(SKKN 2022) some suggestions to teach pronunciation and do the phonetic questions in high school english tests

THANH HOA OF EDUCATION AND TRAININGDAO DUY TU HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE SOME SUGGESTIONS TO TEACH PRONUNCIATION AND DO THE PHONETIC QUESTIONS IN HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH TESTS Imple

THANH HOA OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

DAO DUY TU HIGH SCHOOL

EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE

SOME SUGGESTIONS TO TEACH PRONUNCIATION

AND DO THE PHONETIC QUESTIONS IN

HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH TESTS

Implementer: Ly Thi Nguyet Minh Position: Teacher

Subject: English

THANH HOA 2022

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Reasons for studying 1

1.1 Reasons for the theoretical side 1

1.2 Practical reasons 2

1.3 Reasons for the condition and capacity of the instructor 3

2 Aims of the study 4

3 Methods of the study 5

4 Scope of the study 5

4.1.Subjects of study 5

4.2 Scope of study 5

PART II: CONTENT 6

1.The components of Speaking 6

1.1 What Is Phonetic symbol 6

1.2 The Speaking Process 6

2 Curent situation of the research issue 7

2.1 General difficulties in the process of teaching and learning speaking: 7

2.2 Limitations in the process of teaching and learning speaking skills 8

2.2.1 Subjective limitations 8

2.2.2 Objective limitations: 12

2.3 Types of questions in speaking comprehension and steps to cope with the two basic speaking exercises 11

2.3.1 Types of questions in English pronunciation 11

2.3.2 Specific steps in teaching the speaking and filling section 15

PART IV CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS 18

1 Conclusion 18

2 Suggestions 19

REFERENCES: 22 APPENDIX

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Reasons for studying

1.1 Reasons for the theoretical side

The current teaching is still mainly based on knowledge transfer, and does notpay much attention to ability training Throughout the whole process of phoneticsteaching, the problem of overemphasizing knowledge imparting and neglectingability training is quite serious First of all, many teachers still follow a step-by-stepand follow the script in their teaching, and often neglect to cultivate students'learning abilities We know that language acquisition mainly depends on thelearners themselves to imitate and use However, from the current situation ofpronunciation teaching, many teachers have not really cultivated students' learningabilities Teachers are still the main body of the classroom, instilling knowledgeinto students in the way of "adding ducks" Teachers are used to reading new words

in the classroom instead of letting students practice spelling independently, whichcauses most students to develop the bad habit of talking without thinking Manystudents simply do not have the habit and ability to preview and learn bythemselves Obviously, teachers only know how to "give a man a fish" but not

"teach a man how to fish” Secondly, most English teachers trained under thetraditional education model lack comprehensive phonetic knowledge, and theyhave no chance to receive systematic phonetic training Due to the influence ofregional dialects, some English teachers cannot even pronounce 48 phonemesaccurately They teach students according to their own feelings Some teachersregard phoneme teaching as the whole of phonetic teaching They often focus onthe teaching of a single phoneme and ignore the teaching of super phoneticsegments (stress, rhythm, and intonation) In order to meet the needs of exampreparation, teachers think that pronunciation teaching is "more laborious and lesseffective", so they ignore the teaching of theoretical knowledge of pronunciation,which makes students also think that pronunciation is not important because theexam is not taken

1.2 Practical reasons

Voice is the material shell of language, and it is the basis for masteringlanguage knowledge and acquiring language skills, so language learning muststart with the voice According to the newly promulgated "English Syllabus forSecondary Schools" issued by the Ministry of Education, an ordinary highschool graduate must master six phonetic items including alphabets,international phonetic symbols, basic spelling rules, consonant splices and two-sylläble word stress, intonation, and rhythm But most high school students now

have many phonetic problems, especially those in ethnic areas who are learning

"dumb English" or "flavored" English These phenomena show that there arestill many phonetics teaching in our country

Problems existing in English phonetics teaching in middle and high schools

in ethnic areas

1 Basic problems

(1) Although many students have learned phonetic symbols, their grasp ofphonetic symbols is not accurate and solid, and many students do not even knowhow many phonetic symbols are in English Most students are accustomed tousing the Vietnamese pronunciation to deal with the pronunciation of Englishphonemes, for example: replace [a] with "A", replace [r] with "E", and use "Ainstead of [a] "Touch" instead of [m] "Oh" instead of [wl, "So get Maoning"instead of "Good morning!" in [p], [bj [t], [d] [k], [gl, [m] [n] and otherconsonants are often followed by a vowel The biggest weakness of many highschool students in pronunciation is not the pronunciation of single phonemesand the pronunciation of consonant groups, but the problem of stress andrhythm Many students do not use the pronunciation methods and rules theyhave learned at all when pronouncing Learning English relies on parroting, andreciting words also relies on rote memorization The result did not achieve theexpected effect

(2) Most high school teachers pay more attention to grammar teaching andthe rate of admission, but do not pay much attention to the pronunciation ofstudents In addition, the class size of high school is relatively large, and it isimpossible to notice the pronunciation mistakes of each student I didn't evennotice it myself When many teachers teach, they pay more attention to thespeed of speaking, and they only want students to read fluently and proficientlyand ignore the rhythm As everyone knows, English is an accent language, andthe time spent in an English sentence is determined by the number of accents.The interval between two accents is roughly the same no matter how manywords there are in between

2 Examination system problems The current high school entranceexamination system has few tests for spoken English and pronunciation The test

of pronunciation ability in the high school entrance examination can only passthe listening question Some areas in Vietnam use the national paper (2), and theexamination of pronunciation only accounts for 5 points on the paper, and thedegree of emphasis is not high, which creates a misunderstanding for students ,

I think that as long as students can guess a few simple ones correctly, it doesn't

matter whether students spoken language is good or not Many high schoolstudents would rather spend their time practicing grammar, vocabulary,speaking, and writing every day, not realizing how much good pronunciation canmean to them in learning English.

1.3 Reasons for the condition and capacity of the instructor

1.3.1 Teaching progress

In most cases, the specific content of phonetic symbols is not involved inboth the textbook and the examination process Therefore, the phonetic symbolsare not included in the teacher's teaching progress

The teacher's teaching progress is also relatively fast, and they must followthe overall plan of the school It can be said that most English teachers do nothave time to teach It is good to finish the course according to the teachingprogress Where will there be time to arrange other things? What about thecourse content?

1.3.2 Teaching atmosphere

The teacher's salary is stable, whether she attends more classes or classaccording to the progress as before, the remuneration is the same To put itbluntly, it means that teachers work more without raising wages

In addition, many school teachers now have the ethos of finishing the class

In such a teaching atmosphere, it is difficult for teachers to take the initiative towork overtime to teach

And sometimes they don’t work hard enough, and they will be disgusted bythe students if they are well-intentioned and take more classes, and they mayalso be disgusted by other teachers

There is still a stumbling block in the teaching of phonetic symbols: juniorhigh school teachers think that phonetic symbols are taught by elementaryschool teachers, high school teachers think that they are taught by junior highschool teachers, and elementary school teachers believe that they should betaught by junior high school teachers Blaming each other, it is difficult to takethe initiative to teach

1.3.3 Teaching skills

It is no exaggeration to say that many English teachers do not necessarilylearn phonetic symbols well Many English teachers have no confidence inpronunciation, so they can only avoid it

Some teachers can't even read the simple word apple correctly, and even 40%

of teachers even read flower wrong The correct pronunciation is to pronounce onlyfour phonemes /f/, /l/, /aʊ/, /ə/, Many teachers will add an extra /w/

2 Aims of the study

First of all, the research sought the understanding of English pronunciationand phonetic practices as the theoretical bases The framework shaped after thereview of journal articles and books has informed a design of a minor surveyinto the practice of pronunciation learning activities in language classrooms inĐào Duy Từ High School, in a typical Vietnamese province The questionnairesfirst aimed at collecting factual evidence about difficulties facing teachers whileapplying the cooperative learning technique

Research question 1: What difficulties do teachers face in typical Vietnamese classrooms while teaching pronunciation techniques?

Next, a type of action research has been carried out by experimenting withthe application of the modified literature circle technique in that context Datagathered was analyzed to decide the level of appropriateness of the technique inenhancing cooperative learning activities

Research question 2: Do the adapted phonetic questions in the high school graduation exam help enhance awareness about English pronunciation in Vietnamese classrooms?

All those practical exercises and lessons learned from the study helped extendthe use of the techniques to a larger geographical region for future research

3 Methods of the study

This study is conducted as an action research because action research is thebest choice for the purpose of improving the current state of affairs withineducational context in which the research is carried out In order to get data, acombination of different instruments, namely:

- Observe speaking classes

- Consult many documents, especially methods of study

- Study colleagues’ experience

4.2 Scope of study

The study was conducted on 87 students from classes 11B3 and 11B9 atĐào Duy Từ High School during the first semester and restricted to the firstsemester of 2021-2022 The study focused on exploring the current state of

pronunciation learning activities and then experimented with the adaptedphonetic questions in grade 11 in an average upper secondary school in NorthVietnam, especially for the effectiveness in improving students’ speaking skills.

We used the practice test and semester exam questions for the research

PART II: CONTENT 1.The components of Speaking

1.1 What Is Phonetic symbol

Phonetic symbols are the basic elements of English and the basic skills thatmust be played in learning English However, many people don't know muchabout phonetic symbols This should be the sadness of exam-oriented education.Students have been exposed to English since elementary school (Trazo, &Abocejo, 2019) From the first lesson, students were always the kind of Englishscumbag that directly marked the transliteration of Vietnamese charactersafterwords Later, students also realized that if students want to learn Englishwell and improve their speaking, students have to start over with phoneticsymbols and correct their phonetic symbols one-on-one

1.2 The Speaking Process

English pronunciation can be confusing As students know, there are nostrict pronunciation rules in English, so if students see an unknown Englishword, students will not know how to pronounce it The same English letter orcombination of letters may be pronounced differently in different words Also,the same English word may be pronounced differently by native Englishspeakers from different countries or even from the same country (Rao, 2018)

At present, the prevalent and popular phonetic symbols include theInternational Phonetic Alphabet, the British Phonetic Alphabet and the AmericanPhonetic Alphabet But among the three phonetic symbols, the internationalphonetic symbols and the American phonetic symbols are more popular in themarket, because these two are slightly easier than the British phonetic symbols,but there are also many fans who love the British accent and learn the Britishphonetic symbols In fact, different paths lead to the same goal, no matter whatkind of phonetic symbols, the ultimate goal is to speak fluent English (Carley, &Mees, 2021)

2 Curent situation of the research issue

2.1 General difficulties in the process of teaching and learning speaking:

On the learner's side:

In order to shorten the learning process of high school students' phoneticlearning, change the status quo that students are in a passive learning position

from the beginning of high school, give full play to students' learningintelligence, and develop students' learning ability, the monophonic part ofphonetic teaching in the current high school English textbooks is reviewed It ispractical and feasible to implement the teaching principle of first concentrationand then decentralization (McKay, & Brown, 2015) The concentrationmentioned here is to first use about 2 hours to focus on memorizing 26 letters(26 letters have been exposed in the junior high school curriculum and daily life)and their accurate pronunciation (Hayati, 2010) During this period, some dailyexpressions and Short and easy-to-learn articles, the content basically matchesthe teaching materials, and teachers can also have appropriate maneuvers;secondly, use 2-3 weeks to teach letters, phonemes, and phonetic symbols, andthe focus of teaching should be on understanding letters, phonemes, phoneticsymbols the internal connection between the three is clear, the role of each inspelling words is clear, and the teaching of 48 phonemes, phonetic symbols andtheir corresponding letters and letter combinations are completed so thatstudents can initially pass pronunciation and spelling.

At the same time, practice spelling in combination with the words on thevocabulary list in the textbook, and master the correct method of combiningsound, shape, and meaning to memorize words (it can be some words in thevocabulary list, especially some words with pronunciation rules), so thatstudents can form the ability of independent spelling so that students' Englishlearning can enter a positive and active learning state from the beginning of highschool (Rao, 2018) Then there is decentralized teaching, that is to teach one byone according to the phonetic appendix compiled in the textbook, so as tofurther disperse and consolidate the letters, phonemes and phonetic symbolslearned earlier in the teaching, and indeed form a proficient spelling ability, andfurther learn and master the monophonic part of the other learning content(Abdelkader, 2015)

On the teacher's side.

1 While teaching alphabets, phonemes, and phonetic symbols to master the ability of spelling and reading, cultivate the ability

High school students' knowledge and understanding of English cannot bezeroed, and their learning and mastery of their mother tongue inevitably affecttheir English learning The practice has proved that it is impossible for highschool students to master English entirely by acquisition because they lack thenecessary language environment Therefore, it is not allowed to simply rely onbehavioral habits, mechanical imitation, and parroting to learn and master

English Otherwise, it will underestimate students" cognitive ability, inhibitstudents' initiative, and make students develop the habit of learning Englishwithout thinking (Hayati, 2010) Therefore, in phonetics teaching, teachersshould guide students to compare English-English and English-Vietnamesephonemes appropriately, and pay attention to the connection between letters andphonemes, letters, and phonetic symbols Develop students' ability to observe,discover, connect, compare, summarize, and summarize cognitive learning,transfer learning, and behavioral habit learning As soon as possible, studentscan form the spelling ability that students can spell and read when students see aword Such as a comparison of similar sounds in English and Vietnamese: y-[i:].r-[r], w-[w], h-[h], g-[gl, etc.; comparison of similar sounds in English andEnglish and the connection between letters and phonetic symbols: such as somevowels, and most consonants The letters are similar to their correspondingvowel phonetic symbols and consonant phonetic symbols: such as p-[p] f-[f], h-[h] and so on Learning English cannot rely on simple mechanical imitation androte memorization Only by "twisting cognitive learning, transfer learning andbehavioral habit learning into a three-strand rope of English learning ability" can

we truly learn English well Therefore, from high school to learning English, wemust pay attention to cultivating students' ability to learn English

2 Combining pronunciation teaching with listening and reading

teaching, and insisting on language flow teaching for a long

Learning pronunciation is the foundation and key to learning English well.Phonetics teaching is actually a highly operational subject, and its phonemepronunciation skills and theories can be applied to all aspects of Englishteaching Using phonetic teaching in listening and reading teaching, from thebeginning, let students pay attention to the connection between pronunciationand context and content, and pay attention to the changes of pronunciation inspeech flow, which can effectively improve students' sensitivity topronunciation, and can also make students more familiar with a range ofpronunciation techniques Such as monophonic, word, sentence combination;word, sentence, and discourse combination Through reading aloud, consciouslyuse these phonetic skills to artistically process written language, turn visualimages into auditory images, and accurately and vividly reproduce the thoughtsand feelings expressed in written language Therefore, the combined teaching ofpronunciation, listening, and reading can make boring pronunciation teachinglively and interesting; it can help students grasp the main information conveyed

by language, and overcome the need to pay attention to the accuracy of

phonemes but not the pronunciation skills incoherent discourse The problem of

"seeing the tree but not the forest" is so that high school students canunknowingly correct their pronunciation problems and learn more authenticEnglish This not only improves their enthusiasm for learning English, but alsoenhances their self-confidence in learning English and can cultivate their sense

1 - sluggish

tail-In Vietnamese, all words are monosyllabic and end with a vowel at thebeginning of tutoring Excessive ending sounds are a common phenomenonamong Vietnamese students when they express themselves in spoken English.The so-called procrastination is the addition of a vowel after the consonant

at the end of the word For example, for words ending in a voiced consonant,such as bed/red/, big /big/ , students especially like to stress the letter d toemphasize the pronunciation of the word, and the pronunciation of “bed”becomes "Bed" Words that end in unvoiced consonants, such as “cat”, also havesome students' preference for the accented –t-

For this problem, practice capitalizing the first few letters of the word toemphasize the pronunciation, such as SPORT (sport) Then, keep tellingthemself to be "breathless and silent" and practice more

2 Wrong accent on word

-English learners in China often make stress displacement errors whenreading English words The most common word with stress displacement is

“interesting”, and its stress is on the first syllable instead of the secondsyllable Here are a few words for students to read along with them:photography, celebrity, and industrial

The stress of some English words will change with the vocabulary, such asresearch, as a noun, the stress is at the front /'riːsɜːtʃ/ and as a verb, the stress is

at the second syllable /rɪ'sɜːtʃ/, and the same type of vocabulary is 'content content (adj.) ;'object (n.)- object (v.) and 'record( n.) - record (v.) …etc

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pronunciation-It is suggested that when students memorize words, they must not only payattention to the meaning of the word, but must check the pronunciation of theword, and strive to read the word correctly when they first come into contactwith the word

Is it the American accent with the "er" syllable? The answer is obviously

no Many examinees unilaterally interpret American pronunciation asindiscriminately rolling the tongue and making childish sounds For example,

"because" is not the same as "of course", the latter has "r" that can be "children";another example, famous, this word is really 90% of the students willmispronounce it, once again, don't pronounce this word with childish accents.Words like banana, Christmas, August, and idea are all typical examples.There is no "r" in the spelling of the word, but the test taker has to pronounce thesound of "r" inexplicably Usually what we call childish sounds only occur whenthe letter r appears in the word

4 Inaccurate consonants

-The first thing to do is the pronunciation of –th- Whenever we encounter

th, we have to bite our tongue, such as think, both, three, through, month Whenmost students encounter th, they use /s/ or /z/ instead, without sticking out theirtongues The result of this is that students are comfortable speaking, but theexaminer will definitely hear the error

There is also a group of very common mistakes: /l//n/ is not divided, thisproblem usually occurs in the students in the south If students usually have thisproblem, students must pay more attention and practice more, and don'tunderestimate this pronunciation problem The examiner will not deduct pointsfor students because students are from the south

5 - Diphthong not

full-There are 8 diphthongs in English: [ei], [ai], [ɔi], [ɛə], [uə], [iə], [au], [əu]

So what are the common mistakes Vietnamese students make?

For example, there is no difference between the pronunciation of fight andfat, the [au] sound of the mountain is pronounced, and the mouth is not open Inthe pronunciation of diphthongs, the shape of the mouth will undergo changes.Generally speaking, the gums will change from open to half-open, and from