Acknowledgementtopic the importance of english in students’ opinon

Nguyen 2 Intonation CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Nguyen 3 Intonation 1 1/ Rationale Celce Murcia states in his book that, “Pronunciation is becoming increasingly recognized as a crucial area for language le[.]

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1/ Rationale

Celce-Murcia states in his book that, “Pronunciation is becoming increasingly recognized as a crucial area for language learners” (Celce-Murcia, 1996; Rossiter, 2010) Many non-native speakers who have studied English for years share that, nomatter how good their English-grammar skill are, they could not speak English fluently, and their accents are not native-liked speakers In fact, comprehensibility from speakers to listeners has a specific influence to the speaker’s confidence and others’ perception of them Leah Tweedy indicates that the people who had a shortage of intelligibility in their speech have a huge adversity in their

professional, social, and educational lives (Leah Tweedy, 2012) Many cases of misunderstanding in communication caused by the mispronouncing of words, intonation or stress According to the Adult Migrant English Program (AMPE), the people who have great pronunciation in English, even if they make mistakes in other spaces, their speech are more likely understood Nonetheless, the people withthe difficulty in pronunciation will not be understood, although their grammars are blameless Many adult learners find that pronunciation is one of the most difficult aspects of English to acquire They need explicit help from the teacher (Morley 1994)

1.2/ Scope of the study

Intonation is very important for English learners who want to speak English in a natural way Even with perfect vocabulary and grammar skills, incorrect intonationstill leads to misunderstanding about the intended meaning of the utterance This study will briefly compares the difference between Vietnamese intonation and English intonation as well as indicating some problems that Vietnamese students meet on the way of becoming a skillful non-native speaker

CHAPTER 2 LITTERATURE REVIEW

2.1/ What is intonation?

One writer of Elserver magazine proposes that “intonation can be described using asequence of rise, fall, and connection elements Pitch accents and boundary rises are described using the rise and fall elements and connection elements are used to describe everything else” (Elsevier journal vol 15) Another perspective, Daniel Hirst believes that the description of the intonation system of a particular language

or dialect is a “difficult task” because intonation itself is paradoxical (Daniel 1998, 2) He also declares that intonation is “universal first of all” since every language

in the world possess intonation Those ideas were the early descriptions of intonation in years of the 90s Marta J Sabbadini informes that intonation is not about the things a person says, but it is about the way he says them (Marta, 2006) She also believes that “without intonation, it's impossible to understand the expressions and thoughts that go with the words, when you listened to somebody, the “melody” in their voice is intonation” (Marta, 2006) Marta also discribes the feature of intonation as following ground:

 “It's divided into phrases, also known as 'tone-units'.

 The pitch moves up and down, within a 'pitch range' Everybody has their own pitch range Languages, too, differ in pitch range English has particularly wide pitch range

 In each tone unit, the pitch movement (a rise or fall in tone, or a combination

of the two) takes place on the most important syllable known as the 'tonic-syllable'.

The tonic-syllable is usually a high-content word, near the end of the unit

 These patterns of pitch variation are essential to a phrase's meaning Changing the intonation can completely change the meaning

Example:

o Say: 'It's raining'

o Now say it again using the same words, but giving it different meaning You could say it to mean 'What a surprise!', or 'How annoying!',or 'That's great!' There are many possibilities” (Marta, 2006)

Those opinions are the glance of different descriptions by the writers in different time period about the universal intonation For now we will take a quick look aboutthe intonation in Vietnamese

2.2/ Vietnamese tone and intonation

2.2.1/ Vietnamese tone

According to Ms Luu Thi Kim Nhung, “Vietnamese is a tonal language, in which changes of the pitch level and/or contour signal a change meaning” (Le, 2010) Even though, there are some different perspectives on this topic Base on an opinion collected online, Vietnamese tones are considered different from other languages in the world The author says that, “Unlike many Native American, African, and Chinese languages, Vietnamese tones do not rely solely on pitch contour Vietnamese often uses instead a register complex (which is a combination

of phonation type, pitch, length, vowel quality, etc.) (Wikipedia, 2008) In other words, Vietnamese is a register language and not a "pure" tonal language”

(Wikipedia 2008) In short, Vietnamese tone is still a controversial topic

However, many linguists have a special concern on its prosodic and consider tone

as a crucial part of a word as its consonant and its vowel

To illustrate that follows, the words with different tone changes the whole meaning

of them, and such words are likely to have unrelated meaning

“ma” means ghost

“mả” means tomb

“má” means mother or cheek

“mà” means (adversative conjunction) but, nevertheless, yet, however or then, in

order to

“mạ” means seed or to plate (silver, gold )

The Northern dialect of Vietnamese has six tone: mid-level, low-falling, high rising, low-falling- rising, high-rising broken and low-falling broken Except for the middle level, all the other tones are distincted by the diacritic over or under one

of the vowels in the syllable Each tone has its own speech We can present the range of the variation of pitches with a short vertical divided into five points, which represent five degrees as below chart

5 the high pitch

4 the mid-high pitc

3 the middle pitch

2 the mid-low pitc

1 the low pitch

Chart 1 The pitch levels of the Vietnamese tones

The pitch levels of the six tones can be presented on such a five-degree chart (see Appendix 1)

Luu.T.K.Nhung has once indicates how the various tonal designations are used in the Northern dialect of Vietnamese and parallel discriptions with English

intonation (Appendix 2)

2.2.2/ Vietnamese intonation

In fact, Vietnamese is not only a “word-pitch system (tone) but also a “phrase- pitch system” (intonation) (Luu, 2010) Beside the syllabic pitch, there are the risesand falls of pitches which form intonation contour in the utterance as well

Do (2009) indicates five main components of Vietnamese intonations, as follow:

Components Distinctive features

Table 2 Five main components of Vietnamese intonation

Kieu-Phuong Ha and Martine Grice claim that there is an interaction between syllabic tone and intonation (Ha, 52) According to Alan Cruttenden, there is not any difference between Vietnamese intonation and one of other languages To him, the difference tones are somehow “attracted” by the intonation movement

(Cruttenden, 1986) As Nhung says, “Register tones are levelled, low tones widen their range, high tones are more strongly marked in interrogatives” (Luu, 2005) Although, intonation contour is seemed to be “heedfully used” in Vietnam than in other languages: In question, for example, there is nothing noticeable until the proximity of the sentence final question mark, where the rise appears; In

declarative sentences, the tone is seemed to be higher and stronger

In terms of the functions of Vietnamese intonation, Đỗ states, “intonation is one

of the conditions of a sentence/utterance to exist and function communicatively” (Đỗ 2009) In communication, the Vietnamese intonation has such functions as grammatical, attitudinal, implicational/logic, pragmatic” (Đỗ 2009)

2.3/ English tone and intonation

Although English employs tonal variation, the English intonation has the different usages from tones used in Vietnam In English, intonation contour mainly reflect the intention of utterance However, no matter how up or down the tones are, they can not change the meaning of whole sentence

L.T.K.Nhung, in her journal finds out some different perspectives on English intonation According to her research, Crystal (1969) and Ladefoged (1982) identify four basic tone, Brazil et al (1980) and Roach (1983) assent five tones (fall, rise, rise-fall, fall-rise, and level) Whereas Cruttenden (1986) [16] even recognizes seven different tones of English This research will focus on the opinion

of Ronald Carter ( ) expressed in their book, they endorsed that there are three main patterns of intonation in English are: falling intonation, rising intonation and fall-rise intonation Cambridge Dictionary has displayed their idea as follow: (Ronald et al 2011)

2.3.1/ Falling intonation

 Falling intonation describes how the voice falls on the final stressed syllable of aphrase or a group of words A falling intonation is very common in wh-questions.Ex:

- Where’s the nearest post-office?

- What time does the film finish?

 People tend to use falling intonation when they say something definitely, or whenthey want to be very clear about something:

Ex:

- I think we are completely lost.

- OK, here’s the magazine you wanted.

2.3.2/ Rising intonation

 Rising intonation describes how the voice rises at the end of a sentence Rising intonation is common in yes-no questions:

Ex:

- I hear the Health Centre is expanding So, is that the new doctor?

- Are you thirsty?

2.3.3/ Fall-Rise intonation

 Fall-rise intonation describes how the voice falls and then rises We use fall-rise intonation at the end of statements when we want to say that we are not sure, or when we may have more to add:

Ex:

- I don’t support any football team at the moment (but I may change my mind in future

- It rained every day in the first week (but things improved after that).

 Speakers use fall-rise intonation with questions, especially when they request information or invite somebody to do or to have something The intonation pattern makes the questions sound more polite:

Ex:

- Is this your camera?

- Would you like another coffee?

Intonation does not exist in isolation so that it will make sense more clearly if we approach it with other factors According to Nhung, “there are four function namely attitudinal, grammatical, accentual and discourse.” (Nhung 2010)

2.4/ A brief comparison of Vietnamese intonation and English intonation

In comparing Vietnamese intonation and English intonation, a big difference between them can be easily found First, Vietnamese two kind of pitch contour: thesyllabic pitch for single syllable and intonational pitch for the whole sentence; whereas, English only hold the pitch level for the meaning of the utterance To clarify, English intonation simply can not change the “dictionary maning” of the sentence No matter how we change the pitch, the sentence will not be changed In Vietnamese, syllabic pitch can alter the whole meaning of your speech For example:

“Ông ấy đi tu” (He has become a priest/a monk)

Versus

“Ông ấy đi tù” (He has been going to jail)

Obviously, wa can say that the syllabic pitch decides the meaning of the sentence.Secondly, in English, we can base on the intonation to identify the types of the sentence

For example:

- He’s coming! (the assertive sentence)

- He’s coming? (interrogative sentence)

In Vietnamese, intonation is rarely used as a way to form the sentence If it is an assertive sentence ending with thanh sắc (high-rising tone), the speakers have to raise the voice at the end of the sentence, for example, “Em đói bụng lắm!” (I am

so hungry!) Whereas, if an interrogative sentence ends with thanh huyền

(low-falling tone), the voice should be lower at the end of the sentence, for example,

“Em đói bụng à?” (Are you hungry?)

Chapter 3 Survey

3.1.2/ Purpose of the survey

This survey is conducted for three main purposes Two first questions are to find the important role of English in social life The next question is about responsors‘ opinions of pronunciation in communication The last ones is purposed to figure out their attitudes toward intonation and their own thoughts about the reason why pronunciation is difficult to non-native English speaker

3.1.3/ Data collection instrument

To collect data, some indirect observation is created right from the start Besidesthat, survey questionnaires, interview and tape-recording were also used

Survey questionnaire and interview are the most necessary methods instrument tocollect information The survey is conducted in English because the responsors’pronunciation throughout the interview would be noticed and become a part of thedatabase The questions are easy to undertand and answer During the survey, theparticipants are encouraged to feel free to express their thinking and knowledge.After collecting answers from the students, in order to get more persuasive data, a

number of students were asked to pronounce All the interview was recorded toavoid data loss

3.2/ Data analysis

3.2.1/ The importance of English in students’ opinon

The result of students’ opinion in the survey questionnaires show a positive point.The collected data will be presented in the chart below

Chart 2 Student’s opinion about the importance of English

From the collected data, students agreed that English is important in social life nowadays They claim that English is very popular and is used in many majors and situations For example, not only the students who are in English major have worked with English In fact, the students who are in other majors such as medical branch and economics have to use English everyday In order to catch up with the world, many of their coursebooks are in English Thus, they are forced to use English almost everyday even if they like it or not Therefore, we can see in Chart

2, just one out of ten students believe that English is not important for our future

3.2.2/ Student’s opinion about pronunciation

The two next questions (question 2 and 3) is about students’ opinion against pronunciation in general When being asked about their frequency of using English

to communicate, the answers are displayed in the below chart

Chart 3 Student’s opinion about frequency of communication in English

In chart 3, we can realize a decrease of English dominant, particularly in

pronunciation part Although English is expanding its influence, students do not use English usually in their communication According to their reasons, they expose that the time they use English to talk in a week are very rare They just need

to talk English in the speaking classes, and a class are just long for about 45 or 50 minutes Outside of the class, they seldom use English to talk to each other They explain that there are too much information that they need to tell each other, and with their English level, it must be take them forever to finish their speech This may takes more time than using Vietnamese mother-tongue language The survey also shows that many students do not have any awareness of the importance of English communication Moreover, they do not know the way how to practice speaking English outside the class