A n investigation into the use of shadowing technique in listening lessons to improve the pronunciation of 3rd year students at HUBT (hanoi university of business and technology)

The research was formulated as an action one which used a questionnaire, interviews and tests as research instruments to collect quantitative and qualitative about the students‟ and teac

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LAGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

*************************

NGUYỄN THANH VÂN

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF SHADOWING ECHNIQUE IN

-YEAR STUDENTS AT HUBT (HANOI UNIVERSITY OF BUSINESS AND

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Code: 60140111

HANOI – 2016

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LAGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

*************************

NGUYỄN THANH VÂN

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF SHADOWING ECHNIQUE IN

-YEAR STUDENTS AT HUBT (HANOI UNIVERSITY OF BUSINESS AND

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Ph D Dương Thu Mai

DECLARATION

I certify that this minor thesis entitled “Using shadowing technique to improve the

pronunciation of the 3 rd year students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology” is the study of my own research and the substance of this research has not

been submitted for a degree to any other university or institution

Hanoi, 2016

Nguyen Thanh Van

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my gratitude to all those who have given me great

assistance in the completion of my research work

In the first place, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Duong Thu Mai, Ph.D., who has provided me with insightful discussion, helpful

comments, valuable support in the preparation and completion of this thesis Without her guidance and help, this work would not have been accomplished

Secondly, my sincere thanks also go to all lecturers and staff of the department of Post- Graduate studies for their valuable lessons and precious helps Thanks to their lessons as well as needed helps, I could overcome enormous obstacles when doing the study

I also wish to acknowledge the cooperation of my colleagues and the students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology in contributing to the data collection presented in this study

Last but not least, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my family for their encouragement and great support during my time of fulfilling this thesis

ABSTRACT

Most second language learners encounters difficulties when listening and speaking

in the target language For the students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology, the problem might be serious Because of their poor pronunciation even with basic sounds or words, the students found it difficult to say, speak and understand studying materials in English In order to solve the problem, students need to understand the pronunciation in terms of the basics elements and target the individual sounds As a result

of this, this project was set out to help the students‟ pronunciation of the individual sounds in English The research was formulated as an action one which used a questionnaire, interviews and tests as research instruments to collect quantitative and qualitative about the students‟ and teachers‟ attitudes and the effectiveness of using shadowing technique in teaching and learning pronunciation As can be seen from the qualitative and quantitative data, difficulties, limitations and challenges still occurred during the research; however, to some extent, the students‟ pronunciation was also improved in terms of individual sounds and words Their positive attitude and results when using the technique to teach and improve the student‟s pronunciation in terms of individual sounds in the research might suggest the use of the new technique

“shadowing” as one of the effective ways to teach and learn pronunciation in English

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

P: page

L2: second language

3rd: third

HUBT: Hanoi University of Business and Technology

JSL: Japanese as the second language

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Classification of shadowing (cited in Tamai, 2005)

Table 2: Information about the teacher participants

Table 3: The reliability of the tests

Table 5: The percentage of the participants with the range of scores

Table 6: Frequency statistics of vowel sections

Table 7: Frequency statistics of consonant sections

Table 8: Frequency statistics of cluster sections

Table 9: Frequency statistics of minimal pair sections

Table 10: Overall descriptive statistics of the sections

Table 11: One sample T test results

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 3.1 Shadowing technique improves pronunciation

Figure 3.2 Aspects of pronunciation that the technique of shadowing helped to improve

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Objectives of the study 3

3 Research questions 3

4 The scope of the study 3

5 Research methods 4

6 Design of the study 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 6

CHAPTER I LITERATURE REVIEW 6

1 Pronunciation 6

1.1 Why is pronunciation important? 6

1.2 Definition of pronunciation 7

1.3 Factors that affect pronunciation learning 8

1.4 Different techniques used to teach pronunciation 9

2 Shadowing 10

2.1 Definition of shadowing 10

2.2 Significant features of using shadowing technique in learning and teaching pronunciation 11 CHAPTER II RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 13

2.1 Context of the study 13

2.2 The study 15

2.2.1 Participants 15

2.2.2 Data collection instruments 16

2.2.2.1 Questionnaire 17

2.2.2.2 Interviews 19

2.2.2.3 Pre-test and Post-test 20

2.2.2.4 Data presentation and analysis 21

CHAPTER III FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 22

3.1 Students’ general attitude towards using shadowing in learning pronunciation (Research Question 1). 22

3.1.1 Students’ attitude towards learning pronunciation through the project 22

3.1.2 Students’ attitude towards the attraction and motivation of the practice 25

3.1.3 Students’ attitude towards the content of the practice lessons 25

3.1.4 Students’ attitude towards the amount of the total time for the practice and delivery of time

for each target practice lessons. 26

3.1.5 Students’ difficulties in doing the project 27

3.2 Teachers’ attitude towards the use of shadowing technique in improving the pronunciation of the students ( Research Question 2) 28

3.3 The effectiveness of the research (Research Question 3) 31

3.3.1 The overall descriptive data of the pre-test and the post-test: 31

3.3.2 Descriptive statistics of sections in the tests. 33

3.3.3 One Sample T-test Results: 36

3.4 Discussion 36

PART C: CONCLUSION 38

1 Recapitulation and research experience 38

2 Main findings 38

3 Limitations of the study 39

4 Suggestions for further study 40

REFERENCES 41

APPENDICES I

Recently, shadowing has attracted much attention in the field of teaching and learning foreign languages Although shadowing was originally designed to train simultaneous interpreters, its effects on foreign language learning have been widely recognized and being used in classrooms The effectiveness of shadowing in classrooms has been investigated throughout the field on second language acquisition (Kuramoto & Matsuura (2002), Lambert (1992), Murphey (2001), Mochizuki (2006), Toda and Liu (2007), Tamai, (1992a, 1992b, 1997, 2001, 2005), Suzuki (2007)) For instance, Tamai (1997) compared shadowing and dictation, and concluded shadowing improved learners‟ listening proficiency faster than dictation Kuramoto (2002) reported the effectiveness of one type of shadowing activity, parallel reading (Tamai, 2005)

Regarding the global trend in teaching and learning English pronunciation, recently in Vietnam, the problem of English pronunciation has been more and more increasingly noticed and solved Many studies can be taken in account such as that

by Nguyen Tien Dung (2015) or Tweed (2012) and also the boom of English pronunciation courses via the social networking sites like Facebook as well as

physical English centers throughout the country Mispronunciation is a major

problem in learning English, because Vietnamese students often mix the pronunciation of their first language and English as second language, also more than often they mispronounce or even drop the ending sounds in English Problems may also come from the fact that when forming words, the sound of the same letter may vary

At Hanoi University of Business and Technology (hereafter HUBT), a private university, English is a compulsory subject for all students of all faculties from the beginning of every program Therefore, 3rd-year students here have already been familiar with the obligation of studying English at university However, because of their poor pronunciation, they find listening and speaking periods the hardest moments in their foreign language study That is to say, they cannot understand what was said by teachers and other English speakers and vice versa There is a pressing need for them to learn correct pronunciation to make it possible for them to understand the listening materials as well as speak English better Even though they have been given opportunities to learn “listening and speaking” in English classes, their basic competence in listening and speaking were inferior to their reading and writing skills Incidentally, their mother tongue interference also creates some difficulties in learning to pronounce English intelligibly Furthermore, English teachers mostly focus on the students‟ vocabulary and still lack of the teaching facilities, which causes a fact that the students to be unable to speak in

English Under the circumstances, at the Department of English- Hanoi University

of Business and Technology, there has been an attempt in investigating and solving this issue Regarding the crucial aspect of pronunciation in English learning and the mentioned reasons, this action research entitled “Using shadowing technique to improve the pronunciation of the 3rd- year students at HUBT” was done on the

2 Objectives of the study

The study is to investigate the use of shadowing technique to improve the pronunciation of 3rd- year students at Hanoi University of Business and Technology Questionnaire the 3rd- year students and the teachers, the author firstly aimed at identifying their general attitudes towards learning English pronunciation, and towards using shadowing technique in teaching and learning pronunciation as the main focus of the study Besides, the study also examines how the use of shadowing technique helps improve the pronunciation of the 3rd- year students at HUBT

3 Research questions

With the aims stated above, three following questions were proposed for the study:

1 What are the students‟ attitudes to shadowing?

2 What are the teachers‟ attitudes to shadowing?

3 To what extend does the shadowing technique improve the students‟ pronunciation?

4 The scope of the study

Needless to say, the overview of the various aspects of English pronunciation – sounds, stress, rhythm and intonation – is essential The use of shadowing technique in language teaching and learning has been approved for decades because

of its variety of benefits in enhancing four English skills in general, and also in terms of pronunciation in particular Shadowing plays an undeniable role in improving students‟ pronunciation including both segmental and supra-segmental levels (Hiramatsu, 2000); however, within the framework of this paper, this minor thesis attempts to target the students‟ pronunciation in individual sounds and words

by applying the shadowing technique

The subjects of the study include only 30 3rd-year students at the Department

of Finance and Banking at HUBT who are not English majored Therefore, the results of this study may be generalized to other similar Vietnamese non-English majors

5 Research methods

The study was conducted as an action research

The research began with a literature review in different theoretical issues related to pronunciation learning and the use of shadowing in teaching and learning the language throughout the world After the literature review, in response to the presented aims, the researcher used different instruments which were a questionnaire, interviews, a pre-test and a post-test to collect data from the students and the teachers at HUBT

+ Interviewing and asking students to do the questionnaire is to find out their attitude to the use of shadowing technique in learning pronunciation All the questions in the interview involved closed and open-ended questions After collecting the data from the interview, the data was analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively This is to answer research question 1

+ Interviewing teachers is to obtain information about their attitude to the use

of shadowing technique in teaching pronunciation and answer research question 2

+ Doing statistics analyses from a pre-test and a post-test is to explore the effectiveness of using the shadowing technique in learning pronunciation and answer research question 3

6 Design of the study

The thesis is entitled “Using shadowing technique to improve the pronunciation of 3rd- year students at HUBT.” The study will be designed with three parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion

The first part, Introduction, is a brief overview of the study with more details

of the rationale, the objectives, the methods, the research questions, and the scope of the study as well as the design of the study

about the current situation of teaching and learning pronunciation at HUBT This chapter is also a deeper look on the technique used in the study with the participants and data collection procedures as well as data analysis one Chapter 3 deals with the findings and discussion

The last part, Conclusion, is devoted to the summary of the findings, limitations of the study This chapter also provides some suggestions for further studies

References and Appendices will be in the end

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I LITERATURE REVIEW

This part reviews some authors‟ viewpoints concerning with pronunciation learning and teaching, the convenience of teaching and learning pronunciation in listening lessons and also the use of shadowing technique in English language learning in order to build up the theoretical background for the study which consists

of three main parts: related issues of pronunciation, an overview of shadowing technique as well as an overview of previous studies in the world and in Vietnam about using shadowing technique in improving pronunciation of language learners

1 Pronunciation

Pronunciation was viewed as an important component of English language teaching curricula since the 1940s Morley (1991) argued that the question does not lie in „whether‟, but „what‟ and „how‟ pronunciation should be taught Baker (1992) contended that advanced English learners realize while overall English proficiency can be improved, that it is impossible to eliminate some repeated mistakes and accented pronunciation Although the pronunciation of adult L2 learners cannot be native-like, it can be improved with constant exposure to L2 (Flege 1988; Flege & Liu 2001; Riney 1998; Trofimovich 2006

1.1 Why is pronunciation important?

People also often judge others by the way they speak, and so learners with poor pronunciation may be judged as incompetent, uneducated or lacking in knowledge, even though listeners are only reacting to their pronunciation Yet many adult learners find pronunciation one of the most difficult skills of English to acquire, and need explicit help from the teacher (Morley 1994; Fraser 2000) Surveys of student needs consistently show that the learners feel the need for

Aspects of pronunciation:

Based on the viewpoint that pronunciation refers to the production of sounds used to make meaning, there are two aspects of pronunciation to be taken into account: the supra-segmental and the segmental aspects The former covers aspects

of speech beyond the level of the individual sound such as intonation, phrasing, stress, timing, and rhythm The later refers to the particular sounds of a language

About the Supra-segmental aspects of pronunciation, Stress comes in the first place Stress is about the prominence given to certain syllables within words, and to certain syllables or words within utterances Three main different levels of stress are word level, sentence and contrastive stress The second is Intonation Intonation, or change of pitch, is crucial in signaling speaker meaning, particularly interpersonal attitudes Clennell (1997) identified some major functions that are important for learners such as information marking (prominent stress), discourse marking (given/new), conversational management (turn-taking/collaborating), attitudinal or affect marking (mood/feeling), grammatical/syntactic marking (clause boundaries/word classes) and pragmatic marking (illocutionary force/intention of the speaker) Five major patterns of tones can be identified by fall, rise, fall-rise, rise-fall and level The third one is features of connected speech In English, the way of linking and blending sounds between words is quite distinctive from that of other languages, and these features help to manage the patterns of stressed, unstressed and pitch change The fourth one is voice quality Voice quality has received little attention in L2 learning, although this factor may be quite familiar

with the concept This term refers to the more general, longer term articulatory settings shared by many sounds within a language, and these affect accent and the quality of voice in a global way

About Segmental aspects of pronunciation, the first one is the sound system

of English which is made up of phonemes, or individual sounds which carry the potential to make meaning, and these may be vowels, diphthongs (combinations of two vowel sounds), triphthongs (combinations of three vowel sounds) or consonants These sounds are made using our tongue in different parts of the mouth Consonants are made by causing a blockage or partial blockage in the mouth, and these are usually described in terms of where the sound is made in the mouth, or place of articulation, how the sound is made, or the manner of articulation and whether or not the vocal cords vibrate, or voicing

1.3 Factors that affect pronunciation learning

Like in other subjects, there are many factors which affect pronunciation learning, but some of them are specific to this language section as well as to learning foreign language as a whole It involves both learning as an organized and intentional process, and the unintentional language acquisition which proceeds subconsciously and intuitively, however, is not less beneficial Both, learning and the language acquisition, are dependable on the inner and outer factors, which the teachers should be aware of when setting out goals and preparing methods and materials

While the factors which cannot be influenced neither by the learner, nor his

or her surroundings are the native language, the age and to a certain extent the phonetic ability of the learner, the amount of exposure to English, the attitude and motivation may be supported and changed a lot either by the teacher, or the learner,

1.4 Different techniques used to teach pronunciation

Up to now, there have been a variety of different techniques applied to teach pronunciation all over the world such as listening and imitating, phonetic training, minimal pair drilling, visual aids, tongue twisters, developmental approximation drilling, practicing of vowel shifts and stress shifts related by affixation, and reading aloud/recitation

In listening and imitating, a technique used in the Direct Method, students listen to a teacher-provided model and repeat or imitate it This technique has been enhanced by the use of tape recorders, language labs, and video recorders

In phonetic training, teachers use descriptions of articulatory, diagrams of articulatory, and a phonetic alphabet to help students understand and practice pronunciation

In minimal pair drilling, a technique introduced during the Audio-lingual era, teachers use the words in pairs to help students distinguish between similar and problematic sounds in the target language through listening discrimination and spoken practice Minimal pair drills typically begin with word-level drills and then move on to sentence-level drills (both paradigmatic and syntagmatic)

Using visual aids is also a technique which helps to enhance teacher's description of how sounds are produced by audiovisual aids such as sound-color charts, Fidel wall charts, rods, pictures, mirrors, props, realia, etc These devices are also used to cue production of the target sounds

Practicing tongue twisters is another technique of pronunciation in which different sounds are repeated and contrasted This technique helps learners to practice difficult sounds in English in a funny way

Using developmental approximation drills is a technique suggested by language acquisition studies in which second language speakers are taught to retrace the steps that many English-speaking children follow as they acquire certain sounds

first-in their first language Thus just as children learnfirst-ing English often acquire /w/ before /r/ or /y/ before /l/, adults who have difficulty producing /l/ or /r/ can be

encouraged to begin by pronouncing words with initial /w/ or /y/, and then shift to /r/ or /l/, respectively

Practice of vowel shifts and stress shifts related by affixation is a technique based on rules of generative phonology (Chomsky & Halle, 1968) used with intermediate or advanced learners The teacher points out the rule-based nature of vowel and stress shifts in etymologically related words to raise awareness; sentences and short texts that contain both members of a pair may be provided as oral practice material

In reading aloud/recitation, teachers deliver passages or scripts for learners to practice and then read aloud, focusing on stress, timing, and intonation This technique may or may not involve memorization of the text, and it usually occurs with genres that are intended to be spoken, such as speeches, poems, plays, and dialogues

In brief, there may be different ways of teaching and learning English pronunciation, furthermore, the shadowing technique, the technique used in this research, can be seen as the new and modern one

Kinds of shadowing Task contents

Shadowing articulate the same sounds at almost the same time while

listening to sounds of a text Delayed shadowing do the same thing as shadowing explained above, but not at

the same time, rather, after a second Phrase shadowing do shadowing phrase by phrase In this activity, a teacher

has students listen to a targeted text with CD or a teacher's model reading phrase by phrase

Parallel reading read aloud looking at a text while listening to sounds

Speed reading read aloud as quickly as possible looking at a text In this

activity, the degree of understanding the text is not important, and the teacher has each student measure how long it took for an individual to finish reading the text

Table 1: Classification of shadowing (cited in Tamai, 2005)

As can be seen from Table 1, delayed shadowing and phrase shadowing may

fit the aim of this research in terms of improving pronunciation of sounds and words Therefore the author put these two kinds of shadowing into practice during the research

The effectiveness of using these two types of shadowing on improving pronunciation was mentioned as minimal delay (delayed shadowing) and at greater latencies (phrase shadowing) in Lambert (1991) and Seleskovitch and Lederer (1989:168)

2.2 Significant features of using shadowing technique in learning and teaching pronunciation

To talk about the use of shadowing for teaching pronunciation, researches have been carried out to show the advantages of this technique Rongna and Ryoko (2012) specifically studied and yielded encouraging results In their study, they investigated the use of shadowing to help the Japanese as the second language (JSL) students to improve their pitch accent Shadowing was chosen as a language

teaching activity in their study, since correct pitch accent is crucial to comprehensibility in Japanese speech (Rongna & Ryoko, 2012), and shadowing has been shown to “improve prosodic features of pronunciation (Mori, 2011 as cited

by Rongna & Ryoko, 2012)

The participants in Rongna and Ryoko‟s (2012) study shadowed a dialogue ten times per week over a period of three weeks; before and after each recorded shadowing activity, the participants read the dialogue aloud Upon completion of their study, the researchers found that there was a significant improvement in the participants‟ pitch accent from the first reading to the final reading

According to Yonehara (1994 as cited by Hiramatsu 2000), shadowing was much more useful as an activity that focuses on pronunciation than as an activity that focuses on content She claimed that shadowing should be used for the following purposes: “acquiring pronunciation, intonation and natural sentence patterns and expressions” (as cited by Hiramatsu, 2000, p 315) Hiramatsu (2000) supports Yonehara‟s (1994) claim, adding that shadowing had the capability of helping students to improve features of their pronunciation, such as accent and stress

To sum up, studies have been conducted to find if shadowing was the appropriate way to teach and learn pronunciation The use of shadowing has been noticed the most among pronunciation teaching techniques because of its convenience and effectiveness However, in Vietnam, it has been a quite strange technique, the author encountered difficulties when accessing related information With the hope of finding the most appropriate way of mastering pronunciation, this study might help make a small contribution to fulfil the picture of current learning pronunciation situation in Vietnam

CHAPTER II RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This study employed an action research method which is often described as being cyclical, participative, qualitative, reflective and responsive (Dick, 1993) McCutcheon and Jung (1990) regard action research as a systemic inquiry that is collective, collaborative, self-reflective, critical and undertaken by participants in the inquiry These two definitions lean more on the problem-solving practical concerns that need quick and immediate remediation and action research render itself well to this study focus

In the previous chapter, the theoretical matters related to the topic have been covered In order to see how they work in real learning environment, the research was carried out with the following steps:

1 Identification of the problem

2 Formulation of action hypothesis

3 Designing and implementing the action plan

4 Simple procedure of analyzing data and giving conclusion

This chapter describes only the first three steps The last step will be presented

in the next chapter That is, the main contents of the chapter include the context and the subjects of the study, the research, the data collection instruments, the data collection procedure, and the data analysis procedure Also, this chapter mentions the advantages and disadvantages when the researcher used those instruments and

data analysis procedure

2.1 Context of the study

This study was conducted at HUBT, a private university in Hoang Mai District, Hanoi, Vietnam HUBT is quite famous for providing good training in two main fields: business and technology Business covers several different majors such

as Banking and Finance, Accounting, Business Administration and Commerce

At HUBT, English is considered an extremely important subject to all students; therefore, the students have to study English during three and a half years

at HUBT and to complete 45 credits of English (equivalent to 675 periods) before

taking the Graduation examination by the end of the fourth year English and informatics are two priorities equipped for students in the search for a competitive job That is the reason why HUBT always looks for new ways to improve the quality of teaching and learning English

For third year students, English is taught two lessons per week Each lesson focuses on improving the students‟ English skills such as reading, listening, speaking, and writing in the classroom To prepare for students to learn English well, a great number of interactive classrooms with computers and projectors are set

up In addition, such high quality equipment as players, tape players, and reference books are also available Moreover, on average, about 30 students attend each English class, which is a good size for a language class Though supported with interactive video and audio files, not all learners find it easy to boost their improvement in English pronunciation

As regards the teaching, teachers at HUBT usually have an annual meeting before the first day of the school year starts They are informed of the course book, schedule, and principles within the class Assessment encompasses the attendance marking, and mid-term and final scoring for students Another point to note is that teachers of English graduated from different universities in Vietnam Moreover, most of them are very young, enthusiastic, and dynamic Nevertheless, some of the teachers were not trained to be teachers Or a number of them are over the age of fifties and accompanied a lot of difficulties in pronouncing English in terms of individual sounds and words Those reasons lead to a great number of difficulties in teaching and learning English pronunciation especially in ending sounds In this action research, the researcher would like to focus on the pronunciation of individual sounds especially the ending sounds and words

These students at Faculties of Finance and Banking participating in the study were assumed by the researcher to be more proficient than those at other faculties because of present academic and future career requirements Therefore, this sample does not necessarily present the whole population of the university Because of the scope of the study, the researcher tried to figure out the result of better English pronunciation of sounds as well as individual words after using the technique of shadowing

About the teachers:

The three teachers took part in the interviews are at different ages and time

of teaching, therefore the answers should be various based on their ages and experience They were invited to observe the class in the research to have a better understanding about the technique and the application during classed, after that they were asked to give feedback to the researcher at the end of the research project through the private interviews

Teachers Age Gender Years of

experience

Table 2: Information about the teacher participants

2.2.2 Data collection instruments

To reach the primary objectives of the study, a survey questionnaire has been constructed for data collection for this research The survey questionnaire is

intended to serve as a source of data for this research since it “is useful to collect

survey information, providing structured, often numerical data, being able to administer without the presence of the researcher, and often being comparatively straightforward to analyze” Hence, it will certainly be valuable for helping the

author explore the subjects‟ difficulties in learning English pronunciation in terms

of individual sounds, ending sounds and words Moreover, this research tool is also relatively more comfortable, time-saving and economical to administer Though the

use of questionnaire has some weak points like responses “participants think the

researcher wants to hear, or indulge in self-flattery”, Ellis (1985: 101) emphasized

that questionnaires have provided an insight into the personal nature of language learning, particularly classroom language learning

In addition to the questionnaire, this study encompassed the use of quantitative and qualitative research methods The qualitative data was gained from the interviews with English teachers after they had been invited to observe the class

In order to make sure that the participants can understand correctly the content of the questionnaire, the questionnaire items are presented in Vietnamese as well

pronunciation ( Baker, 2001 ) to examine the effectiveness of using the new technique to teach pronunciation

2.2.2.1 Questionnaire

A questionnaire was used to find out the students‟ attitude toward using the shadowing technique in improving pronunciation, the ways they learn and practice, their problems in learning pronunciation The questionnaire was designed with both open- ended and closed questions, containing the title, instructions, questionnaire items, additional information, and a final “thank you” The questionnaire for students was in Vietnamese so that the students were able to understand easily and to avoid any misunderstanding of the questions This may enhance the reliability and validity of the collected data Students were asked to answer the questionnaires at the end of the course They were guided to avoid misunderstandings and to provide reliable information Before the students were handed the questionnaires, they were explained about its aims and that their responses were anonymous They were required to complete the questionnaire during break time, which last 20 minutes at university

The questionnaire consists of 16 questions that required the participants to give their opinion about their attitude, interest and difficulties when applying shadowing technique in learning pronunciation

This section of the questionnaire also based on a 5-point Likert scale with a hope to have the unity with the previous section of learning strategies The scale

ranges from (1) strongly disagree to (2) disagree, (3) neither, (4) agree and (5)

strongly agree By this scale, number 5 inferred a student who is highly motivated

by the given reason while number one means the other end of the spectrum Moreover, the type of odd-numbered scales is utilized here, with a middle value (neither), the respondents could have an “out” (Losby & Wetmore, 2012) Meanwhile, even-numbered scales (such as four options) without the middle value

“force people to choose”, make them “frustrated” and; therefore, responses collected may not be accurate (Losby & Wetmore, 2012) In addition, despite more

discrimination of 7-point type, the difference is not so much Moreover, the researcher supposes that 7 is a bit lengthy for when the time for handing out and completing the questionnaire was limited while the questionnaire was not short With mentioned reasons and credit to these above authors, the researcher believes that this study‟s adaption is reliable enough to carry out

In particular, question 1, 2, 3 and 4 and were asked about their opinion about the attitude to the effectiveness of shadowing in learning pronunciation Question 5,

6 and 7 focused on the participants‟ interest in using shadowing in learning pronunciation as well as other English skills Question 8, 9, 10 and 11 focused on the views of the students about the suitability of the practice lessons Question 12 and 13 focused on the duration of practice time

The last three questions were open-ended ones asking about difficulties that participants face while they did the project as well as their lessons which they

refined from the experience (For further information, please see Appendix A)

Questions Content Pronunciation

improvement

Q1 Overall pronunciation improvement due to the use of

shadowing Q2 Better sound imitation when using shadowing Q3 Consonant pronunciation improvement due to the use

of shadowing Q4 Vowel pronunciation improvement due to the use of

shadowing Interest Q5 The interest when using shadowing to learn

pronunciation Q6 The suitability of shadowing with the participants‟

Q9 The usefulness of the vowel sound practice activities Q10 The usefulness of the consonant sound practice

activities Q11 The usefulness of the minimal pair practice activities Practice time in

class

Q12 The appropriateness of the amount of overall of time

to practice in class Q13 The appropriateness of time delivery amongst the

target sounds Q14 The difficulties that the students met during the

research Q15 The improvement for further research Q16 Students‟ suggestions to help the teacher and

classmates in applying shadowing in teaching and learning pronunciation

2.2.2.2 Interviews

An interview was designed to seek the answer for the second research questions (“what are the teachers‟ attitudes towards shadowing?) Three teachers were chosen to attend the interview because they were at different ages and have various time of teaching experience From the differences and a variety of teaching time and ages, the researcher hoped to obtain different views or attitudes towards the subject matter They were interviewed individually with the questions in English The focus of the interviews were on their attitude towards the shadowing technique that they had observed in the class, how they thought about the effectiveness of the shadowing technique, difficulties in teaching pronunciation, suggestions to help students learn pronunciation better etc The teachers were interviewed in an informal way and the interviews were note-taken For further information about the questions for the teachers‟ interviews, please see the

Appendix B

This interview protocol for teacher was completed with the help of the supervisor

Interview protocol for teachers

The interview protocol for teachers is composed of 16 questions Each question had its own function in finding the answer for the research question

In particular, question 1, 2, 3 and 4 asked about their opinion about the benefits of shadowing technique in learning pronunciation in the project Question

5, 6 and 7 focused on their viewpoint about the participants‟ interest in using project work in learning process Question 8, 9, 10 and 11 focused on the views of the teachers about the content of practice lessons: was it suitable to the students‟ level

of pronunciation or not? Question 12 and 13 focused on the duration of practice time to see whether it was sufficient or not From their observation, it could be seen whether the work was too difficult or too easy for the students

The last three questions were open-ended ones aiming at finding out the teachers‟ difficulties and lessons from implementing shadowing in pronunciation teaching

2.2.2.3 Pre-test and Post-test

The pre-test and Post-test were formed and adapted from two text books used for teaching and learning pronunciation The first one was the test of English pronunciation (Cambridge University Press, 2004) The second one was „Ship or Sheep” (Baker, 3rd edition, 2001, Cambridge University Press) Both of the tests consisted of 4 parts to test the vowels, consonants, clusters and minimal pairs in tests of words in English Each part of the tests focused on one main area in pronunciation therefore it helped to draw conclusions quickly and clearly The advantages of using tests adapted from these books are well-organized structure,

2.2.2.4 Data presentation and analysis

The collected data were presented in an SPSS file The 16 questions in the questionnaire became 16 variables in the SPSS file Then, for the responses, the questionnaire items were ranked into 5 different categories, namely 1-Strongly Disagree (SD), 2-Disagree (D), 3-Undecided (U), 4-Agree (A), 5-Strongly Agree (SA)

To answer the first question, the researcher decoded the frequencies of their answers to their attitudes towards learning English pronunciation and the use of shadowing technique

To answer the second research question, the researcher coded and synthesized the answers of the teachers to the interviews about their attitude towards the use of shadowing technique in improving the pronunciation of the students

Answering the third question, the researcher used One Sample T Test via SPSS to seek for the answer to the hypothesis: Does the use of shadowing technique help to improve the pronunciation of the students or not? (Research question 3)

The One Sample T Test was used because it could show the statistical difference

between a sample mean (post test score average) and a known or hypothesized value of the mean (pretest score average) in the population If one-tailed significant value is < 0.05, then it is possible to reject that there is no difference between the pre-test and the post-test

Thus, so far, this chapter has presented in detail the context, the subject, the instruments, and the procedure of collecting data and analyzing data of the whole study The following chapter will deal with the findings and discussions

CHAPTER III FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

In this chapter, the students‟ and teachers‟ attitudes towards using shadowing technique in learning pronunciation will be in focus Moreover, the aspect that meets the project‟s aims most will be explored This comprehensive analysis leads

to a better understanding about using shadowing technique in learning

pronunciation This will give grounds for a discussion and further recommendations

in the following part of the study

3.1 Students’ general attitude towards using shadowing in learning

pronunciation (Research Question 1)

With the aim at investigating students‟ general attitude towards using shadowing in learning pronunciation which included their difficulties and lessons when implementing the project, all the questionnaires were gathered and analyzed both descriptively and interpretively The results shown below are rather significant

to the research

This part will be presented into 4 main categories: (1) attitude towards using shadowing in learning pronunciation, (2) motivation and attraction, (3) the content

of practice lessons and (4) the time of practice in class

3.1.1 Students’ attitude towards learning pronunciation through the project

In the questionnaire, the first question was made to investigate students‟ general attitude towards using shadowing technique in pronunciation learning The first question asked the participants if the use of shadowing helped improve their pronunciation or not There were five choices for them

Figure 3.1 Shadowing technique improves pronunciation Figure 3.1 shows that most of the students here thought that shadowing

technique improved their pronunciation 20 respondents showed their agreement with the answer and 3 of respondents showed strongly agreement Therefore, in total the number of the respondents who thought that shadowing technique improved pronunciation was 23 while only a small number (1 respondent) strongly disagreed Furthermore, just 3 of the participants had neutral attitudes to the effectiveness of using shadowing technique to improve pronunciation

To make the information from question 1 clearer, the next 3 questions deeply looked into aspects in which the technique of shadowing helped the students in pronunciation After doing some statistics, the results were summarized as shown in the below figure:

strongly

strongly agree

Figure 3.2 Aspects of pronunciation that the technique of shadowing helped to

3.1.2 Students’ attitude towards the attraction and motivation of the practice

The question 5, 6 and 7 were used to collect data from the participants about

the attraction and motivation of the project is shown in Figure 3.3

Figure 3.3 Attraction and motivation of the practice

From this figure, it is clear that the practice made the students interested in learning pronunciation using shadowing technique and also they would like to applied this technique to learn other skills 22 said they agreed with the idea the project interested them and no “strongly agree” answer was collected, only 3 got

“disagree” answers and 5 got “neutral” ones In addition to that, 23 of the participants thought that the practice did suit their levels of pronuciation so also increased the interest to learn pronunciation, only 4 got “neutral” answer and 3 strongly disagreed It is obvious from Column q7(question 7) that the practice brought the participant a great interest so that they also would like to apply this technique to other skills such as speaking and listening

3.1.3 Students’ attitude towards the content of the practice lessons

Question 8, 9, 10 and 11 collected the data for the aim of analyse the attitude

towards the practice lessons The results are shown in Figure 3.4

Figure 3.4: The attitude towards the practice lessons

As being seen from the chart, there were a large number of respondents agreed and strongly agreed about the effectiveness of the practices lessons in class There were 88 strongly agree and agree answers were collected in compared with 9 gave disagree and strongly disagree answers about the usefulness and effectiveness

of the practice lessons carried out during the research

3.1.4 Students’ attitude towards the amount of the total time for the practice and delivery of time for each target practice lessons

Question 12 and 13 refer to the attitudes to the point of total for practice in class and the delivery of time for each practice lessons The results are shown in

Figure 3.5: The attitude to the total time for the practice and time delivery for each

practice lesson

As can be seen from Figure 3.5, 18 of the participants including the one with

agreement and strong agreement responses claimed that the total amount of time for the practice was suitable, only 5 had the “strongly disagree” and “disagree” answers and 6 claimed the “neutra”l ones

The next question showed that there was one strongly disagreed that the amount of time delivery for each practice lesson was suitable and one more claimed the disagree answer, compared with 16 of the respondents strongly disagreement and 11 had neutral attitude

3.1.5 Students’ difficulties in doing the project

An open-ended question was used to investigate students‟ difficulties in doing the project It was clearly shown that students have trouble in doing the project They listed many difficulties they faced However, the most popular ones are shown below:

Figure 3.6 Students’ difficulties

As can be seen from Figure 3.6, 14 of the participants stated that the time

for practice at home was to some extent limited Next, it was the problem of existed sounds in Vietnamese but occurred in English that caused difficulties when they shadowed the sounds and words (8 of the participants) Then, the problem of the participant‟s anxiety was one of the obstacles that the students had to deal with (6 of the participants) Last but not least, some others difficulties were no bonus mark or

no gift (2 of the participants)

To sum up, it can be said that the technique received a positive attitude from the student participants Despite the difficulties they may deal with during the research, their positive attitude may help to enhance their performance during the study The next part will be about the teachers‟ attitude to the target technique

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

number of choices