integrating pronunciation elements into listening lessons for first-year students in backan community college = kết hợp các yếu tố phát âm trong giờ học nghe cho sinh viên năm thứ nhất trường cao đẳng cộng đồng bắc kạn tt

In terms of an integrated approach to teaching English, many researchers have agreed with the views of integrating pronunciation into all the areas of language work.. In order to investi

TABLE OF CONTENT

CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT Error! Bookmark not defined ABSTRACT Error! Bookmark not defined.i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii

PREFACE iError! Bookmark not defined TABLE OF CONTENT……… …v

LIST OF TABLES Error! Bookmark not defined.i LIST OF FIGURES ix

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale to the Study 2

1.2 Objectives of the Study 2

1.3 Research questions 2

1.4 The scope of the study 3

1.5 Organization of the Study 3

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 4

2.1 Some main features of pronunciation teaching 4

2.1.1 The importance of pronunciation and pronunciation teaching 4

2.1.2 Models of pronunciation 5

2.1.3 Intelligibility 7

2.2 Approaches of the teaching of pronunciation 8

2.2.1 Bottom-up and top-down approach 8

2.2.2 Intuitive-imitative and Analytic-linguistic approach 9

2.2.3 Communicative approach 9

2.2.4 An integrated approach Error! Bookmark not defined

2.3 Integrating pronunciation into listening Error! Bookmark not defined 2.4 Empirical research on the integration of pronunciation into listening Error! Bookmark not defined

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY Error! Bookmark not defined 3.1 The context of the study Error! Bookmark not defined

3.2 Subjects 15

3.3 Instruments 16

3.3.1 The tests 16

3 3.2 Questionnaires 16

3.4 Data Collection Procedure 17

3.4.1 Treatment 17

3.4.1 The tests 19

3.4.3 Questionnaires 19

CHAPTER 4 PRESENTATION AND THE ANALYSIS OF RESULTS Error! Bookmark not defined 4.1 Results and analysis Error! Bookmark not defined 4.1.1 Results from the pretest and six progress tests Error! Bookmark not defined 4.1.2 Results from the pretest and post test 26

4.1.3 Results from the students’ questionnaires 27

4.2 Discussion Error! Bookmark not defined 4.2.1 The students’ scores in pronunciation tests Error! Bookmark not defined 4.2.2 The questionnaires 34

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION 35

5.1 Major findings 35

5.2 Limitations of the Study 36

5.3 Recommendations for Future Research 36

5.4 Conclusion 37

REFERENCES 38 APPENDIX……….I

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1 Comparison of the scores in the pre-test and week-2 progress test Table 1.2 Comparison of the scores in the pre-test and week-4 progress test Table 1.3 Comparison of the scores in the pre-test and week- 6 progress test Table 1.4 Comparison of the scores in the pre-test and week- 8 progress test Table 1.5 Comparison of the scores in the pre-test and week- 10 progress test Table 1.6 Comparison of the scores in the pre-test and week-12 progress test Table 1.7 Comparison of the scores in the pre-test and post test

Table 1.8 Comparison of students’ scores during 12 weeks

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Students’ opinions toward English pronunciation study

Figure 2.2 Students’ opinions toward classroom pronunciation activities

Figure 2.3 Students’ opinions toward studying stress and intonation

Figure 2.4 Students’ opinions toward the usefulness of integrating stress and intonation into listening lesson is useful

Figure 2.5 Students’ likeness of integrating stress and intonation into listening lessons

Figure 2.6 Students’ opinions about the appropriation of lesson design

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale to the Study

To many learners, learning English is very difficult because of many differences between it and Vietnamese Pronunciation is considered as one of the most difficult one It is the biggest challenge because a word pronounced incorrectly may lead to misunderstandings of listeners These sometimes bring unexpected effects or even break communication

The approaches to teaching pronunciation have been changed according to the EFL teaching methodological changes However, EFL teachers still face up with many problems in finding ways to teach pronunciation effectively

In terms of an integrated approach to teaching English, many researchers have agreed with the views of integrating pronunciation into all the areas of language work However, teachers mostly are confused about how to apply this approach in their classroom Levis and Grant (2003) have pointed out

Approaches favoring the integration of pronunciation into oral communication have been espoused for more than 10 years, but teachers have received little clear direction about how to accomplish this.( Levis and Grant(2003:1)

Teachers in Vietnamese schools and universities have applied different approaches and techniques in teaching pronunciation However, the teaching and learning process still gained not much progress In Backan Community College, the teaching of English pronunciation still faces up with many difficulties With the aims of finding new ways for pronunciation teaching, the researcher would like to find out whether an integrated approach can be used in this context In order to investigate how an integrated approach of pronunciation teaching can

be applied to help students improve their pronunciation, the researcher decided to do an action search on the teaching of stress and intonation entitled: “Integrating pronunciation elements into listening lessons for first- year students in Backan College of Community” The study was conducted to seek the answers to which extent the integration of pronunciation elements into

listening lessons affects the improvement of L2 learners‟ pronunciation in an English classroom in Vietnam It was expected that the findings of this research present to ESL teachers, especially Vietnamese ESL teachers, a set of general ideas about this approach Then

on the basis of these findings, some recommendations for English teaching pedagogy will be given

2 Objectives of the Study

This study investigates the extent to which the integration of pronunciation elements improves

students‟ English pronunciation Specifically, the research has two main objectives:

1 To examine the extent to which integrating pronunciation elements into listening lessons improve L2 learners’ pronunciation

2 To examine the attitudes of Vietnamese learners of English about the integration of pronunciation elements into listening lessons

3 Research questions

The researcher aims at answering the two research questions:

a What are the effects of the integration of pronunciation elements into listening lessons to students’ pronunciation?

b What are the students’ attitudes toward and perceptions of the integration of pronunciation elements into listening lessons?

4 The scope of the study

This is an action research with a focused group of 45 students in Backan Community College This study was aimed exploring how the integration of pronunciation elements into listening lessons affect students‟ performance in pronunciation

5 Organization of the Study

The thesis is structured in five chapters Chapter 1 introduces the study It includes the objectives, the scope, and the significance of the study

Chapter 2 provides a review of the literature on the approaches to pronunciation teaching with

a focus on an integrated approach to pronunciation teaching, i.e., integrating pronunciation into listening lessons

Chapter 3 presents the research methodology and the instruments used to collect data

Chapter 4 presents the results of the study, along with analysis and discussion of the data Chapter 5 offers a summary of the findings of the study, conclusions, and suggestions for future research

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Many researchers have pointed out the educational benefits of an integrated approach to second and/or foreign language teaching A number of studies have examined the possibilities and advantages of integrating pronunciation integrating pronunciation into other language activities However, relatively few studies on integrating pronunciation elements into listening have been documented in the ELT literature

In this chapter, the author will first define some important terms of teaching pronunciation and then review some studies on the integration of pronunciation into listening in different contexts so that their findings may be revealed in relation with the findings of the present context

2.1 Some main features of pronunciation teaching

2.1.1 The importance of pronunciation and pronunciation teaching

Communication is the most important component of any human society To communicate properly, we need intelligible pronunciation because pronunciation affects very much on the understanding of the meanings of the words Mispronunciation or unintelligible pronunciation

is likely to lead to misunderstandings and even communication breakdown

The role of pronunciation and pronunciation teaching in second/foreign language learning has been acknowledged by many researchers According to Morley (1998), the limitation of a learners‟ pronunciation may lead to the lack of self- confidence and reducing social

interactions and affecting badly their credibility and ability Celce-Murcia (1996) states that

There is a threshold level of pronunciation in English for non-native speakers of English; if they fall below this threshold level, they will have oral communication problems no matter how excellent and extensive their control of English grammar and vocabulary might be (p7)

She goes on to argue that the focus on language communication leads to “the urgency

to the teaching of pronunciation” Hewings (2004) argues that an understandable pronunciation plays an important role to the students‟ communication skills and therefore

pronunciation teaching should be integrated into other areas of language work Generally

speaking, there is no need in turning learners sounding like native speakers but teachers do need to get them to be capable of being understood by a variety of listeners

It is believed that teaching the right pronunciation of English to the learners is very important,

so that they may communicate exactly what and how they want to communicate Pronunciation is one of the most difficult areas for learners, as well as for teachers but their intelligibility can be greatly improved by effective pronunciation teaching Goodwin (2001) claims that “the teaching of pronunciation is so crucial to our students.”(p17) According to Pennington(1989), teachers who are trained formally in pronunciation and teaching suprasegmentals in communicative language program can create a difference of learners‟ pronunciation Harmer (2001) also argues that pronunciation teaching not only helps students

to be aware of different sounds and sound features but also improve their speaking immeasurably Subsequently, he claims

concentrating on sounds, showing where they are made in mouth, making students aware of where words should be stressed- all these things give them extra information about spoken English and help them achieve the goal of improved comprehension and intelligibility (p183)

In short, all the researchers have an agreement on the role of the teaching of pronunciation and encourage teachers to play the role as facilitators in students‟ pronunciation learning

2.1.2 Models of pronunciation

The choice of a pronunciation model for L2 learners has become an important issue among teachers and educators concerned with teaching English They have tried to answer the question to what extent models of pronunciation should be explored to teach pronunciation

When an English language teacher conducts a pronunciation activity, he should be aware of what form of pronunciation that activity focuses on

In the literature, there are different models of teaching pronunciation According to Kelly (2000), the term “model” refers to the pronunciation characteristics of the language a teacher presents to learners in the classroom Richards et al (1985), define model as " someone or something which is used as a standard or goal for the learners” (cited in Brown, 1994:36) There many models of English which can be a standard or dominant accent, for instance, the Queen‟s English, standard American or a locally produced variety like Indian Accent Although we commonly talk about „English pronunciation‟ obviously not all speakers of English pronounce it in the same way Even among countries where English is the first language of the majority of the population there are considerable variations, and we can distinguish between the pronunciation of British English, American English, Australian English, South African English, and so on And it is necessary to consider varieties of English used in Britain, Ireland, the USA, Australia and Canada

Traditionally, the most widely used pronunciation models for ESL/EFL learners was the Received Pronunciation accent of English Received Pronunciation is firstly given by dialectologist, Ellis in 1969 The pronunciation by which British speakers are distinguished in Received Pronunciation( RP), Oxford English, Public School English, BBC English or standard British English Tench (2003) described RP as Educated Southern English and Southern British Standard It is commonly known as Oxford accent, or the BBC accent However, it has been recognized that there is no such thing as „received pronunciation‟

Other alternatives for RP proposed includes General American (GA) and Scottish English( SE) Wells (1982:118) explained General American as the speech of „the two-thirds of the American population who do not have a recognizably local accent‟ The spread of this accent

is related to the export of American TV programmes, films and pop music over the world

Dretzke (2008) explains that there is no recognized standard pronunciation for the whole of the United States as there is for England The author claims

“American English pronunciation includes three major areas, ie eastern, southern and the rest of the country The pronunciation in the rest of the country is particularly

uniform and labeled General American English.”

(p.164)

Brown ( 1994) states that Scottish English even with a much smaller number of native speakers( only 5 millions) and has little influence in other part of English-speaking world

However, he points out that a reasonable homogeneity exists between typical accents of

English in Scotland, such that a category of SE can be used.( p.36)

Even the diversity of how English is pronounced is real but what is common to all speakers of English (the commonality) is much greater Thus, it is believed that the ultimate target of both the teaching and the learning of ESL pronunciation would be an intelligible accent Because There is no problem in allowing a distance exist between what is presented to the learner (model) and an acceptable achieved performance by the learner‟ ( Brown,1994, p 40) Thus, teachers must choose the appropriate materials for pronunciation teaching to help students to

be understood by varieties of listeners

2.1.3 Intelligibility

Some teachers claim that pronunciation teaching is discouraging because they believe that students should achieve native-like pronunciation, but very few learners can do that In fact, many of these learners master the elements of language such as syntax, morphology, or even semantics but often fail to master phonology But it is worth emphasizing the fact that native-like pronunciation should not be the goal for pronunciation teaching The major difficulty facing almost any ESL/EFL learner is the achievement of acceptable pronunciation that enables them to be understood by the L1 English speakers

According to Kenworthy (1987:3) „ for the majority of learners a far more reasonable goal is

to be comfortably intelligible Intelligibility is the degree to which a listener can be

understand what is being said, or in the words of Kenworthy (1987) “Intelligibility is being

understood by a listener at a given time in a given situation”( p13) Following the same ideas, Harmer (2001) also agrees that a „perfect’ pronunciation is achieved extremely rarely by students (p185) Silveira (2002) states that followers of the Communicative approach all

consider intelligible pronunciation more important than the total accuracy

Taking everything into account, it appears that native-like pronunciation is an inappropriate aim for most learners Achieving pronunciation which is good enough for students to be always understood should be one of the main goals of foreign language learners

In short, it can be seen that teaching pronunciation should aim at an understandable pronunciation rather than a perfect model So, the overall aim is for learners to develop spoken English that will serve their individual needs and allow them to form a positive image of

themselves as speakers of a foreign language

2.2 Approaches of the teaching of pronunciation

Approaches to the teaching of pronunciation have changed throughout the recent history of language teaching The most important change is the movement from an emphasis on the accurate production of individual speech sound to the concentration more on the broader, communicative aspects of connected speech There are different approaches of pronunciation teaching such as bottom-up and top-down approach by Dalton (2003); Intuitive-Imitative and analytic-linguistic approach by Murcia (1996); Communicative approach or integrated approach by later researchers

2.2.1 Bottom-up and top-down approach

In the book “Teaching pronunciation” Dalton compared the two main approaches to pronunciation teaching: the bottom-up and top-down approach In the bottom-up approach, teachers start with articulations of individual sounds and then focus on intonation In the top-

down approach, teachers work with patterns of intonation and add individual sounds if required Most important, he emphasized that the choice of the approach depends on the learning purposes and the stages

2.2.2 Intuitive-imitative and Analytic-linguistic approach

Celce-Murcia (1996) presents two general approaches to the teaching of pronunciation including the intuitive- imitative approach and the analytic-linguistic approach An Intuitive-Imitative approach is related to the capacity of the learners in listening and imitating the rhythms and sounds of the language and no explicit information is intervened The quality of phonograph records, tape records and language labs in the mid-twentieth century, and more recently of audio-videocassettes and compact disc are considered to be good models for learners The second approach is believed to complement the first approach Teachers use information and tools such as alphabet, articulatory descriptions, charts of the vocal apparatus, contrastive information and other supplementary materials to provide explicit information to the learners and attention to the sounds and rhythm

2.2.3 Communicative approach

Since the communicative language teaching has been rising, there were tendencies of a

communicative approach to pronunciation teaching In the past, the teaching of pronunciation

is concerned much with practicing isolated sounds or stress and intonation patterns without considering the context in which these sounds and patterns produced However, there has been

a change from the teaching of segmentals (individual vowel and consonant sounds) to the teaching of suprasegmentals (stress, rhythm, and intonation) Other authors including Jones & Evans( 1995:224) suggest that teachers still have different ways to present pronunciation

communicatively with most teaching materials

2.3.4 An integrated approach

The pronunciation teaching is not an end in itself, as it is closely intertwined with listening and speaking skills, as well as with other language areas such as grammar and vocabulary Most literature supports the views of an integrated approach to pronunciation teaching in which it is combined with other language works

According to Chera Flores (2001), it is very important to apply an integrated approach in pronunciation teaching because

… the integration of pronunciation into other language activities from the beginning stages of learning and throughout a complete program would allow the learner to reach stage of phonological development suggested as necessary to achieve results from pronunciation training (p 1)

Murphy (1991) maintains that pronunciation instruction needs to be integrated with broader level communicative activities in which speakers and listeners engage in meaningful communication (p 60) Gilbert and Rogerson (1990) suggest that teachers may use different ways to integrate pronunciation These include reading- phrasing, writing- spelling and punctuation, vocabulary- marking word stress, reduced weak form, speaking with all elements Morley (1991) points out that students can improve their English pronunciation in the case„the pronunciation class is taken out of a meaningless isolation and becomes an integral part of the

oral communication class.‟(p 496)

According to Pennington and Richards (1986)

It is artificial to divorce pronunciation from communication and from other aspects of language use, for sounds are a fundamental part of the process by which we communicate and comprehend lexical, grammatical and sociolinguistic meaning‟ (p208) They suggested that there is a natural link between pronunciation and other aspects of language use such as listening, vocabulary and grammar Thus, teaching

activites need to investigate this interdepence They emphasized that „Pronunciation ought to be taught as an intergral part of oral language use, as part of the means for creating both referential and interfectional meaning, not merely as an aspect of the oral production of words and sentences.(p219)

In Nooteboom‟s (1983:183-94) words, the speech production and the speech perception are closely related, Thus, teachers need to integrate pronunciation into communicative activities and provide opportunities to student to develop their pronunciation by listening and speaking

In order to communicate with native speakers effectively, students need to learn pronunciation

in communicative practices Jones (1997) agrees that “Pronunciation will, whenever possible,

be taught in concert with other skills, not as a separate entity, but as another string in the communicative bow”, (p.185)

Similarly, Levis and Grant (2003) also agree with the ideas that pronunciation should be taught in combination with other language skills These ideas support the views of Gilbert (1990) and Murphy (1991) as discussed above

In this sense, the researcher would go along with the views that pronunciation should be integrated into listening and speaking skills development And teachers should identify and deal with their learners´ immediate pronunciation needs regarding the aural-oral activities of the language course

2.3 Integrating pronunciation into listening

With regard to the integration of pronunciation elements into listening, most researchers deal with how and why the teaching affects students‟ improvement of pronunciation

Gilbert (1990) presents his ideas about the connection between listening and pronunciation To his views, pronunciation is an important aspect of both speaking and listening and an understandable pronunciation is crucial to their communication skills Thus, teachers should integrate it with other areas of language work

Moreover, he recommended that authentic unscripted recordings from the cassettes can be used in an effective way which explores the recordings as natural speech to raise the students‟ awareness of elements of connected speech and realize the crucial relation between developing pronunciation and listening skills

Murphy (1991) states that Increasing numbers of ESL methodologists argue that L2 pronunciation practice needs to be intimately linked with the listening process (p 285)

According to Kelly (2003), teachers should consider the noticing process which affects students‟ achievement of L2 pronunciation When pronunciation study and listening activities are combined, students will notice things about the language and its use better The concept of noticing is crucial in pronunciation work Jones (1997) has pointed out “Listening will continue to play a large part in pronunciation training, with perhaps more authentic listening tasks with a variety of accents.” (p 185)

In general, it can be concluded that most researchers supported the integration of pronunciation into listening for the following advantages: the authentic materials for pronunciation practice, the development of the students‟ awareness of elements of connected speech and the contribution to the noticing process which supports students in pronunciation learning process

2.4 Empirical research on the integration of pronunciation into listening

As it has been pointed out in Chapter I, very few studies have focused on examining the effects of the integration of pronunciation into listening Most of the literature on the integrating pronunciation into other language activities is opion-based, rather than data-driven Gutknecht (1978), in his study, argued that the description of intonation problems could not

be carried out without considering all other aspects of language and language use Language teaching itself should include the teaching of intonation at every stage and in all areas

Leech and Svartvil (1975) suggest that the teaching of intonation should be included in every single paragraph of the work

Overall, there has been very little research on the integration of pronunciation into listening Knowledge of how the approach can be applied in an ESL setting is still limited No research has evaluated the use of this approach in an ESL classroom in the context of Vietnam Thus, the aim of this study is to fill this major research gap

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents the context of the study, the subjects of the study, the procedure of data collection

The aim of the study, as stated in Chapter 1, is to examine whether or not the teaching of integrating pronunciation elements into listening lessons is effective with students at Backan Community College In order to measure the effectiveness of the intervention, the researcher decided to conduct an experimental research The research methodology for this aspect of the study was a pre-experimental design (One-group pretest-posttest design) The pre-test were therefore utilized to assess the pronunciation ability of stress and intonation of the students prior to the study Then, students did the six progress tests and the post-test The dependent variable was the scores on the tests The scores were compared to measure to the effects of the treatment on students‟ pronunciation

In order to evaluate the students‟ attitudes toward and the perceptions of students on the teaching, the questionnaires were given to the students after the intervention

3.1 The context of the study

Backan Community College is a local public college located in the North of Vietnam The number of students in each class remains about 45-70 students The classroom for English lessons is not equipped with multimedia facilities The teachers only used cassette players for listening lessons

The Department of English in the college has a teaching staff of 6 permanent members and a student body of approximately 500 Each teacher must follow a set of guidelines with regard

to the content, focus and duration of a course Teachers have the freedom to make decisions concerning appropriate teaching approach and methodology to use All the materials using for teaching and learning are the text book “New Headway” by John & Liz Soars (2000) and cassettes attached In the textbook, four macro language skills are equally developed However, pronunciation is not focused as much as other skills

In Backan Community College, students are majored in different subjects to become teachers

in secondary schools English is not considered a major Every academic year, there are about

500 new comers who study English as a compulsory subject They have already learned English at secondary and high school, about 3 to 7 years Students are from different ethnic minority groups in Backan province such as Tay, Dao, Mong, Nung Each group has its own customs and values Most of them can speak both their own language and Vietnamese In other words, English can be considered to be their third language As being observed, their accents of their own language partly affect the way they speak Vietnamese and English

It is believed that different culture value leads to different learning behavior Since learning becomes more learners centered, the institutional culture plays an important role in language learning environment and contributes to the effective learning As the cases of other mountainous provinces in the North of Vietnam, the learning and teaching of English is considered as a compulsory subject in schools Parents and teachers only focus on the so-called „learning for testing‟ style in which learner‟s aims at memorizing language items for reading and writing tests Listening and speaking skills are rarely spent much time on both inside and outside the classrooms In addition, there are little chances for communicating in English with foreigners or native- speakers

To students in BCC, English is a compulsory subject in to fulfill their program at the college Thus, most of the students only desire for high scores of the written test at the end of the semester In the academic year 2011, the staff decided to change the new form of testing including three written tests and a final oral test This aims at enhancing students in using English communicatively

3.2 Subjects

The subjects of this study were originally 45 first-year students in Backan College of Community They were on average 20 years old All were in Department of Education of Backan Community College All were exposed to the same learning situation and teachers in the college Each member of the group has a different level of English education They had

already gone through about three to eight years of English Due to the recent schedule, they have taken five periods each week in English

The pre-test was administrated to measure the students‟ ability of pronunciation performance before the intervention

The post-test was designed with the selected words and sentences from the pronunciation practice during twelve weeks in order to measure the students‟ ability of pronunciation performance after the intervention

The six progress tests contained the words and sentences from the ones practiced during two previous weeks (Week 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12)

3 3.2 Questionnaires (see Appendix 5)

At the end of the twelve-week intervention, once all the pronunciation practices and tests had been completed, the questionnaires were administrated to get more information about their attitudes of the treatment and their perception of its effects on their improvement of

pronunciation The questionnaire includes three main parts The first part contains different items related to the students‟ attitudes and perceptions toward English pronunciation learning The second part contains three items related to the intervention applied in 12 weeks The third part is for three open questions for other opinions related to the intervention

The questionnaires includes three main categories: (a) Attitudes toward studying English pronunciation, (b) Attitudes toward the teaching of pronunciation by integrating it into listening lessons and (c) Other opinions about the intervention

3.4 Data Collection Procedure

Having described the instruments used in the study, this part will proceed by outlining the data collection procedure

3.4.1 Treatment - Integration of pronunciation exercises into listening lessons (see Appendix 4)

The treatment was a series of 24 pronunciation practice lessons The aim of the treatments is

to raise the awareness of students in the two pronunciation elements consisting of stress and intonation The students were helped to recognize significant variation in stress and intonation The contrasts that students can recognize or produce were very general indeed

Every week, an appropriate dialog in listening lessons was utilized to help students practice word stress, sentence stress and intonation

The treatment consists of three stages: recognition, practice and production It was adapted

from the article “Teaching with functional materials: the problem of stress and intonation”

written by Roberts (1983) The main stages of each treatment are described as following:

Stage 1: Recognition

After listening tasks, students repeated the dialogues a line at a time (chorally and individually) First, they marked the word stress and sentence stress and intonation on sentences in the dialogue

Then, the teacher played the tape line by line and marked major features of stress and intonation according to students‟ answers Students followed and wrote down their answers in the second part

Sample 1: Checking sentence stress and intonation

Tape: First, I‟m going to Holland

Teacher: Is The stress of “Holland” on First or second syllables ?

Teacher: Which are the strongest syllables?

Teacher ( Marks sentences on the board)

Now does her voice go up or does her voice go down ? Listen Is it or ?

S1: Down

Teacher: Do you agree? Ok( Marks the board: ………

The analysis of the dialogue helped students to pay attention on these linguistic features and in the next lessons; they would be likely to recognize similar features Teacher did a quicker version in the following lessons in which students are familiar with the steps

Stage 2: Practice

Students practiced the dialogues among group members and individual Teacher called some pairs to present the conversations

Stage 3: Production

Teacher gave some other similar words and sentences and asked students to pronounce with the correct stress and intonation Teacher listened and examined how they could apply what they had learnt in new sentences and conversations

3.4.2 The tests

a/ The pretest and post test

The pretest was administrated to the students at the second week of the second semester The teacher collected the pretest for the score analysis

After 12 weeks of treatment, the post test was given to check the extent to which the students improve their ability in producing stress and intonation The score of post test was used to

compare with the scores of pretest to justify the students‟ improvement after the teaching

b/ Six progress tests

During the 12 weeks of treatment, there were six tests which aim at exploring how the scores changed after 12 weeks The tests were administrated after every two week (Week 2, 4, 6, 8,

10 and 12)

3.4.3 Questionnaires

The questionnaires were delivered to the students after the intervention The researcher collected the data for further analysis

CHAPTER 4 PRESENTATION AND THE ANALYSIS OF RESULTS

The tests were scored manually by the researcher herself Each correct answer was assigned with 1 The scores of the pre-test, the post-test and six progress tests were analyzed by calculating mean and standard deviation with the help of the SPSS program In order to

determine the effect of the intervention, the mean and standard deviation of the tests were compared Firstly, the author decided to compare the scores of the pretests with six progress tests Finally, the scores of the pretest and post test were examined

4.1 Results and analysis

4.1.1 Results from the pretest and six progress tests

a) The scores in the pre-test and week-2 progress test

Table 1.1 Comparison of the scores of pretest and week-2 progress test

As indicated in Table 1.1, there is not much difference in the students‟ scores between the test and the progress test administered after two weeks of intervention Not a single student scored 8 and higher in both tests while the number of students scored (7 ≤ - < 8) was the same (9.4%) in both tests A striking feature is that while nearly half of the students achieved the scores of 5 ≤ - < 7, the number of the students of this category is slightly higher (43.8%) in the week -2 progress test in comparison with the pre-test (40.6%) The number of students who scored of 3 <- < 5 remained the same (25%) Another important observation is that the number of the students who scored of 3 and lower than 3 is slightly reduced (21.9% vs 25%)

pre-in week-2 progress test However, this difference pre-in both categories (i.e positive and negative)

is not great enough to justify any improvement in the students‟ pronunciation Overall, the mean score of the week-2 progress test is slightly higher (4.63; SD=1.39) than that of the pre-test (4.53; SD=1.39)

b) The scores in the pre-test and week-4 progress test

As can be seen in Table 1.2, the students‟ scores between the pre-test and the progress test administered after four weeks of intervention are partly different

There are still no students who scored 8 and higher in both tests while the number of students scored 7 ≤ - < 8 was the same (9.4%) in both tests The students who scored 5 ≤ - < 7 mainly remain the same (43.8% vs 40.6%) Most importantly, the scores of 5 and higher did not change much, the numbers of students who scored of lower than 3 reduced greatly (12.5% vs 25%) The students who scored of 3 < - < 5 rose slightly 25.0% 34.4% However, the differences are not much enough to justify the improvement of students‟ pronunciation In general, the mean score of the week-4 progress test is slightly higher (4.75; SD= 1.32) than that of the pre-test (4.53; SD=1.39)

n = 32 Percentage n = 32 Percentage

Table 1.2 Comparison of the scores of pretest and week- 4 progress test

c) The scores in the pre-test and week-6 progress test

Table 1.3 presents the students‟ scores of pretest and week- 6 progress test There are bigger changes in the students‟ scores after six weeks Still there is no student who scored 8 and higher, the number of students who reached the score of 7 ≤ - < 8) increased (12.5%) The numbers of the students achieved the scores of 5 ≤ - < 7 is higher (53.1%) in the week -6 progress test in comparison with the pre-test (40.6%) The students‟ scores changed from 25.0% into 28.1 % Another important point is that the number of the students with a score of

3 and lower is remarkably reduced (25.0% vs 6.3 %) in week-4 progress test The mean score

of the week-6 progress test is considerably higher (5.19; SD=1.18) than that of the pre-test (4.53; SD=1.39) It can be seen that there were considerable changes in the students‟ ability of recognizing stress and intonation

n = 32 Percentage n = 32 Percentage