Using some techniques to help the 10th grade students at ham rong hhigh school determine the position of primary stress better

The author of this research decided to carry out a research work in : “ Using some techniques to help the 10th grade students at Ham Rong High School determine the position of primary st

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 RATIONALE

In recent years, Vietnam has made reforms in many areas including education One of the fundamental challenges of the current Ministry of Education and Training is

to innovate teaching and learning methods to meet the requirements of industrialization and modernization English is a subject that has been being innovated at the forefront of high schools The Ministry of Education and Training has developed a plan to change (improve) the quality of foreign language teaching and learning across the country It can be seen that English in particular and foreign languages in general are the focus of interest and strong development In the context of international integration, teaching and learning English has received a lot of attention from the whole society

In order to innovate and improve the quality of learning foreign languages, many synchronous solutions need to be made, first of all, teaching and learning methods must

be renewed English is currently being taught in a communication-oriented and learner-centered approach To be able to communicate in English, students must use two skills

of listening and speaking well So what must teachers and students do to achieve this goal? This requires many factors, in which it is quite important to help students master word stress in English The correct pronunciation of English word stress will help communicate in English more smoothly, avoiding misunderstandings in communication

When teaching E n g l i s h to the 10th students at Ham Rong High School the author found out that students are very confused by pronouncing a right word They often pronounce incorrectly and do not read the stress corectly

The author of this research decided to carry out a research work in : “ Using some techniques to help the 10th grade students at Ham Rong High School determine the position of primary stress better” Based on the results of this action

research, some changes and improvements could be applied in the author’s lessons, and some appropriate strategies needed to be designed with the hope that students will work more effectively in the phonetic lessons Hopefully that the results of this study would be shared with any colleagues who had the same problem or anyone who is interested in this study

1.2 Aim of study

The specific aims of the study are as follows:

- Clarifying the nature of determining the position of primary stress in accordance with some important points in teaching this part

- Investigating the present situation of teaching and learning phonetic of the 10th form students to find out advantages as well as problems facing both teachers and students in phonetic lessons

1.3 Scope and objectives of the study

The study will focus on improving determining the position of primary stress for 10th students at Ham Rong High School and showing the ways in finding the position of primary stress .This study was carried out in three English classes with

146 10th grade students at Ham Rong High School in Thanh Hoa province

1.4 METHODS OF THE STUDY

The study is basically a qualitative research, which employs the following methods:

- Firstly, make students aware of the importance of using correct English stress, thereby helping them have a sense of stress in training their communication skills

- Second, help students speak English correctly, ensure subject knowledge standards, thereby helping students solve the questions about stress knowledge in exams or graduation exams and university

- Third, this topic can help teachers of foreign languages have a few small suggestions

in practicing speaking skills for students

2 Other sources of data come from writing tasks from the textbooks

The analysis of the data hopefully will bring about reliable findings useful for the teaching of phonetic to non – major students at Ham Rong High School, Thanh Hóa

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

Doing phonetic exerxises , one of the most dificult parts , has always a significant position in language teaching Nevertheless, how to teach and learn phonetic effectively often poses great problems to both teachers and students For the teachers

of English at high school, this problem is considered a difficult part to teach Some of them even ignore teaching phonetic and focus only on grammar excercises for the exams However, nothing is difficult if we, the teachers make decision to make it easier Hopefully , with a range of suggestions of how to make activities effectively in phonetic lessons introduced in this research, it will be more motivating for the teachers to teach and make progress in teaching phonetic.Therefore, their students will be interested in phonetic lessons

2 CONTENTS 2.1 Theoretical Background

* What is stress?

According to Peter Roach in “English phonetics and phonology,” the stress of a word is pronounced more prominently than the other Stressed sounds have at least four distinct characteristics:

- have a louder volume (loudness) than the rest of the sound,

- has a longer length than the other sounds,

- has a higher pitch than the rest of the sound,

- the vowel of a stressed sound has a characteristic different from that of the other vowels in the same word

Usually the above four factors often appear together in an accented sound However, sometimes just one or two factors contribute to the stress of a word The above factors are of different importance, in which pitch and pitch are the two most important factors, helping listeners easily recognize the stress of a word Stressed sounds are read about a half-way above other sounds and read almost like a stretched sound

* Why need to master stress?

Stress is an integral part of English Mastering stresses helps learners get closer

to their ability to use English fluently, making the communication process more natural, avoiding misunderstandings and errors in communication In addition, for high school students, mastering the correct pronunciation of stress also helps them to correct questions about stress knowledge in tests, semester tests, graduation exams or entrance exams

* How to learn stress?

Like all language knowledge, stress has its own rules Learners can buy books about stress and follow the rules in them With fixed rules, learners only need to memorize and do lots of exercises However, the rules have exceptions Learners need to pay more attention to these exceptions In addition, learners can learn stress in many different ways such as: learning in communication, learning while listening to the teacher lectures, learning when listening to programs played in English, or by looking up a dictionary And only regular practice and practice can help people learn successfully

on the path of conquering the language

In conclusion, Syllable stress is where every word in English will have one syllable ie part of the word stressed ie said more strongly than the unstressed syllable(s) This will be shown in a good dictionary eg Oxford, Cambridge, Collins for British English with the IPA notation system with a ‘ mark in front of the stressed syllable and a , mark in front of a secondary stressed syllable In English language textbooks and classes, instead of the ‘ or , marks a heavy dot or square will be placed above the vowel of the stressed syllable Unstressed syllables are shown in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) with an upside down-back-to-front ‘e’ This unstressed symbol is so important it has a name ‘schwa’ (originating from Yiddish language) as the majority of spoken syllables are UNstressed Getting syllable stress

correct ie emphasising the stressed syllable by saying it louder or more strongly is very important as English is a ‘stress-timed’ language with correct syllable stress the building block of word stress, phrase stress and the intonation or musical-like

‘melody’ of spoken English Generally, the stressed words are the ones with the main meaning ie nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs Other smaller words such as definite articles ie the / some, indefinite articles ie the / some, prepositions eg ‘in’, ‘to’ etc are unstressed or kind of ‘skipped (over) Finally, teachers should give clear and brief instructions in this stage so that students can solve the phonetic exercises well

2.2 The reality of the study

Basing on the new textbooks designed by the Ministry of Education and Training, English are taught with four skills and Language Focus which focuses on grammar and pronunciation The phonetic program at Ham Rong high school follow the syllabus

of the Ministry of Education and Training with the aim of improving students’ abilities

in pronounce On English 10 textbook, there are a range of types to practice determining the position of primary stress

As regards the language, for non - major English students, students sometimes have to depend on the provided structures and phrases or vocabularies However, some

of them start to be aware of and perform different styles as well as various levels of formality to match the phonetic exercises But most of their works still need to

be examined for vocabulary and the position of primary stress accuracy

In terms of methodology, students are expected to master the rule to determine the position of primary stress Students should be active in self – studying, peer and group cooperation They understand the process in teaching and learning writing and

know how to pronounce

2.2.1 Background of the study

Through polling by many colleagues and students, and through teaching practice,

I found that students who learn English from middle school to the end of grade 11 of high school almost do not learn in terms of weight English sound Most teachers do not have the time or attention to guide students on this matter Teachers, when correcting mistakes for students, only pay attention to word usage, grammatical errors or incorrect pronunciation errors, not correct stress errors

Most students have no concept of stress in English pronunciation Students can learn about stress by looking at the Glossary section at the end of a textbook However, many students do not watch this part or watch but only pay attention to the meaning of the word without paying attention to the pronunciation or stress of the word

Especially, there are a number of teachers who are not aware of the importance

of correctly pronouncing English stress in communication, so they have not focused on training to speak correctly

Before doing the topic, I have done 2 surveys on students' understanding of stress and the current situation of teaching stress

2.2.2 Survey 1

Survey 1 is a survey on the ability of students in grades 10B6, 10B7 and 10B11

to use English stress of Ham Rong High School I have given each student a 10-minute questionnaire about English stress and ask them to do it within 10 minutes The words

on the questionnaire were selected from unit 1 of the 10th grade English program when students finished this lesson The questionnaire is as follows:

Choose the word whose stress pattern is different from that of the rest.

1/ A student B member C prefer D teacher

2/ A subject B hello C teacher D thousand

3/ A people B classmate C lesson D devote

4/ A background B tutor C degree D master

5/ A routine B arrive C morning D prefer

6/ A dinner B harrow C neighbor D correct

7/ A education B specialty C opposition D demonstration

8/ A special B mental C fourteen D within

9/ A technology B illustration C definition D electronic

10/ A computer B different C capable D calculate

The results of the number of students correctly completingand the number of questions

in each class are as follows (with percentages ):

Class Total Correct 5

sentences Correct 4 sentences Correct 3 sentences Correct 2 sentences Correct 1 sentences Mistake 5 sentences

10% 12%6hs 10 %5hs 20 %10hs 14hs28% 20 %10hs

8 %

6hs

12 %

6hs

12 %

12hs

23 %

12hs

23 %

12hs

23 %

11% 14 %6hs 11 %5hs 25 %11hs 18%8 hs 20 %10hs

From the above results it can be seen that only about 30% of students achieve the average or above with knowledge of stress and about 20% of students do not correct any questions about stress After the students had finished their answers, I continued to ask some students to pronounce words on the ballot at random As a result, most of the children did not pronounce the word stress correctly, even if they answered all 5 questions on the questionnaire correctly Thus, it can be seen that students' knowledge

of stress is relatively weak Even those who understand the theory are weak in practice

2.2.3 Survey 2

I have conducted a survey on teaching status of English language stress knowledge of English teachers at Ham Rong High School After attending some lessons and through interviews, I noticed that teachers have mentioned stressing since teaching new words, but not often In the Language focus part of the units, the teacher only allowed the students to repeat words in the textbook, did not have time to do extra exercises or explain anything about stress From the above situation, I have taken some measures to improve students' ability to use English stress in grades 10B6, 10B7 and control in grades 10B11 Students in these 3 classes have similar qualifications The

measures are divided into two groups: group one includes measures taken during distributed English lessons and group two includes measures taken during English extracurricular hours

2.2.4 Taken Measures

* During English lessons:

+ Measure 1:

When teaching new words I always focus on the stress of words by using the stress mark for new words and ask students to write the whole part in their notebooks When I let students read words, I also pay attention to correct them if they find that they are not reading the stress correctly by re-pronounce the wrong word and ask them to read it correctly

+ Measure 2:

When using English, I always pay attention to correct accent and intonation to guide and create habits for students to listen correctly In order to do this, I always have

to practice my speaking skills properly in many ways such as: listening and practicing according to tape, using dictionary to look up words that I am not sure about, listening

to broadcast programs in English on television or radio,

+ Measure 3:

This is the measure used in Language focus periods of Unit 3, Unit 4 and Unit 5 Because the time for stress in each Language Focus period is only from 10 to 15 minutes, so there is only enough time for students to listen to tapes and repeat the pronunciation of words Teachers don't have time to explain to students some general rules regarding stress Therefore, students can only grasp the stress of words in the textbook So before every Language Focus lesson of Units 3, Unit 4 and Unit 5, I ask the students to preview the “stress” at home, divide the class into groups of 6 students, and ask the groups to find more words with similar stress patterns, write in the form of multiple-choice questions about stress in the sub-chart first Each group prepares 3 questions In class, I proceed to teach stress as follows:

- First, have students listen to the tape 1 time to recognize word stress and then ask students to repeat the tape 2 times

- Check the word stress positions to see if the students have mastered them

- Tell students to listen to the part "Practise reading aloud the sentences" and call some students to read it again

- Finally, organize for groups to exchange sub-boards with each other and do the exercises on those sub-boards

+ Measure 4:

This is the most important measure of this topic based on the idiom "Practice makes perfect" Before each class I prepare 2 multiple-choice questions about stress with the requirement “Choose the word whose stress is differently placed from the other words” The words chosen in these 2 questions are the words that will be used in that class These two questions can be written in advance on the supplementary board, or written

on an electronic lecture to show on the projector At the end of each class, I spend 30

seconds to 1 minute for students to answer the two questions and pronounce the words

in the two questions The student who correctly answers and pronounces the word stress will receive a report card This card is used to add points for students to tests of 15 minutes, 1 period or semester tests in proportion:

+ 2 votes = 1 point for the 15-minute test

+ 4 votes = 1 point for the 45-minute test

+ 6 votes = 1 semester test score

This measure is administered in lessons of 16 unit units and Test Yourself Thus, after each lesson, students will master the stress of 8 words and after 86 lessons of 16 units and Test Yourself A, B, C, D, E, F, students have been practicing stressing with

688 words When I take this action, I find that students who want to answer correctly and read correctly will have to listen more attentively At the same time, the scorecard has the effect of stimulating students to pay attention to study and actively volunteer to answer questions In addition, it also helps students improve their scores in a legitimate way and helps teachers evaluate students more accurately The questions for this section are listed in the following table

Unit 1

Reading

1 A dinner B harrow C neighbor D correct

2 A buffalo B exactly C tobacco D continue

Speaking

1 A minute B about C Physics D English

2 A evening B usually C afternoon D another

Listening

1 A.together B dinner C leftover D children

2 A.excited B often C crowded D rarely

Writing

1 A quarter B before C partner D weather

2 A peasant B finish C compare D adverb

Language Focus

1 A alarm B discuss C friendly D begin

2 A morning B repair C happy D pupil

Unit 2

Reading

1 A subject B hello C teacher D thousand

2 A lesson B woman C repair D father

Speaking

1 A above B sister C widen D very

2 A corner B answer C doctor D prepare

Listening

1 A headmaster B holiday C attractive D internet

2 A matter B happen C listen D below

Writing

1 Aexplain B problem C study D worry

2 A habit B become C learner D mother

Language Focus

1 A fifteen B fifty C center D biggest

2 A student B member C prefer D teacher

Unit 3

Reading

1 A receive B private C brother D children

2 A general B condition C another D together

Speaking

1 A people B classmate C lesson D devote

2 A background B tutor C degree D master

Listening

1 A student B career C tiny D research

2 A passage B unit C little D become

Writing

1 A November B December C October D January

2 A receive B private C brother D children

Language Focus

1 A.mother B mature C sister D tragic

2 A secondary B impossible C laboratory D conditional

Test yourself A

1 A education B necessary C parent D languages

2 A gestures B interest C example D movement

Unit 4

Reading

1 education B specialty C opposition D demonstration

2 A special B mental C fourteen D within

Speaking

1 A luggage B retard C happen D lesson

2 A subtract B parent C message D passage

Listening

1 A disable B manager C condition D parental

2 A sorry B happy C commune D subject

Writing

1 A instead B welcome C construct D arrive

2 A primary B everything C afternoon D exciting

Language Focus

1 A province B prepare C finger D meeting

2 A better B standing C attend D open

Unit 5

Reading

1 A technology B illustration C definition D electronic

2/ A computer B different C capable D calculate

Speaking

1 A number B software C manage D invent

2 A become B hardware C letter D music

Listening

1 A office B language C around D other

2 A beauty B machine C daily D modern

Writing

1 A newspaper B multiply C magical D allowance

2 A magazine B collection C performer D invention

Language Focus

1 A request B subtract C produce D action

2 A device B lighting C magic D worry

Unit 6

Reading

1 A excursion B occasion C protective D multiple

2 A number B recent C problem D ahead

Speaking

1 A mountain B event C nation D country

2 A beauty B painting C wonder D relax

Listening

1 A different B together C computer D occasion

2 A otherwise B botanic C excellent D suitable

Writing

1 A various B inventive C convenient D permission

2 A arrangement B delicious C occupy D component

Language Focus

1 A glorious B official C rapidly D hospital

2 A invent B pressure C remain D prefer

Test yourself B

1 A qualification B normally C common D possible

2 A discover B intensive C computer D independent

Unit 7

Reading

1 A partner B something C classmate D discuss

2 A national B Liverpool C recommend D internet

Speaking

1 A animal B comedy C importance D different

2 A unknown B wealthy C moment D mountain

Listening

1 A comment B reading C healthy D lucky

2 A headache B present C nation D planet

Writing

1 A playwright B active C global D tonight

2 A painting B visit C portrait D enough

Language Focus

1 A canteen B surprise C lengthen D nothing

2 A appropriate B documentaryC Entertainment D confirmation

Unit 8

Reading

1.A pessimistic B.optimistic C.unexpected D.contribute

2.A.security B technology C.disappear D.invention

Speaking

1.A.Chinese B declare C.Standard D.Disease

2.A.atmosphere B.prediction C.science D fatal

Listening

1.A.incredible B.eradicated C.fatal D.eternal

2.A.mushroom B.expectancy C.curable D.general

Writing

1.A.conflict B.harmony C.desire D.violent

2.A.together B.organize C.concern D.employment

Language Focus

1.A.across B.butcher C.cancer D.famous

2.A.opposite B.business C.among D.contract

Test yourself C

1 A electric B famine C climate D office

2 A expert B increase C urgent D message

Unit 9

Reading

1 A mystery B understand C overcome D submarine

2 A Atlantic B paragraph C Antarctic D contribute

Speaking

1 A garlic B manner C bother D delete

2 A under B offspring C offer D forget

Listening

1 A undersea B attitude C various D exhausted

2 A offend B insult C baby D sparkling

Writing

1 A inhabit B natural C finally D evidence 2.A biodiversity B international C sophisticated D.independently

Language Focus

1 A complete B reveal C surface D restrict

2 A indication B understanding C investigate D interaction

Unit 10

Reading

1 A vegetation B eliminate C disappearance D intonation

2 A photo B rapid C pattern D about

Speaking