Suggestions to improve teaching pure vowels artticulation at ho chi minh city university of industry m a 5 07 02

iv ABSTRACT A large number of English-majored students at Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry, though having learned English since junior high school and being very motivated, still

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HO CHI MINH CITY

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

- -

NGUYỄN ĐÌNH LUẬT

SUGGESTIONS TO IMPROVE TEACHING PURE VOWELS ARTICULATION AT HO CHI MINH

CITY UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for

the Degree of Master of Arts in TESOL

Supervisor: DƯƠNG NGỌC DŨNG, Ph.D.

HO CHI MINH CITY, 2009

i

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled:

SUGGESTIONS TO IMPROVE TEACHING PURE VOWELS ARTICULATION

AT HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY

in terms of the statement of Requirements for Theses in Master’s Programs

issued by the Higher Degree Committee

Ho Chi Minh City, June 18th, 2009

NGUYỄN ĐÌNH LUẬT

ii

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, NGUYỄN ĐÌNH LUẬT, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited

in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan

or reproduction of theses

Ho Chi Minh City, June 18th, 2009

NGUYỄN ĐÌNH LUẬT

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my deep sense of gratitude to Dr Dương Ngọc Dũng,

my thesis supervisor, for his careful and patient guidance, invaluable and constructive comments, and positive encouragement, without which it could have been hard for me to complete the study

My special thanks also go to Dr Tô Minh Thanh for her inspiration to carry out the investigation from her lectures and heartfelt encouragement

My sincere thanks are also due to Ms Nguyễn Thanh Nga for her practical and helpful suggestions

I own a debt of gratitude to all of the Master’s course’s lecturers whose invaluable lectures help to provide a solid foundation for the methodology of the study

I especially appreciate the administrators at Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry and its Faculty of Foreign Languages providing me with the opportunity and all favorable conditions so that I could undertake this investigation

I would like to express my grateful thanks to Mr Võ Duy Minh for his technical support with the phonetic and phonological transcriptions, without which

it could have been a challenge for me to present the symbols of the vowels

For assistance and unflagging encouragement for the completion of the project, I have been indebted to my colleagues, friends, and family throughout the implementation of the study

iv

ABSTRACT

A large number of English-majored students at Ho Chi Minh City University

of Industry, though having learned English since junior high school and being very motivated, still find it hard to speak English with correct pronunciation, especially when individual sounds like pure vowels are under consideration Without being able to produce the sounds correctly, the students also have trouble understanding what they listen to Identified as among the most problematic monophthongs by contrastive analysis and by students themselves, English front vowels are worth investigation Therefore, the study was undertaken as a response to such demand

In teaching vowels, O’Connor (1986) argued for the benefits of the teaching technique with listening and imitation rather than any phonological guidance On the other hand, other authors like Tomlinson and Ellis (1981) believed in the effectiveness of using articulatory description of English sounds in pronunciation teaching Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin suggested an integration of a variety of techniques so that learners’ need could be the best meet Hence, the purpose of the study was to test Connor’s proposition about teaching English vowels by comparing the performances of the two groups of second-year English-majored students at Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry, one being taught without phonetic training, i.e with merely listening and imitation and the other with phonetic and phonological explanation about the articulation of the four front vowels added to classroom instruction

The research methodology used in the study included (1) reviewing the final scores from the pronunciation test in the previous semester and delivering a preliminary questionnaire exploring some possible affecting pronunciation learning

so that the two most equivalent groups could be selected, (2) conducting a pretest and a post test before and after the two different treatments were applied, and (3) utilizing statistical procedures to compare the performances of the two groups

v

The results of the investigation indicated that phonological explanation, together with listening and repetition, was more effective than listening and imitation exclusively in improving the Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry sophomores’ intelligibility with regard to their front vowel production After being taught with phonetic training, the experimental group approach authenticity more closely The error analysis was also conducted to explain why and how the students speaking the Southern and Sothcentral dialects of Vietnamese made errors when producing the four front vowels After reaching the conclusions, the study also recommended some solutions to the errors and several activities that proved to make the lessons on front vowels useful and engaging With an attempt to improve students’ performance on English pronunciation, the investigation, hopefully, could serve as pronunciation instruction reference to the teachers of English

vi

LIST OF TABLES

Page

before the experiment

Class 2A

Class 2B

dialects

Table 4.13 – Differences between pre- and posttests’ errors made by students 103

with Southern and Southcentral dialects in respect of /i:/ and /á/

dialects

vii

Table 4.16 – Differences between pre- and posttests’ errors made by students 105

with Southern and Southcentral dialects in respect of /e/ and /`/

group

viii

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

students’ front vowel performance

comparison with tongue height in front vowel production

with normal curve

with normal curve

group

ix

x

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY i

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii

ABSTRACT iv

CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Statement of the problem 1

1.2 Background of the study 4

1.2.1 The HUI 4

1.2.2 The English Faculty 4

1.2.3 The language laboratory 4

1.2.4 The pronunciation course 5

1.2.5 Teaching materials 5

1.3 Rationale of the study 5

1.4 Aims and Objectives of the study 8

1.5 Hypotheses 9

1.6 Research questions 9

1.7 Theoretical perspective 10

1.8 Definitions of terms 12

1.9 Delimitation 13

1.10 Limitations 14

xi

1.11 Significance of the study 15

1.12 Overview of the study 16

CHAPTER 2 – REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 17

2.1 Pronunciation acquisition among adult learners 17

2.1.1 Adult learners with nativelike pronunciation 18

2.1.2 Adults’ inability to acquire nativelike pronunciation? 20

2.1.2.1 Neurological view with critical period hypothesis 22

2.1.2.2 Cognitive view with sensitive period hypothesis 24

2.1.2.3 Psychological factor 25

2.1.2.4 Auditory perception 26

2.1.2.5 Linguistic view – interference between first and second language in 26

adults a The Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis 27

b Error Analysis and Avoidance 27

c The Interlanguage Hypothesis 29

d Markedness Theory 31

e Language Universals 31

f Information Processing Theory 33

2.1.2.6 Recent research 35

2.1.3 Some factors affecting pronunciation acquisition 36

2.1.3.1 Age 36

2.1.3.2 Amount of exposure to the target language 36

2.1.3.3 Amount and type of prior pronunciation instruction 37

2.1.3.4 Aptitude 38

2.1.3.5 The native language 38

2.1.3.6 Attitude and motivation 39

2.2 Pronunciation teaching 40

2.2.1 History of pronunciation teaching 40

xii

2.2.1.1 Direct Method and more recent Naturalistic Approaches 41

2.2.1.2 The Reform Movement 41

2.2.1.3 Audiolingualism and Oral Approach in the 1940s and 1950s 42

2.2.1.4 The Silent Way 44

2.2.1.5 Community Language Learning 46

2.2.1.6 Communicative Approach 47

2.2.2 Some ideas about how to teach pronunciation in general 51

2.2.3 Procedure for pronunciation teaching 53

2.2.4 How to make use of articulatory features in teaching English 54

front vowels 2.2.4.1 Tips for teaching /i:/ 56

2.2.4.2 Tips for teaching /1/ 57

2.2.4.3 Tips for teaching /e/ and /ç/ 58

2.2.5 Pronunciation goal 59

CHAPTER 3 – METHODOLOGY 65

3.1 Subjects 65

3.2 Variables 65

3.3 Instrumentation and materials 66

3.3.1 Instruments 66

3.3.1.1 Test validity 66

3.3.1.2 Test taker validity 68

3.3.1.3 Marker reliability 69

3.4 Instructional materials 69

3.5 Research design 70

3.6 Research procedure 71

3.7 Statistical analysis 74

3.7.1 Descriptive statistics 75

3.7.1.1 Measures of central tendency 75

xiii

3.7.1.2 Measures of variability 76

3.7.2 Inferential statistics 76

3.7.2.1 How to check normality of a distribution 78

3.7.2.2 The logic behind t-test 81

3.7.2.3 T-test with SPSS 82

CHAPTER 4 – RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 84

4.1 Results 84

4.1.1 Pretest 84

4.1.2 Posttest 86

4.2 Checking assumptions for inferential statistics 89

4.2.1 Descriptive statistics 90

4.2.2 Histogram 90

4.2.3 Q-Q plot 91

4.2.4 Boxplot 92

4.3 Mean comparison with t-test 94

4.4 Acquisition pattern of each front vowel 95

4.5 Acquisition pattern followed by students speaking Southern and 101

Southcentral dialects of Vietnamese 4.5.1 /i:/ and /á/ 102

4.5.2 /e/ and /`/ 104

4.6 Discussion 105

CHAPTER 5 – CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 116

5.1 Conclusion 116

5.2 Implications 117

5.2.1 Phonics reading 119

5.2.2 Discovery production activities with mirrors and hand gestures 120

5.2.3 Lip reading 120

xiv

5.2.4 Gestures 120

5.2.5 Tongue-twisters 121

5.2.6 Minimal pair drills 121

5.2.7 Nonsense syllables 121

5.2.8 Games 122

5.3 Recommendations for further research 124

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 125

APPENDICES 130

và Tiếng Anh

Appendix 2 Articulatory Descriptions of English Pure Vowels 138

Power CD-ROM, /i:/ and /1/

Power CD-ROM, /e/ and /ç/

1

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM:

English has gained its deserved position in Vietnam for a long time Teachers and learners of English in Vietnam no longer focus on grammar only Instead, they are spending more time on speaking and listening However, still is speaking in English with intelligible pronunciation a challenge to quite a number of Vietnamese learners, as Donovan and the McAmmonds (2007) noticed and wondered:

Canadian people are often puzzled to see a person coming from Vietnam, who reads the Times Magazine and writes a beautiful essay in an English class, but cannot utter an intelligible word in English

Why does this usually happen to people from Vietnam, not to people from other countries? Why has this problem remained for a long time? Who should be blamed? What can the English teacher in Vietnam do about this?

The above statement may sound a little exaggerated; however, it is worth careful consideration Another question, which also remained a “mystery” in these scholars’ mind for a long time is why many of the Vietnamese learners, after years

of studying English, still “have trouble understanding and being understood by English native speakers.”

Basing themselves on observation and first-hand experience in teaching English in different schools and to individuals in Vietnam in the last few years, these scholars found that “the teaching of English to people whose native language

is Vietnamese presents unusual difficulties” and that “The first and most important difficulty is that there is virtually no true overlap between the two languages in the

2

area of sounds…” As a result, “the level of comprehension by the English speaking person unfamiliar with Vietnamese is very often ZERO.” For this reason, the scholars suggested that the theories of language teaching and learning be re-examined in order to respond to the specific problems facing Vietnamese learners According to these volunteer teachers from Canada, “it is clearly not possible to proceed WITHOUT teaching specific English sounds.”

At the universities and English training centers in Vietnam, the teaching of English pronunciation to English-majored students is usually assigned to native speakers due to the standard pronunciation they possess At Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry (hereinafter referred to as HUI), however, the situation is a bit different: Vietnamese teachers are supposed to teach the English majors English pronunciation when they are in the first year The experimenter is among those teachers Beside Pronunciation, he is also in charge of teaching Speaking and Listening to the first, second, and third year English-majored students

During the time of teaching those classes, the experimenter found that a large number of these students failed to sound intelligible sometimes when they were speaking English For instance, many of them usually have trouble understanding English utterances and cannot make themselves understood when they say some

words like leave or live The key problem lies in their incorrect articulation of the

vowels of the words, and that kind of pronunciation also makes them speak English without naturalness, leading to their difficulty understanding English speech and being understood This fact could be due to the belief that English consonants are more problematic than English vowels and that working more on improving consonant production, therefore, would be more necessary Also, some students may feel that English vowels are either unimportant or too difficult; therefore, they pay more attention to how to convey their ideas effectively Unfortunately, native educated, proficient speakers and even non-native speakers of English tend to appreciate those who have good pronunciation More importantly, pronunciation

3

can affect the above people’s opinion of the speaker they are listening to A native speaker, when listening to someone speaking English with a foreign accent, could have the feeling of “a host who sees an uninvited guest making free with his possessions.” (Kenworthy, 1992: 12) Conversely, “certainly the reaction of most people when they meet someone whose English is virtually indistinguishable from that of a native speaker is one of admiration and high praise.” (Kenworthy, 1992: 12) Even worse, inadequate pronunciation of vowels, like that of consonants, may also lead to misunderstanding The author of Gloria Poedjosoedarnmo (2004:2) once reported a misunderstanding caused by the incorrect pronunciation of a Chinese speaker, which is related to the production of vowels:

I was attending a presentation at Singapore’s National Institute of Education by

a speaker from China The topic was the use of radar for communication

between ships Some of the listeners later said that they were imagining a field

of sheep with radar attached to their heads and trying to make sense of the

picture

That is to say, “speaking with a foreign accent is only a ‘problem’ if it leads

to a breakdown in communication.” (Kenworthy, 1992: 12) What is more, these

students are trained to become English teachers or interpreters in the future;

therefore, speaking English with correct, intelligible and even good pronunciation,

including the pronunciation of pure vowels, is very important to them

What is mentioned above makes the experimenter feel the need to find some way to help these English majors better their pronunciation, beginning with the

production of pure or simple vowels, which are considered to form the nuclear of

a word As a matter of fact, the study was conducted in the hope of finding the best

way to enable English-majored students at HUI to “improve their intelligibility” (Poedjosoedarnmo, 2004:1) as well as “to allow them to create a favorable

impression in situations such as job interviews” (Poedjosoedarnmo, 2004: 2) in the future

4

1.2 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY:

1.2.1 THE HUI:

HUI, whose forerunner is the Industrial College No.4, was officially founded

in December 24th, 2005 as a multi-disciplined, multi-leveled, and multi-professional university With the teaching staff of more than one thousand lecturers, the university provides its students with different kinds of training courses including continuing education, vocational education, college education, and university education The disciplines offered by the university range from technical, economic, tourism, garment making to arts In order to promote the continuous improvement

on teaching quality and to facilitate the teaching process as well, the university provides the teachers with modern technological devices The language laboratory installed for the English Faculty is a fine example This laboratory was a very useful tool during the experiment

1.2.2 THE ENGLISH FACULTY:

The faculty is one of the centers which became faculties after the Industrial College No.4 was upgraded to a university in 2005 It offers the training of English

as a discipline The students, who are recruited on the basis of their acceptable performance at the entrance exam to university, are divided into two levels: college students and university students Right at the beginning, the English of the university students is much better than the college ones The objective of the training programs is to train these students to be interpreters or teachers of English

1.2.3 THE LANGUAGE LABORATORY:

In order to suit the requirements of teaching English as a major, the university has had Sanako Tanberg Educational set up a language laboratory Sanako Tanberg Educational is a multinational corporation whose headquarters are

5

in Turku, Finland There are thirty-seven computers in this language lab The software that is used for laboratory is Sanako Lab 250, one of the most advanced language lab softwares This Sanako Lab 250 allows different kinds of interaction like T-Ss, Ss-T, Ss-Ss The teacher can also make use of pair work and group work

in this kind of classroom Another important feature of this lab is that it enables the students to see the teacher’s screen and hear the sounds from the teacher’s computer Thanks to that, the experimenter could utilize a multimedia software called Pronunciation Power as an important teaching resource

1.2.4 THE PRONUNCIATION COURSE:

The pronunciation course consists of two modules Most of the lessons in the first module deal with consonants, and those in the second one address vowels The first module was taught in the first semester of the first year, and the second one in

the second semester

1.2.5 TEACHING MATERIALS:

The pronunciation textbook being in use at HUI is Sounds English by

O’Connor and Fletcher The activities in the book are quite interesting and useful The book offers a wide range of activities from listening and discrimination with minimal pairs to production activities with isolated words, isolated sentences, dialogues, and communicative activities Suprasegmental features like stress, intonation, etc are also incorporated in the book The book is used with three accompanying CDs, whose quality is quite poor The book does not include any phonetic explanation of how English sounds are produced

Some other books such as Sheep or Ship, Tree or Three, both by Ann Baker

are recommended to students as reference books

6

Concerning how to teach vowels, O’Connor (1986:79) stated the following:

Vowels must be learned by listening and imitating I could tell you that the

English vowel /å:/ as in saw is made by rounding the lips and by placing the back of the tongue in a position mid-way between the highest possible and the lowest possible position, but it would be much more helpful if I could simply say the sound for you and get you to imitate me…

According to the author, the reason is that “it is very difficult to see or to feel the tongue differences, and that is why a detailed description of the tongue position for a certain vowel does not really help us to pronounce it well.”

As a professor of Phonetics in the University of London, the above statement seems to be reliable However, Tomlinson and Ellis (1981, 107) expressed a different point of view when discussing the general principle of teaching the

pronunciation of the English sounds, whether vowels or consonants:

The teacher should make use of any theoretical knowledge of how sounds are

articulated to help the pupils overcome difficulties by describing how the vocal

organs are used to produce specific sounds

It is clear that O’Connor’s idea of teaching vowel articulation needs to be tested The question that arose then was which vowels to be under investigation

Without doubt, front vowels are taken into account during the study For one thing,

these are the vowels which have no exact Vietnamese equivalents The contrastive and comparative analysis of English and Vietnamese pure vowels (see Appendix 1),

if analyzed with the strong version of contrastive analysis theory and markedness theory (see Chapter 2), helps to predict that the four front vowels will cause great difficulties for Vietnamese learners For one thing, the analysis shows that /ç/ is the pure vowel that never occurs in Vietnamese This certainly causes great difficulty for Vietnamese learners, as “the pupils may experience difficulty with sounds which

do not occur in their mother tongue” (Tomlison & Ellis, 1981: 100) In addition, the

7

English /e/ as in “egg” and the Vietnamese /</ as in “xem” may sound the same to a lot of Vietnamese learners; however, the analysis mentioned above reveals the opposite truth In English, /e/ is short, mid, and slightly spread The Vietnamese /</, however, is long, open (low), and unrounded Besides, the English /i:/ and the Vietnamese /i/, though being both long vowels, are different from each other in terms of lip rounding That is to say, in producing the /i:/ in English, the lips are spread; however, when the Vietnamese /i:/ is articulated, the lips are unrounded Last but not least, the English /1/ has no Vietnamese equivalent, and pronouncing /1/

in middle position as in “visibility” is always a challenge to Vietnamese learners

All the facts above can serve as a convincing explanation of why using

wrong front vowels is among the most common mistakes that the researcher noticed

after teaching a lot of English classes at HUI and at some other educational institutions as well More specifically, they cannot distinguish the lax front vowel /1/ from the tense front /i:/, or the mid front /e/ from the low front /ç/ As a matter of fact, /e/ and /ç/ are among the vowels that cause “great confusion” because some learners produce these vowels in a similar way (Avery & Ehrlich, 1995:98) In addition, “Many students will have problems articulating the difference between the adjacent tense/lax vowel phonemes /i:/ and /1/” (Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin, 1996: 97) Another common situation is that “some learners may in fact produce a sound midway between /i:/ and /1/, which is perceived as /i:/ when the native speaker expects /1/ and vice versa” (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin, 1996: 97) This situation is very easy to notice when Vietnamese learners in general and the English majors at HUI in particular speak English Most importantly, Avery & Ehrlich (1995:156) identified that the English tense/lax vowel pairs such as /i:/ and /1/ as well as differentiating /e/ from /ç/ as in “bed” or “bad” can make trouble for Vietnamese speakers

8

Generally speaking, all of the problems and the ideas drawn by the above linguists provided the experimenter with the motivation in conducting this

investigation, which could be best to verbalize as “Using articulatory features in

teaching English Front Vowels to English-Majored Sophomores at HUI”

As Poedjosoedarnmo (2004:15) points out, it is essential to teach important contrasts between the sounds, because a substitute of this sound for another one can cause a change in meaning; therefore, the four front vowels are divided into two pairs of contrastive sounds due to that fact that they are differentiated from each other thanks to their contrasts in tongue height and tenseness Indeed, because the distinctive feature which helps to distinguish /i:/ from /1/ is tenseness or length, the two sounds were taught side by side in a lesson This is also to solve the problems which are always created by the distinction between tense and lax vowel pairs of English as Avery & Ehrlich (1995:96) stated Another lesson dealt with /e/ and /ç/, whose difference can be told in terms of tongue height

1.4 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY:

The first aim of the study is to enhance students’ intelligibility when speaking English, especially when they are in contact with native speakers of North American English Another aim would be to help students prepare themselves for studying English with American English textbooks

The purpose of this study was to compare the responses of fifty-four majored sophomores at HUI on two different techniques of teaching English pure front vowels The responses were collected in terms of the scores these students obtained after recording their own pronunciation in the language laboratory These second-year students were from two different classes with approximately equal number of students in each class, having been divided so by the faculty administration The first class, coded as DHAV2B (hereafter referred to as Class

English-9

2B), learnt to pronounce the front vowels mainly by listening and imitation or repetition On the other hand, phonetic descriptions of the four front vowels were added to the process of teaching those single vowels to the students from the second class, coded as DHAV2A (hereafter referred to as Class 2A)

1.5 HYPOTHESES:

The research process is based on the following hypotheses:

The students from Class 2A, taught with a combination of different techniques, including the phonetic explanation as part of the class instruction, will pronounce the pure front vowels at the same level of intelligibility as those from Class 2B, learning to produce these vowels mainly by listening and imitation In other words, there is no significant difference between the two groups of students regarding their performances on the front vowels

The students from the Southcentral of Vietnam will have fewer errors in producing the long /i:/ than those from the South Conversely, those from the South are expected to have fewer errors when producing the short /á/

1.6 RESEARCH QUESTION:

Part of the investigation would be to answer the following questions:

How the students speaking the Southern dialect of Vietnamese and those speaking the Southcentral deal with English phonological information relating to the four front vowels? Are the processes the same or different?

What causes the errors of the students’ producing the front vowels, i.e what are the sources of errors?

How should the teachers deal with those errors?

10

1.7 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE:

In formulation of a theoretical perspective for studying the effective technique

of teaching front vowels, the Information Processing Theory provides a useful

prototype This theory, developed by Schneider and Schiffrin (1977) and Rumelhart and Norman (1978), was used to investigate how the human brain processes new information and thus accounts for how leaner language is established This theory indicates that learners tend to interpret new information

based on their existing knowledge structures, termed schemata According to the

theory, formerly stored information can be processed through either controlled processing, which requires attention and awareness, or automatic processing, which is not controlled, adjusted or interfered (Scheneider and Schiffrin, 1978) Unlike controlled processing, automatic processing is not limited in terms of capacity Therefore, some automatic processes can happen at the same time whereas only one controlled process can be performed at one time These two ways of processing do not exclude each other; instead, they work together when dealing with new information

In respect of phonology acquisition, Information Processing Theory predicts that learners tend to interpret the foreign sounds in terms of the sounds in their first language In addition, they will have a tendency to process pronunciation information automatically, even at the beginning of the second language acquisition, for “conceptualizing and formulating in a second language require controlled processes.” (Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin, 1996: 25) This automatic phonology processing, commonly found among adult learners, helped to explain

how features of second language pronunciation are fossilized As a result of

automatic processing in pronunciation acquisition, adult learners, instead of substituting the first language phoneme for that of the second language, create a

compromise or “middle ground” between the two languages (Flege, 1981)

11

The following statement represents the fundamental logic for designing and conducting this study If the English-majored sophomores at HUI, apparently adults, are taught to produce front vowels in the target language with a combination

of techniques, including phonetic explanation of how the vowels are produced, then they will attain higher level of intelligibility in performing these sounds than those who are taught with instruction being based mainly on listening and imitation and excluding the phonetic description of the four vowel sounds It is the articulatory descriptions of the vowels that can help adult learners recognize the distinctive features of the English front vowels so that they can avoid producing the vowels that sound half like the front vowels from their native language and half like the English ones

The above perspective can be presented in the following figure:

In phonetics and phonology, a distinctive feature is a feature distinguishing

one phoneme from another It is a feature that “can be thought of as having two values, + which signifies its presence and – which signifies its absence.” (Fromkin

& Rodman, 1993: 221) One example is /d/ is [+voiced] and [t] is [-voiced]

Intra-rater reliability is a term from the field of language test construction

and validation Alderson, Clapham, and Wall (1995: 290) define the term as follows:

An examiner is judged to have intra-rater reliability if he or she gives the same marks to the same set of scripts or oral performances on two different occasions The examiner may still be considered reliable even if some of the marks are different; however, not much variation can be allowed before the reliability becomes questionable

According to Alderson, Clapham, and Wall (1995: 136), “the only way in which intra-rater reliability can be established is by getting examiners to remark scripts they have already marked”, with the scores given for the first making occasion not on the scripts

Construct validation is also a language testing term A construct is the most

important component in a theory “Every theory contains of a number of constructs and attempts to define the relationship between the constructs.” (Alderson, Clapham, and Wall, 1995: 286)

13

Content validity is a kind of test validation depending on “a systematic

analysis of the test’s content to see whether the test contains a representative sample

of the relevant language skills.” (Alderson, Clapham, and Wall, 1995: 287)

In a test has criterion validity, students can be “compared not with one

another, but with a level of achievement, or a set of criteria set out in marking descriptors.” (Alderson, Clapham, and Wall, 1995: 287)

Skewness is a descriptive statistic revealing information on the shape of data

distribution “Outliers may skew the distribution either negatively or positively.” (Hatch and Farhady, 1982: 78) The perfect normal curve or normality will have skewness value equal to 0 When the value of skewness of a certain set of data is between -1 and 1, it can be concluded that the distribution is very close to normal distribution, and inferential statistics that have the assumption of normality can be used In a skewed distribution, the measure that describes the central tendency, or the clustering of data, most accurately is the median, not the mean

Figure 1.2 Normal distribution vs skewed distribution

1.9 DELIMITATION:

Conducted exclusively at HUI, the study will confine itself to teaching and testing pure front vowel production of the English-majored sophomores at this university

14

1.10 LIMITATIONS:

Due to the time constraint and the available conditions, this quantitative study still contains some limitations relating to the scope of the study, the choice of the pure vowels, the measurement, and the implication generalization

Firstly, only simple front vowels, rather than all pure vowels, are taken into consideration Therefore, in order to reach any reasonable conclusion about how the two kinds of classroom instruction, i.e imitation and phonetic training, affect the learning of pure vowels in general, another study with more pre- and posttests on other pure vowels should be conducted so that the pattern of acquisition could be clearer

Secondly, the pre- and posttests aim at evaluating the students’ production of the front vowels in a number of given words, phrases, and sentences It could be even more reliable if the pronunciation of the vowels in real communication could

be measured

In addition, the knowledge of contrastive features of the two languages’ front vowels serve as the guide in deciding the areas of difficulty that those Vietnamese students may have when learning English front vowels rather than as part of the classroom instruction The articulatory descriptions of the vowels that were used in the lessons neither included a contrastive and comparative analysis of the front vowels in English and Vietnamese nor phonological rules of English vowels

Another limitation of the study is that some factors which may affect the learning of the vowels, e.g the amount and response to exposure in English speech, were not under complete control

15

Finally, the focus of the study is pure front vowels; therefore, the study will not be generalizable to all areas of pronunciation learning and teaching or to all learners

1.11 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY:

An investigation of the role which phonetic training takes in the teaching of front vowel articulation is important for several reasons

First of all, realizing whether or not phonetic training can help to improve the students’ intelligibility when they say the words containing front vowels could provide a confirmation of whether English front vowels should be treated in the same or different way than English consonants, i.e whether front vowels should be taught with phonetic training like how consonants are taught

In terms of teaching and learning reality, the research will help the teachers better their knowledge of how to make use of the phonetic and phonological description of front vowels in their teaching Such knowledge, in turn, helps to facilitate linguistic explanation for the teachers, if the articulatory descriptions of the front vowels prove to be useful in the process of teaching If that is the case, thanks to the detailed descriptions, the students could benefit very much from the instruction of how to produce the sounds in that they will be able to articulate the sounds in a more target-like way In addition, the recommended activities and techniques in the study will also bring more enjoyment to the teaching and learning

of pronunciation in general and that of front vowels in particular However, if the findings of this investigation revealed that teaching front vowel articulation with listening and only imitation would be more effective than with phonetic training included, then the experimenter and the teachers in charge of Pronunciation would not have to waste their time describing these vowels to the students Instead, they could spend that time conducting some other activities that are more communicative Most importantly, the error analysis would help teachers know how

1.12 OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY:

The research report comprises five chapters, which are organized in the following manner:

Chapter 1 provides some background information on the study This chapter outlines the features of HUI, the training programs and facilities of the English Faculty, the pronunciation course, and the characteristics of the English-majored freshmen The chapter also justifies the significance of the study and indicates the hypothesis to be tested

Chapter 2 reviews the literature on pronunciation acquisition and instruction This chapter serves as the foundation for the investigation

Chapter 3 addresses the methodologies of data collection and data analysis Chapter 4 interprets the collected data and reveals the outcome of the study

Chapter 5 summarizes the implications of the investigation and discusses some recommendations for further research relating to the topic of teaching pure vowels

17

Chapter 2

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

In order to establish a solid theory of how to teach the vowels, it is necessary

to understand the process and nature of adult phonology acquisition, i.e how adult learners approach the sound system of a foreign language and whether there are any factors interfering with that approaching process Besides, it is no less essential to review previous teaching methods and teaching ideas, an outline of which can also help to build up the teaching procedure, the instruction techniques, and the expected pronunciation goal Because the phonetic and phonological descriptions usually tend to be abstract and difficult to understand, the knowledge of how to transfer such theoretical information into practical teaching techniques, which are easy for the students to understand and to follow, would be very necessary As a result, this chapter aims to explore second language phonology acquisition among adult learners, with attention paid to (1) some acquisition theories and (2) some factors possibly affecting the learning process, as well as the teaching methods having been used so far, with a focus on (3) the history of pronunciation instruction, (4) the ideas about how to teach pronunciation in general and how to teach vowels in particular, and (5) some teaching tips having suggested to teach the four English pure front vowels

2.1 PRONUNCIATION ACQUISITION AMONG ADULT LEARNERS:

In order to predict which teaching method, simple listening and imitation or formal instruction including explicit phonetic training, would be better for the students, it is important to be aware of how they acquire a foreign language’s pronunciation

18

To begin with, it is essential to bear in mind that the students involved in this

study are most of the same age: they are all nineteen or twenty years old Needless

to say, they all have reached puberty and are considered to be adult Therefore, the

experimenter concerned himself with how learners within this age group learn a

second or foreign language, especially the pronunciation, and therefore what kind

of classroom instruction-with or without explicit explanations about how the

sounds are produced- could suit them more

When dealing with the question of how adult learners acquire pronunciation

in a foreign language, most of the discussions have been centered on whether these learners can acquire nativelike pronunciation, with different studies coming up with conflicting results However, these results could be divided into two groups, the first revealing that adults can acquire nativelike pronunciation, and the second demonstrating that adults cannot

2.1.1 ADULT LEARNERS WITH NATIVELIKE PRONUNCIATION:

Some researchers found that adults still perform very well when taught with listening and imitation Snow and Hoefnagel-Höhle (1975) studied the pronunciation of British learners learning Dutch as a second language in Holland The investigation was conducted in two different environments: in a laboratory and

in a natural setting In the laboratory, 136 subjects listened to five Dutch words and

tried to imitate them After that, a long-term study was carried out At that time, the

subjects’ pronunciation was tested in a very similar way at four- to five-month intervals during the first year of learning Dutch The outcome of the investigation suggested that the two oldest groups of learners, aged 17 and from 21 to 31 respectively, achieved the top scores; which means their pronunciation was the best The two youngest groups, on the other hand, received the lowest scores In the natural setting like school or work, 47 English speakers aged from 3 to 60 were

tested at different times during the first year of learning Dutch in Holland, without

19

any formal instruction The tests were conducted in such a way that the 47 subjects

were asked to imitate 80 words immediately after a native speaker and then to look

at a picture cue and say the same words without a model The results of the tests indicated that adults have an advantage at first; however, the score gap between the younger learners and the older ones seemed to disappear after four or five months Near the end of the first year, although the younger children did much better in pronouncing some sounds, there was still no general age difference In a word, this study showed that adults have the same opportunities to improve their pronunciation as children do

Another set of studies conducted by Gerald Neufeld (1977, 1979, 1980) also conformed to the above idea In this author’s earliest experiment, 20 English natives

were taught to imitate ten Japanese and Chinese utterances After that, their imitations were taped and judged by Japanese and Chinese native judges The

results revealed that eleven of the Japanese and nine of the Chinese imitations were considered to be nativelike While recognizing the limitations of the investigation, Neufeld (1979) stated that “older students have neither lost their sensitivity to subtle differences in sounds, rhythm, and pitch nor the ability to produce these sounds and contours.”

More recently, Bongaerts, Planken, and Schils (1995) have also challenged a

theory relating to Critical Period, a neurological term referring to the period of time

after which the acquisition of nativelike pronunciation in a second language is considered to be somewhat impossible These researchers, as reported by Brown (2000: 59), undertook a research “on a group of adult Dutch speakers of English, all

late learners, who recorded a monologue, a reading of a short text, and readings of

isolated sentences and isolated words.” The outcome of this study is that some of

the recordings were judged to have come from native speakers

20

It is clear that the focus of the above studies is whether or not adults could

achieve nativelike pronunciation, not how classroom instruction contributes to adult learners’ pronunciation Therefore, all of the above studies either fail to take

classroom instruction into account or base the instruction on listening and imitation only Also, the evaluation of the subjects’ pronunciation is based on the level of authenticity rather than the level of intelligibility or closeness to the target norm

2.1.2 ADULTS’ INABILITY TO ACQUIRE NATIVELIKE

PRONUNCIATION?

Despite the above-mentioned conclusions withdrawn from scientific studies, other researchers hold an opposite viewpoint Scovel (1988) questioned the so-

called authentic pronunciation acquired by second language learners Scovel

indicated that when native speakers praise a foreigner for his ‘perfect’ pronunciation, they usually exaggerate their compliment For example, when they say, ‘I’m amazed that you sound just like a native speaker!’ what they really mean

is ‘You speak my language brilliantly – especially for a foreigner!’

Although it is true that a number of second language learners have been known to acquire nativelike pronunciation beyond the age of puberty, a number of

researchers have argued that such learners are just few exceptions As a matter of

fact, a study conducted by Oyama seems to conform to the belief “the younger the better” in the area of second language pronunciation acquisition The researcher of Oyama conducted a study on 60 male Italian-born immigrants having been learning

English in the United States These subjects were asked to read aloud a short

paragraph and tell a story about a frightening situation in their lives without any preparation or rehearsal Their readings and monologues were tape-recorded and

judged by two experts with a five point scale Each subject was given a score on the scale, ranging from ‘no foreign accent’ to ‘heavy foreign accent’ The analysis of the results suggested that the younger a person was when he arrived in the United

21

States and started to learn English, the more authentic or nativelike was his accent This study seems to prove that learning to pronounce like a native speaker is very difficult for older people Oyama indicated that really nativelike pronunciation among adult second language learners is as rare as the ability to run a mile in under four minute

Brown mentioned the scarcity of authentic pronunciation among adult

learners no less than one time in the book titled Principles of Language Learning and Teaching According to this author, the “individuals” who “acquire an authentic

accent in a second language after the age of puberty … are few and far between.” (Brown, 2000: 57) Then he repeated the idea by suggesting that “These exceptions

… appear to be (a) isolated instances or (b) only anecdotally supported” (Brown, 2000: 58) Brown (2000: 59) went on to claim that the chances of any one individual starting to learn a second language after puberty and achieving a scientifically verifiable nativelike accent are extremely limited If this is true, the students involved in this study could suffer from a disadvantage: although they did start to learn English before puberty, the pronunciation models that they could frequently get access to were from their Vietnamese teachers, whose authenticity of pronunciation is questionable Moreover, these students have been learning English

as a foreign language, i.e in non-English-speaking environments Therefore, the possibilities of having authentic native accent could even be lessened

In short, adult second language learners’ inability to achieve perfect

pronunciation, as Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin (1996: 15) points out, seems to be apparent Also, Moulton (1970: 49) stated that if the learners are children, they can learn to produce and understand the sounds of a foreign language “simply by imitation and mimicry: listening to the way others talk, and then making exactly the same sounds in exactly the same way Though a few adults are able to do this almost as well as children, most of us cannot.” This inability has aroused both

One of the reasons why adults are unable to attain nativelike proficiency in

pronunciation is associated to the critical period In fact, the center of most

discussions about the relationship between age and acquisition is the question of whether there is a critical period during language acquisition time This is a biologically determined period of life when language can be acquired more easily and after which time language is increasingly difficult to acquire From the viewpoint of neurologists, critical period is the one before the completion of

lateralization, which refers to the process of assigning certain functions to the

different hemispheres of the brain Neurological research found evidence that when human brain becomes fully grown, some functions are assigned, or ‘lateralized’, to the left hemisphere of the brain, and some others to the right The left hemisphere is where intellectual, logical, and analytic functions seem to be mostly situated, while functions related to emotional and social needs are assigned to the right hemisphere

And language functions seem to be controlled mainly in the left hemisphere

Lenneberg (1967) stated that lateralization is complete around puberty These findings lend support to the suggestion on the relationship between lateralization and second language acquisition which Thomas Scovel (1969) put forward According to this researcher, before lateralization, the brain is still plastic,

or flexible This plasticity facilitates children’s acquisition of not only their mother tongue but also a second language The author went on to suggest that it is the very completion of lateralization that makes it difficult for people to be able ever again to acquire the second language with ‘authentic’ or nativelike pronunciation Torrance

Makes objective judgments

Planned and structured

Prefers established, certain

information

Analytic reader

Reliance on language in thinking and

remembering

Prefers talking and writing

Prefers multiple-choice tests

Control feelings

Not good at interpreting body language

Rarely uses metaphors

Favors logical problem solving

Intuitive Remember faces Responds to demonstrated, illustrated, or symbolic instructions

Experiments randomly and with less restraint

Makes subjective judgments Fluid and spontaneous Prefers elusive, uncertain information

Synthesizing reader Reliance on images in thinking and remembering

Prefers drawing and manipulating objects Prefers open-ended questions

More free with feelings Good at interpreting body language Frequently uses metaphors

Favors intuitive problem solving

Table 2.1 Left- and right-brain characteristics

A possible interpretation of critical period theory is that if language

functions are controlled mainly in the left hemisphere, where intellectual, logical, and analytic functions are located, then the learning process that adult learners are involved in should be conscious learning with formal instruction including verbal explanations and established, certain information In the case of teaching

24

pronunciation, the formal instruction should include articulatory explanations of the sounds working as a guiding method to help their learning more “intellectual.”

2.1.2.2 COGNITIVE VIEW WITH SENSITIVE PERIOD HYPOTHESIS:

More lately, cognitive scientists have attempted to explain adults’ failure in

authentic pronunciation acquisition by referring to sensitive periods during which

different aspects of a second language is acquired Walsh and Diller (1981) concluded that different aspects of a second language are learnt with the best possible results at different ages

Lower-order processes such as pronunciation are dependent on early maturing and less adaptive macroneural circuits, which makes foreign accents difficult to overcome after childhood Higher-order language functions, such as semantic relations, are more dependent on late maturing neural circuits, which may explain why college students can learn many times the amount of grammar and vocabulary that elementary school students can learn in a given period of time

As the conclusion reveals, pronunciation is learned with the best results when one is much younger As the person grows up, other aspects like grammar or vocabulary will be optimally learned The conclusion makes Critical Period Hypothesis seem more likely to be true; however, the truth mainly lies in the acquisition of nativelike pronunciation

According to Massaro (1987), what makes adults different from children might be more related to the available information like external circumstances than

to any inborn differences in ability Lieberman and Blumstain (1988) indicated that children and adult learners perceive foreign sounds in a very similar way To add to the arguments, Diamond (1988) claimed that the brain preserves a measure of plasticity all its life In the other research, Jacobs (1988) contended that biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors each place adult learners in the same limitations

Although the critical period hypothesis has been challenged by “the development recent technology allowing scientists to map mental activity,” (Nunan, 1999: 41) the one value which seems to remain is “the loss of plasticity only affects pronunciation.” (Nunan, 1999: 42) In addition, as Brown (2000: 59) pointed out,

“Upon reviewing the research on age and accent acquisition, as Scovel (1999) did,

we are left with powerful evidence of a critical period for accent, but for accent only!”

2.1.2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTOR:

The third reason for adults’ problem in learning pronunciation is explained in terms of a psychological factor According to Moulton (1970: 49), most of adult learners, when asked to imitate the foreign sounds as they hear, fail to produce the sounds as those of a foreign language “Overcoming this inability is not a physiological matter (since we possess all the sound-producing equipment that is needed) but a psychological one.” (Moulton, 1970: 49) To solve this problem, one way that learners can do is to make use of a kind of seriously wholehearted imitation by getting themselves into proper thinking, then pretend that they are making an extremely funny imitation of the foreign speaker – “imitating every sound, every tone of sound, every mannerism, even every gesture.” (Moulton, 1970: 49) Unfortunately, the author went on to contend, adult learners hesitate to do that because of politeness – they are afraid that the foreigner will think that they are making fun of him Another kind of imitation is intentionally fun-making imitation, which is better to use the native speaker’s presence An example is that “Anyone