According to Tweedy (2012), the factors that influence English pronunciation of native Vietnamese speakers are participants’ age, first language influence, and lack of directed pronunciation instruction. Brown (2008) discusses three variables associated with good language learners in pronunciation learning: motivation, aptitude, and opportunity. Rogerson-Revell (2011) views exposure to L2 as a critical factor in pronunciation learning. Kenworthy (1987) states that during the pronunciation learning process, learners may be affected by various factors such as the native language, the age factor, the amount of exposure, the phonetic ability, the attitude and identity, the motivation and concern for good pronunciation.
In this study, the researchers focused on seven most common factors considered having strong impact on learners’ pronunciation learning including learners’ age, first language transfer, motivation, exposure to the target language in and outside of class, L2 teachers’ pronunciation model, aptitude and pronunciation learning strategies.
2.2 Pronunciation Learning Strategies
2.2.1 Definition of Language Learning Strategies
Rubin (1975), defines learning strategies as the techniques or devices which a learner may use to acquire knowledge. Oxford (1990), believes that students’ learning becomes more fun, more proactive, more effective and more transferable to new situations through their active use of learning strategies. Sunsequently, Ellis (1997a) defines learning strategies as the particular approaches or techniques that learners employ to try to learn an L2. According to Cohen (1998, p.4), learning processes that a learner consciously selects are learning strategies and there must be
118 processes that the language learner is at least partially conscious of, although he or she does not need to give full attention to them.
2.2.2 The classification of pronunciation learning strategies
Many scholars have contributed to language research field in the classification of language learning strategies. Rubin (1989) differentiates between strategies contributing to language learning directly and those contributing to language learning indirectly. Three types of language learning strategies he identifies are learning strategies, communication strategies, and social strategies. O’Malley and Chamot (1990) conduct a language learning strategies research that provides a theoretical background to the majority language learning strategy research in the 1980s.
They classify language learning strategies into three categories which are metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, and social strategies.
Peterson, whose work is considered as one of the earliest in the classification of pronunciation learning strategies, states, “The study is perhaps the first focusing solely on learning strategies as they relate to pronunciation learning” (2000). From an examination of some previous studies, she documented a list of 22 specific pronunciation learning tactics. Later, she conducted her own study on 11 students from Spanish classes at Ohio State University. The study uncovered 21 specific tactics that had yet been documented before as pertaining specifically to pronunciation learning. Together with tactics mentioned in literature review, she thus documented 12 pronunciation learning strategies emerged out of 43 tactics.
Peterson’s pronunciation learning strategy classification relies heavily on Oxford (1990) as she states “the principal outcomes expected are to increase the range of documented pronunciation learning tactics used by adult foreign language students and to classify these, along with pronunciation learning tactics from the literature review, into meaningful strategies according to Oxford’s (1990) strategy classification scheme.” (p.7). She also states that several of the pronunciation learning strategies are identical to general language learning strategies as she explains “pronunciation learning strategies may be regarded as a subset of language learning strategies” (p.7). Her work is extremely important because of it being the only study ever done to investigate into learning strategies and classify them.
Osburne (2003) has proposed seven pronunciation learning strategies including memory and imitation, paralanguage, individual words, global articulatory gesture, prosody and individual sounds. Eckstein (2007) proposes a detailed taxonomy of pronunciation learning strategies based on Kolb’s (1984) learning construct. There were 28 documented pronunciation learning strategies which were linked to four stages of pronunciation acquisition and one additional category added, namely motivation.
2.2.3 Pronunciation learning strategies used by successful language learners
According to Ellis (1997a, p.134), being aware of how good language learners try to learn can help researchers find out which strategies are useful. Szyszka’s (2015) work seems to be the first one investigating how good language learners learn their English pronunciation. Sixty-one participants were asked to respond to a research questionnaire, there were 28 higher education teachers and scholars specializing in English phonetics and phonology, who were defined as good pronunciation users, and 33 EFL students, viewed as average pronunciation learners. The results show that good pronunciation users most frequently used tactics such as listening to tapes, television, movies or music a lot, talking aloud or silently to oneself in English, imitating native
119 speakers, concentrating intensely on pronunciation while speaking, seeking opportunities to talk with others in English, noticing different English dialects or varieties, mentally rehearsing how to say something before speaking, and asking someone else to correct one’s pronunciation. Moreover, the findings suggest that good language learners used a broader range of strategies and they mostly agreed that strategies for learning pronunciation contribute to English pronunciation learning process. The findings also support the claim that there is a significant need to raise the awareness of applying useful pronunciation learning strategies in language learning.
2.2.4 Previous studies of pronunciation learning strategies
A recent study on pronunciation learning strategies is of Rokoszewska (2012), who investigated pronunciation learning strategies used by first-year students of an English department who had completed their pronunciation course without any strategy-based instruction. The aim of this study was to investigate if there is any positive relationship between the students’ use of pronunciation learning strategies and their learning of English pronunciation, particularly English vowels. The study indicated that the students seemed to rely much on cognitive tactics, such as reading aloud, sounding out words, and working out words’ phonetic transcription, which were indirectly taught through different formal activities during their classes. In addition, the study revealed a positive relationship between pronunciation learning strategies and the production of English vowels and suggested that the students might benefit from strategies-based instruction as part of their pronunciation course.
Erbay, Kayaoglu, and Onay (2016) conducted a qualitative case study which aimed to find out the strategies employed by 56 participants in a middle-sized university in Turkey. The findings showed that cognitive, metacognitive, and memory strategies were employed more frequently than social, compensation, and affective ones which seemed to be underused. The finding analysis also revealed that the participants used a wide variety of tactics in their pronunciation learning.
Akyol (2012) conducted a study attempting to gain some preliminary insights on the pronunciation learning strategies and diverse tactics that help students learn to improve their pronunciation. Participants of this study tended to use social strategies to improve their English pronunciation with the mean score of 3.03. It was followed by memory (M=2.94), affective (M=2.89), compensation (M=2.88), metacognitive (M=2.88). Cognitive strategies were found to be the least frequently used strategies in general.
2.3 Conceptual framework
The researchers of the current study adapted Calka (2011) classification to conduct the study. However, some adjustment has been made to suit the subjects’ condition and their comprehensibility of given tactics. A survey questionnaire comprising 16 strategies, 36 tactics and one open-ended item which was designed as a main instrument to collect data in order to find the answer for the first research question was summarized in the following table:
Table 1: Adapted model employed in the current study (Calka, 2011) Pronunciation Learning
Strategies
16 sub strategies
Memory A. Representing sounds in memory
120 B. Rote learning
C. Reviewing well
Cognitive A. Practicing pronunciation
B. Receiving and sending messages on pronunciation
C. Analyzing and reasoning
D. Creating structure for input and output
Compensation A. Guessing intelligently
B. Overcoming limitations in pronunciation Metacognitive A. Centering one’s learning
B. Arranging and planning one’s learning C. Evaluate one’s learning
Affective A. Encouraging yourself
B. Taking one’s emotional temperature
Social A. Asking questions
B. Cooperating with others
In order to find the answer for the second research question, a list of factors affecting pronunciation learning were designed based on the theoretical background suggested by Tweedy (2012); Meng et al. (2009); Singer, (2006); Brown (2008); Rogerson-Revell (2011) and Kenworthy (1987).