Luận văn AN APPLICATION OF GAMES AND OTHER STIMULATING ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING PRONUNCIATION TO GRADE 10 ENGLISH GIFTED STUDENTS AT HA NOI SPECIALISED UPPER SEC

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIESFACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ------ĐÀO THỊ KIM NHUNG AN APPLICATION OF GAMES AND OTHER STIMU

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

- -ĐÀO THỊ KIM NHUNG

AN APPLICATION OF GAMES AND OTHER STIMULATING ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING PRONUNCIATION TO GRADE

10 ENGLISH GIFTED STUDENTS AT HA NOI SPECIALISED

UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL

(ÁP DỤNG TRÒ CHƠI VÀ CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG MANG TÍNH KHÍCH LỆKHÁC TRONG VIỆC DẠY PHÁT ÂM CHO HỌC SINH CHUYÊN ANH

LỚP 10 TRƯỜNG PHỔ THÔNG CHUYÊN NGỮ HÀ NỘI )

Course: Cohort 12 Supervisor: Dr GARY CARKIN

Ha Noi 2013 INTRODUCTION……….4

1 Rationale……….4

2 Objectives of the study………5

3 Scope of the study……… 5

4 Methods of the study……… 5

5 Design of the study……….5

DEVELOPMENT……….6

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW………6

1.1 Pronunciation ……… 7

1.1 Definition of pronunciation ………7

1.2 The impotance of pronunciation ………7

2 Pronunciation in language teaching ……… 8

2.1.The status of pronunciation teaching……… 8

2.1.1 The vowel and consonant sounds ………9

2.1.2 Words stress pattern……….9

2.1.3 rhythm……… 9

3 Current ideason pronunciation teaching and writing ……….9

4 Teachers’ roles ………10

5 Learners’ roles ……… 10

6 The use of games and other communicative activities in pronunciation teaching …….11

CHAPTER 2 MOTHODOLOGY………13

1 Context of the study……… 13

2 game……… 13

3 instruments………14

4 Questionaire ……….15

5 Teacher’s note ……….15

CHAPTER 3 DATA PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 16

1 Responces to the questionaire ……… 16

2 Qualitative to the questionaire ……….17

3 Diagnotic Test Analysis ……… 18

4 The reseacher’s observation during class time through out the course ……… 20

5 Dicussion ……… 21

6 The effectiveness game and other stimulating activities ……… 22

CONCLUSION………25

1 Conclusion………25

2 Implications……… …25

REFERENCES………27

APPENDICES ……… 28

1 Rationale

It is undeniable that English has become a language of globalcommunication thanks to its contribution to different fields of our life such as:science, technology, aviation, diplomacy and so on No one can deny that therapid expansion of information technologies and the spread of globalizationhave led to an explosion in the demand for English worldwide

English is now taught throughout of Vietnam in different levels ofeducation from primary schools to universities because it serves as aninternational language and as a mean to promote mutual understanding andcooperation between Vietnam and other countries In fact, more and morepeople desire to know and master English in order to keep them up-to-date withthe global development As a result, English is taught not only at schools anduniversities but also at many foreign language centres, on radio, television andeven via the internet However, both teaching and learning of English are stillfar from being satisfaction One main problem is that most Vietnamese learnersare rather good at English writtenly but not orally Many of them have a goodcommand of grammar and vocabulary, which promises very high marks inwritten tests, but cannot communicate successfully with foreigners The reasonlies in the imbalanced development of four language skills In most schools anduniversities (except those whose major is English), teachers focus too much onreading and writing rather than speaking and listening of which pronunciation is

a good foundation Thus, students do not often have English competence,especially in oral communication

In the present context of teaching English at CNN, speaking and listeningare very important for grade 10 students because they establish a firm base forstudents’ further development, especially in interpreting skills

Being a teacher of English in general, I am well aware of the importance ofpronunciation to help my students improve these skills, but like other teachers, Ihave faced many difficulties in creating motivation so that students are eager topractise in and out of their classes

We have questioned ourselves about how to motivate our students tomaximize their time of practising in class and even outside class, which leads tothe use of games and other stimulating activities We have tried activitiescollected from different sources, which seems to bring about great effect

2 Objectives of the study

The study is aimed at:

 Finding out their advantages and disadvantages

 Helping pronunciation teachers choose suitable activities for their classes.Thus, this thesis is to answer two research questions:

 How effective is the use of games and some other stimulating activities?

 What are students’ attitude towards the use of games and some otherstimulating activities?

3 Scope of the study

To create motivation for students in pronunciation classes, teachers atEnglish group, CNN, have applied a lot of games and activities However, theresearcher in this study only focuses on and analyzes some typical ones (whichwill be presented in the following parts) and then suggests some effectiveactivities that teachers can introduce to students so that they have more practiceoutside class There are 4classes at grade 10 which consist of 160 students whohave to take pronunciation as a compulsory subject; however, this actionresearch was carried out in only two classes of which the researcher was incharge Thus, the questionnaire was delivered to only 50 participants

4 Methods of the study

Action research is the method employed in this study To achieve the aimsmentioned above, the researcher has used a number of instruments to collectdata for analysis which include a questionnaire distributed before the termstarted and after it ended, teachers’ observation and notes

5 Design of the study

This minor thesis is composed of three parts

Part 1, INTRODUCTION, presents the rationale, aims, scope, methods anddesign of the study

Part 2, DEVELOPMENT, is divided into three chapters.

Chapter 1, Literature Review, presents relevant concepts to pronunciationand pronunciation teaching

Chapter 2, Methodology, involves the information about context,participants and instruments of the study

Chapter 3: Data Presentation, Analysis and Discussion, focuses on dataanalysis to show students’ point of view towards pronunciation and theeffectiveness of different activities

Part 3, CONLUSION, summarizes some major findings, provideimplications for pronunciation teaching, limitation of the study and suggestionsfor further research

DEVELOPMENT LITERATURE REVIEW

More specifically, pronunciation can be understood as one of the threeexplanations given in the http://www.thefreedictionary.com:

 The act or manner of pronouncing words; utterance of speech

 A way of speaking a word, especially a way that is accepted or generallyunderstood

 A graphic representation of the way a word is spoken, using phoneticsymbols

1.2 The importance of pronunciation

Nowadays, no one can deny the significant role of pronunciation inlanguage teaching and learning Pronunciation is one of the most importantaspects of language We may be proficient at grammar and have a huge store ofvocabulary, but if we pronounce words wrongly, we just will not get understood.Wong (1993) argues that the importance of pronunciation is even more distinctwhen the connection between pronunciation and listening comprehension isconsidered As listeners expect spoken English to follow certain patterns ofrhythm and intonation, speakers need to employ these patterns to communicateeffectively If the rhythm and intonation are different, listeners simply can’t getthe meaning Similarly, listeners need to know how speech is organized andwhat patterns of intonation mean in order to interpret speech accurately Thus,learning about pronunciation develops learners’ abilities to comprehend spoken

English Furthermore, Wong demonstrated that a lack of knowledge ofpronunciation could even affect students’ reading and spelling

2 Pronunciation in language teaching

2.1 The status of pronunciation in current language teaching

The status of pronunciation teaching in different schools of languageteaching has varied widely According to Castillo (1990), pronunciationteaching has no role at all in the grammar-translation method, but it is the mainfocus in the audio-lingual method The audio-lingual view of the pronunciationclass was also mirrored in situational language teaching, developed in Britain(Richards and Rodgers, 1986

Nowadays, teachers and learners have realized the importance ofpronunciation in English teaching and learning, however, it still has not receivedenough attention In fact, pronunciation tends to be de-emphasized in mostEnglish courses because many teachers believe that pronunciation cannot betaught effectively and it is not worth spending time on this field because itshould be allowed to develop naturally by students

Colin Mortimer (1985) claimed that elements of pronunciation teachinginclude weak forms, clusters, linking-up, contractions and stress time However,according to Gerald Kelly (2000), teaching pronunciation involves: vowels,consonants, word and sentence stress, intonation, other aspects of connectedspeech and spelling Jennifer Jenkins (2004) provided more comprehensiveelements of pronunciation teaching This researcher stated that depending on thesecond language in question, pronunciation teaching typically covers any or all

of the following: consonant and vowel sounds, changes of these sounds in thestream of connected speech, word stress patterns, rhythm, and intonation, whichmight be described as the nuts and bolts of pronunciation

2.1.1 Consonant and vowel sounds

It is obvious that learners of English need to know and pronounce lettersounds correctly because they are the basement for the combination of soundsinto words However, students must know that English pronunciation does notmatch spelling and one of the most confusing aspects of English pronunciation

languages such as ancient Latin, Greek, Eskimo and Farsi, so its sound andspelling correspondences are irregular Thus, phonetic transcription is anindispensable part of pronunciation teaching.

2.1.2 Word stress patterns

Word stress must highly be focused on at the beginning of anypronunciation courses because without correct word stress, speakers of Englishcannot have understandable pronunciation In every two or more-syllable words,one of the syllables is stressed, which means it is higher, louder and longer thanthe others This stressed syllable is very important because it helps listenersdistinguish the word from others Therefore, listeners often find it hard tounderstand what the speaker is saying when he or she misuses word stress

2.1.3 Rhythm

Rhythm is the obvious feature of every language Rhythm or beat of alanguage is the product of word stress and the way in which important items areemphasized The combination of strong beats (the occurrence of importantitems) and weak beats (the occurrence of unimportant items) makes rhythm easy

to be recognized Thus, after dealing with word stress patterns, teachers ofpronunciation should introduce to their students the rhythm of English which ischaracterized by the alteration of strong and weak syllables (Kenworthy, 1987).Intonation

3 Current ideas on pronunciation teaching and learning

Changing outlooks on language learning and teaching have influenced theview of language competence, which leads to a shift from specific linguisticcompetencies to broader communicative competencies as goals for teachers andstudents (Morley, 1991) Previously, teachers of pronunciation only focused onteaching segmental features which started with a concentration on phoneticalphabets during the Reform Movement (Celce-Murcia et al., 1996) Phonetictraining was used in order to help learners establish good speech habits Minimalpair drills were used extensively to distinguish phonemes in listening practiceand oral production (Celce-Murcia et al., 1996) McNerney and Mendelsohn(1992, p 186) suggested “a short-term pronunciation course should focus firstand foremost on suprasegmentals, as they have the greatest impact on the

comprehensibility of learners’ English” So far a lot of books for teachers havelargely encouraged the teaching of suprasegments at the production level toimprove learners’ intelligibility

4 Teachers’ roles

Some researchers (Suter and Purcell, 1980) have cast doubt on theimportance of pronunciation teaching because in their opinion, little relationshipexists between teaching pronunciation and attained pronunciation proficiency.They stated that “the attainment of accurate pronunciation in a second language

is the matter substantially beyond the control of educators” However, otherresearchers including Pennington (1989) believed that teachers with formaltraining in pronunciation play an important role in helping students improvetheir pronunciation A teacher of pronunciation often fulfills the following roles:

 Helping learners perceive sounds

 Helping learner make sounds

 Creating authentic activities and exercises

 Providing learners with feedback

 Accessing learners’ progress

5 Learners’ roles

There is no doubt that whatever the teacher does and however hard he/ shetries, there is still no success in the teaching and learning process if students donot involve Students need to develop awareness and monitoring skills that willallow learning opportunities inside and even outside the classroom environment,which promises their improvement and prospect of change The learner’sinvolvement in the learning process has been noted as one of the best techniquesfor developing learner strategies, that is, the measures used by the learner todevelop his language learning (Morley, 1991) Thus, students must become part

of the teaching and learning process, actively involve in their own learning.Ultimate success in pronunciation surely depends on learners’ attitude and howmuch attempt they put into the process of learning

6 The use of games and other communicative activities in pronunciation teaching

As discussed above, pronunciation is an essential part in language learningand teaching Many people believe that in language learning, effort is required atevery moment and must be maintained over a long period of time It is alsoobviously true with pronunciation learning There are a few pronunciationteachers who think that teaching pronunciation means helping students perceiveand produce English sounds correctly That is why they often ask their students

to repeat the sounds times and times again after introducing them, which makesstudents get bored with studying pronunciation Once students get bored, theywill get nothing from the studying

Talking about the advantages of games, Thiagarajan (1999); Wright,Betteridge, & Buckby (2005) claimed that games add interest to what studentsmight not find very interesting Sustaining interest means sustaining effort Afterall, learning a language involves long-term effort because games offer students afun-filled and relaxing learning atmosphere Thanks to that, they learn andpractise the sounds in a non-stressful way Games ease the fear of negativeevaluation, the concern of being negatively judged in public, and which is one ofthe main factors inhibiting language learners from using the target language infront of other people (Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope, 1986) In a game-orientedcontext, anxiety is reduced and speech fluency is generated, so communicativecompetence is achieved

According to Shalley Vernon in the article “Teaching EnglishPronunciation Using Role Playing and Other Games”, anxiety is one of the mostcommon obstacles to the ESL students’ ability to learn English pronunciation.However, the problem of anxiety can also be resolved with games becausestudents will learn to relax and enjoy themselves, which encourages them toparticipate and be more willing to experiment with new different sounds.Richard-Amato (1988) and Uberman (1998) also shared the same view that thevariety and intensity that games offer may lower anxiety and encourage shyerlearners to take part especially when games are played in small groups

More importantly, it is undeniable that games are advantageous inpronunciation teaching in the way that they help teachers to create contexts in

which the language is useful and meaningful Games provide a context formeaningful communication Even if the game involves discrete language items,such as a spelling game, meaningful communication takes place as students seek

to understand how to play the game and as they communicate about the game:before, during, and after the game (Wright, Betteridge, & Buckby, 2005) Inorder to take part in games, learners must understand what others are saying andthey must speak in order to express their own point of view or give information

By that way, teachers are successful in helping learners achieving the shift fromspecific linguistic competencies to broader communicative competencies and thechange of emphasis from segmentals to suprasegmentals

Apart from games, other communicative activities such as drama practice,puppet-play, news reading, and video making which sometimes requirepreparation before going to class are also effective in pronunciation teachingbecause they are very motivating even outside class and yield opportunities forstudents to put what they have learnt in pronunciation lessons into connectedspeech Thus, they will experience what have been taught more vividly,therefore, remember better

Games and other communicative activities, from what have been discussedabove, undoubtedly bring about a lot of benefit to both teachers and students inthe process of teaching and learning pronunciation

1 Context of the study

The study was carried out in two grade 10 classes at CNN.They have afavorable English learning environment because they can work with qualifiedteachers, have more access to resources of reference books in the library or viathe internet, and more chance to meet foreigners Thus, a good way to enhancestudents’ improvement is to motivate them to make most use of all the externalconditions to self study

2 Games

Most of the games applied in my classes are taken from the book

“Pronunciation Games” by Mark Hancock I have chosen some games that weresuitable for my students when they practised individual sounds, word stress,sentence stress and intonation (Appendix 3) All the games were used in classes

at different stages of the lesson

Besides, I have also designed some other games that drew much attentionand interest from my students

Teacher vs Class

- Material: One set of cards, on each card, there is one word which isfamiliar but commonly mispronounced; make cards out of the game words(Appendix 4)

- Rules: Teacher (T) raises one card for each student to pronounce If thatstudent says it correctly, the whole class has 1 point Otherwise, the T has 1point Every student in the class will take turns to do this until the end to seewho wins the game

- Notes: T is expected to win but don’t forget to encourage students (Ss) Atthe end of the game, T should stress that the ultimate purpose of the game is toshow Ss the difficulty of pronunciation

Single Sounds

- Material: 6 sets of cards, each set has 44 cards On each card, there is onesound (Appendix 5)

- Rules: T divides class into 6 groups Each group gets one set of card Tgives Ss 2 min to revise all the sounds Then, T will pronounce one sound at atime and the groups will have to raise the correct symbol for that sound Thegroup who raises the CORRECT symbol the QUICKEST will get one point Atthe end, the group with the most points will be the winner

- Notes: T should ask one student (S) to act as assistant to ensure fairness Tshould be very careful and accurate in his/her own pronunciation

- Notes:

 Any person in the group can yell out “SAME!” Whenever he firstnotices that the top two cards have the same stress pattern, even if it is before thecard thrower pronounces his word

 If someone uses incorrect pronunciation, tell the other Ss to help correct it

 If someone yells “SAME!” and it is not the same stress, then he mustput a card of his on the center pile as penalty

 If someone runs out of cards, they can still yell “SAME!” and join in thegame again

3 Instruments

In order to obtain in-depth information on the application of activities inthe course, the study used a variety of research instruments including an oraldiagnostic test, questionnaire, classroom observation and teacher’s notes, andfinal examination There are a number of reasons why I chose these tools in mystudy I carried out the oral diagnostic test because it would give me trueinformation on my students’ pronunciation before I decided which fields tofocus on during the whole course The final examination was really necessarybecause it was an effective tool to measure my students’ improvement Theresult of the final examination worked as a good reference to see how much theyhad gained after the course Besides the two tests, I used questionnaire because

it was easy to manage and obtain big-scale data Questionnaires are familiar tomost people and nearly everyone has had some experience completingquestionnaires, so they generally do not make people apprehensive Moreover,questionnaires reduce bias There is uniform question presentation and nomiddle-man bias The researcher's own opinions will not influence the

respondent to answer questions in a certain manner Thus, the questionnairewould give me more reliable data for analysis Lastly, I applied classroomobservation and teacher’s notes because it was convenient for the teacher toobtain more detailed and precise evidence of the students’ attitude andclassroom atmosphere Additionally, it would permit the researcher to study theprocesses of education in naturalistic settings Classroom observation alsostimulated change and verified that the change occurred, which led to improvedunderstanding and better models for improving teaching.

4 Questionnaire

The questionnaire was delivered to students before and after the course.The purpose of the two deliveries was to find out the students’ attitude, interestand motivation before the course and the changes in the students’ self evaluationafter the course (Appendix 1)

5 Teacher’s notes

The researcher carried out classroom observation in order to take notes ofchanges in the students’ attitude, motivation, interest and improvement duringthe course The researcher also reflected on the teaching and learning processafter each lesson.(Appendix 2)

DATA PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

1 Responses to the questionnaire

Students’ evaluation of their interest and motivation Question 5, 6, 7

Analysis and findings

 Students’ evaluation of the importance of pronunciation

Firstly, the researcher analysed students’ evaluation by looking at theirresponses to a direct question about the importance of pronunciation in languagelearning

c Not very important

d Not important at all

Chart 1: The role of pronunciation in language learning

As can be seen clearly from the chart, the majority of students thoughtthat pronunciation was very important in learning a foreign language both beforeand after the course However, the percentage of students who held the idea afterthe course (84%) was much higher than that of those who had the same point ofview before the course (60%) On the contrary, only half of the students whothought that pronunciation is rather important kept their view after they hadfinished all pronunciation lessons It was obvious that none of the students didnot appreciate the role of pronunciation and chose option d (not important at all)

In order to analyse students’ evaluation of the importance of pronunciation, theresearcher based not only on their direct answer to question 1 but also on theiracknowledgement on the influence of poor pronunciation on other skills inquestion 2.

Chart 2: The influence of pronunciation on speaking and listening

Generally speaking, most of the students were aware of the role andinfluence of pronunciation, which is illustrated by the fact that 80% of themfound it difficult to learn such skills as speaking and listening due to their poorpronunciation After the course, even more students (88%) realized the reasonfor difficulty in listening and speaking was poor pronunciation

Looking at the analysis, it was obvious that students were positive inlearning pronunciation They had quite high awareness of the importance ofpronunciation in their language learning, especially speaking and listening

 Students’ evaluation of their aptitude to learn pronunciation

There are three questions dealing with this matter The first question is forstudents to self evaluate their pronunciation The responses before and after thecourse were different in all options

d Not good at all

2 Qualitative results - Teacher’s notes and observations

Apart from the results in the diagnostic test and final test as well as theresponses to the questionnaire, the study was also based on the researcher’sobservations and analysis of the diagnostic test and during class time throughoutthe course

Students’ evaluation of their interest and motivation to learn pronunciationQuestion 5, 6, and 7 were used to measure students’ interest andmotivation Looking at the results, it is clear that students’ interest andmotivation towards learning pronunciation had many changes when comparingresponses before and after the course

Chart 3: Students’ interest in learning pronunciation

Responding to question 5, only 60% of the students revealed that they hadvery high or high interest in pronunciation, but after the course, the number went

up to 88% In contrast, the number of students who showed their low or verylow interest decreased by 28% from 40% to 12%

3 Diagnostic Test Analysis

After the test, the researcher has summarized some common problems thatstudents encountered and put them in the analysis as follow: