1 English Intonation: Errors made by Third Year Students at English Department, Chu Van An University Phan Thị Ngọc Anh Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh; Mã số: 60 22 15 Người hướng dẫn: PGS TS Võ Đại Quang Năm bảo vệ: 2012 Abstract: This is a study on common errors in English intonation unit made by Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language with a hope to help the students to improve their ability of dividing utterances into intonation units and help the teachers of English acknowledge their students‟ difficulties in perceiving and producing tone units The participants of the study involve 20 third year majors at English Department, Chu Van An University The major source of data for the research came from three sets of instruments including the academic results, the intonation tasks, and the survey questionnaire The results indicated that third year students still faced numerous difficulties in speech division into word groups The problems they had were caused by both their mother tongue and the English intonation itself However, the complicacy of the foreign language item seemed to be far more problematic to Vietnamese learners Apart from that, a correlation between perceptive and productive ability and a close tie between learners‟ language proficiency and their intonation ability were investigated in the study The study also revealed that most of participants kept positive beliefs in learning intonation but not most of them had positive attitudes towards learning it due to its complicacy Many students wished to find solutions to their problems in tonality and almost needed more exercises and activities from their teachers Keywords: Ngôn ngữ; Tiếng Anh; Ngữ điệu Content PART A INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study Intonation is a helpful tool to achieve effective communication Intonation, however, is a fairly complicated subject It is the reason why both Vietnamese teachers and students pay very little attention to intonation Thus, when it comes to speaking English, it is no surprise to find that many students sound monotonous This also prevents learners from comprehending spoken English From the teaching reality, I have realized that my students encounter no few problems in speaking English rhythmically and intonationally They even find it difficult to pause correctly after word groups and more difficult to put the most prominent stress on the tonic syllable As a result, their speech is either jerky or monotonous or both Apart from that, I myself find my spoken English not as good as my written English Especially I have a couple of difficulties with English intonation I am aware of the importance of English intonation Also, I have certain knowledge of English intonation However, the amount of knowledge I gained before my post graduate course is not sufficient for me to feel confident about communicating in English With a hope that I can make some contributions to solving my own problems and my students‟ difficulties in communicating in English, I choose the study on “English Intonation: Errors Made by Third Year Students at English Department, Chu Van An University.” 2 Scope of the study The study will focus on the formation of intonation units – tonality and concentrates on a limited number of 20 third year English majors of Chu Van An University Aims of the study The ultimate aim of this thesis is, to the possible extent within the findings established, to provide an account of the errors in English intonation commonly committed by third year students at Chu Van An University and on this basis, to facilitate the mentioned students in improving English intonation unit usage Objectives of the study  Detect common errors in relation to English intonation units made by Vietnamese EFL students;  Find out the causes of these errors;  Investigate the relationship between participants‟ perceptive and productive ability;  Identify the correlation between third year students‟ language proficiency and their ability of dividing speech into word groups;  Explore learners‟ beliefs and attitudes towards learning English intonation as well as their solutions to the problems they made with English intonation unit Research Questions To achieve the aims above, research questions are addressed Common types of errors relating to English intonation 1.1 What are the common errors in dividing speech into tone units at the perception and production stage encountered by third year majors of English Department, Chu Van An University? 1.2 What factors cause errors of English tonality? Do the learners‟ perceptive ability relate to their productive ability? What is the correlation between the students‟ language proficiency and their ability of speech division into word groups? Students‟ attitudes towards intonation learning and their solutions to problems? 4.1 What are students‟ beliefs and attitudes towards English intonation learning? 4.2 What students to resolve their own difficulties in learning intonation? PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 English Intonation 1.1.1 Definitions of intonation In the present study, the researcher adopts the definition from the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (1992: 190) that is “When speaking, people generally raise and lower the pitch of their voice, forming pitch patterns They also give some syllables in their utterances a greater degree of loudness and change their speech rhythm These phenomena are called intonation Intonation does not happen at random but has definite patterns which can be analyzed according to their structure and functions Intonation is used to carry information over and above which is expressed by the words in the sentence” 1.1.2 Tonality – Intonation Unit 1.1.2.1 Nature of tonality Paul Tench (1996:31) considers tonality as the system in intonation that divides spoken discourse into its separate individual intonation units, each of which represents one unit of information The terms “intonation unit” can be called by different names by different authors In the present study the terms like “tone unit” (according to Roach), “tone group” (in the word of Halliday), “word group” (stated by Tench), “sense group” (called by O‟ Connor), and “pause group” (in the view of Pennington) are used to refer intonation unit 1.1.2.2 Identification of tonality Halliday (quoted in Tench 1996:31) states that very often intonation units coincide with clauses Theoretically, neutral tonality can be founded on the basis that a single piece of information is handled in the grammar typically by a single clause, and in pronunciation by a single intonation unit However, in spoken English, intonation units not always coincide with whole clauses In such cases, marked tonality will count to identify intonation units Marked tonality occurs either when two (or more) clauses fit into a single intonation unit, or when two (or more) intonation units are needed to cover a single clause Of the two cases, the latter is much more frequently than the former To be more precise, tag questions, listed items, marked themes, long themes, final adverbs modifying meaning of the whole clause, initial and medical adjuncts have their own tone unit The case of two (or more) clauses fitting into a single unit can be found with report clause, negative domain, and when two transitive verbs have one object complement in common 1.1.3 Structure of intonation Structure of intonation here is shown through structure of each intonation unit in an utterance According to Paul Tench (1996:12), structure of an individual intonation unit consists of pre-tonic segment and tonic or nucleus and tail Among those, the tonic is obligatory and the most prominent word; the head, pre-head and tail are optional Tonic syllable is the most prominent syllable in an intonation unit Each intonation unit has one and only one tonic syllable The head extends from the first stressed syllable up to but not including the tonic syllable If there is no stressed syllable before the tonic syllable, there cannot be a head The pre-head is comprised of all the unstressed syllables in tone-unit preceding the first stressed syllable Any syllables between the tonic syllable and the end of the tone unit are called the tail 1.1.4 Errors in intonation There is much that can go wrong in intonation However, the errors with tonality are the commonest An error of tonality can cause series of errors in tonicity and tone Therefore, if the teacher detects an error in intonation, he or she can check first with tonality then the tonicity and tone so as not to cause byproduct errors in tonicity and tone Tonality errors emerge when learner utter the response as two intonation units instead of as one, or as one instead of as two 1.2 Contrastive analysis Contrastive analysis (CA) is defined by James (1980: 3) as “a linguistic enterprise aimed at producing inverted (i.e contrastive, not comparative) two-valued typologies (a CA is always concerned with a pair of languages), and founded on the assumption that languages can be compared.” 1.2.1 Intonation unit English tonality Vietnamese tonality  English intonation unit normally is  Vietnamese intonation unit operates in associated with clauses Each clause sentences Different types of sentences have constructs an intonation unit different types of intonation  Each intonation unit has one nucleus except  Simple sentence has one nucleus while other the case of dive tone kinds of sentences have nucleuses  Each intonation unit has one intonation  Each intonation unit involves a series of contour falling and rising contours Great difference exists not only in tonality system but also in its elements including stress, rhythm, pause, and pitch 1.2.2 Stress Stress in English Stress in Vietnamese  It is a key factor to discover the tonic  Stress is weak because of the appearance of syllable which brings the most important tones in all the words of utterance information in a given intonation unit 1.2.3 Rhythm and pause Rhythm and Pause in English Rhythm and Pause in Vietnamese  English is foot-timing language Thus, the  Vietnamese is syllable-timing language rhythm is very strong and is a prominent There is no rhythm group division or if there phenomenon is some, it is very weak  The pause in English can happen anywhere  The pause is used if there exists punctuation in a given intonation unit It appears without a comma including comma 1.2.4 Pitch English Pitch Vietnamese Pitch  Pitch is associated with utterances and  Pitch is associated with syllables and affects meaning of the whole utterance changes meaning of individual syllable  Pitch variations don‟t form new words but  Pitch variations form new words sentence meaning  Variations in pitch can convey different  Variations in pitch cannot express different purposes of the speakers purposes of the speakers  Pitch performs grammatical function  Pitch variations perform lexical function CHAPTER METHODOLOGY 2.1 Error and error analysis 2.1.1 Definition of error In this thesis, the researcher adopts Chaudon‟s definition In his view (1986: 66), errors are defined as “linguistic forms or content that differed from native speaker norms or facts and any other behavior signaled by the teacher as needing improvement.” The researcher selected Received Pronunciation as the norm in the present study 2.1.2 Error Analysis In the view of Corder (1967& 1974), error analysis is the study of the errors made by second language learners It provided a methodology for investigating learner language level He also identified a model for error analysis which included three stages: Identification Description Explanation Among the three stages, explanation is especially important because in order to arrive at effective remedial measures, a full understanding the mechanism that triggers each type of errors is necessary According to Richard (1974), there appear two main types of errors They are interlingual and intralingual errors 2.1.2.1 Interlingual Errors Interlingual errors - interference errors occur when learners transfer one item or structure of their native language into second language whereas the two languages are different in nature in many aspects 2.1.2.2 Intralingual Errors Intralingual errors are those due to the language being learned itself, independent of the native language Intralingual errors are caused by the deficient knowledge of the target language Lack of knowledge is the common reason why learners forget the exception (over-generalization), ignore the rules restriction, apply the rules incompletely, or build up wrong hypothesis 2.2 Subjects Participants of the study are 20 third year students (17 female and male students) with the average age from 21 to 24 All are at English Department, Chu Van An University All of them are exposed to the same learning situation and teachers at university They have gone through a minimum of five years of English; three before college and two at college While in University they have taken credits of English language and literature including three in English phonetics and phonology that covered vowels, consonants, stress, rhythm and intonation 2.3 Instruments 2.3.1 The academic result Refer to Appendix 6, this instrument was the academic results of first five semesters of the course In this kind of assessment, the students got 10% of the total mark from their regular attendance and active participation during the class hour, 30% from the mid-term examinations, and 60% from the end-of-term examination After being calculated according to the appropriate proportion, marks ranging from to 10 were given for each individual subject of each student For the purpose of this study, only the results of the examinations for four English skills, general English, grammar, and phonetics and phonology were recorded 2.3.2 The Intonation tasks As the main instrument to collect data on errors relating to English intonation units, a task with two stages of perception and production was adopted in this research This is an extract from conversational pages, Better English Pronunciation (O‟ Connor, 1980: 128) There were 32 intonation units of all types In terms of the length of units, there were twelve short units, four medium units and sixteen long units According to the way of tonality division, there were 25 neutral units, which left only marked ones including unit 3, 5, 8, 14, 18, 25and 30 Of all the three groups in term of length, it was a big potential for students to make errors of splitting with long units On the contrary, students by no mean split short units but might encounter the errors of joining them Another potential source of difficulties might be marked units The perception task was employed to help assess the students‟ ability to recognize and comprehend system of intonation units in English The production task was designed to examine the students‟ ability to produce utterances in real context with right pause after sense groups 2.3.3 Survey questionnaire Part 1: The demographic information consisting of student number, age, gender, and duration of English learning Part 2: (from question to 6): Attitudinal data including the opinions, attitudes and interests of the participants on English intonation and English intonation learning Part 3: (from question to 9): Behavioral data detecting the problems in learning intonation and their reactions to those problems 2.4 Data Collection and Analysis Procedure At the first stage, the results of the first five semester‟s achievement test were collected Scores of English subjects were averaged, and then were used to place the students into three groups of ability Then, one day of April 2011, 20 students were gathered in their lecture hall and were required firstly to perception task With the perception task, they were asked to divide the utterances into tone units while listening to the tape three times After the perception task came to the production task At this stage, students had time to rehearse the dialogue until they felt confident enough to act out the conversation in pair twice After each time, players in each pair would change their roles of the two speakers of the dialogue Participants‟ role-playing was recorded onto a tape for later analysis The recordings were then carefully checked and converted by the researcher and two other teachers at Chu Van An University to detect errors in producing intonation units Based on the results from the handouts and the recordings, the researcher counted and categorized perceptive and productive errors related to intonation unit division later When the task was completed, the researcher conducted a survey questionnaire (Appendix 5), which had been carefully designed and delivered to all the 20 participants The data collected from the instruments were presented in tables and charts 2.5 Data Analysis Both qualitative and quantitative methods are exploited in the research Qualitative analysis: analyzing the participants’ recordings and handouts Quantitative analysis: analyzing the questionnaire and academic results 2.5.1 Data obtained by the academic results The participants‟ average marks ranged from 6.14 to 7.90 Two groups of high and mid ability were formed (1) Mid ability students had the average marks ranging from 6.14 to 6.67 (2) High ability students had the average marks 7.14 to 7.90 2.5.2 Data obtained by the intonation task The data on intonation unit division was analyzed on two main areas: error analysis and correlation investigation The error analysis was based on the three main steps Within the first step of error identification, twenty handouts and recordings were marked according to the transcription The second step, errors classification, looked into: (1) Splitting errors at perception and production stage and (2) joining errors at the two stages Based on the errors found in the area, the third step - error explanation- further looked into the factors that caused the splitting and joining intonation units The causes were identified by studying the nature of the errors The correlation was investigated first between perceptive and productive ability of tone unit division to discover how perceiving capacity supported producing ability, and second between learners‟ language proficiency and their intonation ability to make out whether students with higher scores at university can produce intonation unit better or not 2.5.3 Data obtained by the survey questionnaire Each survey questionnaire was analyzed by the researcher to avoid any mistakes The frequency of the responses given by the students was in the form of tables and percentages Data from the survey helped the researcher to determine the proper suggestions to assist teachers and students in teaching and learning English intonation unit CHAPTER DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS The handouts of the perception task and the recordings of the production task were marked according to the keys on the conversation pages, Better English Pronunciation (O‟Conner, 1980: 128) One error was counted wherever students had wrong division or joined more than one unit into one Therefore, there existed a fact that more than one error might appear in one unit The author counted the number the error appeared and classified them into types Otherwise, each correct division for one unit took one point The researcher would count the right tonality division then gave marks to every participant 3.1 Research question – Error analysis 3.1.1 Research question 1.1 – Error identification and description Various sorts of errors were committed by students The number of errors on the division of speech into tone units is fairly high, and they are categorized into 12 groups of errors (refer to appendix 0, table 06) They were errors of joining short units (Js), joining closely grammatically connected units (Jc), splitting marked tonality at clause boundary without comma (Sbwc), splitting marked tonality at clause boundary with comma (Sbc), splitting tonality at the place of the stressed syllables in the head (Shs), splitting Proportion of error types at the place of the unstressed Sp Stu Sbwc Ss syllables in the head (Shu), splitting Sd tonality after the nucleus (Sn), splitting tonality after the direct Jc Sbc object (So), splitting tonality at the Js changing point in the dive (Sd), splitting tonality after the subject Shs So (Ss), splitting tonality after the preSn Shu head (Sp), splitting tonality at unstressed syllables in the tail (Stu) 3.1.2 Research Question 1.2 – Error explanation What are the probable causes to the problems detected? (Refer to appendix 0, table 07) The errors participants made with 32 units involve two types of errors namely the interlingual (17.7%) and the intralingual (82.3%), but the main causes are faulty hypothesis resulting in 35.4% errors in the total and over-generalization leading to 23.8% errors of the sum Then come to negative influence from the mother tongue which covers 17.1% of all errors made, and ignorance of the rule restrictions which causes 14.7% of the total errors The least frequent source of errors is incomplete application of rules reaching to 8.4% of all It can be said that the influence of the mother tongue plays a little role in the division of utterances into intonation units The most important factor, however, lies in the tonality itself It, therefore, is more fundamental to pay attention to make clear intonation rules in order to help students acquire knowledge in the process of learning English intonation Thus, it can be concluded that it is these errors that show the general characteristics of the students‟ learning how to divide speech into intonation units 3.2 Research Question Does the learners’ perceptive ability relate to their productive ability? In both stages, students seemed to have the same problems However, the number of students who encountered faults varied greatly in perceiving and producing tone units The frequency of order was not similar in the tasks In general, students have same difficulties with marked tone units composed by more than one clause Students tended to make more errors of splitting in producing tone units than in perceiving them However, with regard to the errors of joining short and closely grammatically connected units, it is a problem of perceiving sense groups The participants have a better perceptive ability compared to the productive one but they are correlated to each other The better perceptive ability compared to the productive ability is demonstrated by the fact that students get more good marks, less errors at perception stage, and fewer students faced difficulties in perceiving tone units (Appendix 0, table 11, chart 03) The relation between the two abilities is proved by the data that of 15 students who got above the average and good marks with perception task, 13 students (representing 86.67%) attained the same ranges of grade with production task Thus, those who perceive tone units well will produce them well (Appendix 0, table 09) 3.3 Research Question What is the correlation between students’ language proficiency and their ability to produce intonation units? The students‟ language proficiency and their competence in English tonality had close ties The higher the proficiency is, the lower the number of errors is committed, and the lower the number of students makes faults (Appendix 0, table 13, chart 05) This is demonstrated in the marks they attained, the errors they make in their intonation tasks and the number of them with errors It is the high ability students that awarded the more good grades and committed fewer faults In contrast, the mid ability students frequently made errors and got lower marks Therefore, the difference in the students‟ language proficiency and in their intonation capacity should be taken into account in the process of teaching intonation in general and in teaching intonation unit in particular Thus, a teacher should apply different types of activities and provide a wide range of exercises from easier levels to more difficult ones Despite the better performance in producing tone units, quite a large number of high level students have problems with English tonality For this reason, it is definitely that the process to eliminate tonality errors among high ability students requires hardship and effort, let alone those in mid ability group It is both groups of students that are in need of great help from teachers for linguistic knowledge from structure of clause with more attention to clause types formed by di-transitive and complex-transitive verbs to rules of stress and rhythm with more explanations for strong form and weak form of words, and to tonality rules with special focus on marked tone units What‟s more, acquiring sufficient theoretical knowledge will turn out to be useless if students are out of practice Thus, together with equipping them theory, carefully planned exercises and activities should be provided 3.4 Research question 3.4.1 Students’ beliefs and attitudes towards learning English intonation The statistic data shows students‟ positive belief in English intonation and English intonation learning Most of the participants find it important to learn intonation, and it is necessary to spend more time on intonation at university because intonation helps them not only to communicate successfully but also to represent themselves well in English More importantly, their future job requires that they should be good at intonation As shown in the following table, although most of them (90%) appreciate the important role of intonation, not most of them like learning it (60%) of students questioned assert that they like learning intonation because it is necessary Some of them (35%) believe learning intonation is interesting No one thinks learning intonation is easy Those who either not like or not mind learning intonation attribute their negative attitude to the complexity of English intonation itself (40% of the students) and the uneasiness in the way of teaching (30% of the participants) Only a small number of students (10%) think learning English is boring 3.4.2 Students’ reactions to their problems As a matter of fact, intonation is a complicated issue in the process of acquiring English, so it is understandable that all of participants face difficulties in learning intonation So as to overcome difficulties, the first way most students (55%) use is asking for help from their teachers 40% of the participants search material and practice themselves, some others (15%) ask for help from friends While 35% want to something with tonality but not know what to and how to do, a few (10%) nothing All mentioned data proved that many students wish to solve problems with tone units, so teachers should more to provide help According to 90% of the participants, the most significant action a teacher can take is providing students with activities and exercises to practice at class Two third of the participants asked emphasized the role of a teacher‟s listening to students and giving feedback Half of the students want their teachers to give lectures on intonation deeply and clearly and assign them exercises for homework practicing PART C CONCLUSION Summary of the thesis Errors are obviously unavoidable in learning a foreign language, so error correction plays an essential role in teaching a language, especially in teaching difficult language elements like intonation The thesis is carried out with the aims at finding out common errors in dividing speech into tone units made by third year students at English Department, Chu Van An University and clarifying the causes to these errors Moreover, the thesis wishes to discover the relationship between participants‟ perceptive and productive ability of tonality to find effective ways to support students‟ competence in English tonality Also, investigating the correlation between learners‟ proficiency and their tonality capacity is another significant goal of the thesis to offer suitable tasks in need as possible suggestions to aid teachers in delivering lectures on tonality and on its elements To achieve these aims, some literature review relating to the theme of the study is taken into consideration The study has been conducted with 20 third year students from Chu Van An University and three sets of instruments namely academic results, intonation tasks, and a survey questionnaire Data collected from these tools are analyzed, which help to answer all the research questions thoroughly The analysis reveals important findings that third year students still face numerous difficulties in speech division into word groups The problems they have are caused by both their mother tongue and the English intonation itself However, the complicacy of the foreign language item seems to be far more problematic to Vietnamese learners Apart from that, a correlation between perceptive and productive ability and a close tie between learners‟ language proficiency and their intonation ability are investigated in the study Concluding remarks From what has been analyzed above, in this part I would like to draw some conclusions for the objectives set forth at the beginning as follow: 2.1 Concluding remarks on objective My first objective is to detect common errors in relation to English intonation units made by third year majors at English department, Chu Van An University I think that this objectives is done successfully with 12 types of errors that students commonly encountered Of all the types, Sbwc, Sbc, Shs, and Shu are four most serious ones with the largest number of errors and the biggest number of students who made errors From the above most frequently met problems, it can be implicated that marked tonality comprised of two clauses, stressed and unstressed syllables are attribute to the most problematic factors which hinder students from correctly dividing utterances into word groups 2.2 Concluding remarks on objective Errors coexist with learning a language They are useful for learners, teachers and researchers as well Nonetheless, errors are taken advantage only when we acknowledge the core causes leading to them That is the reason why the second objective of the study concerns the causes of these problems, which is tackled strictly with the most frequently sources of faults committed by the participants are false concepts hypothesized and over-generalization Having found out the underlined causes to the errors of tonality committed, implications emerge that English intonation unit alone is rather complicated for learners to acquire 2.3 Concluding remarks on objective Having investigated the relationship between participants‟ ability to perceive and produce tone units, it is found that perceptual competence relatively affects producing capacity, which is stated in more details as follow (1) students tend to perceive tonality better than producing tonality and (2) those who perceive tone units well will produce them well 2.4 Concluding remarks on objective The next objective is to explore the relationship between third year students‟ language proficiency and their ability of dividing speech into word groups Participants were divided into two groups of ability, the high and the mid one Both groups had the same difficulties, and committed the same types of errors, but the degree of their problems was not the same Students with higher proficiency level performed better than lower ones, which was represented by the following details:  Higher ability students face less difficulties than mid ability students  Fewer high ability students made intonation errors than the others The mentioned facts provide the answer to our third research question That is speakers with higher English proficiency will have better tonality ability 2.5 Concluding remarks on objective The final objective is to discover students‟ belief and attitudes towards English intonation and English intonation learning Data from the survey questionnaire indicates clearly that a majority of the participants are aware of the important role of learning English intonation in their process of acquiring the language and for the future career, and almost keep the positive attitude towards this issue However, not most of the students like learning English intonation since it is too difficult for them, so they are in need of teachers‟ help with both theoretical knowledge and practice exercises and activities On the whole, the thesis has fulfilled its objectives of the study Although it cannot fully cover all the aspects and components of English intonation, I hope that this thesis would be of some value for those interested in English intonation in general and English intonation unit in particular Recommendations So far, the errors found in the study have been discussed in much detail The causes of the errors have been found and explained clearly The relation between perceptive and productive, the correlation between language proficiency and tonality ability also have been discovered The findings of the study show that using English intonation is not easy any more for the third year students at English Department of Chu Van An University In the elementary system of intonation only – tonality – numerous errors are detected The question raised here is how to teach students English intonation effectively Intonation is a vast topic, so this section will nevertheless have given some ideas to tackle intonation in the classroom, and some recommendations to help learners with tonality I hope that they will be useful enough for teachers and learners to deal with this problem (1) Concerning the errors made in the intonation tasks and the causes of these errors, it is suggested that learners are in need of not only exercises and activities for further practice but also theoretical knowledge of English intonation unit As a result the teachers need to prepare for intonation lessons deliberately, so that they should be competent in approaches, techniques, and principles to teach English intonation (refer to appendix 7, and 9) as well as prove their roles in the teaching process (appendix 10) In order to make the process of comprehending English intonation unit less hard, learners should be involved in lessons on components of a tone unit like stress, rhythm, and pause in advance And more attention and energy should be paid to these elements to make it easier for learners to acquire the language items During the process of lecturing, similarities and differences in intonation unit and in its components between the two languages are required to be handled too but in the form of warm up exercises to wake the awareness of the learners (2) Regarding the importance of the perception ability to the production ability, it is demonstrated that they are related to each other to a certain extent Normally, students perceive intonation units better than producing, and those who perceive well tend to produce well In other words, perceptual ability plays a part in reinforcing the producing competence of tonality The relation between perceptive and productive ability recommends that if a teacher wishes to improve his students‟ ability to produce intonation unit, he firstly need to consolidate their ability to perceive tonality with sufficient theoretical knowledge However, being good at perceiving word groups is not enough, even helpless, 10 since good capacity for tonality requires more than that It is expected to produce tone units flowingly without any hesitation or pause in between The productive ability, nonetheless, involves much more effort and attention of the teachers to design suitable exercises and activities (3) Although the students learn in the same groups, their tonality ability is not homogenous This is due to the differences in each person‟s language competence and his own background and learning environment Therefore, in teaching a group of students who are at different levels of language proficiency, different tasks should be assigned to these different levels to ensure that all of the students can practice For higher ability students, the requirements should be harder Also, constant attention should be paid to low ability students to give any instant help so that they can catch up with the higher ones (4) Learners are well aware of the importance of English intonation in the daily conversation, but the time they are allowed to study this subject is extremely little compared to the time on English practical subjects I presume to think that English intonation should become a separate subject so that both teachers and students have more time to investigate the nature of English intonation deeply enough to become more and more successful communicators of English Moreover, it is rather complicated for students to acquire English intonation It is the complicacy of intonation that prevents the learners from being interested in learning English intonation in general and learning English intonation unit in particular Thus, teachers should facilitate them, enhance their confidence, and make sure that they feel relaxed when they learn intonation In this case, easy tasks at the beginning and game will count Suggestions for further study For further development of the topic of the present study, the following directions should be considered in the future research: (1)The present study involved only a small sample size among third year students There is a need for a more representative sample to get a more comprehensive picture of the English major students‟ intonation ability (2)This study mainly looked at errors committed with the elementary system of English intonation, tonality It is also essential to examine the two other systems namely tonicity and tone (3)In order to discover underlined causes to errors relating to intonation, contrastive analysis between English and Vietnamese intonation is in need to help well predict students‟ errors (4)Intonation is considered as a vast topic which includes many minor components A need is raised here is that further researches on its elements as stress and rhythm should be conducted before hand X APPENDIX PRODUCTION TASK I would like you to take a few moments to complete the following tasks Your answers will help me with the error analysis of English intonation All the information provided by you is of great importance and solely used for the study purpose, not for any other purposes You can be sure that you will not be identified in any discussion of the data Thank you in advance! You are expected to Listen to the tape, divide the utterances into tone units Rehearse the dialogue until you feel confident enough to act out the conversation Your speech will be recorded on to a tape Take turns to play roles of speaker A, then the speaker B, respectively The dialogue A That‟s a nice suit I haven‟t seen it before, have I? B No It‟s the first time I‟ve worn it, actually I only got it about four days ago You like it, you? A Very much Did you have it specially made, or did you buy it off the peg? B I had it made I very rarely buy a suit, so I thought I‟d have it tailored, and I‟m quite pleased with it A I should think so It‟s very handsome May I ask where you got it? B The same place as I got my last one, nineteen years ago A Nineteen years? Do you really mean to tell me you haven‟t had a suit since then? B That‟s right I don‟t often wear a suit, you see, so they tend to last a long time A Nineteen years is certainly a long time; and even if you don‟t wear them much, your old one must have lasted well B Oh, it did They did a very good job on it XI APPENDIX KEYS TO INTONATION TASKS A B A B A B A B A B //That‟s a nice suit.//2 I haven‟t seen it before, //3have I?// //4No.//5 It‟s the first time I‟ve worn it, actually // 6I only got it about four days ago.// 7You like it,// you?// //9Very much.// 10Did you have it specially made, //11or did you buy it off the peg?// //12I had it made.//13 I very rarely buy a suit, //14so I thought I‟d have it tailored,// 15and I‟m quite pleased with it.// //16I should think so //17It‟s very handsome.// 18May I ask where you got it?// //19The same place as I got my last one,// 20nineteen years ago.// //21Nineteen years? //22Do you really mean to tell me //23 you haven‟t had a suit since then?// //24That‟s right //25I don‟t often wear a suit, you see, //26so they tend to last a long time.// //27Nineteen years is certainly a long time; //28and even if you don‟t wear them much, //29your old one must have lasted well.// //30Oh,//31 it did //32They did a very good job on it.// XII APPENDIX PHONETIC TRANSCRITION OF INTONATION TASK \ A: 1ts nais /sju:t 2 hvnt \si:nt b f 3 a : hva \ B: 4n 5 tsf:s  tam av \w ktl 6 nl \g bat f dez  ga 7 :nt a tt : ju: \ lakt 8 du:ju: A: 9er \mt 10 dju: hvt spel med 11: ddju: bat  \peg v d  f B: 12  hdt \med a 13 aver \real  ba  sju:t 14 sa adhvt \teld :t 15 namkwat \ pli:zdwt A: 16 ad \ks 17 ver \hnsm 18 ea a:sk we ju: g ts m tt B: 19 sem  ples zag ma \la:stwn 20  t nanti:n \jz   g A: 21anti:n jz 22 n dju:rl mi:n t telmi: 23 hvnt  hd   sju:t  sns en ju: B: 24 ts rat 25 dnt  \wer sju:t ju: si: 26  a fn setend tl:st l \tam  A: 27 anti:n jz zs:tnl l tam n  28 ni:vn fju:dnt \wem mt msv l:std wel \ B: 30 31 \dd 32  t edd ver d nt b 29 j ldwn :r XIII APPENDIX SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE I would like you to take a few moments to complete the following questionnaire Your answers will help me with the error analysis of English intonation All the information provided by you is of great importance and solely used for the study purpose, not for any other purposes You can be sure that you will not be identified in any discussion of the data Thank you in advance! Part 1: Please provide some information about yourself Your age: ……………… Years of learning English:  9  12 Gender:  Male  Female Please tick () right answers to the following questions (You can tick more than one answer for each question) Part 2: Attitudes towards the learning of intonation How important is intonation in your English learning? a  very important b  quite important c  not very important d  unimportant Do you think it necessary to have more time to learn English intonation in your course? a  yes b  no If you find it necessary to have more time to learn English intonation in your course, what are the reasons? a  You need it to communicate successfully b  You need it for your future career c  It is included in your course at university d  It is a way to show your proficiency in English How much you like learning intonation? a  like b  not like c  not mind If you like learning intonation, what are the reasons? a  It is easy to learn intonation b  Learning intonation is interesting c  Learning intonation is useful d  The conditions for learning intonation like cassette recorders, videos, and materials are good e  The way your teacher gives lessons on intonation is easy to understand If you not like or not mind learning intonation, what are the reasons? a  It is difficult to learn intonation b  Learning intonation is boring c  Intonation is not paid much attention at university d  The conditions for learning intonation like cassette recorders, videos, and materials are still deficient e  The way your teacher gives the lesson on intonation is not easy to understand Part 3: Problems and Solutions Do you face with any difficulties in learning English intonation?  Yes  No When you have faced problems, what have you done to solve them? a  Ask your teachers for help XIV b  Ask your friends for help c  You yourself search materials to learn and practice d  You nothing e  You want to something but not know what to At present, if your teachers are willing to help, what you need them to help you? a  Give lectures on intonation deeply and clearly b  Provide you with activities and exercises to practice at class c  Assign you exercises for homework practicing d  Listen to you and give feedback e  All above Thank you so much for your cooperation! XVI APPENDIX Academic results 17 APPENDIX APPROACHES TO TEACH INTONATION Intuitive-imitative Approach Intuitive-imitative Approach depends on the learner‟s ability to listen to and imitate the rhythms and sounds of the target language without the intervention of any explicit information; it also presupposes the availability of good models to listen to, a possibility that has been enhanced by the availability first of phonograph records, then of tapes recorders and language labs in the mid-twentieth century, and more recently of audio and video cassettes and compact discs Jones and Evans (1995) suggest teachers should take this approach at the beginning of teaching pronunciation: „Firstly it constitutes a more holistic approach in which, from the o outset, different elements of pronunciation are seen as integrated Secondly, it gives students a chance to experience pronunciation o intuitive and communicative levels before moving on to a more analytical exploration of specific elements of phonology Finally, work in voice quality can help students to improve their image when they speak English, and thus increase their confidence‟ Analytic-linguistic Approach Analytic-linguistic Approach utilizes information and tools such as a phonetic alphabet, articulatory descriptions, chart of the vocal apparatus, contrastive information, and other aids to supplement listening, imitation, and production It explicitly informs the learner of and focuses attention on such segmental as the sounds and rhythms of the target language This approach was developed to complement rather than to replace the intuitive - imitative approach Two common approach to teaching pronunciation mentioned by Tench (1984), Pennington (1989), Jones and Evans (1995), Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994) Are Approach of Bottom- up and Top - down Approach of Bottom - up Approach of Bottom - up has close relationship with accuracy which should be focused from the very beginning of a course Teachers teach learners with the smallest and most concrete unit elements in pronunciation The teacher goes from individual consonants and vowels to more abstract segments such as intonation and thought group Approach of Top - down Approach of Top - down gets the idea of contextualized sounds in connected speech The teacher goes from the biggest elements to the smallest ones of pronunciation: from intonation or thought group, or contextualized sounds to individual sounds Approach of integrating pronunciation Hewings (2004) suggests an Approach of integrating pronunciation for some classes where pronunciation is given a lower priority than other components of language such as grammar and vocabulary The teacher gives pronunciation a more central role in teaching by integrating 18 it with other areas of language work, for example, connecting vocabulary and pronunciation, or the links between grammar and pronunciation The approaches to pronunciation teaching above have been used worldwide in language teaching However, it depends on the certain situation, the formal curricula and the teacher that decide which approach is of priority 18 19 APPENDIX TECHNIQUES TO TEACH INTONATION To teach pronunciation as part of Communication Approach, Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin list ten techniques have been traditionally used and are still being used Among those six techniques below can be taken advantages in teaching intonation Listen and imitate A technique used in the Direct Method in which students listen to a teacher-provided model and repeat or imitate it This technique has been enhanced by the use of tape recorders, language labs, and video recorders Phonetic training This technique makes use of articulatory description, articulatory diagrams, and a phonetic alphabet, which may involve doing phonetic transcription as well as reading phonetically transcribed text Drill Drilling aims to help students achieve better pronunciation of language items, and to help them remember new items However, some teachers skimp on drilling because they feel that it is something that only needs to be done at lower level, yet it is important at higher levels too Teacher generally drills chorally first of all, which means inviting the whole class too repeat the item in unison Choral drilling can help to build confidence, and gives students the chance to practice pronouncing the drilled item relatively anonymously, without being put on the spot It is typically followed by individual drilling, where students are invited one-by-one to repeat Drilling is fundamental to the teaching of word stress, sentence stress and intonation Teacher should aim to model utterances as naturally as possible Teachers can beat out the rhythm of the stress pattern while drilling, or they can beat the air with their finger, or click their fingers, tap on the table; teachers should choose whatever comes naturally to them, and then use the same method consistently Chaining Chaining can be used for sentences which prove difficult for students to pronounce, either because they are long, or because they include difficult words and sounds Within the chaining, teachers isolate certain parts of the sentence, modeling them separately for students to repeat, and gradually building the sentence up until it is complete It includes back chain and front chain Back chain: The sentence is drilled and built Front chain: The sentence is drilled and built up from the end, gradually adding to its up from the start, gradually adding to its length like: … told him length like: … would‟ve told … If I‟d seen him I would‟ve told him If I‟d seen him, I would‟ve If I‟d seen him … I would‟ve told him If I‟d seen him, I would‟ve told him If I‟d seen him, I would‟ve told him Reading aloud/recitation 19 20 Passages or scripts for learners to practice and then read aloud, focusing on stress, timing, and intonation This technique may or may not involve memorization of the text, and it usually occurs with genres that are intended to be spoken, such as speeches, poems, plays, and dialogues Recordings of learners’ production Audio-and video-tapes of rehearsed and spontaneous speeches, free conversations, and role plays Subsequent playback offers opportunities for feedback from teachers and peers as well as for teacher, peer, and self-evaluation Except the last two techniques listed above, we can see that the emphasis in pronunciation instruction has been largely on getting the sound right at the word level-dealing with words in isolation or with words in very controlled and contrived sentence-level environments The last two techniques allow learners to practice at the discourse level However, the practice material is often fully scripted and sometimes highly contrived 20 21 APPENDIX PRINCIPLES TO TEACH INTONATION Accurate Imitation Establishing Firstly, teacher should try to establish accurate imitation of intonation right from the beginning Then get the learner to imitate your intonation, or the intonation of a native English speaker recorded on the tape After giving learners time to imitate, it‟s necessary to check quickly, mentally, on tonality, tonicity and tone A teacher will not be able to this quick mental checking for each response from each learner, but he should so if the intonation of a response sounds different from that of the stimulus Refinement following formal practice A second principle is that a teacher should use a more normal intonation forms in initial practice and leave the refinements till later If an individual or a group of learners consistently gets a particular intonation form wrong, then it might be as well if the teacher points out the mistake directly He can this by contrasting the wrong form with the form required, or by highlighting or even exaggerating the point of difficulty If the wrong form suggests a different meaning in English, then that difference can be pointed out to the learners This will add some point to the matter „If you say that, it means “a” in English, not “b”‟ Careful plan Thirdly, a teacher should introduce a new intonation form carefully and deliberately, and not accidentally or randomly The teaching of intonation should be as planned as every other part of language teaching Try to introduce new intonation forms only when you begin a new chapter or dialogue 21 22 APPENDIX 11 TEACHERS’ ROLES IN INTONATION TEACHING No matter how formal the training is, teachers certainly play a role in teaching and learning pronunciation Some roles of a typical teacher of teaching intonation are mentioned (by Kenworthy 1996) as follows: Helping learners hear Helping learners perceive sounds is part of teacher‟s role Learners often have a strong tendency to hear the sounds of English in terms of the sounds of their native language Each language has its own categories of sounds Teachers need to check that learners are hearing sounds according to the appropriate categories and help them to develop new categories if necessary Helping learners make sounds It is obvious that some sounds of English not occur in learners‟ mother tongues Sometimes learners will be able to imitate the new sound, but if they cannot then the teacher needs to be able to give some hints which may help them to make the new sounds Providing feedback Both the above tasks require the teacher to tell learners how they are doing Often learners themselves cannot tell if they have got it right; the teacher must provide them with information about their performance In other cases, learners may overdo something – they may make inaccurate assumptions about they way English is uttered, perhaps because of the way it is written This leads to another task for the teacher Pointing out what’s going on Learners need to know what to pay attention to and what to work on Because while learners are speaking with the most part unconsciously controlled, they may miss something important For example, they may not realized that when a particular word is stressed or said in a different way this can affect the message that is sent to the listener Teachers need to make learners aware of the potential of sounds – the resources available to them for sending spoken messages Establishing priorities Learners need the help of the teacher in establishing a plan of action, in deciding what to concentrate on and when to leave well enough alone Learners themselves can be aware of some of the features of their intonation that are „different‟, but they will not be able to tell if this is important or not They may notice that something about their intonation is not like the way English people it and may automatically try to change this, but their efforts are misplaced because that feature is a refinement, or acceptable to the English ear Devising activities 22 23 Learning intonation is so complicated that the teacher must carefully consider what types of exercises and activities will be helpful Which activities will provide the most opportunities for practice, experimentation, exploration? In designing activities for learning, teachers must also keep in mind that certain activities suit the learning styles and approaches of some learners better than others Assessing progress This is a kind of feedback or comment on their dealing with intonation work Learners find it difficult to access their own progress so it will be meaningful if the teacher provides this kind of information This is especially difficult in the activity of making sounds, but information about progress is often a crucial factor in maintaining motivation References In English Binghadeer, N (2008) An Acoustic Analysis of Pitch Range in the Production of Native and Non Native Speakers of English Asian EFL Journal 10 (4), 96-113, from http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/December_08_nb.php Brazil, D (1994) Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English: Student’s book The UK: Cambridge University Press Brazil, D (1997) The Communicative Value of Intonation in English The UK: Cambridge University Press Celik, M (1997) Teaching English Intonation to EFL/ESL Students The Internet TESL Journal, (12), retrieved December 26th, 2001, from http://iteslj.org/Techniques/ Celik-Intonation.html Chaudron, C (1986) Research on Error Correction and Implications for Classroom From www.carla.umn.edu/immersion/acie/ /Bridge1.3.pdf Corder, S.P (1967 & 1974) The Significance of Learner’s Errors Error AnalysisPerspectives on Second Language Acquisition Longman Group Limited Cruttenden, A (1997) Intonation Cambridge University Press Dalton, C & Seidlhofer, B (1994) Pronunciation Oxford University Press Dalton, D.F (1997) Some techniques for teaching pronunciation The internet TESL Journal, Vol.3, No.1 Retrieved November 1, 2001, from http://ww.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj Gilbert, J.B (1993) Clear Speech Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension in North American English (Second Edition), Cambridge University Press 23 24 Halliday, M.A.K (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar (Second Edition) London: Arnord Hancock, M (1995) Pronunciation Games Cambridge University Press Hewings, M., (2004) Pronuciation Practice Activities A resource book for teaching English Pronunciation, Cambridge University Press James, C (1980) Contrastive Analysis Longman: Longman Group Limited Kelly, G (2000) How to teach Pronunciation, London: Longman Kenworthy, J (1987) Teaching English Pronunciation , London: Longman Nga, Vũ Thị (2004) A Contrastive Analysis of Modality Markers in English ƯH-Questions and the Vietnamese Equivalents ĐHNN-ĐHQG Hà nội O‟Connor, J D (1980) Better English Pronunciation (Second Edition) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press O‟Connor, J D., & Arnold, G E (1973) Intonation of Colloquial English A Practical Handbook, London: Longman O‟Connor, J D., & Fletcher, C (1989) Sounds English A Pronunciation Practice Book, Longman: Longman Group Limited Ohata, K (2004) Phonological Differences between Japanese and English: Several Potentially Problematic Areas of Pronunciation for Japanese ESL/EFL Learners Asian EFL Journal, (4), from http://www.asian-efl journal.com/december_04_KO.php Pennington, M.C (1996) Phonology in English language teaching: an international approach Longman Richards, J C (1974) Error Analysis – Perspectives on second language acquisition London: Longman Richards, J C., & Platt, J., & Platt, H (1992) Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics (Second Edition) London: Longman Roach, P (1983) English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Roach, P (2001) Phonetics Oxford: Oxford University Press 24 25 Snell, A.L.F (1918) Pause: A Study of Its Nature and Its Rhythmical Function in Verse From http://www.unz.org/Pub/SnellAda-1918 Tâm, Đào Thị (2007) A Contrastive Analysis of Intonation in English Yes-No Questions and Vietnamese Equivalent Expressions ĐHNN-ĐHQG Hà nội Tench, P (1996) The Intonation Systems of English New York: Cassell Tench, P (1991) Pronunciation Skills, Essential language teaching series Macmillan Publisher Ltd In Vietnamese Chừ, Mai Ngọc (2007) Nhập môn Ngôn ngữ học Nxb Giáo dục Kỷ, Nguyễn Huy (2006) English Intonation by the Vietnamese Hà Nội: Nxb Văn hóa-Thơng tin Quang, Võ Đại (2009) Một số phương tiện biểu đạt nghĩa tình thái tiếng Anh tiếng Việt Nxb Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội Thuật, Đoàn Thiện (1980) Ngữ âm tiếng Việt Hà Nội: Nxb Đại học Trung học chuyên nghiệp Thắng, Đỗ Tiến (2009) Ngữ Điệu Tiếng Việt Sơ Khảo, Nxb Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội 25 ... provide an account of the errors in English intonation commonly committed by third year students at Chu Van An University and on this basis, to facilitate the mentioned students in improving English. .. learning English intonation The statistic data shows students? ?? positive belief in English intonation and English intonation learning Most of the participants find it important to learn intonation, and... at finding out common errors in dividing speech into tone units made by third year students at English Department, Chu Van An University and clarifying the causes to these errors Moreover, the