Experiences in teaching prononunciation for primary students

As a teacher of English at Primary School, I am always awarded of researching the specific methods inteaching English, especially in teaching pronunciation in order to make thestudents b

2.2.4 The quality survey and students’ classification 5

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 REASON FOR CHOOSING THE TOPIC

English plays an important role in our lives It is not only the language inthe field of international communication but also the language of the science,information technology, socio-cultural, tourism and commercial, etc

In Vietnam, English is considered as a compulsory subject at school, especiallyPrimary School With the trend of international integration, Vietnam isincreasingly able to be fully available in all areas To meet the growing demand

as well as communication needs of society, the Ministry of Education andTraining has put English into the programme at Primary School

Learning English is to form and develop students' knowledge and basic skills inEnglish, through English, students gain knowledge and their love for theVietnamese Learning English not only contributes for the development ofpersonality and learning style but also provides students with basic knowledgeand helps students understand initially the knowledge about the people andculture of English speaking countries

At Primary School, English is a subject which has its own characteristics.Therefore teachers are as an artist , he or she needs be creative and cheerful inorder to involve students in learning English excitingly As a teacher of English

at Primary School, I am always awarded of researching the specific methods inteaching English, especially in teaching pronunciation in order to make thestudents believe that they can speak English fluently and naturally Students willnot be motivated to speak in English unless they are presented with words incontext Creating a positive classroom ethos where students feel empowered towork in a collaborative way is an important role of the teacher We mustunderstand the inter-relationship between speaking, listening, reading andwriting and plan for speaking opportunities in the classroom in the same waythat we plan for teaching pronunciation

Pronunciation is the basic foundation when learning English, it is veryimportant with beginner learners as it allows them to feel more comfortablewhen speaking; teachers must be aware, however, that the more sounds differbetween the mother tongue and the second language, the higher the affectivefilter A student feeling too self-conscious will not be as willing to take the risksthat are necessary when learning a new language

Some teachers might argue that pronunciation is not important at all forvery few of the tests require students to show their speaking ability Others,however, find that they do not know how to teach pronunciation, even if theywant to teach it That is because of these conventional notions aboutpronunciation that the teaching of it has, for too long, been neglected in manyESL/EFL curriculums all over the world

According to our teaching experience, a great number of our studentshave many difficulties in pronunciation When speaking English, with very little

or poorly trained pronunciation skill, they have problems either makingthemselves understand or understanding others

After exploring and accumulating the experiences from colleagues, I havesome experiences in teaching pronunciation and achieved quite effective results.The students are more interested in learning English and more confident inspeaking in front of the class This improves that my methods are right With thepassion and the love for teaching English, I have studied and developed the

research: "Experiences in teaching pronunciation for primary students "

1.2 THE PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH.

- The research applies the methods of teaching pronunciation to involvestudents in learning pronunciation well

- Creating the language circumstance to communicate in English andpromote students to actively participate in communicative activities; offeringsome solutions and methods for teaching pronunciation

- Exchanging and sharing some experiences in teaching pronunciation forprimary student

1.3 RESEARCH TASKS

- Systematizing some theoretical issues about the procedures andactivities in teaching pronunciation in English Primary program according to thecommunicative approach

- Exploring the present situation of teaching pronunciation at PrimarySchool and suggesting some techniques in teaching pronunciation to developspeaking skill for elementary students, helping them be more confident tocommunicate in English

1.4 RESEARCH TIME AND LOCATION

Research Time : School Year 2017-2018

Research Location: Hoang Trinh Primary School

Research Object: " Applying the methods of teaching pronunciation for primary students "

The respondents of the research: With this research I focused on theprimary student, especially the students of class 3

2 CONTENT

2.1 RATIONALE

A significance of research, developed over many years, is available toinform educators about effective approaches to teaching children how to read.However, research on applying the methods of teaching pronunciation forprimary students is in its infancy This reflects the fact that many teachers in theVietnam are faced with the challenge of teaching children to listen and speak inEnglish while the students have a heritage language that is not English and theyare not proficient in English yet Making this a more critical issue, severalresearches suggest that teachers are not receiving adequate professionaldevelopment in effective strategies to teach pronunciation for students As part

of the effort to learn more about teaching pronunciation for primary students,educational researchers and teachers in Vietnam have looked at instructionalpractices in Primary School In order to be successful in using of the informationpresented in this research, many teachers might want to consider the following

set of questions together in preparation for making decisions about teachingpronunciation for primary students

Pronunciation is an umbrella term that encompasses the interrelated areas

of sounds, phonetic symbols, stress, intonation and rhythm Good pronunciation

comes from a lot of technical knowledge on the part of the teacher aboutplacement of the mouth, etc Most teachers in Vietnam unfortunately, do nothave this knowledge and therefore tend to pass it off as being unimportant but infact, as you progress in your fluency, pronunciation becomes more and moreimportant Language learning needs a lot of practice and both mechanical andmeaningful practice lead to improved pronunciation Only practising thatpronunciation will become automatic and drill-like activities are not alwaysconsidered interesting Nevertheless perception practice is a good way to helplearners distinguish certainly sounds

Pronunciation involves far more than individual sounds Word stress,sentence stress, intonation, and word linking all influence the sound of spokenEnglish, not to mention the way we often slur words and phrases together incasual speech 'What are you going to do?' becomes 'Whaddaya gonna do?'English pronunciation involves to many complexities for learners to strive for acomplete elimination of accent, but improving pronunciation will boost selfesteem, facilitate communication, and possibly lead to a better job or a leastmore respect in the workplace Effective communication is of greatestimportance, so choosing first to work on problems that significantly hindercommunication and let the rest go Remember that your students also need tobelearnt strategies for dealing with misunderstanding, since native pronunciation isfor most an unrealistic goal

Pronunciation is an interesting area because when learning in a classroomcontext, pronunciation isn’t usually a major factor that influencescomprehension The value of teaching pronunciation cannot be underestimated.Besides the difficulty of changing a `bad habit´, early pronunciation instructionhelps students understand how to form sounds that are not found in their mothertongue, contributes to decoding ability and lowers the affective filter Someresearchers suggest that pronunciation does not need to be taught and will `takecare of itself´ over time Others suggest that teaching pronunciation is necessary

In order to avoid some of the pitfalls associated with poor pronunciation it

is important to hear as much of the target language (TL) as possible Thisexposure to the TL can be from the teacher, from films or media clips, songs oraudio clips, guest speakers

This research will present specific tools and techniques to help studentsovercome problems with English pronunciation The selection of problems isbased on both the frequency and seriousness of errors which many Vietnamesestudents may produce Methods are resolved or resolving the various problems,such as missing final consonants, misplaced stress in sentences, and misusedintonation patterns, will be discussed in the three areas of pronunciation: sounds,stress & rhythm, and intonation Activities related to the correction of these

errors are designed to meet students' different learning styles, namely auditory,visual, tactile, and kinesthetic learning In this way, the goal of the “learner-centered” classroom is hoped to be pragmatically achieved.

2.2 THE PRESENT SITUATION OF THE PROBLEM

Analysis of my school’s performance in teaching and learningpronunciation in recent years showed that our average score in pronunciationhad been consistently below that of like other schools in urban areas It was asituation that was of concern and motivated a thorough examination of theschool’s approach to the teaching of pronunciation

Our school is a public primary school in a rural area in Thanh Hoaprovince It is a small school with about 415 students, ranging from 6 to 10years old There are three or four classes in each grade, meaning thatcollaboration among teachers is extremely important to ensure consistency inlearning programs In the school year 2009 - 2010, Ministry of Education andTraining applied pronunciation as the framework in the program of teachingEnglish for primary students After teaching English book from grade 3 tograde 5, I found that most of the students can not pronounce the new wordscorrectly They only focused on grammar and vocabulary and did not like tolearn pronunciation during the lesson

2.2.1 About students

In fact, in the process of learning a foreign language, students often focus

on learning grammar mainly because the test requires the application ofgrammar, the tests often have a few exercises with pronunciation In Englishclass they have little chance to practice pronouncing Over time they lose theirability to communicate in English In addition, the limitation of students’speaking skill that has some reasons:

+ The old habit of learning English does not motivate students to

communicate in English

+ Being lack of knowledge of English to communicate everyday

+ Having a few opportunities to speak and practise English in the

classroom with their teacher and classmates

2.2.2 About the teacher

Many teachers in the Vietnam are faced with the challenge of teachingstudents to pronounce correctly, when the students have a heritage language that

is not English and they are not yet proficient in English

Normally when teaching a foreign language, teachers often focus onteaching vocabulary, grammar or structure However, grammar is not the finalresult of the teaching and learning process It is only a tool to help learner tocommunicate more effectively But in fact, there are some differences betweenspoken English and written English Written English requires the accuracystatement of the structure, whereas spoken English needs the flexibility and theintimacy in communication

From those factors, there are some problems in teaching pronunciation forprimary student at school However, in a number of causes, teachers and

students can progressively overcome the difficulties Therefore, in the teachingprocess teachers must use some suitable techniques to teach students how to leanpronunciation effectively He or she should have creative and flexibleapproaches in using the methods of teaching pronunciation.

2.2.3 About the teaching facilities

My school has facilities of teaching and learning to meet the needs ofspecific subjects such as: projectors, the modern teaching equipment such asTelevision, CD player, etc So the application of teaching pronunciation is quiteeffectively

2.2.4 The quality survey and students’ classification

Based on the present situation of students in class 3 the level of allstudents is acquired after a few weeks of the new school year with the methods

of teaching pronunciation I had a test on students in class 3A, 3B, 3C to surveyand classify the students The following servey showed the result:

numbers

ofstudents

Excellent(A)

Good(B)

Fair(C)

Poor(D)

Fail(F)

According to the survey result, I have classified the students and

immediately applied the methods and experiences which I accumulated over theyears to improve the teaching and learning quality

2.3 THE SOLUSION

At the present situation in English classes at my school, pronouncingwrong still exists in all grades from 3 to 5, especially in grade 3 To improve thissituation, I would like to present some techniques for teaching pronunciation andelicit the stages of teaching pronunciation for primary student which I haveresearched and applied quite successfully at my school

This research will attempt to address the common and seriouspronunciation errors that Vietnamese students produce Activities related to thecorrection of these errors are designed to meet students' different learning styles,namely auditory, visual, tactile, and kinesthetic learning As for the research'stitle, the "learner-centered" classroom, we take the term from a broaderperspective, meaning that it is a class where students can feel, experience, andmonitor their own learning of pronunciation The research will cover the three

areas of pronunciation: sounds, stress & rhythm, and intonation with the

expectation that it will provide the audience with comprehensive insight intoways of teaching pronunciation The presentation is by no means

comprehensive; rather it is an opportunity for sharing what we know about newperspectives in pronunciation instruction

2.3.1 Sounds

Teaching sounds involves several steps: first, identify your students'problem areas; second, find a meaningful context for the problem sounds, andthen develop communicative or relevant tasks that incorporate the sound; third,develop at least three or four exercises so that students can keep practicing targetsounds in new contexts ( Celce-Murcia, 1987 ) For the sounds part, we intend

to offer teachers some remedial teaching techniques for sounds which they canapply in regular English classes to help students overcome problematic sounds Vowel length and final consonants are commonly found difficult for mostVietnamese students to master in English classes What teachers confront is that

no effective technique has been found to help students to pronounce someproblematic vowel contrast such as / i / and / I / correctly in sentences, indialogues or even in reading passages Traditionally, teachers will model thesounds and then students repeat them or teachers show a facial diagram whichallocates various sounds positions in the mouth to enhance correctpronunciation In order to provide teachers with more effective and interestingteaching techniques, the first part of this paper will present some new teachingtools and activities to solve the problems mentioned above

In the second part of sounds, we will address the problem of droppingfinal consonants while students are speaking In Vietnamese, there is no CVCstructure ( consonant + vowel + consonant); consonants would never appear atthe end of the word This is quite different from English Influenced byVietnamese, students omit final consonants while speaking and this result leadsmisunderstanding with each other in meaning For example: They pronounce

these words in the same way: white, wine, wife, why, etc The activities adopted

tend to alert students to final consonants and regulate their English languagehabits in putting final consonants on in speech

* Vowel Length

- Rubber bands Students like to have the chance to experience how

sounds can be produced through operating a rubber band For example, using arubber band in / i / sound, students have to pull both sides of the rubber band tothe end to feel the strength and tense of / i / On the other hand, whilepracticing / I /, students just have to pull both sides of rubber bands slightlyapart, as shown below / i / / I /

(Adopted from Gilbert, 1993, Clear Speech, 2nd ed., p 54)

By doing this, students can clearly distinguish the length of the two

vowels and experience the real difference between both sounds Other vowel sounds can also be demonstrated by rubber bands in the same way

For example:

My brother is thirteen.

My mother is thirty – three yearsold.

(Tieng Anh 3 - Unit 11: This is my family – Lesson 3 - Page 10)

Students may hear two different vowel lengths of “thirteen” and “thirty”.The "ee" vowel sound of “thirteen” is pronounced a little bit longer than the ''y'' of “thirty.” Using rubber bands can help students to build up their listeningcomprehension ability and clarify the slightly different vowel length

One important aspect that teachers have to inform students about vowels

is that if the vowel sound follows a voiced consonant then the vowel sound will

be pronounced a little bit longer than when followed by a voiceless consonant

If the final sound is voiced, the vowel before it is long Pull the rubber band

at both sides to the end If the final sound is unvoiced, then the vowel before it isshort Pull the rubber band slightly toward both sides

For example: rise rice

(Gilbert, 1993, p.45)

Practice the rubber band with different words within the same vowel but followed by voice and voiceless consonants, such as:

back bet cap plants cart sink ice bucks

bag bed cab plans card sing eyes bugs

(Dauer, 1993)

Then, do some minimal pairs to practice these similar word sounds insentences to reinforce the pronunciation One student is speaking the sentenceand the other is operating the rubber band according to what he/she heard fromthe partner

For example:

a Please take this back Please take this bag.

b Has he used this bet? Has he used this bed?

c I need a cap I need a cab.

d Where are your plants? Where are your plans?

e Give him a cart Give him a card.

f She is going to sink She is going to sing.

g I wish I had blue ice I wish I had blue eyes.

h I found ten bucks I found ten bugs.

(Dauer, 1993)

- Mirrors In addition to rubber bands, mirrors are a strong

self-correction tool for students to modify or imitate sounds Teachers can askstudents to take out mirrors to do peer-correction or self-correction whileapproaching some problematic sounds

- Rhymes To avoid boring students with continuous practicing and drills,

use rhymes with a regular beat and the same vowel sound This will lead

students to master the target sound unconsciously For example, we take /e /sound into rhymes Ask students to snap their fingers, clap, or tap on the desks

to keep the beat and read aloud the rhyme:

For example:

Look! Look! Look!

These are books.

They're my books

Look! Look! Look!

These are pens.

They're my pens

Look! Look! Look!

Those are robots.

They're my robots.

Look! Look! Look!

Those are robots.

They're my robots.

(Tieng Anh 3- Unit 8: This is my family - Lesson 3 - Page 56)

- Mother tongue This is an added bonus if students find some way to

apply their mother tongue to some English sounds For example: / e / sound can

be applied to Vietnamese as " ten " in an expressive situation Examples can befound successfully in class or in students' books

For example:

How old is he?

How old is he? He's eight.

He's eight yearsold.

How old is she? She's nine.

She's nine yearsold.

How old are you? I'm ten.

I'm ten yearsold.

(Tieng Anh 3 - Unit 11: This is my family – Lesson 3 - Page 10)

- Role play A brief role play puts students into a realistic and

communicative situation and will allow the sounds to be spoken more naturallyand necessarily We have used a short dialogue which happened in a railroad

station between Mr Gray and the conductor adopted from Pronunciation

Pairs (Baker & Goldstein, 1990) One student acts as the first person who is

asking about the things in the room, and the other student is the conductor who

is answering the questions:

For example: Where's the pencil?

S1: Where is the pencil?

S1: Where is the doll?

S1: Where are the photos?

S1: Where are the pictures?

S2: Here! Here!

It's here S2: There! There!

It's under the chair.

S2: In the album In the album

They're In the album

S2: On the wall On the wall

They're on the wall

(Tieng Anh 3- Unit 13: Where's my book? – Lesson 3 – Page 23)

- Tongue twisters Tongue twisters are also an interesting way to practice

and contrast similar sounds and have fun at the same time But there is a hugechallenge for the teacher and students to do it well Teachers should tell students

at first not to feel upset at making mistakes because even for native speakers, it

is difficult Examples for practicing / e / , and /æ / are below:

Henry, age eight, etched the letter h on the edge of the desk

* Final Consonants

- Song lyrics Teachers can ask students to read some popular song lyrics

aloud to practice final consonants In our classes, students omit final consonantsoften or pronounce them too lightly to be heard For example, they pronouncestudent as "studen" Therefore, we ask them to read the marked song lyrics of

"Silent Night" in which the final consonants in each sentence have beenunderlined, and then to listen to the song to notice how the singer produced finalconsonants

Silent night, holy night All is calm All is bright.

Round young virgin, mother and child.

Holy infant, so tender and mild,

Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace

- Numbers Besides song lyrics, numbers can be a good aid in helping

students put final consonants on For example, teachers can set up some

particular numbers to have students practice final consonants

A: What is your telephone number?

B: 01274560036.

2.3.2 Stress and Rhythm

Why is it necessary to teach stress and rhythm? Every language in theworld has a characteristic speech rhythm English tends to be a stress-timedlanguage with rhythmic patterns based on a fairly regular recurrence of stressedsyllables (Browne & Huckin, 1987) However, Vietnamese tends to give equalweight to each syllable, making the rhythmic patterns appear to be moresyllable-timed In Vietnam, many students often use the Vietnamese rhythmicpattern when speaking English; as a result, even though they can pronounceeach English sound correctly, their speech does not sound like English

Their problems with the word rhythm of English are that they oftenmisplace the stress and give each syllable, whether it is stressed or unstressed,the same length; thus, the vowels in the unstressed syllables are not reduced Asfor their problems with the sentence rhythm of English, one is that they putstress on too many words, for they do not know what kinds of words need to beemphasized; the other is that they tend to separate words during speech withoutlinking them together In order to help Vietnamese students speak Englishnaturally, we are English teachers who should pay more attention to teaching therhythm of English Two aspects of English rhythm, stress and linking, and someteaching tools and techniques related to these two are now discussed

* Stress

It is important for our students to know the different rhythmic patterns of Vietnamese and English The teacher can show them a visual contrast between