iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration…………………………………………………………………………… i Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………… ii Abstract………………………………………………………………………… iii Table of contents…………………………………………………………………… iv List of charts and tables……………………………………… ……………………… vi PART I: INTRODUCTION……………………………… ……………………… 1 Rationale of the Study………………………………… …………………………… Aim of the Study…………………………………………………………………… Research Questions…………………………………………….…………………… Methods of the Study…………………………………… ………………………… Scope of the Study ……………………………………….………………………… Significance of the Study………………………………… ……………………… PART II: DEVELOPMENT………………………………………………………… Chapter 1: Literature Review ……………………………………………………… 1.1 Place of Pronunciation in Communicative Competence and Foreign Language Learning……………………………………………………………………………… 1.2 Approaches to Pronunciation Teaching –Pronunciation Teaching Methodologies ………………………………………………………………………… 1.3 Factors Affecting Pronunciation Learning ………………………………………… 1.4 Differences in the Sound Systems of the Two Languages: English and Vietnamese …………………………………………………………………………… 1.5 Some Common English Pronunciation Problems Met by Vietnamese Learners ……………………………………………………………………………… Chapter 2: Methodology …………………………………………………………… 12 2.1 Context of the Study ………………….…………………………….…………… 12 2.2 Participants of the Study ………………………………………………………… 12 2.3 Instruments ……………………………………………………………………… 13 2.3.1 Survey Questionnaire …………………………………………………………… 13 2.3.2 Interview ……………………………………………………………………… 13 2.3.3 Classroom Observation ………………………………………………………… 14 v Chapter 3: Data Analysis and Discussions …………………….…………………… 15 3.1 Data Analysis and Discussions …………………………………………………… 15 3.1.1 Students’ Evaluation of the Importance of Pronunciation ……………………… 15 3.1.2 Students’ Difficulties in Learning English Pronunciation …………………… 15 3.1.3 Students’ Difficulties with English Vowels …………………………………… 17 3.1.4 Students’ Difficulties with English Consonants ……………………………… 18 3.1.5 Students’ Difficulties with Stress, Intonation and Rhythm …………………… 22 3.1.6 Causes of Difficulties in Learning English Pronunciation ………………… 24 3.1.7 Teachers’ Suggestive Teaching Techniques …………………………………… 26 3.2 Summary of the Findings 26 Chapter 4: Recommendations ……………………………………………………… 28 4.1 Amount of Exposure ……………………………………………………………… 28 4.2 Attitudes and Motivation ………………………………………………………… 28 4.3 Suggested Teaching Techniques ………………………………………………… 29 PART III: CONCLUSION ………………………………………………… ……… 37 Conclusions of the Study…………………………………………………………… 37 Limitations of the Study…………………………………………………………… 37 Suggestions for Further Study.……………………………………………… …… 37 REFERENCES ………………………………………………………………………… 39 APPENDICES ……………………… ……………………………………………… I-VII vi LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES Table1: Students’ evaluation of the importance of pronunciation 15 Table2: Students’ evaluation of the difficulties in learning English pronunciation 15 Table 3: Students’ evaluation of the difficulties in pronouncing long and short vowels 17 Table 4: Students’ evaluation of the difficulties in pronouncing English consonants 19 Table 5: Students’ evaluation of the problematic positions of consonants in a word 19 Table 6: Students’ evaluation of the difficulties in pronouncing consonant clusters 20 Table 7: Students’ awareness of the concepts of stress, intonation and rhythm 22 Chart 1: Students’ evaluation of causes of the difficulties in learning pronunciation 24 PART I: INTRODUCTION Rationale English has become a language for global communication these days In this common trend, English in Vietnam has become one of the important, compulsory subjects at schools, from primary school to high school system No longer are students merely required to master English grammar and vocabulary to sit for a test, they are now studying English to develop their own communicative skills, of which intelligible pronunciation plays a crucial part With poor pronunciation, students have problems either making themselves understood or understanding others Therefore, there must be the appropriate concern on teaching and learning pronunciation With the main purpose of training students majoring in English with high communicative competence, the role of teaching and learning English pronunciation has been appreciated right from the beginning of the course at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College First-year students majoring in English at the college have to complete the course titled “Practical Pronunciation” with the course book “Ship or Sheep” by Ann Baker (1997) Nevertheless, from the very first day of my teaching career in here, from my own observation and experiences, I faced a fact that they had serious problems in pronunciation during the pronunciation course even though each lesson was designed with clear, stated objectives A number of students mispronounced separated words and words combined in a sentence Others pronounced a sentence with equal stress, flat intonation and no rhythm at all Therefore, investigating the problems then look for some pedagogical suggestions to improve the situation would be useful for the pronunciation learning and teaching at my college Last but not least, the issue has not caught much attention of our teaching staff and there has not been any research on students‟ problems in learning pronunciation at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College so far Being motivated by the situation, I would like to carry out a case study in order to figure out the problems in learning English pronunciation met by the first year students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College The research findings would be followed with suggestive implications with the hope that the first year students at my college could their best with their English pronunciation 2 Aims of the Study This study is conducted with the following purposes: - to investigate the first year students‟ perception on learning English pronunciation - to find out what difficulties the first year students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College meet when they study English pronunciation - to offer possible solutions to help students overcome their difficulties in learning English pronunciation Research Questions In order to fulfill the above aims, the research is designed to seek answer to the two following research questions: What are the difficulties the first year students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College meet when they study English pronunciation? What are the causes of the difficulties met by the first year students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College in their pronunciation learning process? Method of the Study This study is conducted as a case study which employs multi methods including qualitative and quantitative methods The former uses naturalistic observation, narrative diaries, and collection of existing information while the later makes use of such instruments as questionnaires and structured interviews Scope of the Study The study focused on pronunciation learning of the first year students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College with the course book “Ship or Sheep” by Ann Baker (1997) Significance of the Study Despite the fact that pronunciation plays an important role in learning a foreign language, so far there have been few studies on the learning and teaching this language aspect compared to other language skills such as speaking, listening, reading and writing The study looks for the first year students‟ difficulties in their learning English pronunciation, following by pedagogical implications for the learning and teaching situation at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College Therefore, it contributes to enriching the researches on teaching English pronunciation and to promote students in their learning afterwards The results of this study would be of much benefit to both teachers and students of English PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Place of Pronunciation in Communicative Competence and in Foreign Language Learning Pronunciation plays a very important role in communicative competence since successful communication cannot take place without correct pronunciation (Celce-Murcia et al, 1996) Obviously, we may be proficient at grammar and have huge vocabulary, but we pronounce words wrongly, we just cannot get ourselves understood in oral communication And even if we speak in an understandable way, still, we have to work on our pronunciation Poorly pronounced segments and suprasegments may have the result of disorienting the listener and inhibiting comprehension Pronunciation is as important as any other aspects of foreign language learning like syntax or vocabulary Correct pronunciation is very necessary to develop speaking skill Pronunciation also has close connections to the other fields such as listening and even grammar Once a person can pronounce correctly the endings of the words, for example, he can, at the same time give grammatical information There is no doubt that incorrect pronunciation tends to disrupt communication just as incorrect spellings (Sebastine, 2009) In short, pronunciation has important values not only in oral communication but also in foreign language learning Acquiring good pronunciation is what a learner needs to make effort to on the way of mastering a foreign language 1.2 Approaches to Pronunciation Teaching –Pronunciation Teaching Methodologies The two general approaches to pronunciation teaching described in 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 can 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 teachers - The Direct method, which gained acceptance in the late 1800s and 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 et al, 1996) However, students who showed accuracy in controlled practice might fail to transfer what they learned to actual communicative language use (Cohen, Larson-Freeman, & Tarone, 1991) - From the late 1960s and the early 1980s, there was a decline in explicit pronunciation teaching with the invention of the language lab The Total Physical Response by Ashers‟s (1977) and Natural Approach by Krashen and Terrell‟s (1983) were among the most popular in the pronunciation training 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 still needs further investigating if the method has the persuasive foundation An analytical-linguistic approach recognized the importance of explicit intervention of pronunciation pedagogy in language acquisition The approach employs a variety of pedagogical aids including phonetic 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 - The 1940s and 1950s witnessed a noticeable movement emphasized on explicit instruction of phonetics with Audiolinguisim in the United States and the Oral approach in Britain Also relying on the 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 techniques of minimal pairs drill were used extensively by Baker (1997) in her very popular course book on contrastive segmental instruction “Ship or Sheep.” - The 1980s witnessed the significant shift with discourse based communicative approach with the ultimate goal was communication Under this trend, pronunciation teaching focused more on a “top-down” approach instead of the original “bottom up” method of teaching isolated sounds In other words, the focus of teaching pronunciation seemed to shift from mastery of segmentals (e.g vowels and consonants) to fluency, highlighting the importance of elements of suprasegmentals (Pennington, & Richards, 1986) Techniques used to teach pronunciation included listening and imitating, phonetic training, minimal pairs drilling in context, visual aids, reading aloud, recording the students‟ production with more focus on suprasegmental aspects of pronunciation It can be seen that communicative approach seems to be more balanced approach with the focus on both accuracy and fluency The approach had characteristics of both intuitive-imitative approach and analytical-linguistic approach In the light of communicative language teaching (CLT), learners are expected to achieve “intelligible pronunciation” of the target language, which is, according to Kenworthy, (1987), understood by a listener at a given time in a given situation That is, students are able to understand, accept and declare to be recognized meaningfully in their oral communication To sum up, trends of teaching pronunciation have been changing a lot during different periods Nowadays, teaching pronunciation plays a very important part in the language teaching It is the main target connected with other skills to get the highest purpose of learning a foreign language, which is communication 1.3 Factors Affecting Pronunciation Learning There are many factors affecting the learners' pronunciation According to Kenworthy (1987:4-9), factors such as the native language, the age, amount of exposure, phonetic ability, attitude and identity, motivation and concern for good pronunciation have great influence on pronunciation learning 1.3.1 The Native Language The native language plays an important role in learning to pronounce English as it is clearly seen that a foreign accent is influenced by some of the sound characteristics of the learner's native language Due to the role of native language, there has been a great deal of research on the differences between sound systems of English and other languages in terms of sound system as well as problems, difficulties the learners face when studying English According to Kenworthy, (1992: 4): "To put it very crudely, the more differences there are, the more difficulties the learners will have in pronouncing English.” 1.3.2 The Age It is commonly assumed that people can pronounce a foreign language like a native if they start learning it as a child This leads to a question that whether there is an age-related limit on the mastery of pronunciation 1.3.3 Amount of Exposure Another factor is the amount of exposure to English the learner receives However, it does not totally mean learners who have more opportunities speaking and listening with the native English speakers can have better English pronunciation Based on some recent studies, it seems that amount of exposure is not a necessary factor but a contributory factor for the development of pronunciation skills 1.3.4 Phonetic Ability Researchers demonstrate that some people are able to mimic sounds more accurately than others These abilities are innate, so this factor seems to be out of the teacher's control What the teacher can is to investigate the abilities of the learners and provide a variety of tasks so that something will suit the needs and ability of each learner 1.3.5 Attitudes and Identity It has been claimed that factors such as a person‟s „sense of identity‟ and feelings of „group affiliation‟ are strong determiners of the acquisition of accurate pronunciation of a foreign language In many studies of attitude and motivation in language learning, it has been shown that those learners who show positive feelings towards the speakers of the new language tend to develop more accurate, native-like accents 1.3.6 Motivation and Concern for Good Pronunciation It cannot be denied that motivation is an important factor that determines the people's participation in every activity especially in language learning Motivation makes people more active in learning The more motivated the people are, the greater the cognitive process is Celce Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin (1996) considered that motivation and concern for good pronunciation affect pronunciation accuracy 1.4 Differences in the Sound Systems of the Two Languages: English and Vietnamese There are a number of books discussing this matter In this study, the detailed comparison of Vietnamese and English pronunciation by Doan Thien Thuat (2003), Nguyen Thien Giap (1997), Ha Cam Tam (2005), O'Connor (1967), McNeil (1987), Hinst and Cristo, (1998) has been adopted The main differences between English and Vietnamese pronunciation are presented hereafter: 1.4.1 Phonemes In Vietnamese, a letter is often represented by the same phoneme (except /r/, /ng, ngh/, /k/ (c, k) While in English, the same letter may represent different sounds Besides, many words contain silent letters which may be at any positions in the word This feature is quite a challenge for Vietnamese students in learning pronunciation 1.4.2 Vowels Three out of seven short English vowels are absent in Vietnamese Vietnamese does not have vowel contrasts (minimal pairs) which means there is not discrimination between the short and long This is really a matter to Vietnamese students because they cannot pronounce some words correctly without looking at its pronunciation transcription in the dictionary 1.4.3 Consonants English has 24 consonants but there are only 22 in Vietnamese There are some phonemes in English but not in Vietnamese and vice versa In Vietnamese, a letter is often represented by the same phoneme In English, some phonemes seem to be represented by identical letters but different pronunciation Vietnamese in general is spoken with a staccato delivery Syllables and words are not linked together as in English but are clearly separated from each other Especially final consonant clusters cause the greatest difficulties for Vietnamese students ... competence, the role of teaching and learning English pronunciation has been appreciated right from the beginning of the course at Hanam Teachers? ?? Training College First- year students majoring in English. .. to investigate the first year students? ?? perception on learning English pronunciation - to find out what difficulties the first year students at Hanam Teachers? ?? Training College meet when they... addresses major difficulties met by the first year students in pronunciation learning As experienced teachers of the pronunciation course for the first year students, all the teachers give a lot of