(LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ) The use of English pronunciation websites for improving grade 10 students’ pronunciation

However, from his own experience of teaching as well as working as a teacher inspector, he noticed the poor pronunciation with incorrect word stress of many students.. From the reasons m

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

BÙI VĂN KHIẾT

THE USE OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION WEBSITES FOR IMPROVING GRADE 10 STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION

(SỬ DỤNG CÁC TRANG WEB PHÁT ÂM ĐỂ CẢI THIỆN NĂNG LỰC PHÁT ÂM CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10)

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW

1.2 Pronunciation as an aspect of communicative competence 9

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CHAPTER 2 THE STUDY

CHAPTER 3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com

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APPENDIX D - Questionnaire XI APPENDIX E - Students’ results of pre-tests and post-tests XIII

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LIST OF ABBREVIATION

MCQs: Multiple Choice Questions ESL: English as a Second Language EFL: English as a Foreign Language

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: The table illustrates the research design adapted in this study

Table 2: One-tail t-test for control group (Listening test) Table 3: One-tail t-test for control group (Speaking test) Table 4: One-tail t-test for experimental group (Listening test) Table 5: One-tail t-test for experimental group (Speaking test) Table 6: Two-tail t-test for control group and experimental group (Listening test) Table 7: Two-tail t-test for control group and experimental group (Speaking test)

LIST OF DIAGRAMS AND CHARTS

Diagram 1: The relationship between the key variables of this study

Diagram 2: The flowchart shows in detail how the research was conducted

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INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

More and more people desire to study abroad with the hope of being successful in the modern world Therefore, English is widely taught not only at schools, colleges or universities but also at many foreign language centers There are also hundreds of English teaching and learning programs on radio and television, especially thousands of websites for teaching and learning English available on the Internet However, students should be intelligent enough to adapt the most effective method to master the language so that they can have a good command of English in all four skills, especially speaking and listening in order to communicate successfully As a result, pronunciation is one of the most paramount aspect that needs emphasis for the ease of communication

As a teacher trainer and a part-time teacher of English, the researcher is especially dedicated to the teaching of speaking and listening skills However, from his own experience of teaching as well as working as a teacher inspector, he noticed the poor pronunciation with incorrect word stress of many students They seem not

to have problems with grammar, fluency or ideas, though, they have difficulties in pronouncing certain consonants, vowels and similar sounds in English, mainly the minimal pairs such as: /l/ and /n/, /s/ and /z/, /p/ and /b/, /i/ and /i:/ For example, nice /nais/, nine /nain/, night /nait/, light /lait/ are all pronounced /nai/ Besides, words and sentences are usually produced with wrong stress pattern or no stress at all

The reason for this may firstly be due to geographical positions where they live, which belongs to the sociolinguistics Another explanation for this could lie in the introduction of Multiple Choice Exams for English, which surely have an influence on students’ learning style in which speaking, listening and pronunciation are never paid enough attention However, the root of the issues is believed to be the current technique of teaching pronunciation as well as the method of assessing

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Students are encouraged to learn the pronunciation by rules or sometimes listen to and imitate the teacher's pronunciation of single words and limited sentence drills and when assessing, paper tests with MCQs are employed Many teachers claim that the classes are too crowded (from 45-55) so they do not have time to correct students’ pronunciation mistakes In addition, there is not a separate period for pronunciation instruction, just about 15 minutes for every 5 periods, therefore they have to teach to the test, if not, their students will not get high scores in the exams and their reputation as well as their emulation titles will be lost

When observing teachers’ lessons, the researcher found that many teachers have difficulties in producing good English, some even pronounce with wrong sounds or stress This may be due to the fact that they are not well-trained and qualified enough According to the results of the English Competence Survey Exams for English teachers in 2011, only 05 out of 389 high school teachers in Nam Dinh province got C1 (the requirement of the Ministry of Education and Training -

5 th level in the Common European Framework) The survey results also revealed that the teachers are particularly weak in listening and speaking skills, which surely affect their teaching of pronunciation

The researcher has taken this matter into consideration a lot The students seem not eager to learn pronunciation and feel shy to correct their mistakes every time they are asked to Meanwhile, most them are really into surfing the Internet, to

be more specific, they often spend hours signing in yahoo chat or facebook everyday, which inspires the researcher the idea of using websites for pronunciation instruction The websites include not only standard video clips that guide students to pronounce English sounds but they also provide a wide range of exercises, games, quizzes and activities with pictures and other illustrations, which are believed to attract the grade 10 students Besides, studying with websites can give students chances to listen again and practice the words, phrases, sentences at home which can not be done with conventional technique

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From the reasons mentioned above and with an aim to improving the students’ pronunciation, the researcher decided to do a piece of experimental research on the impacts of pronunciation websites on the improvement of grade 10 students’ pronunciation of English consonants, vowels and word stress with a hope

to change the situation

2 Aims of the study

The main objective of doing this research is to find out the more useful technique for improving students’ pronunciation as the current method where students learn the rules or repeat after the teacher and then do pronunciation exercises on paper seems not efficient The research is to test whether the use of pronunciation websites can help improve students’ pronunciation significantly and whether it is more effective than conventional technique

3 Scope of the study

There are certainly various aspects of pronunciation such as vowels and consonants, stress, intonation, rhythm, assimilation, elision, linking, tones etc However, due to the limited time as well as the scope of this paper, the research deals with only two aspects of pronunciation: consonants and vowels, and word stress It is conducted with only 30 selected participants from class 10 Maths 1 at Le Hong Phong Gifted High School in Nam Dinh Province within a period of 8 weeks (two meetings a week, each meeting lasts 90 minutes)

4 Research questions

This study is guided by the following research questions

1 To what extent does the use of pronunciation websites help class 10 Maths

1 students at Le Hong Phong Gifted High School improve their pronunciation?

2 Is the use of pronunciation websites more effective than conventional technique of teaching pronunciation to class 10 Maths 1 students?

3 How do the students of class 10 Maths 1 feel about the use of pronunciation websites for improving their pronunciation?

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Null hypothesis 1 (Ho1): The use of pronunciation websites does not help improve class 10 Maths 1 students’ pronunciation

Null hypothesis 2 (Ho2): The use of pronunciation websites is not more effective than conventional technique of teaching pronunciation to class 10 Maths 1 students

Null hypothesis 3 (Ho3): Class 10 Maths 1 students have negative attitudes towards the use of pronunciation websites

5 Research methods

The aims of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of using websites for students’ improvement in pronunciation, therefore an experimental design is applied In addition, the researcher made a careful selection of the subjects of the study and controlled other extraneous variables such as students’ gender, age, the teacher carrying out the lessons, teaching contents…, hence the study is a quasi- experiment in nature

In this research, both qualitative and quantitative methods are used to analyse the data

Quantitative method:

The range of mathematical and statistical techniques used to analyse data In

this research, it is used to analyse the data collected from the pre-tests and post-tests

to examine the interrelationships between variables, to see whether they are associated or correlated and if so how strong Then, conclusions are drawn from the results using inferential statistics It is also used to analyse data collected from the survey questionnaire to find out what are the students’ attitudes towards the use of pronunciation websites in pronunciation instruction

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Many Vietnamese teachers of English find it quite challenging to teach pronunciation to students, especially word stress and minimal pairs because students forget them easily and due to the lack of practice time Some even try to explain in Vietnamese how to pronounce the words and present them all the rules of word stress, still, they appear to be unable to digest As a result, using pronunciation websites to teach pronunciation to students discovered in this research is a really significant and effective technique for English teachers Not only do teachers save time teaching and reading words to students but they also create positive atmosphere in the English classes, and the most important value is that students can make a lot of progress in their English pronunciation However, in comparison to the conventional technique, using the websites is not significantly more effective Therefore, it is advisable to take into consideration when to use websites and when

to use conventional technique for pronunciation instruction

7 Organization of the study

This minor thesis is composed of five following parts and chapters:

INTRODUCTION

This part presents rationale, aims and scope of the study Research methods, questions, the significance and organization of the thesis are also discussed fully in this part

This chapter summarizes fundamental and theoretical backgrounds and concepts related to the topic of the study by earlier authors It deals with the importance of pronunciation in teaching and learning English as well as positive and negative attitudes, remarks and previous results of using websites in language instruction

CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY

This chapter not only provides the setting of the study, the subjects and instruments for collecting data but also presents the data collection and data analysis procedures

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CHAPTER 3 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

The findings of the tests, questionnaire, diaries, observations as well as recordings are presented in this chapter

CONCLUSION

This part summarizes some major findings, provides recommendations for classroom practice, limitations of the study and suggestions for further research

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Technology, especially the emergence of the Internet, is affecting every aspect of education and changing the way of teaching and learning “It is no longer

a question of whether to take advantage of these electronic technologies in foreign language instruction, but of how to harness them and guide our students in their use” (Paulsen, 2001) Numerous websites present compilations of online resources for language teachers (Kitao, 2000; Depoe, 2001) There are also currently many websites containing materials for ESL learning accessible free of cost

According to Li & Hart (1996), the web’s multimedia capabilities and interactive functions have made it an attractive medium to conduct instruction Among the reasons for using the web in ESL learning, increasing student motivation, authentic language, and global awareness have been cited (Meloni, 1998) Still, there are many problems with the application of the Internet in the classroom including the reliability of the information on the web, the cost of the equipment needed to connect to the Internet, and frustrating slow connections (Warschauer, 2000) Despite these obstacles, using websites for language instruction is becoming more and more popular and we certainly need more confirmation from other researches and studies to support their effectiveness

1.1 Teaching pronunciation

There have been various definitions of pronunciation by different authors Dalton & Seidlhofer (2003) defined pronunciation as the production of significant sounds According to Hornby (2003), “Pronunciation is the way in which a language or a particular word or sound is pronounced.” (p.1015) In short, pronunciation can be described as a way of speaking a word, especially a way that

is accepted or generally understood

Most of the literature on pronunciation deals with what and how to teach while the learner remains a silent abstract in the classroom Morley (1994) underlined that the prevalent focus on pronunciation teaching nowadays should be

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on designing new wave instructional programs Moreover, she stressed that these instructional designs should take into account not only language forms and functions, but also issues of learner self-involvement and learner strategy training

In other words, students who have developed the skills to monitor and modify their speech patterns if necessary should become active partners in their own learning

It is a common knowledge that there have been different views on teaching pronunciation in the field of language teaching The role of pronunciation has varied widely from having no role in the Grammar-translation method to being the central focus in the Direct and Audio-lingual method where the emphasis is on the traditional notions of pronunciation, minimal pairs, drills and short conversations The appearance of the communicative approach has placed higher demands for correct pronunciation Nevertheless, the teaching of pronunciation is not as simple

as people may think Lee (2011) asserted:

Pronunciation is a crucial part of learning English as a Second Language, yet it is one of the most challenging aspects of English for students and teachers For students, unfamiliar sounds and combinations of sounds can be difficult to learn Plus, strategies for teaching pronunciation are sometimes overlooked, leaving teachers with limited skills in handling problems (p.1)

A challenge for some EFL teachers is explaining how to pronounce the sounds of English properly Some students can repeat new or unfamiliar sounds after simply hearing them pronounced by a teacher, but many cannot Therefore, it

is essential to support the latter students with detailed directions on how to articulate these sounds, which requires that teachers understand the anatomical basis of the English phonetic system and familiarize students with the speech organs and how they interact to form different sounds Introducing students to basic speech anatomy with labeled illustrations and demonstrating how they interact to form different sounds in English consume lots of time, energy and talent, which seems too challenging for teachers

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What’s more, many sounds in English have similar pronunciation and are difficult for some English learners to use correctly For example, "p" and "b" are pronounced nearly identically, except that "b" is voiced (pronounced with the vocal cords vibrating) while "p" is voiceless (pronounced with silent vocal cords) Learners often confuse them because they cannot hear the difference Therefore, teachers need to build student awareness of such phonetic contrasts with drills and games requiring students to identify or repeat the problematic sounds in similar pairs of words (such as "peat" and "beat") In fact, most teachers of English do not really teach pronunciation to students in its right way They find it rather challenging because they do not have enough time, energy as well as talent to teach pronunciation to their students properly Fortunately, some pronunciation websites can deal with these problems effectively because they include guiding video clips for teaching students how to pronounce correctly and activities, games and quizzes for students to practice

1.2 Pronunciation as an aspect of communicative competence

There have been various supports for the effectiveness of pronunciation training on learners’ achievement in communicative competence According to Pennington (1996), the most important part of learning a second language rests on pronunciation Morley (1998) also stated that pronunciation plays an important role

in overall communicative competence While, Kelly (2006) confirmed:

A learner who consistently mispronounces a range of phonemes can be extremely difficult for a speaker from another language community to understand This can be very frustrating for the learner who may have a good command of grammar and lexis but have difficulty in understanding and being understood by a native speaker The inaccurate use of suprasegmental elements, such as stress or intonation can also cause problems… (p.11)

In addition, Fraser (2000a) explained that being able to speak English includes a number of sub-skills, of which pronunciation is by far the most important

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(other sub-skills of speaking include vocabulary, grammar, and pragmatics) She argued that a speaker with good pronunciation is intelligible despite other errors; with poor pronunciation, a speaker can be very difficult to understand, despite accuracy in other areas

Hewings (2004) also emphasized that “difficulties with pronunciation might mean that students fail to get their message across, even when the correct words are being used, or they might fail to understand what is said to them.” (p.10)

Yong (2004) confirmed that from the traditional ways of learning English, students neglected the basic knowledge of speaking This may have been enough to meet the demands of English in the years when we had less communication with foreign countries However, oral communication began to be more important when they arrived in this century with extended forms of communication with Western countries He asserted that understanding by reading or writing would no longer be sufficient for the development of the economy and that communicating face to face personally or through the Internet needed to be understood Yong also indicated that pronunciation is the foundation of speaking English, both written and spoken, has been accepted as the dominant means of communication for most of the world but some misunderstandings have been caused by inappropriate pronunciation Poor pronunciation can condemn learners to less social, academic and work advancement than they deserved

Furthermore, Dan (2006) claimed that language competence covers many aspects Phonetics, both in theory and practice, constitutes the basis of speaking above all other aspects of language and pronunciation is the foundation of speaking Good pronunciation may make the communication easier, more relaxed and more useful Almost all learners rate pronunciation as a priority and an area in which they need more guidance

In short, pronunciation plays a vital role in our modern world, particularly in oral communication Therefore, acquiring good pronunciation is very crucial for those who are learning foreign languages in general and in English in particular

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1.2.1 Consonants and vowels

Consonants

Roach (2000) defined: “Consonants sounds are the sounds in the production

of which two articulators come together to form an obstruction of some type so that the air-stream cannot get out freely.” (p.10)

In English, there are 24 consonants, whereas Vietnamese has only 21 Some phonemes exist in English but not in Vietnamese and vice versa, which are challenging for both Vietnamese teachers and learners

Vowels

“Vowels are the sounds in the production of which there is no obstruction to the air so the air can get out freely.” (Roach, 2000, p.11) There are 20 vowels in English (12 simple vowels and 8 diphthongs)

1.2.2 Word stress

According to Hubicka (1980), Word stress is the magic key to understand spoken English; incorrect stress can lead to a communication breakdown Not only the correct stressing but also “de-stressing”, and consequently the reduction of vowel duration and quality play a major role in the production and perception of words and their meaning Therefore, improving students’ ability of using correct word stress is an important part of teaching speaking

What’s word stress?

According to Tam & Quang (2006), “The syllables of a word which stands out from the remainder are said to be stressed, to receive stress.” (p.ix)

The production of stress is generally believed to depend on the speaker using more muscular energy than is used for unstressed syllables From the perceptual point of view, all stressed syllables have one characteristic in common, and that is called prominence; stressed syllables are recognized as stressed because they are more prominent than unstressed syllables (Tam & Quang, 2006, p.ix)

Tam & Quang (2006) also pointed out that prominence is produced by four factors: loudness, length, pitch and quality

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Sentence level stress is described by the term intonation In this case, not syllables but whole words are emphasized to maintain a natural rhythm This research does not aim to deal with sentence stress

Levels of word stress

According to Roach (2000) there are three levels of stress which are distinguished, namely: primary (tonic or nuclear), secondary and unstressed The prominence that results from the pitch movement gives the strongest type of stress;

we called the tonic strong stress when we wish to refer specifically to this type of stress It is also called primary stress The syllable that is also quite prominent, but it

is not as strongly stressed as the primary stress is called secondary stress (or tonic stress) The syllable that is called unstressed and regarded as being absence of any recognizable amount of prominence is unstressed syllable (p.95-96)

non-Placement of stress within the word

Roach (2000) presented a summary of stress placement in nouns, verbs and adjectives and noted that all rules have exceptions and readers may feel that the rules are so complex that it would be easier to go back to the idea of learning the stress for each word individually From his own practical experience of teaching English to high school students, the researcher also realizes that students seem not apply the rules well in learning, especially in speaking English Therefore, websites were chosen for the research with a hope of improving students’ pronunciation

1.3 Pronunciation websites

A website

A website (also written Web site or simply site) is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet address also called URL (Wikipedia, 2012)

A pronunciation website

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A pronunciation websites is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos, lessons, conversations, exercises and quizzes on pronunciation of English consonants, vowels and words, phrases and sentences, which support the

teaching and learning of pronunciation

1.4 Theoretical background of technology and websites application in language teaching

The advantages of technologies in language instruction have been well reported, especially in teaching pronunciation It has been found out that technology helps learners recognize the sound, then imitate the sound that is articulated Although the number of studies on the use of technology and websites in language instruction is quite limited, there are lots of positive comments which have been drawn out from writers

Some authors suggested that teachers should use computers as tools for learning increases motivation in children who are less likely to be motivated by school (Burns, Griffin & Snow, 1999) In her research in the field of learning and teaching EFL, Meskill (2005) also reported that children who otherwise “removed” themselves from school community by keeping their heads down on their desks, crying, acting out, and behaving in ways that revealed strong disconnections with school, became more active when the screen is turned on She then concluded that using computers in teaching language for children brought many a benefit, especially the children of low motivation

Abrams (2006) asserted that Computer- Mediated Communication (CMC) is the process of using computer to facilitate authentic communication between two or more people, and using CMC in language teaching and learning seems the main trend in the process of applying IT in English FL education While Neri & Mich (2008) showed that young learners improve their word-level pronunciation skills in English as a foreign language with computers at a level comparable to that achieved through traditional teacher-led training

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Cummins & Davesne (2009) also studied on the use of technology for assessment of EFL abilities and obtained the better results in comparison with other means of teaching EFL Jarvis (2006) stated that technological development has gone with teaching English and it has brought chances to people in communicating, working, doing business, relaxing or studying and non-native English speakers mainly come from Asian regions are at the top of using it

Regarding of the Internet and websites, Kung & Chuo (2002) affirmed that

“students consider the Internet a useful tool to supplement in-class instruction The students deemed it appropriate to learn English through teacher-recommended ESL websites However, students needed instruction regarding where the sites are and in how to use them.” Paulsen (2000), as cited in Kung & Chuo (2002) also remarked about the importance of guiding students in the use of Internet resources Whereas, Norman (2011) appreciated the roles of websites:

Multiple online resources exist to help English-language learners improve their pronunciation for free Without hiring a tutor or attending English classes, you can get better at pronunciation on your own (although tutors and classes are definitely

of benefit to some) News websites have helpful learning material, and online videos also offer good ways to learn English pronunciation (p.1)

Smith (2012) added:

You can use a variety of books and websites to learn English vocabulary and grammar To learn English pronunciation, though, it is a good idea to use both audio and text lessons Fortunately, you can find these lessons on several websites These websites can teach you how to pronounce consonants, vowels and eventually entire words and phrases Using these websites gives you the opportunity to learn English pronunciation on your time and do so for free (p.1)

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Learners who have troubles in learning to speak normally believe that they

"just are not good at learning English." In reality, it is because most English class environments are not ideal for learning to speak or not strictly focused on teaching spoken language Additionally, students have no chance to practise speaking with native speakers, which may result in mispronunciations that hinder the progress Fortunately, with websites, students can practise with authentic voice

However, there are also studies revealing that technology was of no benefits

to FL teaching and learning According to one study by Thao (2003) on the use of CMC in FL teaching and learning, 20% of the participants claimed that they were not motivated and made little progress in listening comprehension; 80% felt that they made little and slow progress, which was under their expectations

Brooks (2002) and Brooks, Miles, Torgerson, C.,& Torgerson, D (2006) also found no evidence of significant benefit on spelling outcomes using a computer program for literacy learning There was even a decrease in reading scores when the software was used

In short, the effectiveness of technology in foreign language learning remains inconclusive, and this is the motivation for the researcher to carry out this study

1.5 Advantages and disadvantages of using websites in pronunciation instruction

There are certainly lots of advantages of using websites for pronunciation instruction First of all, students have chance to access to authentic voice since there are video and audio clips by native speakers Secondly, teachers can save time and energy; all what they need to do is some guidance for students to study on their own and some observation to make sure if they are on the right track In addition, websites are very useful resources for students to practice pronunciation at home where there is no teacher’s help What’s more, websites motivate and relax students when studying because there are lots of illustrations, clips, games and quizzes to refresh their mind while studying Last but not the least; students can test their own pronunciation with recording function, tests and quizzes

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Everything has its two sides and websites are not the exception Once using websites for language instruction, teachers need to be well-prepared for everything, for example, the power, the Internet connection and the access speed, the headphones, projector, sound server installation, searching engines etc All these conditions must work well during the lesson because if one thing goes wrong, the lesson will not be successfully carried out Besides, teachers also have to pay very close attention to make sure that students do not access to other websites and check whether they actually imitate the sounds in the video or audio clips

1.6 Websites evaluation

Nowadays there are thousands of websites for English teaching and learning

on the Internet Therefore, it is essential for teachers as well as learners to decide what is good and what is a waste of time The excessively increasing load of information production and routing within the Internet leads to an inevitable overload of useless information, which raises certain criticisms concerning the pedagogic value and relevance of the web According to Luhmann (1996), as cited

in Sofos & Kostas (2009), the amassing of information follows a non-systematic pattern because the organization and presentation of information on the Web is quite different from those taking place within the classical media Kron & Sofos (2007), as cited in Sofos & Kostas (2009), stated that within the online context, the user can be a content “producer” and “consumer” simultaneously, thus leading to a huge amount of raw information, produced by a huge number of different users without any educational information applied and incapable to support classroom learning design As a result, evaluation of information resources is a basic requirement for content published on the web Sofos & Kostas (2009) added:

If we focus on the learning and teaching process, then we have to consider evaluation through a pedagogical approach and a media-didactic theory and so, web resources are able to support active learning by using various media elements, are considered as quality content (p.2)

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Many scholars and organizations have developed criteria for judging educational websites They usually specify criteria about platform requirements, goals and objectives, the content, the pedagogy, ease of use, and costs However, the criteria can be modified according to your needs Kapoun (1998) mentioned five criteria to evaluate a website, including accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency and coverage While Jackson (2000) listed six: platform requirements, goals and objectives, content, pedagogy, ease of use and cost He also asserted that we need to undertake our own assessment of the websites based on the criteria which were previously prepared by scholars and organizations, you might adapt those criteria to your organization’s own priorities, or you might develop new criteria According to Hsu, Yeh & Yen (2006) “Standardized and objective design criteria for evaluating web-based learning platforms can effectively distinguish the quality of a platform and, therefore, contribute in improving web-based learning outcomes”

The three websites used for the research were selected and evaluated thoroughly from the pronunciation websites available based on such criteria as Authority, Purpose, Accuracy, Currency, Content, Functionality, Cost and Accessibility General speaking, the three selected websites meet quite well the criteria The first selected website is:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningEnglish/grammar/pron/

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