Integration of pronunciation practice into speaking activities an action research at hanoi tourism college

This action research is an attempt to investigate the effects ofthe integration of pronunciation practice into speaking activities on the students‟achievement in speaking skills and give

POST – GRADUATE STUDIES *****************

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

HANOI – 2013

POST – GRADUATE STUDIES *****************

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Associate Prof Vo Dai Quang, Ph.D.

HANOI – 2013

STATEMENT OF THESIS ORIGINALITY

I, Trần Thị Thu Hà, certify that the thesis “Integration of pronunciationpractice into speaking activities: An Action Research at Hanoi Tourism College”submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

is the result of my own, except otherwise is acknowledged

Tran Thi Thu Ha Hanoi, 2013

At the completion of this thesis, I would like to express my deep gratitude to

my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Vo Dai Quang, for his continuous assistance,guidance and critical comments at every stage of the study

I also wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to all the lectures provided byall the teachers during the M.A course, who have helped me to fulfill this thesis

Finally, I would like to thank my mother, my colleagues and my friends fortheir encouragement, understanding and kind-hearted assistance in completing thisresearch

Speaking a second language involves different skills such as grammar,vocabulary, and so on Pronunciation plays a very important role in EnglishLanguage Teaching This action research is an attempt to investigate the effects ofthe integration of pronunciation practice into speaking activities on the students‟achievement in speaking skills and give some pedagogical implications for the non-major first year students at Hanoi Tourism College On integrating pronunciationinto speaking activities in oral lessons, we have discovered that activities structured

by integrating pronunciation practice can help to improve students‟ intelligibilityand achievement in speaking performance In addition, some helpful techniques ofintegrating pronunciation into activities have been realized with a view to improvethe quality of teaching the speaking skill

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF THESIS ORIGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii

LIST OF TABLES viii

LIST OF CHARTS ix

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale to the study 1

2 Aims and objectives of the research 2

3 Research questions for the study 2

4 Scope of the research 3

5 Significance of the research 3

6 The design of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Review of previous studies about integrating pronunciation into speaking activities 5 1.2 Pronunciation in English language teaching 8

1.2.1 What is pronunciation? 8

1.2.2 The importance of pronunciation in English language teaching 10

1.3 Speaking skill in English language teaching 10

1.3.1 What is speaking skill? 10

1.3.2 The importance of speaking skill in English language teaching 11

1.4 Factors affecting the integration of pronunciation into speaking activities 11

1.4.1 Teachers 12

1.4.2 Learners 13

1.4.3 Learning environment and text books 14

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 15

2.1 Current situation of English teaching and learning at Hanoi Tourism College 15

2.1.1 Students and Teachers 15

2.1.2 The teaching facilities and the teaching materials 17

2.1.3 Course and syllabus 17

2.2 An action research 18

2.3 Research hypothesis 19

2.4 Subjects 19

2.5 Data collection instruments and procedure 20

2.5.1 Audio-Recording 20

2.5.2 Classroom observation 21

2.6 Data analysis techniques and procedure 22

2.7 Data analysis 22

2.7.1 The Pre-Test 23

2.7.2 Intervention 29

2.7.3 The Post-Test 34

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 39

3.1 Finding 1 and comments on this finding 39

3.1.1 Finding 39

3.1.2 Comments 39

3.2 Finding 2 and comments on this finding 40

3.2.1 Finding 40

3.2.2 Comments 40

3.3 Finding 3 and comments on this finding 40

3.3.1 Finding 40

3.3.2 Comments 41

PART C: CONCLUSION 42

1 Summary of the main points presented in the thesis 42

2 Concluding remarks on each of the thesis objectives 42

2.1 Concluding remarks on objective 1 42

2.2 Concluding remarks on objective 2 43

3 Limitations of the study 44

4 Suggestions for future study 44

PART D: REFERENCES 45

PART E: APPENDICES I

APPENDIX 1: PRE-TEST I APPENDIX 2: MATERIALS USED IN THE SPEAKING LESSON WITH STRESS AT THE SUPRASEGMENTAL LEVEL IV APPENDIX 3: MATERIALS USED IN THE SPEAKING LESSON WITH RHYTHM AND INTONATION PATTERNS V APPENDIX 4: POST-TEST VII

Hanoi Tourism CollegeVietnam National University – Hanoi

LIST OF TABLES

Table 6 Intonation: Conversation 8 - High tone

Table 7 Word stress

Table 11 Intonation: Conversation 6 - Tones in new and old information

LIST OF CHARTS

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale to the study

As a teacher of English at present and a long- term learner of English in thepast as well, I can see that pronunciation is one of the most important part forlanguage learners Pronunciation is the key element for the learners to understandwhat others talk to them, and to communicate successfully with other people Manylearners of English language have major difficulties with English pronunciationeven after years of learning the language This often results in them facingdifficulties in areas such as finding employment (Fraser, 2000a) The fault whichmost severely impairs the communication process in EFL/ESL learners ispronunciation, not vocabulary or grammar (Hinofotis & Baily, 1980) Davis (1999)stated that an area of concern and one of the top priorities of ESL students aftercompleting elementary English courses is pronunciation For these reason, it is veryimportant for them to quickly learn how to pronounce sounds, words, sentences aswell as stress, intonation exactly Terrible pronunciation leads to occasionalmisunderstanding Therefore, words and sentences must be repeated due to seriouserrors in pronunciation (still sounds like steel and ship sounds like sheep), wordaccent (words are frequently accented on the wrong syllable, e.g., “content”meaning “pleased, satisfied” versus “content” “that which is contained”), andsentence pitch (statements have the „melody‟ of questions, etc.) The student needs

to know that improving pronunciation may have greater significance andimportance as it supports some aspects like listening comprehension, spelling,reading, and grammar (Wong, 1993) Many studies have shown the strong linksbetween precise pronunciation and speaking well However, teaching pronunciation

in university or college is not really effective or nearly neglected during the process

of teaching, whereas four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing) are the mainemphasis

While English is really important in almost every field of our life such as:economy, technology, science, education, trade, tourism and etc…, there are muchmore difficulties in teaching and learning English especially in teaching andlearning pronunciation At Hanoi Tourism College in particular, difficulties comefrom inconvenient working conditions like not well-equipped devices, low levelstudents and too large classes, as a result, it‟s hard for students to study.

In addition, the popular method here is that teachers pronounce new wordsand students repeat them during speaking periods However, the disadvantage is thepronunciation of teachers may not be really exact or repetition of students is not thesame as what they hear from teachers Therefore, the best way to help students topronounce a word exactly and be able to apply the proper pronunciation to speaking

is to teach them how to pronounce a word with phonetic and stress

2 Aims and objectives of the research

This study is aimed to enhance the quality of English pronunciation of thefirst year students of non-major English at Hanoi Tourism College

The first and foremost objective of the study is by virtue of the students Inaddition, the research is expected to use as a source of reference for teachers ofEnglish on the teaching of speaking skills, especially for those who carepronunciation, one of the important elements which help to deal with listening andspeaking

To be more specific, in realizing the study, the main objectives are:

into speaking activities on the students‟ achievement in speaking skills

-To give some pedagogical implications for further development

3 Research questions for the study

The purpose of the study is to find the answers to the following researchquestions:

1 What are the effects of integrating pronunciation into speaking

activities on students‟ achievement?

development?

4 Scope of the research

This research focuses on studying the effectiveness of integrating

pronunciation into speaking activities to improve English pronunciation of the firstyear students of non-major English at Hanoi Tourism College In my research, I justfocus on suprasegmentals of pronunciation including stress, rhythm and intonation

in role – playing activity in speaking lessons

5 Significance of the research

The findings of the thesis will be useful not only to the researcher but also toteachers and students of HTC They will contribute to the quality of teaching andlearning pronunciation and speaking at HTC

Also, with good and intelligible pronunciation, the students‟ self-confidencewill be increased and enables them to better understand their instructors, follow thenews on TV or the radio more easily, or join English conversations, classdiscussions, role-plays, etc

6 The design of the study

The study is divided into three parts, which are presented as follows

Part A is the introduction, which states the rationale to the study, the aims

and objectives, research questions and the scope as well as the significance anddesign of the study

Part B, including three chapters, reports on the main contents of the study: Chapter one – Literature review - presents an overview of theoretical

issues of pronunciation discussed and analyzed by prominent and high-qualifiedELT experts and researchers The focus is exclusively devoted to pronunciation andspeaking

Chapter two – Methodology – describes how we have carried out the study

of the Faculty of Foreign Languages for Tourism at Hanoi Tourism College Sub

steps in this process consist of observing the learning situation, collecting data,analyzing data and summarizing findings.

Chapter three – Findings and Discussions – deal with the summary, the

findings as well as the comments for each finding

Part C is the conclusion where we summarize all the main contents of the

study, give remarks on objectives, limitations of current research and showsuggestions for further studies

Besides, there are also appendixes in which supplementary materials and list

of references are provided

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter is concerned with some of the most important issues in theory

of pronunciation and speaking in general and in language teaching in particular Themain features will be taken into consideration, namely, review of previous studiesabout integrating pronunciation into speaking activities, theoretical background ofpronunciation and theoretical background of speaking, the language skill into whichpronunciation is intended to be integrated

1.1 Review of previous studies about integrating pronunciation into speaking activities

There have been various arguments and support for the integration ofpronunciation practice into oral communication Morley (1998) stated thatpronunciation plays an important role in overall communicative competence Yong(2004) suggested that from the traditional ways of learning English, studentsneglected the basic knowledge of speaking This may have been enough to meet thedemands of English in the years when we had less communication with foreigncountries However, oral communication began to be more important when theyarrived in this century with extended forms of communication with Westerncountries Yong (2004) asserted that understanding by reading or writing would nolonger be sufficient for the development of the economy and that communicatingface to face personally or through the internet needed to be understood

The central issue of pronunciation teaching is how to help students speakaccurately and fluently in speaking classes One aspect of this issue is what should

be taught in class Earlier teaching approaches focused on the segmental features ofpronunciation, while more recent approaches have emphasized supra-segmentalfeatures such as sentence rhythm and intonation However, this debate has neverreached a conclusion The growing trend in today‟s pronunciation curriculumdesign is to integrate both the most important segmentals and suprasegmentalsappropriately in one course Another aspect of the issue is how to teach effectively

Along with the development of instruction approaches, traditional teaching methodsand techniques have been advocated or challenged during different times while newmethods and techniques have been created A more balanced view today, asrepresented by Celce - Murcia et al., (1996), is to use traditional pronunciationtechniques as a starting point of class and later have students move to morecommunicative classroom tasks.

In recent years, there has been a greater emphasis on teaching competentpronunciation, especially in ESL/EFL classrooms This is due to the increasingrealization that poor pronunciation can cause serious problems for learners, such ascommunication breakdowns, anxiety, and discrimination (Morley, 1998) YetEnglish pronunciation is neglected in classrooms throughout the world today,including Asia One of the reasons that it is neglected or ignored is because notmany English pronunciation teaching strategies or techniques are available toteachers in the classroom (Wei, 2006)

Fraser (1999) added that in the quest for effective teaching, it is worthdiagnosing carefully the nature of the difficulties that may be encountered There is

a significant skill component for learners Pronunciation is not just a cognitive

„knowing-that‟, it is also a physical „knowing-how‟, similar to playing a sport ormusical instrument Learners need motivation and time to really practisepronunciation It is worth spending class time discussing with learners their ownideas about what is involved in learning pronunciation

Jones, Rusman, and Evans (1994) found that students with prior exposure tophonological rules and principles, although they do not always produce moreaccurate pronunciation, seem to be better equipped to assess their own speech and to

be more aware of their particular problems Concurrently, there was a shift fromspecific linguistic competencies to broader communicative competencies as goalsfor teachers and students (Morley, 1991) Morley states the need for the integration

of pronunciation with oral communication, with more emphasis from segmentals tosuprasegmental, more emphasis on individual learner needs, and meaningful task-

based practice and introducing peer correction and group interaction (Castillo,1990) Research has shown that teaching phonemes is not enough for intelligibility

in communication With the emphasis on meaningful communication and Morley‟s(1991, p 488) premise that “intelligible pronunciation is an essential component ofcommunication competence”, teachers should include pronunciation in theirspeaking courses and expect students to do well in them

Besides, Levis and Grant (2003) also did a research of integratingpronunciation into ESL/EFL classrooms In their research, they emphasized thatteachers have to find effective ways to integrate pronunciation into oral – orientedclasses in the purpose of good communication They gave 3 principles to “promotethe integration of pronunciation in ways that link features of speech with theircommunicative functions rather than ways that promote non-contextualized orirrelevant work on the sound system” These principles are: Aim for a PrimaryThough Not Exclusive Focus on Suprasegmentals, Maintain a Central Focus onSpeaking in the Class and Pronunciation Instruction Should Fit the Constraints ofthe Speaking Task Also, they suggested 4 activities (a) word clarity in publicspeaking, (b) thought groups in storytelling, (c) intonation in conversation, and (d)focus in comparisons, three first of which help pronunciation features to beincorporated into speaking tasks intended to aid students develop oralcommunication skills They showed the conclusion as follow

We have shown ways in which effective use of pronunciation features is crucial for effective spoken communication Words must be recognized if listeners are to process speech Speech is processed more easily if speakers chunk information in expected ways Intonation is essential to management of conversational goals Important cues about given and new information and about categories being contrasted with a topic are signaled by sentence focus (19).

However, those researches above have just shown challenges and solution forintegrating pronunciation into oral activities, but not find whether it meets teachers‟abilities and students‟ awareness in particular

1.2 Pronunciation in English language teaching

1.2.1 What is pronunciation?

Pronunciation refers to the phonology of the language – or the meaningfulperception and production of the sounds of that language and how they impact onthe listener (Burns and Claire, 2003, p.5) Similarly, the AMEP Fact Sheets showsthat Pronunciation refers to the production of sounds that we use to make meaning.Pronunciation is a set of habits of producing sounds The habit of producing a sound

is acquired by repeating it over and over again and by being corrected when it ispronounced wrongly Learning to pronounce a second language means building upnew pronunciation habits and overcoming the bias of the first language (Cook,1996)

Pronunciation refers to the production of sounds that we use to makemeaning It includes attention to the particular sounds of a language (segments),aspects of speech beyond the level of the individual sound, such as intonation,phrasing, stress, timing, rhythm (suprasegmental aspects), how the voice isprojected (voice quality) and, in its broadest definition, attention to gestures andexpressions that are closely related to the way we speak a language A broaddefinition of pronunciation includes both suprasegmental and segmental features.Although these different aspects of pronunciation are treated in isolation here, it isimportant to remember that they all work in combination when we speak, and aretherefore usually best learned as an integral part of spoken language

According to Gilakjani (2011), Pronunciation is viewed as a sub-skill ofspeaking Fraser (2000a) explains that being able to speak English includes anumber of sub-skills of which pronunciation is by far the most important (other sub-skills of speaking include vocabulary, grammar, and pragmatics) She argues that

“with good pronunciation, a speaker is intelligible despite other errors; with poorpronunciation, understanding a speaker will be very difficult, despite accuracy inother areas” (Fraser, 2000a, p 7)

Traditional approaches to pronunciation have often focused on segmentalaspects, largely because these relate in some way to letters in writing, and aretherefore the easiest to notice and work on More recent approaches topronunciation, however, have suggested that the suprasegmental aspects ofpronunciation may have the most effect on intelligibility for some speakers Harmer(1993) stresses the need for making sure that students can always be understood andsay what they want to say They need to master “good pronunciation”, not perfectaccents That is, emphasis should be on suprasegmental features of pronunciation-not segmental aspects-to help learners acquire communicative competence(Seferoglu, 2005) Bott (2005) asserts, “In recent years, increasing attention hasbeen placed on providing pronunciation instruction that meets the communicativeneeds of non-native speakers (NNSs) of English Empirical research andpronunciation materials‟ writers suggest that teaching suprasegmentals beforesegmentals to intermediate and advanced NNSs could be more beneficial in ashorter period of time (p 5).

Anderson-Hsieh, Johnson, and Koehler (1992) compared the relativecontributions made to intelligibility by prosody, segmentals, and syllable structure.Within 11 different language groups, they found that the score for prosody was mostsignificantly associated with the overall score for pronunciation In a relatedfinding, Derwing, Munro, and Wiebe (1998) studied the effects of both segmentaland suprasegmental instruction on learners‟ comprehensibility ratings andconcluded that the latter had a greater effect on performance in communicativecontexts Usually learners benefit from attention to both aspects, and some learnersmay need help in some areas more than in others One considerable practicaladvantage of focusing on suprasegmentals is that learners from mixed L1backgrounds in the same class will benefit, and will often find that their segmentaldifficulties improve at the same time (Fraser, 2001)

1.2.2 The importance of pronunciation in English language teaching

Harmer (2007, p 248) states that “pronunciation teaching not only makesstudents aware of different sounds and sound features (and what these mean), butcan also improve their speaking immeasurably” The process of learningpronunciation makes learners be aware of the sounds which they are using whilespeaking (Harmer, 2007) Pronunciation plays a vital part in successfulcommunication When people have intelligible pronunciation, they can comprehendwhat others speak as well as use language to make others understand them Besidesface-to-face communication, they will have abilities to understand information inforeign languages on mass media such as TV, newspapers, etc Since then, they willhave more chances to obtain good jobs and enhance their language level

1.3 Speaking skill in English language teaching

1.3.1 What is speaking skill?

Speaking is one of the most important skills in learning foreign languages.Bailey and Savage (1991: vii) say “for many people, speaking is seen as the centralskill because of the desire to communicate with others, often face-to-face and in realtime” Ur (1996) considers speaking intuitively the most important of the four skills:people who know a language are referred to as “speakers” of that language as ifspeaking included all other kinds of knowing; and many if not most foreignlanguage learners are primarily interested in learning to speak

According to Brown and Yule‟s (1983:127), speaking skill consists of short,fragmentary utterance, in a range of pronunciation There is often a great deal ofrepetition and overlap between one speaker and another and speakers usually usenon-specific references Brown (1994:45) defined that speaking is an interactiveprocess of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving and processinginformation When participating in communicative activities, the speaker shouldchoose the correct vocabulary to describe the things they want to say about, to

rephrase or emphasize words to clarify the description to produce the expected pattern of specific discourse situations.

1.3.2 The importance of speaking skill in English language teaching

Without question, language is a very important means of communicationwhich can help people to exchange information, show ideas, wishes and desires.However, to express those thoughts and transfer that information exactly and easy tounderstand, we need to consider speaking skill a significant part Especially, it isvery necessary for teachers and learners to master this skill Bygate, M (1987:5)emphasizes that speaking “is also a medium through which much language is learnt,and which for many is particularly conductive for learning” Nunan (1991:279) alsomaintains that effectiveness in an oral conversation is evaluated by the competence

to carry out a conversation in the target language This competence depends on bothstudents‟ ability and chances to practice at class If they do not have opportunities

to show themselves through speaking, they cannot develop language ability andeven lose all interest It is more essential in speaking class that both the teachers andstudents pay much attention in organizing and carrying out positive activities,otherwise, the speaking class can be regarded as a dead class Brown, G and Yule,

G (1992:256) point out that speaking plays an important role in a very transactionalintention, that is, to make clear what they want to say When speaking well, learnerswill have more capacity to learn other skills such as listening, reading and writing

In addition, speaking also helps them to open their mind to the large world

To sum up, speaking skill, besides listening, reading and writing skills, plays

a vital role in language teaching

1.4 Factors affecting the integration of pronunciation into speaking activities

It is obviously that any choice of a method of teaching needs favorableconditions for effective application We can consider some factors affecting theintegration of pronunciation into speaking activities as follows:

1.4.1 Teachers

1.4.1.1 Teachers’ attitudes and beliefs

Because teachers are trained to teach students and play a main role in a class,their beliefs are very important in guiding learners to study They are directly inrelation to the instruction, content and process of teaching students When theybelieve strongly in the effectiveness of a particular approach or method of teachingand try to carry out it in classroom, they will be confident to use that

In addition, teachers‟ attitudes are also very important in teaching Inclassroom, teachers play roles as instructors, consultants, supervisors,communicators and controllers, so their attitudes have much influence on teachingand learning processes and the results of them after the course

Although we know very clearly that pronunciation is very important inspeaking, it is usually neglected in oral activities Teachers‟ attitudes and beliefsabout this matter will help learners be better in communication

1.4.1.2 Teachers’ qualities and personalities

Besides attitudes and beliefs, teachers‟ qualities and personalities play a vitalpart in teaching learners It is very difficult for students to gain enough knowledge iftheir teachers do not have enough Levis, J M & Grant, L (2003) states that

“Approaches favoring the integration of pronunciation into oral communicationhave been espoused for more than 10 years, but teachers have received little cleardirection about how to accomplish this integration” They also show twoframeworks “In classes devoted to pronunciation, for example, teachers apply theframework usually by moving from controlled pronunciation practice to lessstructured, communicative speaking practice” and “In courses devoted to speaking

or oral communication, teachers apply the framework by moving in the oppositedirection, starting with less structured speaking practice and perhaps moving intopronunciation” However, teachers often do vice converse or “address pronunciation

unsystematically” Therefore, it can be seen that teachers always need to enhancetheir qualities in knowledge and teaching method.

1.4.2 Learners

1.4.2.1 Learners’ motivation

Motivation often performs two important characters in second languagelearning process; it firstly arouses people‟s interest and secondly helps people keeptheir enthusiasm Language learners‟ motivation is basically originated from goals

of various kinds and needs It is regarded as the fulfillment of the goals and needs.When learners have high motivation, they will learn harder, which help them havemore chance in having a good job, high position or status

1.4.2.2 Learners’ attitudes and beliefs

Levis, J M & Grant, L (2003) also maintain that “even when teachers want

to teach pronunciation communicatively, they have little sense of how to weave iteffectively into a listening and speaking or all-skills course so that it consists ofmore than ad hoc corrections, but does not take up so much time that thecommunicative goals of the course are neglected” From that, we can conclude thatlearners‟ attitudes and beliefs affect how they approach their learning.Pronunciation is considered one of the most important things in speaking fluently.Therefore, learners should have right attitudes and beliefs in learning this, whichwill aid them to feel confident in communicating with foreigners and have morechances in the world market

1.4.2.3 Learners’ anxiety and confidence

Inaccurate pronunciation and having no ideas when speaking to foreignersare main reasons which make learners feel worried and unconfident incommunication Language anxiety is one of the characteristics which have arelationship with learning process The more anxious students feel, the less theirresult in learning is With anxiety, learners may have difficulties in making normal

conversations or expressing spontaneous reactions When they have confidence,they will speak English freely After that, teachers can discover their mistakes inpronunciation, which helps them to improve speaking skill quickly Therefore,teachers should pay more attention in encouraging learners to speak and creating acomfortable atmosphere in speaking classroom.

1.4.3 Learning environment and text books

The learning environment can greatly influence on their academicperformance The learning environment can be seen as physical conditions, such asclass size, chairs, desks, tables, lights, boards, computer and projectors Physicalconditions really affect students‟ learning and their attitudes towards the subjectmatter With enough equipment to serve the learning, learners will have moreinterest in training pronunciation and speaking

In addition, text books and teaching aids can be considered importantresources Talking about the challenges of integrating pronunciation into speakingactivities, Levis, J M & Grant, L (2003) say that “existing textbooks offer twoprimary avenues for integrating pronunciation and speaking instruction On the onehand, although current pronunciation-based texts include communicative activities,most are organized around pronunciation features and are not suitable as primarytexts in oral communication courses On the other hand, a striking feature of manyspeaking-based or integrated-skills texts is the absence of explicit, sustained focus

on pronunciation” It can be drawn that improving text books is a very vital thing tohelp learners overcome the difficulties in pronunciation as well as speaking

of Vietnam Their English learning used to focus on reading and writing but notlistening and speaking, thus they had very little chance to speak English From theexperience of teaching, I find the fact that some fresh students appear to be betterones in class, but they are only good at grammar They can do written grammarexercises accurately, but they are unable to speak English in everydayconversations It can be acknowledged that most of them find the college learningcompletely different from that at their schools After one semester at the college,they are now getting acquainted with the new learning environment However, thereare still several difficulties for pronunciation teaching and learning in speakingactivities.

Firstly, the age factor has a direct effect on pronunciation learning Wecommonly assume that if someone pronounces a second language like a native, theyprobably started learning it as a child In contrary, if a person does not begin to learnEnglish until adulthood, they will never have a native like accent even though theyare good at other aspects of language The fact that most of the students here did notstart learning English until they went to high school means that it is very difficultfor them to perfect their English pronunciation

Secondly, the dissimilarities between English and Vietnamese concepts ofstress, tonality cause quite many problems for students The problem is that in thecase of my class, Vietnamese is students‟ mother tongue or first language The

intonation patterns of Vietnamese are mostly decided by the six fixed tones whilevariations to the degree of falling, rising, rising – falling and falling – rising inEnglish depend on communicative functions and attitudinal meanings of intonation(Tench, 1996) This makes it difficult for my students to employ the desired degrees

of pitch movement, either greater or lesser than neutral forms In addition, theVietnamese students‟ own dialects are very varied, which causes them manydifficulties The Northern usually have problems with spelling such as mistakesbetween “s” and “x”, “l” and “n”, so on Besides, students coming from the CentralVietnam find it difficult to change their pitch in neutral conversations

From that, it is obvious that to speak English intelligibly, Vietnamesestudents have to overcome a great variety of difficulties That asks them to try theirbest to both improve their pronunciation and make them have more chances tospeaking English

Teachers

In the teaching and learning renovation, the teacher always plays a veryimportant role At HTC, there are 17 teachers of English, who were all trained inuniversities in Hanoi, Vietnam (Hanoi University or University of Languages andInternational Studies, VNU) They are from 25 to 50 years of age 2 of them areexperienced teachers who have devoted 15 - 20 years of their life to thedevelopment of the Faculty and the grown-up of generations of teachers Others areyoung teachers who are friendly, active, knowledgeable and full of enthusiasm forteaching 16 of them have completed an MA program and one is doing an MAprogram All teachers here are non-native speakers and some of them have hadopportunities to go to some English speaking countries Sometimes, they havechances to speak and work with native speakers and join professional developmentevents

2.1.2 The teaching facilities and the teaching materials

Classroom arrangement: At HTC, all of the classrooms are designed forlecture lessons It means that the seating is arranged orderly in front of teachers, andthe blackboard Most of the English lessons are conducted in such a fixed condition,which prevents teachers from making a change in adopting new methods inlanguage teaching Moreover, the classes are too small for the number of students ineach

The class size: The size of almost English classes is big with around 50 andeven 60 in each

The teaching aids: There are a few classrooms equipped with projector, butthey are rarely used for English classes Therefore, it is difficult for teachers toapply new method using information technology to language teaching However,there are many cassette players which can be used enough for many classes at thesame time

The materials: The current English teaching textbooks are Lifeline Elementary and Lifeline Pre-intermediate The English materials for reference and

for self-study are very few in the library at HTC Almost all the materials are abouttourism

2.1.3 Course and syllabus

The time allocation for the whole English course at HTC depends on theirmajors In this study, I just mention the Basic English course implemented in thetwo first semesters By the end of the first year, students are supposed to reach pre-intermediate level The core book was mentioned above The syllabus is designed toinclude 150 periods and 75 periods per semester Within this limited timetable, thecontent covered includes grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and the four skills

In terms of teaching speaking skill, it is integrated with listening skill andpronunciation as the instruction of the textbook within three periods per week Asstudents are non-majors in English and the teaching focus is required to be on

reading, students are given very little time to speak and pronunciation receives arestricted zone for being realized.

According to evaluating the English progression of students at HTC, studentshave to do two written tests: one mid-term and one final written test The aim ofthese tests is mainly to test the students‟ grammatical and lexical knowledge andtheir reading comprehension skill There has not been an oral test for assessing theirspeaking and pronunciation

2.2 An action research

Action research is aimed at changing things, which helps teachers self-reflecttheir practice and make their teaching better Kemmis & McTaggart (1988) providesthe following definition of action research:

“A group activity” and “a form of collective self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of the own social or educational practices, as well as their understanding of these practices and the situations in which these practices are carried out.”

A review of action research frameworks reveals several common features andseveral formulas for an action research proposed Below are the seven steps in theaction research cycle adapted from Nunan (1992):

Initiation: Describe the problem and area of focus

Preliminary investigation: Collecting baseline data through observation andrecording classroom interaction

Development of research questions

Intervention: Describe the strategies or innovation to be implemented

Evaluation: Describe the data to be collected, data analysis, and findings

Dissemination: Report the results by running workshop or presenting apaper.

Follow – up: Investigate alternative methods

This research will be carried out in the form of an action research, usingmainly teacher‟s logs and diary, and tape recordings Simply described, the research

is aimed at discovering the challenges, effects as well as implications of theintegration pronunciation practice into speaking activities, specifically, in thecontext of role - plays Cohen et al (2007) said that action research is practicalresearch used to “bridge the gap between research and practice” Clearly speaking,action research has its application in different social fields, and with its essentialfeature of involving the testing out of ideas in practice as a means of improvement

in social conditions and increasing knowledge Therefore, it has grown to a strongtendency of classroom practice Action research helps us be able to put theories intopractices and we can see advantages and disadvantages immediately It is smallscale, contextualized, localized, and aimed at discovering, developing, ormonitoring changes to practice (Wallace, 1998)

2.3 Research hypothesis

This research is carried out to test the hypothesis following: integratingpronunciation into speaking activities is very useful to enhance the intelligibilityand confidence of students in communication and help teachers to have the besttechnique to teach speaking skill

2.4 Subjects

The subjects of the study are all non - major English students from HTC Inthe first year, all students, except for students of Faculty of Foreign Languages forTourism, learn with the same course book – Lifeline: Pre-intermediate Among thetwo classes I was in charge of during the second semester of the academic year2012-2013, twelve students from one stronger group (based on their first semester

results) were chosen to participate in the study There are three reasons for mychoice of subjects Firstly, this selection was based on the restricted scope of thestudy which focuses on the suprasegmentals, especially stress, rhythm andintonation, in role-playing activity Secondly, it was the feasibility of the study,which depends much on whether the students‟ pronunciation in speaking activity isimprovable over a two-month period of time In addition, I would like to choosefirst - year students during the second semester but not the first semester to knowhow their pronunciation is after learning one semester.

Twelve students chosen are at the age of 18 to 20, five boys and seven girls,one third live in Hanoi and the rest come from various provinces in Vietnam Theirlevel of proficiency in English can be roughly attributed to pre-intermediate Most

of the students from the city shows to be better because they have chance to comeand study at the foreign language center where they can practice speaking Englishwhile those from rural areas reveal to be slow and shy Some of their mostdifficulties are the lack of background knowledge, the ability of speaking Englishintelligibly and confidently, and the new experience of learning They are at mixedlevel of English speaking competence; a few of them (about 2) are relatively good

in pronunciation 5 of them are at the average and can pronounce some wordsexactly The last five are very bad and cannot pronounce any word accurately Theyseem to pause most of the time in role-plays and even scared when asked to speak

2.5 Data collection instruments and procedure

The results of the study were developed on the basis of empirical datacollected via audio-recording and observation The stage of data collection has beencarried out during the second semester of the first year

2.5.1 Audio-Recording

In this study, I mainly used the instrument of audio-recording to collect theneeded information In speaking lessons, I apply the way of integratingpronunciation practice into speaking activities by asking students to carry out the

role-plays after they listen to conversations The pre-test and post-test interventiondesign student speaking skills were conducted in 3 cycles:

Cycle 1 - In the first cycle, selected students were asked to take a small test

of pronouncing 5 words (more than two syllables) chosen from the role-playingconversation in text 4 (see appendix) of the textbook “Pronunciation in use” byJonathan Marks and orally role-playing 8 conversations chosen by the teacher fromdifferent sources which have tape recorded without preparation I would like to testtheir pronunciation in word stress first because it is the basis of any high levelpronunciation All their pronouncing words and conversations were recorded andanalyzed by the teacher

Cycle 2 - The teacher listened to their tapes again to find out their problem in

pronunciation and give them oral or written feedback After that, basing on theirissues with pronunciation including stress, rhythm and intonation, the teacherapplied different kinds of techniques in teaching pronunciation into role-playingactivities at speaking classes

Cycle 3 - Students were asked to take the test again with other five words

and conversations but same topics All their pronouncing words and conversationswere recorded and analysed by the teacher

The final results were expressed through their improvement of pronunciation

in role-playing activities

2.5.2 Classroom observation

According to Nunan (1992), observation is of great value as a means ofdoing research “because language classrooms are specifically constituted to bringabout learning, it is not unreasonable to collect data about what goes on there” Allthe observation notes and diary contribute to the analysis of my teaching context aswell as students‟ pronunciation errors that prevent them from beingcommunicatively intelligible

2.6 Data analysis techniques and procedure

In terms of quantitative analysis, the data collected directly from audioscripts on the basis of comparing and contrasting students‟ production ofsuprasegmentals with words from the book “Pronunciation In Use” by JonathanMarks and the modal patterns in the book “Pronunciation In Use” by MarkHancock, “Pronunciation In Use” by Jonathan Marks and “Lifeline Pre-Intermediate” by Tom Hutchinson was used to discover students‟ level inpronunciation and speaking before and after implementing the integrationpronunciation practice into speaking activities Moreover, teacher‟s logs and diary

of the improvement of students‟ pronunciation also help contribute to the analysis

of data The results are provided in the form of tables and graphs or charts, whichgive the information about what really happened in the classes of speaking and howthey proceeded

According to qualitative analysis, the data collected from the observationnotes and diary also are useful sources to triangulate the validity and reliability ofthe data Therefore, I will combine the results of the interpretation of data formaudio scripts and my understanding of the process of integrating Englishpronunciation into speaking activities Upon this basis, some implications andsuggestions for the integration English pronunciation practice into speakingactivities were given

2.7 Data analysis

The study strictly follows the general steps of action research and threecycles in the instruments mentioned above During the first two weeks, along witheach unit including grammar, vocabulary and the four skills, I took notes aboutstudents‟ pronunciation problems with all mistakes in spelling as well as in usingsuprasegmentals in the classes of speaking integrated with listening andpronunciation The initial observation results reveal that although they completed ahalf of the Basic English course, they have basic knowledge of the alphabet spelling