Using video recording project to improve pronunciation for non english major students at a university in vietnam

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ---*****--- HOÀNG THỊ THU HÀ USING VIDEO RECORDING PROJECT TO IM

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

-***** -

HOÀNG THỊ THU HÀ

USING VIDEO RECORDING PROJECT TO IMPROVE

PRONUNCIATION FOR NON – ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS

AT A UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM (Sử dụng hoạt động tự quay video để củng cố việc phát âm tiếng Anh cho sinh viên không chuyên ngữ tại một trường Đại học ở Việt Nam)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Code: 60140111

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

-***** -

HOÀNG THỊ THU HÀ

USING VIDEO RECORDING PROJECT TO IMPROVE

PRONUNCIATION FOR NON – ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS

AT A UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM (Sử dụng hoạt động tự quay video để củng cố việc phát âm tiếng Anh cho sinh viên không chuyên ngữ tại một trường Đại học ở Việt Nam)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Ph.D VŨ THỊ THANH NHÃ

HANOI - 2017

DECLARATION

I hereby certify that this material is entirely my own work I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge breach any law of copyright It has not been taken from the work of others save, and to the extent that, such work has been cited and acknowledge within the text of my work

Signed:………

Hoang Thi Thu Ha

Student ID: 15045009

Date: September 2017

Secondly, I would like to express my gratitude to the teachers for the valuable lessons as well as to the staff of Post graduate studies faculty for their support until this work came to existence

Besides, I would love to send my heartfelt thanks to the teachers as well as third – year students at my university who enthusiastically participated in the data collection process In fact, without their help, I could not complete this thesis

Also, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my family and my friends, who have constantly encouraged me during the time I conducted this research

Last but not least, I would like to thanks my readers for their interests and comments on this study

ABSTRACT

Pronunciation has long been considered as a very important part of a language learning process Although there have been a lot of famous studies carried out on teaching and learning English pronunciation, very few of them bring the look into the effect of using self - recording technology of students Based on the general theories about pronunciation and how to teach pronunciation to Vietnamese people, this study was specifically concerned with implementing video recording to help students self - study pronunciation, and it also examined the relation between improving the students‟ pronunciation with listening skill

This is an action research project conducted in an English course in term 3 for 40 second-year students of K18 at Hong Duc university – academic year 2015-2016 There are five chapters Data were collected by means of tests, classroom observation, informal interview and students‟ documents Two cycles of action research were conducted to compare the changes after the two periods of intervention and implement the supportive actions

The findings of the study shows that the foundation theories were completely suitable with teaching pronunciation in this specific situation, when students almost all participated in the project enthusiastically, and the results of pronunciation tests after every intervention were improved considerably However, the pronunciation itself does not contribute to enhance the score above medium level of listening test

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES vii

CHAPTER IINTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Research question 2

4 Research method 3

5 The scope of the study 3

6 Significance of the study 3

7 The organization of the study 4

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1 Pronunciation 5

1.1 Pronunciation concepts 5

1.2 Aspects of pronunciation 5

2 Teaching pronunciation 10

2.1 Teaching pronunciation 10

2.3 Self - evaluation and monitoring 13

3 Summary 14

CHAPTER IIIRESEARCH METHODOLOGY 15

1 Overview of the chapter 15

2 Context of the study 15

3 Subjects of the study 16

4 Reasons for using action research 16

5 Procedures 17

6 Research instruments 18

6.1 Test record 18

6.2 Classroom observation 19

6.3 Interview 20

6.4 Students’ document 20

7 Data collection 20

7.1 Test recording 20

7.2 Classroom observation 21

7.3 Interview 22

7.4 Students’ document 22

8 Data analysis 22

9 Summary 22

CHAPTER IV FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 23

1 Finding from the pre – tests and the first recording 23

1.1 Students’ results of listening test 1 23

1.2 Students’ result of pronunciation mini test 1 25

1.3 Features of students’ pronunciation in the first video - recording 26

1.4 Conclusion 28

2 The first intervention 28

2.1 Students’ results of 2 nd listening test in comparison with results of 1 st listening test 28

2.2 Students’ results of 2 nd mini pronunciation test in comparison with results of 1 st test 30

2.3 Features of students’ pronunciation after the first intervention 30

2.4 Conclusion 33

3 The next cycle of intervention 34

3.1 Students’ results of 3 rd listening test in comparison with results of 2 nd and 1 st listening test 34

3.2 Students’ results of 3 rd pronunciation test in comparison with results of 2 nd

pronunciation test and 1 st pronunciation test 35

3.3 Features of students’ pronunciation 35

3.4 Conclusion 39

4 Results of students in the pretest, 2nd test and 3rd test in comparison 39

4.1 Mini - pronunciation test 39

4.2 Listening test 39

5 Further finding from teacher‟s observation, informal interview and students‟ documents 40

6 Conclusion 44

CHAPTER V CONCLUSION 45

1 Summary 45

2 Pedagogical implication 45

3 Limitations of the study 46

4 Suggestions for further study 47

REFERENCES 48 APPENDIXES I

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1: Feature of pronunciation 6

Figure 2: English vowels 7

Table 1: English consonants 8

Table 2: Students‟ correct pronunciation 26

Table 3: Students‟ stress on correct syllable 27

Table 4: Students‟ intonation of statements, wh-questions, yes – no Questions and suggestions 27

Table 5: Comparison of students‟ correct pronunciation on English sound in the pretest and in the second test .31

Table 6: Comparison of students‟ stress on correct syllable in the pretest and second test 32

Table 7: Comparison of students‟ intonation of statements, wh-questions, yes – no questions and suggestions in the pretest and second test 33

Table 8: Comparison of students‟ correct pronunciation on English sound in the third test, pretest and the second test 36

Table 9: Comparison of students‟ intonation of statements, wh-questions, yes – no questions and suggestions in the pretest and second test 38

Table 10: Results of mini – pronunciation tests 39

Table 11: Results of listening tests 39

Table 12: Behaviors of students in two intervention cycles 41

Table 13: Student‟s documents of self - evaluation sheets 43

Chart 1: Correct answers of Listening Test 1 24

Chart 2: Number of correct words of Pronunciation mini -test 1 25

Chart 3: Percentage of correct words of Pronunciation mini -test 1 25

Chart 4: Results of Listening Test 1 and Listening Test 2 .29 Chart 5: Results of Pronunciation mini -test 1 and Pronunciation

Chart 6: Correct answers of Listening Test 3 in comparison with

Test 2 and Test 1 34 Chart 7: Correct answers of Pronunciation Test 3 in comparison with

Test 2 and Test 1 35

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Pronunciation has long been considered as a very important part in the language learning process by many well – known scholars in the world One among these scholars, Tench (1981) already states that pronunciation is not an optional extra for the language learner any more than grammar, vocabulary or any other aspect of language is There are some conditions which help speakers be understood by others However, if the general aim of a learner is to talk intelligibly to others in one language, a reasonable pronunciation must be important

In order to get the reasonable pronunciation of a language, firstly the speakers must have the acceptable understanding of the very basic foundation: the sound, syllable and word systems After that, it is suitable to mention the idea about what factors can affect the acquisition of these systems in a certain second language Avery and Ehrlich (1992) claim that there are many factors, and among these, the teacher plays

a very decisive role They could positively affect students by showing them the clear purposes and realistic goals

Since I started working as a teacher at Hong Duc University, in syllabus, the students are required to have general knowledge in four main skills of English: reading, speaking, listening and writing Although they do not have the main course book of pronunciation, this sub - skill does clearly affect students‟ speaking and listening results Most of the students were from rural areas of Thanh Hoa province, and they did not have many opportunities to access standard English pronunciation Moreover, at the secondary school, they were asked to focus only on grammar and vocabulary to pass the graduate examination Therefore, pronunciation is something new and strange for them To achieve the required level, the students obviously

Although pronunciation starting level of my students was very low, most of them were full of energy with pronunciation practice, and very pleased to use the technology in class That made me think of the activity which can encourage students and motivate them study well

What I have mentioned before are the reasons for me to conduct the study „Using video recording project to improve pronunciation for non - English major students

at a university in Vietnam‟ with the hope that pronunciation of my students would

be improved after some actions which were applied in my English course

2 Aims of the study

This study aims to apply a new method of teaching pronunciation, it has three

4 Research method

This study is implemented as an action research as its purpose is to improve the pronunciation for non - English major students who study subject English 3 at Hong Duc University, Thanh Hoa, using the video recording The methods to collect the data are formal tests, class observation and students‟ documents

5 The scope of the study

The study mainly focuses on motivating non - English major students using video camera to record themselves after each session of learning pronunciation as self - study activity Self – study is compulsory part of English 3 syllabus

Because there are many components in English pronunciation, it is very complicated to mention all those aspects in the research Moreover, the average English level of these junior students is comparatively low Therefore, this study only focuses on the separate sounds, words, sentences, word stress and the intonation of some short sentence that can be appeared in the simple daily dialogues

The recording equipments can be varied, from the normal cell phone with camera to the digital camera or whatever can record the voice with face of the speaker and

upload the recorded file on the internet

6 Significance of the study

Although there have been a lot of famous studies carried out on teaching and learning English pronunciation, very few of them bring the look into the effect of using self - recording technology of students, especially to let them self - evaluate and evaluate each other And there are also very few research studies carried out on self - study or homework activities The findings of this study, therefore, will

contribute to enrich the environment of English teaching in general and encourage the teachers as well as students in teaching and learning pronunciation in particular

7 The organization of the study

The study is organized into five chapters:

Chapter 1 Introduction It includes the rationale of choosing the topic, the objectives

of the study, the scope of the study, the research questions as well as the methods to

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW

1 Pronunciation

1.1 Pronunciation concepts

Tench (1981) defines pronunciation as a notion which is more than a matter of consonants, vowels and diphthongs He links pronunciation to the sound of people when they are speaking, to the rise and fall of the pitch of the voice, to the pausing and grouping together of words and phrases, and to the highlighting of some syllables and the virtual suppression of others

Pronunciation, then, is itself a complex of sounds (consonants, vowels and diphthongs), syllables (word accent and rhythm) and intonation

From a different view point, according to Hewings (2004), there are certain components of speech which together combine to form the pronunciation of a language These components range from the individual sounds that make up speech,

to the way in which pitch - the rise and fall of the voice - is used to convey meaning

1.2 Aspects of pronunciation

The following diagram of Kelly, G (2000:1) shows a breakdown of the aspects of pronunciation:

Figure 1: Feature of pronunciation (Kelly, 2000)

It is clear that Kelly sees pronunciation as the combination of two main parts: phonemes and suprasegmental features The former component includes consonants and vowels, whereas the later one contains intonation and stress About the definition of individual components, there are different opinions as following

Vowels are sounds in which there is no obstruction to the flow of air as it passes

from the larynx to the lips (Roach, 1983, p.20) In other definition, vowel sounds

“are produced by a freely flowing airstream Essentially, we create different vowel

sounds by using the mouth as a resonance cavity and changing its size and shape” (Grant, 2014, p 21)

Linguists categorize vowel sounds as simple vowels (those without a glide movement, such as the /ɛ/ in “pepper”), glide vowels (those that have an

accompanying /y/ or /w/, like the /eɪ/ in “paper”), and diphthongs (two vowel

sounds in the same syllable, such as /ɔɪ/ as in “boy”) There are also distinctions commonly made between rounded versus spread vowels (in terms of lip position) and tense versus lax vowels (in terms of muscle tension)

Figure 2: English vowels (Roach, 1983)

Consonants therefore can be referred to the sounds in the production of which one

articulator move towards another or two articulators come together, obstructing the air - stream and the air - stream cannot get out freely

Consonant sounds are distinguished by whether they are voiced or not (for example voiceless sound /f/ and voiced sound /v/), where they are formed in the mouth ( /ð/ and /θ/ sounds), and how the airflow is affected (for instance the air is stopped when you say /p/ but not /m/)

Table 1: English consonants (Roach, 1983)

Linkage of sounds: When English people speak they generally do not pause

between each word, but move smoothly from one word to the next (Kenworthy, 1987)

1.2.2 Suprasemental features

The term suprasegmentals refers to the “features of pronunciation that stretch over

more than one sound or segment” (Grant, 2014, p 16)

Hewings (2004) is more detailed in pointing out that vowel and consonant sounds combine into syllables Then, the structure of English syllables is:

consonant(s) + vowel + consonant(s)

However, suprasegmentals are commonly divided into stress and intonation

Stress

Word: A word can be either a single syllable (e.g cat own) or a sequence of two or more syllables (e.g expensive) When a word has more than one syllable, one of

these syllables is stressed in relation to the other syllables in the word - that is, it is said with relatively more force or heard as being more emphatic - while other syllables are said to be unstressed For example, in apple the first syllable is stressed and the second unstressed, when in above the first syllable is unstressed and the second stressed (Hewings, 2004)

Word stress: When an English word has more than one syllable one of these is made

to stand out more than the other(s) This is done by saying that syllable slightly louder, holding the vowel little longer, and pronouncing the consonants very clearly (Kenworthy, 1987)

Word in connected speech: Words come into contact in connected speech, certain common changes take place, mainly as a consequence of the speed of speaking and

in order to make the production of sequences of sounds easier (Hewings, 2004)

Sentence stress: Speakers often decide that they want to give more or less prominence to a particular word A word may be given less weight because it has been said already, or it may be given more weight because the speaker wants to highlight it (Kenworthy, 1987)

Another component of suprasegmental features which should be mentioned is rhythm Rhythm is also defined by Kenworthy (1987) as a product of word stress and the way in which important items are foreground by their occurrence on a weak beat Dalton and Seidholfer (1994) gave another definition of rhythm by contrasting

the stress and untress They stated that “utterances are continuous strings of

syllables, the stressed syllables provide the foreground and the untressed ones the background”

2 Teaching pronunciation

2.1 Teaching pronunciation

In the ways of teaching English pronunciation, there are some clear approaches: Tench (1981) suggests that the basic strategy in pronunciation teaching is imitation The learners need to be able to imitate the teacher‟s pronunciation, imitating not only the features of consonants, vowels and diphthongs, but also rhythm and intonation

Then, we should decide how „good‟ should the learner‟s pronunciation aim to be? Some time ago it was said that the goal should always be native - like pronunciation, even though it was realized that this would be achieved by relatively few, most people now think that this is an inappropriate goal for most learners The great majority of learners will have a very practical purpose for learning English and will derive no particular benefit from acquiring a native - like pronunciation

There will be some learners, who may want to approach a native - like accent because their work requires them to deal with native speakers in an English - speaking country or abroad

While native - like pronunciation may be a goal for particular learners, and while

we should never actively discourage learners from setting themselves „high‟ goals,

for the majority of learners a far more reasonable goal is to be comfortably intelligible

Kenworthy (1987) points out several factors which may affect pronunciation accuracy They are native language, age factor, amount of exposure, phonetic ability, attitude and identity, motivation and concern for good pronunciation He also tries to find out which factors can themselves be affected by teaching and training Among them, motivation and concern for good pronunciation can be greatly affected

In his book also on this teaching field, Hewings (2004) states that when we are deciding on our priorities for pronunciation teaching, it is useful to know in general what kinds of errors are most likely to interfere with communication, and what special problems particular first - language speakers will have with English pronunciation

Hewings (2004) acknowledges that in some classes, pronunciation is given a lower priority than other components of language such as grammar and vocabulary, and is sometimes relegated to an „end - of - the - day‟ activity or a five - minute filler to give students some relief from „real‟ work of language learning This situation is also very common in many English lessons in Vietnam

For most students, however, an understandable pronunciation will be an important part of their communication skills, and this justifies giving pronunciation a more central role in teaching by integrating it with other areas of language work Perhaps, the most obvious area for useful integration is work that connects vocabulary and pronunciation There are good arguments for teaching the pronunciation of words (both the sounds and their stress) as they are introduced If students have confidence

that they can pronounce a word correctly, they are more likely to use it as they speak, and using words successfully aids memorisation (Tench, 1981)

From Tench‟s opinion, the teachers can find two important principles in the strategy of teaching pronunciation : pronunciation teaching has to be combined with other skills, such as listening with comprehension, reading, writing, and non - linguistic cues, e.g gestures, facial expressions), and with the other aspects of language, such as grammar, lexis, style, function and discourse; on the other hand,

pronunciation has to be practice in isolation, like the articulation of th, or various

vowels and so on

According to Macneil (1987,p 47), teachers need to:

- Ensure that students are able to produce the sound (e.g with /dʒ/ try asking students to combine „d‟ and „y‟ - i.e „jet‟ can be approximated as „dyet‟

- Give students many examples of words and phrases with the sound to practice in class at home

- Encourage the students to monitor their own production of the particular sound, by assessing their own performance - at first when reading, then while transmitting a message of a few sentences, building up to longer stretches of free speeches

- Encourage fluent students who are hard to understand to slow down their rate

to practice and see their mistakes to improve it for the next practice

2.3 Self - evaluation and monitoring

2.3.1 The role of self - evaluation and monitoring

According to Kenworthy (1987), teacher should combine the monitoring and self - evaluation both inside and outside classroom Moreover, oral homework should be included

Language learning is an extended process, and whenever we are involved in a learning task over a long period of time it is very easy to lose track of our progress Therefore, keeping a record of progress or the students‟ tape will help

2.3.2 Giving homework to motivate self - evaluation and monitoring

Avery and Ehrlich (1992) state that the development process of self - correcting and self - monitoring abilities should be included the syllabus the sooner the better Teacher as an instructor plays a very important role in the first stages of pronunciation improvement, and students who must take responsibility for ongoing improvement In addition, self - correcting as well as self - monitoring minimize dependence and at the same time maximize self - reliance, which allows students to continue improving pronunciation outside the classroom

Video recording as homework is mentioned again by another author as following:

Assignments are prepared, rehearsed, and then recorded on video or audio tape learners evaluate their own performance using a score system specified by the teacher There is then an opportunity for feedback and evaluation by the teacher This may be given during „pronunciation clinics‟ (ten or fifteen minutes slots when students can discuss their assignments) or during a lesson in which class members have the opportunity to play or show their completed assignments and receive comments from their teacher and colleagues

In giving the oral homework assignments, the teacher should provide some guidelines for the learners to follow Before the teacher introduces the activity, a video sample of a group of learners unknown should be shown to the students

In general, the theories of teaching English pronunciation focus on encouraging students to imitate the certain model and self - evaluating their practicing results gradually Based on these theories, I constructed my research with the main principle of imitating and self – evaluating to see the changes As the previous part, building the general understanding about sound, word and stress system would be the first step, then teacher should let student to imitate the model and evaluate their practice‟s product

3 Summary

In this chapter, some basic concepts belong to theoretical background of the research have been presented Pronunciation definition and the classification from different points of views have been mentioned How to teach pronunciation, teach pronunciation for Vietnamese leaners and the role of self- evaluation together with monitoring are also discussed

CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

1 Overview of the chapter

This study was conducted for the purpose of implementing the intervention to improve the pronunciation of students in one of the classes English 3 at Hong Duc university by asking them to video - record themselves when pronouncing the English words or sentences at home as the assignment The reliability of findings and conclusions totally depended on the quality of the research design, data collection and data analysis This chapter will concern about the description of research methods and the research procedures in order to select the data, explain how data will be analyzed, interpreted and how to evaluate the effect of the intervention

Specifically, this chapter will cover the following aspects: the research design and method, the respondents or subjects to be studied (which were noted down on the teacher‟s observation sheets), the instrument for collecting the data, and the data analysis They will be presented below

2 Context of the study

This study was carried out at Hong Duc university in Thanh Hoa province Hong Duc is a public institution which includes many different faculties Students from these non – English major faculties have different majors but all of them must study English 1, English 2 and English 3 as the compulsory subjects

In these subjects, pronunciation is not designed as a separate part but it is intergrated into the English courses In the third semester, English 3 is designed after English 1 and English 2, and it is constructed within 12 weeks with 5 periods

per week The main course book used is “English File Pre-intermediate” from Oxford University Press and “Target PET” from Richmon Publishing

My observation at the first week of the course showed that student made a lot of mistakes in pronunciation Some of them even could not defeat the fear to speak or pronounce English Others had trouble when pronouncing even simple English words Therefore, a number of students had difficult in realizing the words or sentence pronounced Therefore, I decided to use technology to help them become more confident and improve their pronunciation

3 Subjects of the study

The researcher was a lecturer in Foreign Language Department of Hong Duc University, Thanh Hoa province The participants of the study are in one class of about 40 non – English major students in department of Preschool Education, who had to study English 3 as a compulsory subject in academic year of 2016 - 2017 at Hong Duc university Most of them had attended English 1 and 2, and already took the English test before being arranged in class English 3; therefore, it can be said that the participants were at similar level of English

4 Reasons for using action research

Before decided to choose action research as the type to carry out the study, the researcher had had a careful look on action research and its characteristics, using reference material of the well – known authors

There have been many concepts of what an action research is Wallace (1998) defines an action research as the organized collection and analysis of the data which relate to the improvement process of some aspects of any professional practice When Halsey (1972) writes about action research as a small-scale practical intervention in the real world together with the careful testing the effects of this intervention

“Action research is the application of fact finding to practical problem solving in a

social situation with a view to improving the quality of action within it, involving the collaboration and cooperation of researchers, practitioners and laymen”

(Burns, 1994, p 293)

In brief, an action research is practical research which aims at changing things, using professional strategy It has the collaboration between the researchers and practitioners and carried out by practitioners (classroom teachers) rather than outside researchers

Based on the characters of action research, which is organized collection and analysis of the data related to the improvement process of some aspects of any professional practice, the researcher decided to design the study in action research model It is suitable with the purpose of improve pronunciation with the help of video recording at small scale, just 40 students in class The researcher was teacher

in this class, and had conditions to carry out a new policy and implement the supportive actions if necessary

Stage 2: Acting

Implement the intervention Students were asked to practice the pronunciation

send the video to the teacher by posting on the Internet forum In the next lesson, each students had two assessment sheets: one was self - assessment and the other for assessing their partner to check the quality of homework and give comments

Stage 3: Observing

The teacher observed the activities of students and noted down into notebook There were observation sheets with checklist and space for narrative writing Every student‟s attitude related to the intervention is also noted down After each step, students were also asked to give comment to show their opinion if the action was

suitable or need to be improved

Stage 4: Reflecting

From the data, teacher monitored and evaluated the intervention, found the outcome

of the intervention and prepared for the revised plan

As recognized some problems in pronunciation of students, the researcher tried to focus the recording activities on some certain sounds and stress types Then two cycles of research were implemented to see the changes and if there were new findings when the results were compared with the general theory

6 Research instruments

To be able to collect the necessary data, the researcher chose several research tools Test record of pre – test, mid – test, post - test, classroom observation sheets, interview and students‟ documents students‟ paper were the research instruments used to gather the data

6.1 Test record

This is the main methods of collecting data in my research There were two test types used in the research: listening test in the B1 listening test form, and

pronunciation test, which is selected from book Ship or Sheep The tests were

administered to my students at the first week and then after several weeks to see the

improvement of the students, the relation between pronunciation and listening proficiency

The first time of pronunciation test helps the author to examine the prominent mistakes of pronunciation that the students commonly make, and the first time of listening test helps the author to determine the listening level of students The following tests were aimed that checking if the intervention of researcher is effective or there should be some other supplementary actions to improve the situation

6.2 Classroom observation

Based on the types of behavioral checklists of Simpson and Tuson (1995), researcher used classroom observation instrument and designed the observation sheets It involves the checklist prepared before every lesson and one part to note down the behaviors of learners

The author‟s observation sheets were carried out in the following aspects:

- Students‟ pronunciation of separate sounds (vowels and consonants)

- Students‟ pronunciation of separate words

- Students‟ pronunciation of short sentences

- Students‟ pronunciation of word stress and sentence stress

- Students‟ intonation in the sentence

- The behavior when pronouncing words, sentence or conversation

The class observations included taking narrative observation notes In this observation paper, the behavior of students were noted down to evaluate if they got excited with the new intervention or not After every cycle of research, some students were asked to give their comments on the action, and these reflections were

also transcribed and kept in the classroom observation Therefore, it could be said that interview was also used as one of the research‟s instruments

6.3 Interview

Interview is one of very basic method to explore the focused area Burgess (1984, p

102) describes interview as “conversation with a purpose” With the purpose of

getting the attitudes about pronunciation and the relation between listening and pronunciation, researcher choose some students randomly then interviewed these students at the beginning of the course and at the end of every cycle to see their attitudes about pronunciation and the relation between listening and pronunciation Students had the structured interviews for researcher to collect specific information The questions went in the same order to different interviewees

6.4 Students’ document

Students were delivered the paper of self - assessment and peer - assessment At the beginning of each period, they already spent time to listen to their recorded pronunciation exercise again and look at the video of their partner Then they gave evaluation and comments on what their partners and they themselves had done These document then were collected Students were encouraged to have clear and detailed comments by the small bonus mark for good evaluation sheet

7 Data collection

7.1 Test recording

All the scores of tests of students were recorded In every pronunciation test, students were required to recognize the separate sounds, words and sentences The result of the test was noted by the teacher into the blog The score of listening tests and pronunciation tests were kept in the teacher blog as well

The formats of pre - test, mid – test and post - test were the same, which included checking students understanding about pronouncing separate sounds, words and sentences In the pre, mid and post listening tests, students would take the PET format, as this format would be used at the end of the course

2016 - 2017 There were 63 periods in the course, and each periods had 50 minutes

In general, the class had two or three periods every meeting and two meetings per week, which was from 100 to 150 minutes every meeting and 250 minutes per week At the beginning of the course, a test was be given to students to study the real situation, listening level and mistakes of students‟ pronunciation Because the main textbook of course English 3 is English File pre Intermediate and Target PET, the teacher only spent around 30 minutes each meeting for pronunciation and speaking activities These included studying the vocabulary in the text book and introducing the aspects of pronunciation in some other materials (English pronunciation in Use and Sheep or Ship) Students were asked to record themselves with the sounds, words or sentences at home with video - recording In the following day, they were given 5 minutes to receive the paper for self and peer assessment The teacher also gave some video as the examples The teacher kept the events in a journal In the end, there was tests to see the effect of the methods and if there should be some other supportive methods

7.3 Interview

The interviews from students were coded, categorized and analyzed Then data were analyzed to compare the similar answer across the people interviewed, and the difference in the learners‟ opinion before and after the intervention

7.4 Students’ document

The researcher collected the assessment sheets of the students after every meeting to analyze them The improvement via the rate in the assessment sheet and the comments were selected to analyze The documents also included the videos of students uploaded in the class page

8 Data analysis

The data which were collected from classroom observation, students‟ documents and interview were analyzed by qualitative method and quantitative method, the results of formal tests were analyzed by quantitative method

The researcher used descriptive statistics (Mean, Median and Mode) to analyze the score The results of listening and pronunciation tests were collected, then ranged to find out the Mean, Median and Mode to compare the changes in the progress of doing the research Observation checklists were used, therefore the data were categorized in percentage

9 Summary

This chapter has dealt with the methodology of the study Subjects, research instrument and research procedures have been mentioned The way of collecting data and how the collected data is analyzed are also presented What have discussed

in this chapter will be the foundation for the finding and discussion in the next chapter

CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter presents data of the research then discusses about it The first part describes the basic data through descriptive statistics The second section presents the discussion from the data analysis

1 Finding from the pre – tests and the first recording

In the second week, students in class participated in the pre – test where they were told to listen to the list of words then write it down into the answer sheet The list of

words was taken from Sheep or Ship by Ann Baker, 3rd edition, Giao thong van tai publisher (2000) The audio scripts of the words were used as the tool for evaluating students‟ answer

From the result, the researcher realized most of students had problems with the voiceless /t/, middle /s/ or the ending sounds Moreover, even simple words were often pronounced with wrong stress syllable

Students then were asked to record themselves when practicing at home these

sounds, individual words and conversation with stress form Sheep or Ship by Ann

Baker, 3rd edition, Giao thong van tai publisher (2000) after instructed in class, then post their videos in the Group on Facebook

In addition, they were given a listening test under the PET form of listening to see the relation between pronunciation improvement and the listening score The key was used as the tool for evaluate the current listening level After the intervention, all the instruments were collected to analyze the changes

1.1 Students’ results of listening test 1

Chart 1: Correct answers of Listening Test 1

The figures in chart 1 represent that in this test, 16 students had 8 correct answers, which was the highest number Number of students with 7 correct answers followed, but just reached almost a half as much as the first The rest groups just had from 1 to 4 people for each one No one had fewer than 2 correct answers

From the test, it is clear that the starting point of Listening skill t the beginning of the course was quite low and many of them did not have any basic experience in English listening skill, which was reflected in the groups who got only under 6 score out of 13