VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES BÙI VĂN KHIẾT THE USE OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION WEBSITES FOR IMPROVING GRADE 10 STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION (SỬ DỤNG CÁC TRANG WEB PHÁT ÂM ĐỂ CẢI THIỆN NĂNG LỰC PHÁT ÂM CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10) MA MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 HANOI - 2012 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii LIST OF TABLES vii LIST OF DIAGRAMS AND CHARTS vii INTRODUCTION 1. Aims of the study 3 3. Scope of the study 3 4. Research questions/ Hypotheses 3 5.
Significance of the study 4 7. Organizations of the study 5 CHAPTER 1. Pronunciation as an aspect of communicative competence 9 1.1 Consonants and vowels 11 1. Theoretical background of technology and websites application 13 in language teaching 1.
Advantages and disadvantages of using pronunciation websites 15 in pronunciation instruction 1. Websites evaluation 16 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. The context of the study 21 2.1 The independent variable 22 2.2 The dependent variable 22 2. Design of the study 23 2.
Data collection instruments 24 2.1 Pre-tests and post-tests 24 2.3 Observation and diaries 25 2. Data collection procedure 26 2. Data analysis procedure 29 CHAPTER 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 3.
The one-tail t-test (one-sample t-test) 30 3. The two-tail t-test (two-sample t-test) 33 3. Observation and diaries 36 3. Major findings of the research 38 2.
Suggestions for further study 40 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com REFERENCES 41 APPENDIX A - Pre-tests I APPENDIX B - Post-tests IV APPENDIX C - Students’ background survey questionnaire VIII APPENDIX D - Questionnaire XI APPENDIX E - Students’ results of pre-tests and post-tests XIII LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATION MCQs: Multiple Choice Questions ESL: English as a Second Language EFL: English as a Foreign Language LIST OF TABLES Table 1: The table illustrates the research design adapted in this study. Table 2: One-tail t-test for control group (Listening test) Table 3: One-tail t-test for control group (Speaking test) Table 4: One-tail t-test for experimental group (Listening test) Table 5: One-tail t-test for experimental group (Speaking test) Table 6: Two-tail t-test for control group and experimental group (Listening test) Table 7: Two-tail t-test for control group and experimental group (Speaking test) LIST OF DIAGRAMS AND CHARTS Diagram 1: The relationship between the key variables of this study. Diagram 2: The flowchart shows in detail how the research was conducted. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Rationale More and more people desire to study abroad with the hope of being successful in the modern world. Therefore, English is widely taught not only at schools, colleges or universities but also at many foreign language centers. There are also hundreds of English teaching and learning programs on radio and television, especially thousands of websites for teaching and learning English available on the Internet. However, students should be intelligent enough to adapt the most effective method to master the language so that they can have a good command of English in all four skills, especially speaking and listening in order to communicate successfully.
As a result, pronunciation is one of the most paramount aspect that needs emphasis for the ease of communication. As a teacher trainer and a part-time teacher of English, the researcher is especially dedicated to the teaching of speaking and listening skills. However, from his own experience of teaching as well as working as a teacher inspector, he noticed the poor pronunciation with incorrect word stress of many students. They seem not to have problems with grammar, fluency or ideas, though, they have difficulties in pronouncing certain consonants, vowels and similar sounds in English, mainly the minimal pairs such as: /l/ and /n/, /s/ and /z/, /p/ and /b/, /i/ and /i:/.
For example, nice /nais/, nine /nain/, night /nait/, light /lait/ are all pronounced /nai/. Besides, words and sentences are usually produced with wrong stress pattern or no stress at all. The reason for this may firstly be due to geographical positions where they live, which belongs to the sociolinguistics. Another explanation for this could lie in the introduction of Multiple Choice Exams for English, which surely have an influence on students’ learning style in which speaking, listening and pronunciation are never paid enough attention.
However, the root of the issues is believed to be the current technique of teaching pronunciation as well as the method of assessing. 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Students are encouraged to learn the pronunciation by rules or sometimes listen to and imitate the teacher's pronunciation of single words and limited sentence drills and when assessing, paper tests with MCQs are employed. Many teachers claim that the classes are too crowded (from 45-55) so they do not have time to correct students’ pronunciation mistakes. In addition, there is not a separate period for pronunciation instruction, just about 15 minutes for every 5 periods, therefore they have to teach to the test, if not, their students will not get high scores in the exams and their reputation as well as their emulation titles will be lost.
When observing teachers’ lessons, the researcher found that many teachers have difficulties in producing good English, some even pronounce with wrong sounds or stress. This may be due to the fact that they are not well-trained and qualified enough. According to the results of the English Competence Survey Exams for English teachers in 2011, only 05 out of 389 high school teachers in Nam Dinh province got C1 (the requirement of the Ministry of Education and Training - 5th level in the Common European Framework). The survey results also revealed that the teachers are particularly weak in listening and speaking skills, which surely affect their teaching of pronunciation.
The researcher has taken this matter into consideration a lot. The students seem not eager to learn pronunciation and feel shy to correct their mistakes every time they are asked to. Meanwhile, most them are really into surfing the Internet, to be more specific, they often spend hours signing in yahoo chat or facebook everyday, which inspires the researcher the idea of using websites for pronunciation instruction. The websites include not only standard video clips that guide students to pronounce English sounds but they also provide a wide range of exercises, games, quizzes and activities with pictures and other illustrations, which are believed to attract the grade 10 students.
Besides, studying with websites can give students chances to listen again and practice the words, phrases, sentences at home which can not be done with conventional technique. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com From the reasons mentioned above and with an aim to improving the students’ pronunciation, the researcher decided to do a piece of experimental research on the impacts of pronunciation websites on the improvement of grade 10 students’ pronunciation of English consonants, vowels and word stress with a hope to change the situation. Aims of the study The main objective of doing this research is to find out the more useful technique for improving students’ pronunciation as the current method where students learn the rules or repeat after the teacher and then do pronunciation exercises on paper seems not efficient. The research is to test whether the use of pronunciation websites can help improve students’ pronunciation significantly and whether it is more effective than conventional technique.
Scope of the study There are certainly various aspects of pronunciation such as vowels and consonants, stress, intonation, rhythm, assimilation, elision, linking, tones etc. However, due to the limited time as well as the scope of this paper, the research deals with only two aspects of pronunciation: consonants and vowels, and word stress. It is conducted with only 30 selected participants from class 10 Maths 1 at Le Hong Phong Gifted High School in Nam Dinh Province within a period of 8 weeks (two meetings a week, each meeting lasts 90 minutes). Research questions This study is guided by the following research questions.
To what extent does the use of pronunciation websites help class 10 Maths 1 students at Le Hong Phong Gifted High School improve their pronunciation? 2. Is the use of pronunciation websites more effective than conventional technique of teaching pronunciation to class 10 Maths 1 students? 3. How do the students of class 10 Maths 1 feel about the use of pronunciation websites for improving their pronunciation? 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Null hypothesis 1 (Ho1): The use of pronunciation websites does not help improve class 10 Maths 1 students’ pronunciation. Null hypothesis 2 (Ho2): The use of pronunciation websites is not more effective than conventional technique of teaching pronunciation to class 10 Maths 1 students.
Null hypothesis 3 (Ho3): Class 10 Maths 1 students have negative attitudes towards the use of pronunciation websites. Research methods The aims of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of using websites for students’ improvement in pronunciation, therefore an experimental design is applied. In addition, the researcher made a careful selection of the subjects of the study and controlled other extraneous variables such as students’ gender, age, the teacher carrying out the lessons, teaching contents…, hence the study is a quasi- experiment in nature. In this research, both qualitative and quantitative methods are used to analyse the data.
Quantitative method: The range of mathematical and statistical techniques used to analyse data. In this research, it is used to analyse the data collected from the pre-tests and post-tests to examine the interrelationships between variables, to see whether they are associated or correlated and if so how strong. Then, conclusions are drawn from the results using inferential statistics. It is also used to analyse data collected from the survey questionnaire to find out what are the students’ attitudes towards the use of pronunciation websites in pronunciation instruction.
Qualitative method: In this research, qualitative method is used to analyse the teacher’s observations, diaries and recordings. Significance of the study 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Many Vietnamese teachers of English find it quite challenging to teach pronunciation to students, especially word stress and minimal pairs because students forget them easily and due to the lack of practice time. Some even try to explain in Vietnamese how to pronounce the words and present them all the rules of word stress, still, they appear to be unable to digest. As a result, using pronunciation websites to teach pronunciation to students discovered in this research is a really significant and effective technique for English teachers.
Not only do teachers save time teaching and reading words to students but they also create positive atmosphere in the English classes, and the most important value is that students can make a lot of progress in their English pronunciation. However, in comparison to the conventional technique, using the websites is not significantly more effective. Therefore, it is advisable to take into consideration when to use websites and when to use conventional technique for pronunciation instruction. Organization of the study This minor thesis is composed of five following parts and chapters: INTRODUCTION This part presents rationale, aims and scope of the study.
Research methods, questions, the significance and organization of the thesis are also discussed fully in this part. LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter summarizes fundamental and theoretical backgrounds and concepts related to the topic of the study by earlier authors. It deals with the importance of pronunciation in teaching and learning English as well as positive and negative attitudes, remarks and previous results of using websites in language instruction. METHODOLOGY This chapter not only provides the setting of the study, the subjects and instruments for collecting data but also presents the data collection and data analysis procedures.
5 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.