1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ---------- TRỊNH PHƯƠNG LIÊN A STUDY ON ACTIVITIES TO INCREASE MOTIVATION TO LEARN PRONUNCIATION FOR THE FIRST – YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANAM TEACHERS’ TRAINING COLLEGE (NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG NHẰM TĂNG CƯỜNG HỨNG THÚ HỌC PHÁT ÂM TIẾNG ANH CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT HỆ CAO ĐẲNG TIẾNG ANH TẠI TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG SƯ PHẠM HÀ NAM ) M. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Methodology Code: 60.10 HANOI – 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ---------- TRỊNH PHƯƠNG LIÊN A STUDY ON ACTIVITIES TO INCREASE MOTIVATION TO LEARN PRONUNCIATION FOR THE FIRST – YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANAM TEACHERS’ TRAINING COLLEGE (NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG NHẰM TĂNG CƯỜNG HỨNG THÚ HỌC PHÁT ÂM TIẾNG ANH CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT HỆ CAO ĐẲNG TIẾNG ANH TẠ I TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG SƯ PHẠM HÀ NAM ) Field: ENGLISH METHODOLOGY Code: 60.10 Supervisor: NGUYỄN HUYỀN MINH, M.A HANOI - 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the study 1 2. Statement of the problem 2 3.
Purpose of the study 2 4. Method of the study 3 6. Significance of the study 3 7. Definition of terms 3 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.
Researches into pronunciation teaching 4 1. Approaches to pronunciation teaching 4 1. Teaching Pronunciation: Segmentals or Suprasegmentals? 6 1. Factors affect pronunciation learning and teaching English 8 1.
Researches into motivation in teaching and learning 8 1. Role of motivation to students‟ learning 8 1. Factors affect students‟ motivation 8 1. Framework to increase and sustain students‟ motivation 9 1.
Researches into the ways to motivate students in pronunciation lessons. Context of the study 12 2. Participants of the study 13 2. Diagnostic test 13 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Final oral examination 14 2. The students‟ journals 14 2. Teacher‟s observations and anecdotal notes 14 CHAPTER 3: DATA PRESENTATION 3. Pronunciation orientation and diagnostic test 15 3.
The students‟ journals 16 3. Software 23 CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 4. Diagnostic test, posttest and final oral examination 24 4. Areas of investigation 25 4.
Analysis and findings 26 4. The students‟ journals 29 4. Teacher‟s observations and anecdotal notes 31 4. The roles of motivating activities 32 4.
Factors influencing the students‟ motivation and performance 33 CONCLUSION 1. Summary of major findings 34 2. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study 36 REFERENCES 37 APPENDICES LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Rationale of the study In the process of globalization, the ability to communicate in English plays an important role in fostering the development of the whole nation in general and of Phu Ly city - Ha Nam province in particular.
In order to communicate well in English, one advantageous point is to have an intelligible pronunciation. However, from the first day of my career as a teacher, I faced a disillusion to find that the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College had serious problems in pronunciation. They mispronounced many words; paid very little attention to stress, intonation and rhythm. Therefore, it is my desire to improve the situation of the students‟ pronunciation.
I registered to teach the subject “Practical Pronunciation” with the coursebook “Ship or Sheep” by Ann Baker (1997). After the first courses, I was delighted to witness certain improvements in students‟ pronunciation. However, it seemed to me that my students were not very motivated in the course and their efforts faded quickly after the examination. This fact dawned on me that my teaching was not interesting and motivating enough.
From the experience of the previous courses of pronunciation, I wished to apply more stimulating activities to increase the students‟ motivation and intelligibility. Moreover, I find that the time for students to study pronunciation in the class is limited, thus in order to obtain good pronunciation requires much self-study time of students. The way to promote students to self-study pronunciation is by making them have great motivation in learning pronunciation. Because I strongly agree with Lightbrown, P.M and Spada, N (1999) that students never learn everything they are taught, they only learn what they are interested in.
The researchers also added that students are unlikely to be very successful at learning anything unless they enjoy the process. Being urged by the situation and motivated by the idea of finding interesting tools to teach pronunciation in an effective and systematic way, I would like to avail myself of this opportunity to conduct a research on activities to motivate first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College to learn pronunciation. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Statement of the problem At Hanam Teachers‟ Training College, up to now there are four classes major in English, with the aim of training teachers of English for secondary schools in the province, providing office workers specializing in English for joint-venture companies in the industrial zones in the province, training some male interpreters and translators to work in the Middle-East countries in Asia.
With the above aims, it is required that students must have an intelligible pronunciation. However, as a teacher of English at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College, I found that students had serious problems with English pronunciation. Most of them come from rural areas of Thanh Liem, Binh Luc, Kim Bang, Ly Nhan, where there is no emphasis on learning pronunciation. Therefore, it is easy to find that students have so many problems with pronunciation.
Moreover, in my previous courses of teaching pronunciation, I realized that my students seemed not to be highly motivated in learning with activities in the coursebook. From the current situation of Hanam Teachers‟ Training College, I would like to conduct a research on activities to motivate first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College to learn pronunciation. Purpose of the study This research is designed to bring a new air into the pronunciation class of the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College. In general, the purposes of this study are: + to seek activities to motivate the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College to learn pronunciation + to have empirical evidence of motivating activities on learning pronunciation of the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College 4.
What are motivating activities for the first-year English major students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College to learn pronunciation 2. How much do motivating activities in the research account for changes in students‟ pronunciation and motivation? LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Method of the study The method employed in this study is an action research, using a number of instruments as questionnaire, the students‟ journals, teacher‟s anecdotal notes, along with diagnostic test, posttest and final oral examination to collect data. Significance of the study Despite the fact that pronunciation plays an important role in learning a foreign language, so far there have been few researches on the ways to motivate students to study pronunciation compared to other skills such as speaking, listening, writing and reading.
The study suggests motivating activities in teaching pronunciation to facilitate the students‟ learning process. Therefore, this study contributes to enriching the researches on strategies to promote students to learn pronunciation. The results of this study will be of much benefit to both teachers and students of English. Definition of terms Motivation Among many definitions of motivation stands out Gardner‟s one (1985) “Motivation refers to the combination of effort plus desire to achieve the goal of learning the language plus favorable attitudes towards learning the language” Gardner (1985, p.
10) Intelligibility “Intelligibility may be broadly defined as the extent to which a speaker’s message is actually understood by a listener” (Munro & Derwing 1999, p. 289) LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 11 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Researches into pronunciation teaching 1. Approaches to pronunciation teaching The approaches to pronunciation teaching have swung in and out of favor through the years in the history.
Two general approaches to the teaching of pronunciation described by Celce-Murcia et al. (1996) have been adopted by many researchers, which are intuitive- imitative approach and analytical-linguistic approach. An intuitive-imitative approach assumes that students will develop acceptable pronunciation and speaking skills when exposed to the target language through accurate models. This approach relies heavily upon imitation and repetition, without any explicit information provided by the teacher.
The early method of pronunciation training called Direct Method, which gained acceptance in the late 1800s and early 1900s, was formed from observations of children attaining their first language. In this method, students would listen and imitate a model of the target language that was spoken by the teacher (and later by recordings) (Celce Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 1996). From the late 1960s and the early 1980s, there was a decline in explicit pronunciation teaching with the invention of the language lab. During this time intuitive-imitative approach was more popular in the pronunciation training with Total Physical Response by Asher‟s (1977) and Natural Approach by Krashen and Terrell‟s (1983).
In Total Physical Response, students would begin to speak when they were ready and they were expected to make errors in the initial stage. The main initial focus of Natural Approach was listening, which gave students the opportunities to internalize the target sound system. Indeed, many contemporary researchers still adopt this view but it is still needed to further investigate if the method has the persuasive foundation. An analytic-linguistic approach recognises the importance of an explicit intervention of pronunciation pedagogy in language acquisition.
The approach employs a variety of pedagogical aids including phonemic chart, contrastive exercises and articulatory descriptions. In this approach, students are given explicit information about how to produce the sounds and rhythms of the target language. This approach was developed to complement rather than LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 12 replace the intuitive-imitative approach. In the 1890s, Henry Sweet, Wilhelm Viëtor and Paul Passy the creators and developers of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), led a movement in language teaching that was generally called the Reform Movement.
These phoneticians had great influence on the teaching of pronunciation with their contribution to the development of a system for describing and analysing the sound systems of languages. The 1940s and 1950s witnessed a noticeable movement emphasized on explicit instruction of phonetics with Audiolinguism in the United States and the Oral approach in Britain. These two methodologies competed with the Direct Method by relying on a recording or the teacher to model the target language followed by the students‟ repetition of that language. However, teachers also drew from their knowledge of phonetics and for the first time used simplified charts of the IPA and articulatory models in the classroom.
The audiolinguism relied much on drilling sound contrasts and minimal pairs, with very little attention to intonation and conversational speech. The technique of minimal pairs drill was used extensively by Baker (1977) in her very popular course book on contrastive segmental instruction “Ship or Sheep.” The Silent Way (Gattegno, 1972) dominated in the early 1970s. In this method segmentals and suprasegmentals are paid attention from the very beginning of instruction. The teachers‟ talk is kept to a minimum using gestures, and visual aids such as the sound-colour chart, Fidel wall charts, and Cuisenaire rods, which were used to demonstrate pronunciation instruction.
The 1980s witnessed the significant shift with discourse based communicative approach with the ultimate goal was communication. The communicative approach dealt with tasks that focus on meaning, using activities such as role play, problem solving and games in a relaxed and supportive classroom environment.