A STUDY ON TEACHING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION FOR 12TH FORM STUDENDTS AT TO HIEU UPPER-SECONDARY SCHOOL IN SON LA

1 PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1. Rationale Up to now, English has become popular all over the world. It plays an important role in many fields; such as, business, commerce, technology, service, etc. Therefore, learning English is the need of not only a person but also everyone. It is a necessity in every country including Vietnam. In Vietnam, English has been taught as a compulsory subject in most of primary, secondary and upper – secondary schools. However, after a long time of learning English, many learners are not capable of communicating in English. One of the difficulties makes them unable to practice what they have learnt about this foreign language in their daily life is pronunciation. Most learners do not know how to speak with stress, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, etc correctly. Those are quite difficult for them to understand. Moreover, as we can see, pronunciation is an integral part of language learning and teaching. Seidlhofer (1995: 12) states: ‘Pronunciation is never an end in itself but a means of negotiating meaning in discourse, embedded in specific sociocultural and interpersonal contexts’. So, the importance of pronunciation in teaching and learning English should be correctly aware of by both teachers and learners, because it is very frustrating for the learners who may have a good command of grammar and lexis but have difficulty in understanding and being understood by a native speaker. At To Hieu upper-secondary school, pronunciation seems still to be an ‘orphan’ of English teaching and learning process. There are a lot of difficulties that teachers as well as students are facing in pronunciation teaching and learning, especially with the new English 12 textbook. In order to help students improve their pronunciation ability and suggest teachers some activities and techniques to teach pronunciation more effectively, I would like to do a research 2 named ‘A study on teaching English pronunciation for 12th form students at To Hieu upper – secondary school in Son La city’. The reasons for the choice of this research are: • The new English 12 textbook has just been used this year. • Teaching English pronunciation is both complicated and difficult for learners and teachers. I do hope that this research will bring benefits to those who want to learn and teach English effectively. 1.2. Hypothesis Teachers may deal with lots of difficulties related to the new English 12 textbook, and students’ poor pronunciation may be because of being effected by many factors; such as the lack of motivation and interest, the teachers’ method of teaching, etc. Thus, this research will help teachers at To Hieu upper – secondary school teach pronunciation effectively and students here learn English better. 1.3. Objectives of the research The objectives of the research are: • To identify the present condition, the real status of teaching and learning English pronunciation, and the attitudes of teachers and the 12th form students towards pronunciation at To Hieu upper – secondary school • To suggest some activities for teaching English pronunciation of teachers at To Hieu upper – secondary school. 1.4. Research questions The study aims at finding out the answers for the following questions: • What are the present condition, the real status of teaching and learning English pronunciation, and the attitudes of both teachers and the 12th form students towards pronunciation at To Hieu upper – secondary school? • What are useful activities to help teachers at To Hieu upper – secondary school teach English pronunciation effectively? 3 1.5. Methods of the study In order to carry out this dissertation, many methods have been applied. • Document analysis: identifying the textbook English 12 – the newest published one – to study how pronunciation part is desired and collecting the materials relating to the topic of the research; such as, pronunciation books, information from web pages, etc. • Questionnaire: questionnaires are for the 12th form students at To Hieu upper – secondary school. • Interview: Teachers and students were directly interviewed for their opinions about pronunciation. • Classroom observation. 1.6. Scope of the study This dissertation focuses on how to teach English pronunciation for the 12th form students at To Hieu upper – secondary school, and gives out some useful activities which can help teachers teach and learn English pronunciation effectively. 1.7. Overview of the study The research is organized into three parts: The first part is the introduction of the research. The second one is the study that includes three chapters. In the chapter 1 the literature review is mentioned; in the chapter 2 the author describes the methodology and major findings; and chapter 3 is about solutions. The last part is the conclusion of the research. PART 2: THE STUDY 4 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1. The definition of pronunciation There are various definitions of pronunciation. In Advanced learner’s Dictionary Oxford (1995), pronunciation is defined as the way in which the language is spoken, the way in which a word is pronounced and the way a person speaks the words of the language. From yourdictionary.com, 1. The act of manner of pronouncing syllables, words and phrases with regard to the pronunciation of sounds and placing of stress, intonation, etc. 2. Any of accepted or standard ways of pronouncing a word, etc. 3. The transcription in symbols of such a way of pronouncing a word, etc. According to Wikipedia.com, pronunciation is the act of uttering with articulation; the act of giving the proper sound and accent; utterance, as the pronunciation of syllables of words, distinct or indistinct pronunciation. Hacker (2007) also states that there are three levels of English pronunciation: • Level 1: People often do not understand what you want to say and use wrong sounds in English words. • Level 2: People understand what you want to say, but it is unpleasant to listen. • Level 3: People understand you and your English is pleasant to listen to. We can see clearly from three levels above that level 3 is considered as a good pronunciation. Candlin & Windowson (1994: 3) define pronunciation as the production of significant sound as follow: First, sound is significant because it is used to as part of a code of a particular language. So we can talk about the distinctive sounds of English, French and other languages. In this case, we can talk about pronunciation and reception of sounds of speech. Second, sound is significant because it is used to achieve meaning in contexts of use. Here the code combines with other factors to make communication possible. In this case, we can talk about pronunciation with reference to act of speaking. Those definitions above similarly mention the characteristics of pronunciation; such as the act of manner of pronouncing sounds, the description of symbols, or the lever of sounds (as Hacker mentioned), etc. Substantially, it is 5 pronunciation that is the significance of sound by which people can communicate with each other in different contexts. Therefore, the definition of pronunciation, which Candlin &Windowson inferred, seems to be the clearest and the most enough one. Thus, to be able to speak English of course includes a number of skills involving vocabulary, grammar, pragmatics, etc, and the most important one is pronunciation. Without pronunciation, it is very difficult for people to understand the accuracy of spoken language. So, ‘pronunciation is the aspect that the speaker is judged by others and they are assessed in other skills’ (Fraser, 2000). 1.2. The main features of pronunciation There are two main features of pronunciation: segmental and suprasegmental features. 1.2.1. Segmental features In any language, we can identify a small number of regularly used sounds (vowels and consonants) that we call phonemes. Phonemes are different sounds within a language. Although there are slight differences in individuals articulate sounds, we can still describe reasonable accurately how each sound is produced. When considering meaning, we see how using one sound rather than another can change the meaning of the word. It is this principle that gives us the total number of phonemes in a particular language. For example, the word ‘cat’ has the phonemes /kæt/. If we change the middle phoneme, we get a different word; such as, ‘cut’ /k۸t/ or ‘coat’ /kəƱt/, etc. According to Kelly (2000: 2), sound may be voiced or unvoiced (voiceless). Voiced sound occurs when the vocal cords in the larynx are vibrated. It is easy to tell whether a sound is voiced or not by placing one or two fingers on your Adam’s apple. If you are producing a voiced sound, you will feel vibration, if you are producing an unvoiced sound, you will not. Therefore, ... - tailieumienphi.vn