẢI THIỆN VIỆC PHÁT ÂM CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ BA TẠI ĐẠI HỌC KINH DOANH VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ HÀ NỘI) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Ph. Dương Thu Mai HANOI – 2016 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com DECLARATION I certify that this minor thesis entitled “Using shadowing technique to improve the pronunciation of the 3rd year students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology” is the study of my own research and the substance of this research has not been submitted for a degree to any other university or institution.
Hanoi, 2016 Nguyen Thanh Van i TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my gratitude to all those who have given me great assistance in the completion of my research work. In the first place, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Duong Thu Mai, Ph., who has provided me with insightful discussion, helpful comments, valuable support in the preparation and completion of this thesis. Without her guidance and help, this work would not have been accomplished. Secondly, my sincere thanks also go to all lecturers and staff of the department of Post- Graduate studies for their valuable lessons and precious helps.
Thanks to their lessons as well as needed helps, I could overcome enormous obstacles when doing the study. I also wish to acknowledge the cooperation of my colleagues and the students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology in contributing to the data collection presented in this study. Last but not least, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my family for their encouragement and great support during my time of fulfilling this thesis. ii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ABSTRACT Most second language learners encounters difficulties when listening and speaking in the target language.
For the students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology, the problem might be serious. Because of their poor pronunciation even with basic sounds or words, the students found it difficult to say, speak and understand studying materials in English. In order to solve the problem, students need to understand the pronunciation in terms of the basics elements and target the individual sounds. As a result of this, this project was set out to help the students‟ pronunciation of the individual sounds in English.
The research was formulated as an action one which used a questionnaire, interviews and tests as research instruments to collect quantitative and qualitative about the students‟ and teachers‟ attitudes and the effectiveness of using shadowing technique in teaching and learning pronunciation. As can be seen from the qualitative and quantitative data, difficulties, limitations and challenges still occurred during the research; however, to some extent, the students‟ pronunciation was also improved in terms of individual sounds and words. Their positive attitude and results when using the technique to teach and improve the student‟s pronunciation in terms of individual sounds in the research might suggest the use of the new technique “shadowing” as one of the effective ways to teach and learn pronunciation in English. iii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS P: page L2: second language 3rd: third HUBT: Hanoi University of Business and Technology JSL: Japanese as the second language LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Classification of shadowing (cited in Tamai, 2005) Table 2: Information about the teacher participants Table 3: The reliability of the tests Table 5: The percentage of the participants with the range of scores Table 6: Frequency statistics of vowel sections Table 7: Frequency statistics of consonant sections Table 8: Frequency statistics of cluster sections Table 9: Frequency statistics of minimal pair sections Table 10: Overall descriptive statistics of the sections Table 11: One sample T test results LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.
Shadowing technique improves pronunciation Figure 3. Aspects of pronunciation that the technique of shadowing helped to improve Figure 3. Attraction and motivation of the practice Figure 3.4: The attitude towards the practice lessons Figure 3.5: The attitude to the total time for the practice and time delivery for each practice lesson Figure 3. Students’ difficulties iv TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS PART A: INTRODUCTION.
Objectives of the study. The scope of the study. Design of the study. Why is pronunciation important?.
Definition of pronunciation. Factors that affect pronunciation learning. Different techniques used to teach pronunciation. Definition of shadowing.
Significant features of using shadowing technique in learning and teaching pronunciation. Context of the study. Data collection instruments. Pre-test and Post-test.
Data presentation and analysis. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. Students’ general attitude towards using shadowing in learning pronunciation (Research Question 1). Students’ attitude towards learning pronunciation through the project.
Students’ attitude towards the attraction and motivation of the practice. Students’ attitude towards the content of the practice lessons. 25 v TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Students’ attitude towards the amount of the total time for the practice and delivery of time for each target practice lessons.
Students’ difficulties in doing the project. Teachers’ attitude towards the use of shadowing technique in improving the pronunciation of the students ( Research Question 2). The effectiveness of the research (Research Question 3). The overall descriptive data of the pre-test and the post-test:.
Descriptive statistics of sections in the tests. One Sample T-test Results:. Recapitulation and research experience. Limitations of the study.
Suggestions for further study. I vi TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Pronunciation is definitely the first aspect that people can notice in second language learners when they speak any language in general and English in specific. As Nation (2009) stated, “when some teachers and students complain about difficulties in speaking, they are often talking about pronunciation" (p.
Pronunciation also “plays a very important role in learning a language” (Derwing and Munro, 2005), "having good pronunciation of the language can help in normal communication, particularly intelligibility" (Nation & Newton, 2009. Although the pronunciation of adult L2 learners cannot be native-like, it can be improved with constant exposure to L2 (Flege, 1988; Flege & Liu 2001; Riney 1998; Trofimovich 2006). Recently, shadowing has attracted much attention in the field of teaching and learning foreign languages. Although shadowing was originally designed to train simultaneous interpreters, its effects on foreign language learning have been widely recognized and being used in classrooms.
The effectiveness of shadowing in classrooms has been investigated throughout the field on second language acquisition (Kuramoto & Matsuura (2002), Lambert (1992), Murphey (2001), Mochizuki (2006), Toda and Liu (2007), Tamai, (1992a, 1992b, 1997, 2001, 2005), Suzuki (2007)). For instance, Tamai (1997) compared shadowing and dictation, and concluded shadowing improved learners‟ listening proficiency faster than dictation. Regarding the global trend in teaching and learning English pronunciation, recently in Vietnam, the problem of English pronunciation has been more and more increasingly noticed and solved. Many studies can be taken in account such as that by Nguyen Tien Dung (2015) or Tweed (2012) and also the boom of English pronunciation courses via the social networking sites like Facebook as well as physical English centers throughout the country.
Mispronunciation is a major 1 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com problem in learning English, because Vietnamese students often mix the pronunciation of their first language and English as second language, also more than often they mispronounce or even drop the ending sounds in English. Problems may also come from the fact that when forming words, the sound of the same letter may vary. At Hanoi University of Business and Technology (hereafter HUBT), a private university, English is a compulsory subject for all students of all faculties from the beginning of every program. Therefore, 3rd-year students here have already been familiar with the obligation of studying English at university.
However, because of their poor pronunciation, they find listening and speaking periods the hardest moments in their foreign language study. That is to say, they cannot understand what was said by teachers and other English speakers and vice versa. There is a pressing need for them to learn correct pronunciation to make it possible for them to understand the listening materials as well as speak English better. Even though they have been given opportunities to learn “listening and speaking” in English classes, their basic competence in listening and speaking were inferior to their reading and writing skills.
Incidentally, their mother tongue interference also creates some difficulties in learning to pronounce English intelligibly. Furthermore, English teachers mostly focus on the students‟ vocabulary and still lack of the teaching facilities, which causes a fact that the students to be unable to speak in English. Under the circumstances, at the Department of English- Hanoi University of Business and Technology, there has been an attempt in investigating and solving this issue. Regarding the crucial aspect of pronunciation in English learning and the mentioned reasons, this action research entitled “Using shadowing technique to improve the pronunciation of the 3rd- year students at HUBT” was done on the situation of teaching pronunciation mainly the pronunciation of the individual sounds and words in English.
2 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Objectives of the study The study is to investigate the use of shadowing technique to improve the pronunciation of 3rd- year students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology. Questionnaire the 3rd- year students and the teachers, the author firstly aimed at identifying their general attitudes towards learning English pronunciation, and towards using shadowing technique in teaching and learning pronunciation as the main focus of the study. Besides, the study also examines how the use of shadowing technique helps improve the pronunciation of the 3rd- year students at HUBT.
Research questions With the aims stated above, three following questions were proposed for the study: 1. What are the students‟ attitudes to shadowing? 2. What are the teachers‟ attitudes to shadowing? 3. To what extend does the shadowing technique improve the students‟ pronunciation? 4.
The scope of the study Needless to say, the overview of the various aspects of English pronunciation – sounds, stress, rhythm and intonation – is essential. The use of shadowing technique in language teaching and learning has been approved for decades because of its variety of benefits in enhancing four English skills in general, and also in terms of pronunciation in particular. Shadowing plays an undeniable role in improving students‟ pronunciation including both segmental and supra-segmental levels (Hiramatsu, 2000); however, within the framework of this paper, this minor thesis attempts to target the students‟ pronunciation in individual sounds and words by applying the shadowing technique. The subjects of the study include only 30 3rd-year students at the Department of Finance and Banking at HUBT who are not English majored.
Therefore, the results of this study may be generalized to other similar Vietnamese non-English majors. 3 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Research methods The study was conducted as an action research.