Đề tài An Action Research on the Use of Continuous Feedback to Improve the First Year Students’ English Pronunciation at the English Department, College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale The trend of globalization in every field all over the world has given foreign languages in general and English in particular a greater role than ever before. As English is largely used in international settings, the ability to communicate in real-life situations is very important. Therefore, speaking plays an essential role because without it, communication cannot take place directly between people. Dealing with how to improve speaking skills, learners face the problem of pronunciation. A consideration number of learners’ pronunciation errors and how they inhibit successful communication is a good reason for the justification of why it is important to teach pronunciation to learners. There is a great number of books relating to the teaching of English pronunciation, most of which refer to specific exercises to help students achieve better pronunciation. However, in my experience as a teacher of English for three years, I have witnessed many cases in which students are able to do pronunciation exercises, but fail to have proper pronunciation in their real-life speaking. Thus, a good mark in doing pronunciation exercises in written form does not accompany good pronunciation. In my opinion, the problem lies in the fact that students do not receive adequate feedback from the teacher on their pronunciation performance. Some students even do not know how to form certain sounds in English. Therefore, it is impossible for them to have genuine production of sounds and sentences. Despite this, little can be done about this due to a vast number of factors, the most serious of which is the high student-teacher ratio in Vietnamese universities, which is about 25 to one (at universities in which English is a major). The teachers hardly have enough time to pay attention and give correction to every student’ speaking performance in general and pronunciation in particular. As a result, students are unable to identify their weak aspects. All of these motivated me to conduct an action research on the use of continuous feedback with the aim at improving the first year students’ English pronunciation. 1.2 Statement of the problem As a teacher at the English Department, College of Foreign Languages, Hanoi National University, I have realized the fact that the first-year students have a lot of problems concerning their pronunciation. It is true that they speak English in all English classes (twelve periods a week) and teachers are alert to help them with their pronunciation problems. However, after a year of learning, their pronunciation doesn’t seem to improve much, not to mention the fact that their frequent mistakes are maintained as the first day they enter the university. This reflects the fact that the present teaching and learning of English pronunciation is not very effective. As O’Connor (2002) stated, “clear, concise feedback matched to standards will promote student achievement”, feedback plays a very important role in the teaching of any foreign language skill because without it, students would have a vague picture of what they are really weak at and what they need to improve. As for pronunciation, feedback is even more important. This is because only when students are adequately informed about their particular pronunciation problems, and helped to make genuine sounds before moving on the more complex issues of pronunciation such as intonation or elision, can they focus more on what their personal problems are and invest more time and effort to improve them. Generally, learners of English are required to have intelligible pronunciation. However, for students at the English Department, College of Foreign Languages, Hanoi National University, the aim of English pronunciation cannot be limited to that point. It is obvious that most of these students are becoming teachers of English in the future. Therefore, their English pronunciation must go far beyond the “accepted level”, as they are going to teach English for the coming generations of the country. After finishing the four-year curriculum, it is expected that their pronunciation would be native-like or near native-like. Therefore, it is essential that the issue of English pronunciation must be raised at the very first time the students enter the college. These first year students should be taught how to achieve relatively correct pronunciation, regarding certain aspects of it. This is to lay a foundation for better pronunciation competence in the next three years. In addition, if students are not provided with adequate feedback on their pronunciation, the mistakes they make may be fossilized and it will take a very long time to correct them later. Those are the main reasons why I would like to propose An Action Research on the Use of Continuous Feedback to Improve the First Year Students’ English Pronunciation at the English Department, College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi to be the topic of my thesis. 1.3 Purposes of the study This research was designed to improve the students’ pronunciation performance by using continuous feedback. Generally, it has three purposes: - To find possible explanations for the weak pronunciation competence of the students - To investigate pronunciation problems among first year students of English at the English Department, College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi . However, due to the limitation of time, the researcher only focused on English consonant sounds. - To justify the effect of continuous feedback on students’ pronunciation. 1.4 Research questions With the above purposes, the research questions are: 1. What are the possible reasons that lead to students’ weak pronunciation of English? 2. What are the students’ most common problems regarding English consonant sounds? 3. Can continuous feedback improve students’ English pronunciation? If yes, to what extend? 1.5 Scope of the study The research was conducted on the first year students at the English Department of CFL, VNU. Regarding its scope, the research was only aimed at justifying the effect of continuous feedback on the students’ pronunciation of English consonant sounds. Other aspects of English pronunciation would not be investigated. Even though the researcher made use of speaking tests as an important instrument for the research, only issues concerning the students’ pronunciation of consonant sounds were taken into consideration. 1.6 Research method The method employed in this study is an action research, with the use of a number of instruments, namely observation, questionnaires, speaking tests and interviews. Action research has proved to be the best choice for this study because the study was aimed at improving the students’ pronunciation within a certain context. The combination of different instruments used in this research would help to gain reliable data and help the researcher have a close investigation into the problems that the students were having. 1.7 Significance of the study Even though pronunciation is troublesome for most English learners, it is surprising that there is not much investigation into this problem. This research provides an insight into the common pronunciation problems that most of the Vietnamese students who are studying English as their major encounter regarding English consonant sounds. In addition, it suggests a new way which is very learner-centered to help students improve their pronunciation. The results of the research will be, therefore, much beneficial to both teachers and students of English. 1.8 Design of the study The study is divided into five chapters as follows: Chapter one presents an overview of the study in which the rationale for the research, the research problem, the purposes, the research questions, the scope of the study, the research method, the significance of the study, as well as the design of the study were briefly presented. Chapter two reviews the literature relevant to the study, including the definition of feedback, as well as an overview on the techniques that have been common used to teach pronunciation. These lay the foundation for the choice of the medium for the research. More specifically, it presents a number of research in which feedback has been used to help students make improvement in their language study. Chapter three is a detailed discussion of the method used in the study. This chapter presents a thorough justification for the use of continuous feedback and action research. It also gives a thorough description of the research’s components, as well as the research program. Chapter four presents the findings of the study. This part is apparently important because it justifies the effectiveness of the research. Chapter five discusses the findings of the study, provides pedagogical implications, as well as presents limitations of the research. It also makes recommendations for further research in the same field. CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Pronunciation teaching and learning 2.1.1 The importance of teaching and learning pronunciation According to Kelly (2000: 11), it is vital for a language learner to have good pronunciation of that language. However, pronunciation competence does not go with the mastery of grammar rules or a good lexis command. Some learners may have already acquired a considerable amount of grammar and vocabulary, but still fail to communicate effectively due to their weak pronunciation. A learner who mispronounces a variety of words would cause great difficulties for a speaker of that language to understand, which is a frustrating experience. Therefore, it can be concluded that pronunciation plays a vital role in learner’s speaking ability. Only when a learner is competent in pronunciation can his speaking skills are acclaimed. In addition to that, bad pronunciation inevitably has negative effect on the learner’s listening ability. When a learner has already been accustomed to the wrong way of pronouncing particular language sounds and utterances, it is unlikely that s/he will be able to recognize the authentic pronunciation by native speakers. There are many cases in which learners are asked to listen to a familiar expression by native speakers with the use of mainly common words. However, they fail to interpret it because they find its pronunciation totally different from the way they are used to speaking or listening in their daily communication. As a result, they cannot understand what the speakers mean. Moreover, it is obvious that good pronunciation serves as a strong motivation for language learners. Most language learners show considerable enthusiasm for pronunciation as they consider it a good way to show that they are competent of the language. Once they have obtained adequate pronunciation competence, they gradually build up strong confidence for themselves and are ready to learn new things without hesitation. 2.1.2 Approaches and methods in pronunciation teaching The history and scope of pronunciation teaching are revised in Teaching Pronunciation (Celce-Murcia. M, et al, 1996: 2). According to the authors, there are two general approaches to the teaching of pronunciation in the modern times, namely intuitive-imitative approach and analytic-linguistic approach. An intuitive-imitative approach depends on “the learners’ ability to listen to and imitate the rhythms and sounds of the target language without the intervention of any explicit information.” This means the teaching of pronunciation depends largely on the teacher’s turning on and rewinding a cassette player (or any other instrument), and the main activities in the class are listening and repeating. Of course, in order to do this, there must be the supply of authentic materials as well as recording devices to use during the lesson. The teacher has no responsibility to explain how sounds are formed or produced. Learners do their main task of listening and imitating, and it is expected that they will gradually gain pronunciation competence. An analytic-linguistic approach “utilizes information and tools such as a phonetic alphabet, articulatory descriptions, charts of the vocal apparatus and other aids to supplement listening, imitation, and production.” In this approach, learners are given explanation as well as training on how to form particular sounds of the target language. This approach is actually a further development of the first approach rather than to replace it because is still makes great use of authentic materials, as well as listening and imitating phases during the lessons. Regarding methods of language teaching in general and their philosophy of pronunciation teaching in particular, it can be seen clearly that each method puts a different weight on pronunciation, and therefore, treats pronunciation differently. Some methods, such as Grammar Translation or Reading-based approaches, give no acknowledge to pronunciation. The teacher use learners’ native language to teach grammar or text comprehension. Thus, little attention is given to speaking, and almost none to pronunciation. However, most methods give a genuine concern for the teaching of pronunciation. The appearance of a method often brings about new approaches towards the teaching of particular issues, most of which are affected by the time they come into being. In Direct Method, which first became popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the teacher provides learners with a model for native-like speech. This can either be the teacher himself or a recording. By listening and then imitating the model excessively, learners gradually develop their pronunciation. Some successors to this method are called naturalistic methods, which mean methods that devote a period of learning solely to listening before speaking is allowed. Linguists following this method believe that when learners are asked to listen without having to worry about speaking, they are better at recognizing the sounds because they are under less pressure. Thus, it is likely that they will be able to produce correct sounds even without receiving explicit pronunciation instruction. Other methods, namely Audiolingualism in the US and the Oral Approach in Britain during the 1940s and 1950s have another way to treat pronunciation. In the class, pronunciation is very important and is taught explicitly from the start. The teacher (or a recording) models a sound, or an utterance and students are asked to repeat it. The difference between Audiolingualism and Direct Method lies in the feature that in Audiolingualism class, beside the model, the teacher also takes advantage of a number of teaching aids such as phonetic description, or the transcription system. The most common technique that is used to teach pronunciation is the minimal pair drills. Learners are asked to distinguish between two different sounds that might sound similar by listening to the teacher or a tape recorder. This listening discrimination is followed by oral practice. During the 1970s, the Silent Way came to public attention. In classes applying this method, accurate pronunciation is a focus from the very beginning. The teacher speaks as little as possible, but takes advantage of gestures to indicate what the students should do. S/he can do this with the aid of a number of tools such as a sound-colour chart, the Fidel charts, word charts, and colored rods. Another method that also came into being during the 1970s was the Community Language Learning (CLL). This is a method which focuses much on the learners rather than the teacher or teaching curriculum. A tape recorder is an indispensable tool in this class. Students sit round a table, and then ask the teacher to translate any utterances they wish to be able to speak in the target language. The teacher then provides students with the phrase they need orally. After some time of practicing its pronunciation, when students can produce the whole utterance fluently, it is recorded on the tape. After that, the tape is played back and the students are able to compare their pronunciation with the target one provided by the teacher. It is the students who decide what particular utterances they would like to be trained pronunciation. The teacher is regarded as a “computer” turning on and off at the students’ request. Today, the dominant teaching approach has been the Communicative Approach. Under this approach, the main objective of language is communication. Therefore, students are not required to have a native-like pronunciation, but intelligible one. This is a kind of “accepted pronunciation”, which means students may make some mistakes provided those mistakes do not affect negatively on the comprehension of the listeners or cause misunderstanding. How can learners achieve good pronunciation? This has been done by a number of techniques with the aids of both traditional and modern materials, either authentic or non-authentic. 2.1.3 Research into the techniques used in teaching pronunciation To date, teachers make use of a great deal of techniques to teach pronunciation. Pronunciation may be taught in isolation or in combination with language skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing. We would like to mention some common techniques proposed by Celce, et al (1996: 8) and Kelly (2000: 16). * Listen and imitate: The pronunciation of the target language is provided by the teacher or tape recorders, language labs, etc. Students are to listen to a sequence of sounds or sentences and repeat it. This not only helps students achieve better pronunciation, but remember new items more easily as well. This technique usually takes two forms, which are either all-class or individual (Kelly, 2000: 16). These two forms are actually the two phases of the same technique. Normally, at first, the whole class repeats after certain sounds and phrases. After a certain amount of class-drilling, individual student take turns and pronounce those items on his/her own. * Phonetic training: This technique makes use of articulatory descriptions, articulatory diagrams and a phonetic alphabet. Learners are provided with basic theoretical knowledge about how sounds are formed. They are also aided by the teacher to make genuine sound production. However, this kind of technique is not supposed to teach to too young learners as it is unlikely that they are able to comprehend such a complicated matter. * Minimal pair drills: These relate to words which differ by only one phoneme. Normally, learners are allowed to listen to the tape and distinguish between the two sounds. This type of activities is particularly useful to teach sounds which cause difficulties for learners or sounds that are easily mismatched. After listening, learners are asked to produce the sounds themselves. * Contextualized minimal pairs: When minimal pair drills seem a bit boring and too theoretical with separated sounds, their contextualization compensates for this weakness. The sentence stem serves as a basis for students to produce appropriate responses with correct pronunciation. When words are put in sentences, it seems to be more useful than the vague minimal pairs because it is more practical. * Tongue twisters: When other techniques look serious and sometimes put learners under much pressure, tongue twisters provide a more delighting way to learn pronunciation. Sounds which are difficult to differentiate are put together to make meaningful sentences. This technique rooted from speech correction strategies for native speakers. One of the most typical examples for this technique is the sentence, “She sells seashells by the seashore.” * Practice of vowel shifts and stress shifts related by affixation: This is a useful technique in which students are taught how stress and vowel shift by affixation. Many learners have the habit of pronounce a new-formed word according to the pronunciation of the root one. For example, they tend to pronounce the sounds of Exhibition like the sound of Exhibit. With the help of the teacher, learners are more aware of some rules for shifting stress and vowels, as well as are more aware that they should check first before making any generalization relating to word formation’s pronunciation. * Reading aloud/recitation: Students are provided with a passage or scripts and then read aloud, focusing on stress, timing and intonation. This activity is often done with texts such as poems, rhymes, song lyrics, etc. It is true that reading aloud is not popular in English class today, due to the fact that it can have negative effect on students’ pronunciation. The spelling of words can affect pronunciation adversely. However, according to Kelly (2000: 22), reading aloud provides a good chance for students to realize the linking between spelling and pronunciation. Moreover, it provides a vivid example of how stress and intonation are related, as well as the importance of linking sounds between words in connected speech. * Recordings of learners’ production: Students are asked to record their reading over a passage or their spontaneous speech in a tape recorder. Then, the tape is played back so that the students can get feedback from the teacher and have self-evaluation. This activity is time consuming. However, it gives a true reflection of how learners are making progress in their pronunciation. The learners’ mistakes can be easily identified, so that learners know what aspects of pronunciation to focus for improvement. 2.2 Problems in pronunciation teaching Inevitably, when teaching pronunciation to students, teachers have to encounter a lot of problems. These may not only come from the nature of pronunciation itself, but from various subjective and objective factors. In the following part, we exploit some important issues that teachers have to pay attention to when teaching pronunciation. 2.2.1 Aspects of pronunciation The question of “What is pronunciation?” has been answered by a number of different definitions. Generally speaking, pronunciation is simply defined as “the way in which a language is spoken” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Encyclopedic, 1992: 718). According to Jones (1998:5), pronunciation is “the way in which people pronounce words.” Pronunciation is a complicated concept that involves many aspects. Generally, it can be broken into the following components: 1/ Vowel sounds and consonant sounds The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning "uttering voice" or "speaking". Vowels usually form the peak or nucleus of a syllable, whereas consonants form the onset and coda. Vowels can be defined as “sounds in the production of which there is no obstruction to the flow of air as it passes the larynx to the lips” (Roach, 2000:10). According to Roach (1998), vowels can be classified in terms of: (1) The height of the bulk of the tongue in the mouth (2) The front/back position of the tongue in the mouth (3) The degree of lip-rounding (4) The length of vowels (Roach, 1998: 13-14) As for consonant sounds, Roach (2000:10) defined them as “sounds in which there is obstruction to the flow of air as it passes the larynx to the lips.” As consonant sounds were the main issue of this research, we would like to propose the classification of English consonant sounds in Table 1 below. Table 1: English consonant sounds Bilabial Labio dental Dental Alveolar Palato-alveolar Palatal Velar Glotal Plosive + b - p + d - t + g - k Fricative + v + ð + z - s + ʒ - ∫ - h Affricate + f - θ + dʒ - t∫ Nasal + m + n + ŋ Lateral + l Approximant + w + r + j Note: + is for voiced sounds - is for voiceless sounds 2/ Word stress and sentence rhythm According to Randolph Quirk and Sidney Greenbaun (1973: 450), stress is the prominence with which one part of a word or of a longer utterance is distinguished from other parts. For example, the word Domination‘s stress is on the third syllables, whereas the word Where and been can be considered to be the stressed words in the question: Where have you been? Rhythm is the pattern formed by the stresses perceived as peaks of prominence or beats, occurring at somewhat regular intervals of time, the recurring beats being regarded as completing a cycle or “measure”. It is characterized by the alternation of strong and weak syllables. Kenworthy (1987: 30) claimed that rhythm is a product of word stress and the way in which important items are foregrounded through their occurrence on a strong beat, and unimportant items are backgrounded by their occurrence on a weak beat. English is a language with a tendency for “stress-timed” rhythm. Therefore, when speaking English, the time interval between the peaks of an utterance is normally the same. For example, the rhythm of the sentence “What did you do at school today?” can be marked like this: ‘What did you ‘do at ‘school to’day? 3/ Intonation Intonation is an important part that most teachers have to deal with when teaching connected speech. According to Kelly (2000: 86), intonation refers to the way the voice goes up and down in pitch when we are speaking. It plays a vital role in helping people express their opinions, as well as understanding thoughts of others. Intonation is such a sensitive issue that it involves practice rather than theory. Therefore, it is always necessary to have a certain context to decide what words to stress and how to raise a specific part of an utterance. Learners have to be made fully aware of the fact that despite how correct their grammar is, their wrong intonation may cause misinterpretation to the listeners. In addition, one sentence’s meaning can be altered by different types of intonation a speaker uses. Thus, learners should be taught how to achieve sensible intonation so as not to let it interfere with the meaning of what they really want to say. However, it is not an easy task to teach intonation to learners as it is largely affected by a number of factors, among which one of the most important factors is the learners’ competence of language. If a learner is unable to find an appropriate word in time due to his lack of vocabulary, then he cannot have a smooth intonation. This results from the fact that he will have to spend a certain amount of time to think of a particular word. 4/ Other aspects of connected speech The master of pronouncing English sounds is not enough to achieve good pronunciation as it is a complicated issue. Apart from the individual sounds, learners have to be competent on the use of intonation and a vast number of other aspects relating to connected speech. If English is spoken in a very careful and slow way, such as when delivering a speech, or having a lecture, these aspects do not appear much. They are most used in casual and rapid, everyday speech. That is the reason why it is much more difficult to teach learners these aspects in the class, where the environment for listening to authentic communication is limited. * Assimilation Kelly (2000) defines assimilation as the modification of sounds on each other when they meet, usually across word boundaries, but can also within words. Assimilation is said to be progressive when a sound influences a following sound, or regressive when a sound influences one which precedes it. In other words, this means in the preparation steps for pronouncing a coming sound, the previous sound is often altered. It is not pronounced in full, but only partly. That is the reason why as stated before, assimilation does not receive attention in careful speech, when utterances are spoken at a very slow speed. * Elision The term elision means “the disappearance of a sound” (Kelly, 2000: 110). This phenomenon, once again, usually refers to rapid speech rather than careful one. In saying an utterance, some sounds are deleted due to the fast speed and also due to the economy of effort, when people do not want to try hard in pronouncing every single sound. In addition, it would be impossible to maintain a regular rhythm and speed if speakers are to put certain consonant sounds together. * Linking and intrusion Normally, when a word is finished with a consonant and is followed by another word with a preceding vowel, the final consonant of the first word will join with the first vowel of the second one. Example 1: You must be quiet and mysterious. (no linking) Example 2: You must end telephone conversation first. (linking between /t/ and /e/: /tend/) 2.2.2 Class setting Class setting poses lots of problems relating to pronunciation teaching. Firstly, the class size is often too big for the teaching of pronunciation. Even in universities of foreign languages, the number of students in one class is normally from 22-27. With such a high student-teacher ratio, it is almost impossible to make sure that students are having proper pronunciation in speaking class, whereas pronunciation is not paid much attention in writing, reading or listening lessons. Besides, the quality of the teaching staff is also a big problem. Most teachers of English are non-native speakers, and few of them can have a native-like pronunciation. As a result, the language input that students receive every day is from non-native people. Therefore, it is impossible to require students to achieve perfect pronunciation when even the teachers are not perfect speakers. 2.2.3 What pronunciation model to teach? We cannot judge students’ pronunciation without regarding the model of pronunciation that we apply during the teaching process. According to Kelly (2000), in the past, the model for teaching English pronunciation was usually Received Pronunciation (RP), which is the pronunciation of people in the southeast England. Whereas other kinds of accent usually say something about the geographical regions, RP is different in the way that it is perceived as the accent that shows a person’s status and education. However, today, there are a vast number of English, such as American English, Australian English, etc. They are also employed in all fields of life. Even within countries where English is the native language, it has a great number of variables. Take the UK, for example, people in the North and in the South have different accents. Thus, it is vital to decide what model of English pronunciation to teach, and for what reasons the teacher makes such a decision. However, the truth is that the teacher himself is often unable to produce a “perfect” accent without being affected by his own language. Some teachers may modify their accents, but actually this can only be to some certain extend. Another troublesome problem is that one student is taught by many teachers, with different accent. In addition, each student may have his/her own preference due to some inner motivation. Some of them may want to study Australian English because they wish to study further in Australia, for example. Therefore, it is virtually impossible to state what is the “correct accent”, what is not. Normally, the teacher would allow the students to choose whatever accent they want to develop, provided that it is widely comprehensible. The teacher should teach the accent that they can use the best, and adequately inform students about the existence of other varieties. 2.2.4 Intelligibility Apart from identifying clearly the kind of pronunciation that will by employed and taught to students, another important issue that needs raising is the question of the pronunciation goal, i.e. the level of pronunciation required from the learners. Locke and Latham (1990) claims that human action is caused by purposes, and goals have to be set and pursued by choice so as for the action to take place. Without a clear goal in mind, people do not know what to work for. Another important issue relating to goals is that goals should be attainable, but not easy to achieve. This means approaching a goal must be a difficult process, so that people have to try hard. However, if it is an impossible goal, they will gradually lose motivation and do not want to continue the pursuit. As stated before, it is virtually impossible to require students to have a “perfect English pronunciation”, because this seems to be also impossible even for the teachers. Furthermore, what is considered to be “perfect” is of much controversy. Therefore, the aim of pronunciation cannot be the “perfect” one. With the prevalence of the communicative language teaching approach, whose target is communication, the most common goal for learners’ pronunciation is Intelligibility. Kenworthy (1987: 13) defines intelligibility as “being understood by a listener at a given time in a given situation”. In other words, although the foreign speaker doesn’t make precisely the same sound or use the exact feature of linking or stress, it is possible for the listener to match the sound heard with the sound (or feature) a native speaker would use without to much difficulty. Therefore, the matter is “counts of sameness”. However, pronunciation intelligibility is affected by a number of factors. It is actually affected by other aspects of speech. For example, if a person is not confident about what he is saying and has lots of hesitation, the utterances he produces will not be easy to be perceived, not to mention the fact that he won’t be able to achieve sensible intonation. Besides, familiarity with the speakers’ accent also affects the listener. This is the reason why Vietnamese teachers of English may find it easier to comprehend what Vietnamese learners say than the other speakers of English. It is also likely that learners will find it less difficult to listen to people from their country speak a foreign language, rather than those from other countries. For example, a Vietnamese learner will find listening to Vietnamese people speaking English much easier than Italian people speaking English. 2.3 Research into factors that affect pronunciation learning A vast number of researches have been carried out to find out and justify factors that may affect students’ pronunciation. These are briefly summarized in Teaching English Pronunciation by Joanne Kenworthy (1987). 1/ The native language It is inevitable that learners’ native language has a great impact on their ability of pronouncing English. The “foreign accent” is therefore easy to identify. Even in some cases, it is possible to identify what country and what region a speaker comes from based on his/her way of pronouncing English. Furthermore, the native language may cause difficulties, as well as advantages for learners. Take Vietnamese learners, for example, learning English may be easier than learning Chinese, because of the fact that both English and Vietnamese are Latin ones, whereas Chinese is a hieroglyphic language. However, some English sounds do not exist in Vietnamese such as /ʒ/, /∫/, /θ/, /ð/. Therefore, many Vietnamese learners are unable to produce those sounds correctly. 2/ The age factor It is often assumed that the younger a person starts learning foreign languages, the better he is at pronouncing it and therefore, a greater chance of having a native-like accent. Oyama (1976) conducted a research whose subjects were sixty male Italian-born immigrants. They were tape-recorded reading aloud a short paragraph and telling a story about a frightening episode in their lives (completely unprepared or rehearsed). Their pronunciation was judged by two experts based on a five point scale, ranging from “no foreign accent” to “heavy foreign accent”. The results showed that the younger a person was when he started learning English, the more native-like was his accent. Nevertheless, other researches showed opposite results. Snow and Hoefnagel-Hohle (1975) conducted a research which had two parts. The first part was a laboratory study in which 136 subjects (British English people who were learning Dutch as a second language in Holland) were asked to listen and imitate five Dutch words. The results showed that the two oldest groups of learners (eight 17-year-olds and seven 21-31-year-olds) had the highest achievement, whereas the youngest groups had the lowest scores (ten 5-year-olds and ten 6-year-olds). The second part was a long-term study in which the subjects were tested in much the same way at intervals during their first year of studying Dutch. This time, at first, older learners seemed to get better results. However, after four to five months, there seemed to be no significant age difference among the results of those subjects. Therefore, we can come to a conclusion that there is no trusted evidence relating to the relationship between age and a person’s ability to pronounce a new language. Even if the age factor is a problem, nothing can be done for the learners. It is the learners’ choice when to start learning a foreign language and therefore, virtually impossible for teachers to interfere. 3/ Amount of exposure People who live in the country where the target language is spoken and is surrounded by an English-speaking environment may have some advantages over some who do not. However, it is difficult to measure the exact amount of exposure to English. Some may use English at work, but use their own language at home. Some may live in the UK, but work for companies from other countries. Even if these people use English everyday, it is not an easy task to measure the length of time they use English, and it is even more complicated to decide what kind of English it is. It may be business English, or just informal English in the market. Furthermore, exposure is not the only important factor, but the way people take advantage to listen to and use English is also essential. Therefore, there is still no clear evidence that an English-speaking country is a necessary factor for a foreigner to have good English pronunciation. 4/ Phonetic ability Researches have shown that some people naturally have a “better ear” for foreign languages than others. They may benefit most from exercises such as imitating, drilling, or distinguishing sounds. Others may have more problems and find it difficult to be able to realize specific sounds. However, this is an innate matter, which means the teacher can do nothing about it. All the teacher should do is to provide a variety of exercises so that all learners can benefit. 5/ Attitude and identity Results from many studies have shown that learners who have a positive attitude towards speakers of a foreign language tend to have a more native-like pronunciation. This is due to the fact that when people like something, they are more likely to pay more attention to it. That brings benefits to learners who are really interested in not only the language, but also in the people and the culture of that language as well. In this case, the teacher may increase the learners’ positive attitude towards the foreign language by providing vivid information about that language’s culture, or making use of authentic materials to make the lessons more interesting. 6/ Motivation and concern for good pronunciation It is essential that in order to learn a language in general, and pronunciation in particular, motivation plays a vital role. If learners really care much about their pronunciation, they will become more careful with their speaking, and gradually build up good pronunciation competence. Moreover, it is the truth that many students have great concern for their pronunciation. They always seek for feedback from the teacher on how they speak. Sometimes, it is the fact that they feel unable to pronounce a word correctly that inhibits them from the desire to speak any more. 7/ The teacher’s role In teaching pronunciation, the teacher is expected to play an important role in guiding and helping learners. According to Kenworthy (1987: 1), the teacher has to perform the following roles: * Helping learners hear: The teacher has a mission to provide appropriate input of the target sounds for learners to hear. If such a provision is not available, learners are likely to have misconceptions about the target language and perceive the sounds in a wrong way. Thus, they will be unable to produce genuine sounds and utterances. * Helping learners make sounds: It is true that some English sounds do not exist in the learners’ mother tongue. Some learners may be able to imitate the target sounds if they are provided models. However, for those who lack such ability, it is the teacher’s task to explain the way those difficult sounds are made and provide aid to help learners produce correct sounds. * Providing feedback: Like any other aspect of teaching, feedback is very important in the sense that it helps learners know where they are standing, how much they have gained and what they need to improve. As for pronunciation, this is of vital importance because in many cases, learners may make overgeneralization about the way English is pronounced based on the way English words are spelt. Besides, learners may be unaware that they are persistently making the same pronunciation mistakes. The teacher must, therefore, provide necessary and appropriate feedback to learners. * Pointing out what is going on: In many cases, learners fail to realize what and how they are speaking. As speaking is for the most part unconsciously controlled, learners may sometimes make mistakes in the way they produce a particular sequence of sounds, or put stress in an incorrect place, leading to misunderstanding. It is the teacher’s role to specify the area that learners have to pay attention to so as not to cause miscomprehension. * Establishing priorities: Native-like pronunciation is not easy to achieve. Therefore, learners need a guide to tell them about what aspects they should master, what aspects they do not have to be “perfect”. Inevitably, when learning a foreign language, it is ideal if learners master every aspect of it. However, as this is somehow unrealistic, learners should learn to satisfy at an accepted level of those aspects which are not vital. The level at which learners can feel satisfied with depends on different situation for different individuals. * Devising activities: Teaching pronunciation is not an easy task. Therefore, the teacher must be able to identify what exercises will benefit learners most, what types of activities will engage the most learners in the class. In devising them, however, it should be kept in mind that certain activities are more suitable to some students than others. * Assessing progress: This is actually a form of feedback, but more official and has more weight. Learners need to know at what level they are in pronunciation. Tests allocated at appropriate times will serve as a strong motivation for students. When they look at their marks, they have a clear sense of how much they have gained. Judging learners’ pronunciation performance is very complicated. However, this should be done accordingly. 2.4 Research into the use of feedbacks and learners’ improvement 2.4.1 Definition of feedbacks As defined in Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (Richards et al: 137), feedback is “any information which provides a report on the result of behavior; for example, verbal or facial signals which listeners give to speakers to indicate that they understand what the speaker is saying.” In teaching, feedback is defined as “comments or information learner receive on the success of a learning task, either from the teacher or from other learners.” Feedback plays an essential role in any language learning and teaching environment. Without proper feedback from the teacher, learners would be at a loss of specifying their own position in the process of studying a foreign language. Davies (2000) stated that “Specific, descriptive feedback that focuses on success and points the way to improvement has a positive effect.” He also pointed out that the purpose of providing feedback is to “provide opportunities for the learner to make adjustments and improvements toward mastery of a specified standard.” A further investigation finds out that there are some kinds of feedback, also specified in the dictionary, namely auditory feedback, delayed auditory feedback and kinesthetic feedback. As for the purpose of the research, for the sake of improving the students’ pronunciation, we would like to present the first two ones. When a person speaks, they can hear what they are saying, and can use this information to monitor their speech and to correct any mistakes. This is called auditory feedback. This means this is a type of feedback that comes from the learners themselves, or we may call self-feedback. It is particularly common in speaking. When students make some mistakes, they discover it immediately after they speak. Then, they provide correction immediately. This type of feedback does not involve the role of the teacher. For example, one student says: “I would like a room for two nights /laits/.” She may discover that she has mispronounced night right at the time she speaks. Then, she can continue to say “I mean nights. /naits/” Another type of feedback which we find particularly effective in the teaching and learning of pronunciation is delayed auditory feedback. This is “a technique which shows how speakers depend on auditory feedback (i.e. hearing what have just said) when speaking. In studies of delayed auditory feedback, speakers wear earphones through which they hear what they have said, but after a short delay. The effect of this on speakers is that it is very difficult for them to speak normally.” It is commonly observed that students find it difficult to identify the mistakes made by themselves. It is the fact that we seem to discover mistakes made by other people rather than those made by our own. For example, in peer-checking lesson in a writing class, some students are very good at pointing out the mistakes made by their partners when they edit their partners’ writing versions. However, they themselves may make the same mistakes in their own writing drafts. This problem gets worse with speaking skill in general and pronunciation in particular. If one student makes mistakes in a writing draft, when the teacher or another student points them out, that student will be able to identify them immediately. However, it is totally different for speaking. When a student is making a presentation, for example, s/he seems to focus more on fluency (i.e. the ability to keep on speaking) rather than accuracy. It takes students time to think of what they are going to say. Finding words and phrases to express their thoughts is already a difficult task, so they may spend little time thinking of how precisely those expressions are used. Therefore, they may make a lot of pronunciation mistakes. However, if there is no recorder to show how the students were going with their presentation, it is sometimes difficult to persuade them that they actually made those mistakes. Thus, with the use of a recorder, it makes it easier for both teachers and students to identify mispronunciation. This will be very effective in serving as a background for further analysis, leading to further improvement. Another type of feedback which is widely used in almost any language classes for the teaching of any language skills is corrective feedback. It was defined by Lyster and Ranta (1997) as “the provision of negative or positive evidence upon erroneous utterances, which encourages learners’ repair involving accuracy and precision, and not merely comprehensibility.” This kind of feedback is mostly provided by the teachers and is normally given right after the students make any mistakes, particularly in speaking. However, to minimize the risk of making students lose confidence and at a loss of knowing what to say, some teachers may wait until the students have finished their speech to provide corrective feedback. Despite the inevitable importance of feedback, there have been very few researches focusing on the use of feedback to improve students’ performance. Most of the researches so far have been largely exploiting other aspects such as assessment or testing. Feedback seems to be ignored. This may be explainable for two reasons. First, feedback is something that teachers do everyday. It is the normal task of the teacher to provide feedback to his/her students. Therefore, maybe it is such a familiar concept that many people think does not worth looking at. The second reason may come from the fact that feedback is actually a very complicated concept. Despite its clear and evident meaning, there are various types of feedback, and the questions of which feedback types is the most suitable in a specific situation, or how should teachers provide feedback to students are not easy to answer. 2.4.2 Research into the use of corrective feedback The term corrective feedback is considered by some researchers to be rooted from the Output Hypothesis proposed by Swain (1985). When conducting a research in a class where school students learn French, she found out that despite the fact that the students hardly encountered any difficulties in understanding the teacher’s instructions in French, their production often lacked accuracy. Therefore, she came to a conclusion, which is the Output Hypothesis, that “comprehensive input alone does not improve learners’ language acquisition in terms of syntax,” and “the production of output in response to input is necessary for further language development.” She also argued that modified output is necessary for second language mastery. Furthermore, modified output could result from the ample opportunities for output and the provision of useful and consistent feedback from teachers and peers. More specifically, modified output can be a form of learner uptake, or learner reaction to corrective feedback given to learners’ error. Therefore, corrective feedback can be regarded as “a pedagogical means of offering modified input to students, which could consequently lead to modified output by the students.” Following this research, Long (1985) clarified the relationship between input, teacher-learner interaction and acquisition as follows: interactional modification makes input comprehensible comprehensible input promotes acquisition interactional modification promotes acquisition Another theory which served as a basic ground for the discussion of the significance of using corrective feedback was proposed by White (1987, 1989). She argued that if second language learners aim at achieving native-like proficiency, it is necessary that there must be a provision of negative evidence, which is information about what is ungrammatical. This is particularly essential when learners seem to over-generalize rules in their first language to produce the second language. Therefore, it is of vital importance that learners should be pointed out what is wrong in their original utterances so as to build up better output. A later issue that is worth looking into is the question of how error treatment should be given, as well as whether learners’ errors should be corrected at all. Spada and Lightbown (1993) conducted an experimental research to justify the effect of corrective feedback in combination with form-focused instructional materials on ESL learners whose native language was French. Despite positive effects observed, there was not enough evidence to come to a conclusion whether error correction alone was effective because in the experiment, it was provided together with intensive form-focused instruction. A significant research aiming at finding out the effectiveness of error correction alone was done by DeKeyser (1993). He conducted an experimental research for over one school-year on Belgium high school students who learnt French as a second language. The research was designed to investigate whether error correction could improve the students’ grammatical use. Simultaneously, DeKeyser collected data on the students’ language learning aptitude, motivation and class anxiety. The results of the research did not reveal significant improvement in students’ grammar proficiency. However, it did show an association between error correction and learner variables, such as motivation and anxiety levels. Thus, the researcher came to a conclusion that there may be interaction between the effectiveness of corrective feedback and learner characteristics. Apart from all of these, it is also of vital importance to look at the issue of how often and to what degree learners perceive corrective feedback from the teacher. Mackey et al. (2000) made an interesting discovery after conducting a research over 17 non-native speakers. According to the results, learners were more accurate in perceiving lexical, semantic and phonological feedback, but they were less accurate in perceiving morphosyntactic one. They also found that morphosyntactic errors were mostly received recasts, whereas negotiation of form (elicitation, clarification request, repetition of the error, and metalinguistic feedback) mostly occurred in response to phonological errors. Therefore, they pointed out that there was a relationship between learner errors’ types and feedback types, and between feedback types and learner perception. From the literature review, we can see that despite the fact that feedback plays a vital role in the learning of a second language, there is still not enough persuasive research evidence to justify its effect on the students’ performance. As for pronunciation, the effect of feedback has not been adequately exploited. This, once again, motivated us to carry out a research on it. CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY In the following part, the researcher provides a detailed description of the research’s methodology. Firstly, we present the argument for the choice of applying feedback to improve students’ pronunciation and the justification for the use of an action research. 3.1 Argument for the use of continuous feedback to improve first year students’ English pronunciation First and foremost, we would like to justify the reasons for our decision to use continuous feedback to help first year students of English improve their pronunciation, although the literature review shows that there is little research carried out in this field so far. 3.1.1 A further analysis on factors that can help improve learners’ pronunciation As can be seen clearly from the analysis of the factors that affect learners’ pronunciation (see 2.3), as well as the teacher’s role in helping learners achieve better pronunciation, the question that should be raised now is: “Which of those factors can teaching and training have impact on?” If an appropriate answer can be found, we can utilize them to help students gain better pronunciation. When we examined the factors again, it is evident that some factors cannot be changed, such as the age factor, the native language, and the phonetic ability of the students. These are the factors that no alternations can be made. The teacher also seems unable to increase the amount of exposure for learners due to the fact that English classes only take place over a certain limit length of time in a day and in a week. Moreover, the teacher cannot be sure whether learners have a chance to use it outside the class, as well as whether they want to do it or not. As for learners’ attitude toward the foreign language, the teacher can stimulate it by providing more authentic materials so as to raise learners’ love for it. However, this is often done only to some extend due to the fact that some learners may not be interested in such provision. In short, these factors are somehow out of the teacher’s control. However, there is one factor that clearly can be improved so as to bring the most benefits to learners, which are motivation and concern for good pronunciation. According to Kenworthy (1987), the teacher can do this in three ways. Firstly, it is vital that learners are persuaded how importance pronunciation is for good communication. Secondly, it must be clearly stated that “native-like” accent is not the pronunciation goal. Learners can be satisfied with the ability of pronouncing a language “intelligibly” with communicative efficiency. Lastly, the teacher has to show his great concern for learners’ pronunciation and their progress in it. From the researcher’s own experience, most students are very concerned about their pronunciation. This comes from the fact that they find themselves more confident when they are able to speak “like a native person”. In addition, when they do not have to worry about making mistakes when pronouncing English, they can concentrate on finding more effective ways to express their ideas. However, despite this fact, students do not seem to spend adequate amount of time practising pronunciation. Firstly, it is quite boring to listen and repeat certain sounds or certain phrases for a long time. Moreover, it is difficult for students to find a person to check their pronunciation. Sometimes they work in pairs with a partner, whose pronunciation is better than them. The “better” student may be able to point out the mistakes made by the “weaker” one. However, if the student who is weak at pronunciation keep making the same mistakes, the other will soon get impatient. Another effective way that students can do is to record their voice and listen to it again and underline the mistake. Nevertheless, this requires some technical assistance, like a tape-recording tool. Some students cannot afford that. In short, a contradiction is shown clearly. On the one hand, students really want to improve their pronunciation. On the other hand, they spend little time doing anything about it. As for the second point, in the researcher’s opinion, this is true only to some extend. We all know that English has become so popular that it has a lot of versions. Beside “original” English like British English, American English, Australian English, there are varieties such as Singaporean English, or even Vietnamese English. For the sake of communication, mistakes in pronunciation can be accepted provided that they do not lead to misunderstanding. However, in many cases, learners need to go beyond the common requirement of the “accepted intelligibility”. Some learners need mandate a high level of intelligibility. One group among those, as identified by Kenworthy (1987: 8), are teachers of English as a foreign language “who are not native speakers of English and who expect to serve as the major model and source of input in English for their students.” Therefore, for students at the English Department, CFL, VNU, the requirements must be much higher than in common practice. This is because three quarters of the students are expected to become teachers of English in the future, whereas the rest are likely to become interpreters. Therefore, the pronunciation goal cannot be limited to “intelligibility”, it should be at least “near native-like”. Only when the students achieve this goal can we have good teachers of English for the young generation of the country. That is the reason why these students must be made aware of the necessity to get a high level of English pronunciation right in their first year, so that they can have a “native like” or “near native-like” pronunciation by the end of the fourth year. What we would like to focus on is the last way, which is the necessity for the teacher to show his great concern for learners’ pronunciation and their progress in it. It is expected that if the teacher continuously and consistently emphasizes on the need for good pronunciation from learners, gradually the learners tend to develop a similar concern for their own pronunciation. Once learners become more aware of their pronunciation, they will pay more attention to it in their speech. This certainly leads to pronunciation improvement. However, the question of how the teacher can show his concern for the students’ pronunciation is another troublesome issue. 3.1.2 Current situation of teaching pronunciation at the English Department, CFL, VNU In their first semester, first year students at the English Department have twelve periods of English per week (two for listening, three for reading, three for writing, and four for speaking and pronunciation). The pronunciation lesson is incorporated into speaking lesson and lasts one period, accounting for 45 minutes. In each pronunciation lesson, students are given drilling practice on three or four pronunciation exercises taken from six exercises designed for each unit. The exercises are designed by a group a teachers at the English Department and are based on the existence of certain words in certain units. A lot of problems can be seen from this. Firstly, there is only one pronunciation period per week, accounting for 45 minutes. Thus, only three or four exercises will be chosen to be corrected and practised among the six ones in the book due to the limitation of time. This short length of time is obviously too little to be effective enough for students. Some may argue that the teaching of English pronunciation is carried out in all other kinds of classes, namely listening, writing and reading. This is because students still have to talk during those classes, especially when those skills are taught in the light of Communicative Language Teaching. This is true to some extend. Obviously, students do not spend all their time in those classes listening, writing or reading. The fact is that the teacher gives a lot of other tasks for them to do as warm-up and follow-up activities, many of which require students to talk. In many cases, students are asked to work in groups and then make a presentation on the topic that is being taught. Therefore, it cannot be denied that apart from pronunciation lesson, teachers have many opportunities to provide feedback to students regarding their pronunciation. However, what actually happens is that in other types of classes, teachers give feedback on the students’ pronunciation, but of a very limited scale. Teachers often focus on the content of students’ product, rather than the accuracy of their pronunciation. Thus, pronunciation receives little attention from the students. Besides, even in speaking classes, it is difficult for the teachers to devote much time for the teaching of pronunciation due to some obvious negative factors. First, class size is a big problem. There are 22 to 25 students in one class. When students are engaged in speaking activities such as group work and pair work, the teacher cannot pay attention to the pronunciation of every student. What s/he can actually do is to discover some most typical mistakes and may bring it before the class after the discussion has finished. However, this kind of feedback does not catch much attention of the students because it is surpassed by the feedback from the teacher on students’ ways of discussing, or how to have a better discussion by taking turns and expressing their opinions. The only time in speaking lessons when the teacher can actually give feedback to students’ performance individually is when they stand up and make a presentation. However, in one speaking lesson (accounting for 135 minutes), the maximum time for this is normally only up to 45 minutes, which means feedback can only be provided to five or six students in the class. It is more troublesome due to the fact that this kind of “feedback on pronunciation” is unlikely to receive much attention from the students because it goes with other kinds of feedback relating to their presentation, such as their presentation skills (eye contact, posture, etc.), and the content of what they have said. Therefore, after that, students may forget all about it. Then, students have to wait for about four weeks before their turns come again. Furthermore, a quick observation shows that students make a lot of pronunciation mistakes. When students are asked to complete a pronunciation exercise in written form, they may do it perfectly well. This may come from their knowledge about phonetics and the relationship between spelling and pronunciation. However, when students speak, they mispronounce many sounds. Sometimes they even cannot have a proper pronunciation of the words in the exercise that they have done successfully in written form. Therefore, it is necessary that students are to provide proper training, especially in the initial steps of their study. At least, they must be taught how to pronounce certain sounds correctly before moving on to more complicated issues like linking or intonation. 3.1.3 The need for using feedback Observation of the researcher shows that many students are unable to pronounce English sounds correctly. At secondary schools, they were taught some common rules to apply so that they can do the pronunciation exercise at the university exam well enough to pass it. However, they fail to have proper pronunciation of English. Therefore, they need a person to show how badly they are at pronunciation, and more importantly, how to correct those mistakes. When we talk about pronunciation, the type of feedback which is typically used by the teacher is corrective feedback, because this relates to the accuracy of the students’ pronunciation. This simply means that when students pronounce a word wrongly, the teacher should be willing to point it out and ask students to repeat again, or provide them with the correct pronunciation of the word. In this research, feedback was given both continuously and individually, both inside and outside the language class. A significant advantage of continuous feedback is that it is closely related to the learning curriculum. Feedback is provided for the students any time they make a mistake. In this research, it was provided during the whole pronunciation lesson of every week. Apart from that, the researcher spent a great amount of time working with individual students. Every two weeks, students were required to come to school and attend a recording session, in which they were asked to record their voice over reading a particular passage. The teacher audio recorded the students’ performance, let them have a chance to listen to what they had read, and then asked if they had discovered any mistakes made so far. If the students were unable to identify the mistakes they had made, the teacher made them fully aware of it. This way, learners will feel that they are involved much in the teaching process. Furthermore, when feedback is given individually, this is beneficial to both the teacher and the students. As for the teacher, she will have a better understanding of the real problems that students are having. This helps her design the pronunciation program so as to serve the students better. As for the students, they have the feeling that they are really taken care by the teacher. They will also feel more grateful for what the teacher does for them. Therefore, they have better motivation to try to achieve better pronunciation. In short, after having a thorough investigation at the literature review, combined with the observation of the current situation of teaching and learning English, we came to a conclusion that a significant amount of feedback provided to the students would help them a lot in improving their English pronunciation. Then, we needed to decide what kind of research should be employed in the study. 3.2 Rationale for the use of an action research Teachers in general and teachers of English in particular actually carry out action research for most of their time. Whenever s/he identifies a problem which is happening in the class, it is his/her task to find ways to solve that problem. Therefore, action research is inevitably a very common practice. As defined by Mills (2003: 4), action research is “any systematic inquiry conducted by teacher researchers to gather information about the ways that their particular school operates, how they teach, and how well their students learn. The information is gathered with the goals of gaining insight, developing reflective practice, effecting positive changes in the school environment and on educational practices in generals, and improving student outcomes.” Kemmis and Mc Taggart (1988) identify three characteristics of an action research, which are: “carried out by practitioners”, “collaborative” and “aimed at changing things”. A typical action research needs to go from one step to another. Eileen Ferrance (2000) suggested an action research cycle as follows: Figure 1: Action research cycle According to her cycle, the first step of an action research is to identify the problem. Then, data must be collected through means of interviews, portfolios, questionnaires, etc. Next, the data is analyzed to find out problems. The fourth step is to design a plan of action that will allow the researcher to make a change and to study that change. After the intervention has been carried out, it is the researcher’s task to evaluate its effects in order to justify whether the intervention worked or not. Then, if it has not been very effectively, the researcher would have to consider another method so as to improve the situation. Another researcher that has conducted a thorough investigation into action research, Nunan (1992), defines the framework of a research as consisting of seven steps: Step 1: Initiation (Identify the problem) Step 2: Preliminary investigation (Collect data through a variety of means) Step 3: Hypothesis (Develop research questions) Step 4: Intervention (Devise strategies and innovation to be implemented) Step 5: Evaluation (Collect data again and analyze it to work out the findings) Step 6: Dissemination (Report the result by running workshops or issuing a paper) Step 7: Follow-up (Find alternative methods to solve the same problem) Action research is conducted widely due to its advantages that cannot be denied. When comparing it with other kinds of research, we can see its advantages more clearly. Table 2: Differences between Action Research and Formal Research Topic Formal research Action Research Training needed by researcher Extensive On own or with consultation Goals of research Knowledge that is generalizable Knowledge to apply to the local situation Method of identifying the problem to be studied Review of previous research Problems or goals currently faced Procedure for literature review Extensive, using primary sources More cursory, using secondary sources Sampling approach Representative sampling Students or clients with whom they work. Research design Rigorous control, long time frame Looser procedures, change during study; quick time frame; control through triangulation Measurement procedures Evaluate and pretest measures Convenient measures or standardized tests Data analysis Statistical tests; qualitative techniques Focus on practical, not statistical significance; present raw data Application of results Emphasis on theoretical significance Emphasis on practical significance ( One of the most significant features of an action research is it is very situational, which means it appears to provide specific solutions to specific problems in each context. While other types of researches focus on experimenting or testing a pre-assumed theory or concept, action research aims at “improving the situation”. Therefore, it is very beneficial to the teaching and learning process. When thinking of choosing an appropriate methodology, the researcher, who is also a teacher, found out that action research is the best choice for the purpose of improving the students’ pronunciation. First of all, action research means “act upon research”. It is impossible to assume pronunciation problems that students are having without having adequate amount of observation. An action research enables the teacher to have a thorough investigation on the pronunciation problems of students on a daily basis. Thanks to this, the findings would be up to date and mostly reliable. The teacher can have a thorough look and is able to work out a detailed analysis on the students’ performance during the progress of the research. In short, an action research helps the teacher design a detailed program which is most suitable to the class and therefore benefits students to the most. This program will be consulted for building up a more suitable pronunciation course for students who share the same problems as the subjects of the research. Secondly, in this action research, the data is taken from every student and treated individually. Therefore, the teacher can see students’ progress easily. S/he will be able to get the most up-to-date information and make sensible changes if necessary to the research while applying it to meet the demand of the students. For pronunciation mistakes that persist for a long time, the teacher can spend more time on it by giving more practice time in class, as well as paying more attention when giving feedback to students. Performance of students is collected weekly, and any potential problems can be solved in time. Last but not least, by using an action research on the use of continuous feedback to students individually, the researcher gives the student a strong sense of themselves. This is typically different from other types of research in which the teacher treats all the students in one class the same way. In this case, data is carefully collected and analyzed for each student. When feedback is provided individually, each student can receive a thorough care from the researcher. The students’ awareness as well as their gratefulness for the teacher’s effort will serve as a strong motivation to make progress in their pronunciation. Despite the obvious advantages, the research has some shortcomings compared to other types of research, such as an experimental one. It is sometimes claimed that action research has limited application. This comes from one of its typical characteristic, which is situational. This means the research program may work well in one class but cannot be applied to other classes in different context. If the same research is carried out in another class, the result may not be effective as expected. In other words, action research lacks generalization. However, the reality is that this action research is very applicable in a wide range of classes. This is explainable by two reasons. Firstly, students at the English Department were sorted in different classes randomly. There were no categories to classify them into different classes, such as basing on their hometowns, or the marks acquired at the entrance university exam. Therefore, each class consists of students coming from many parts all over the country. This also means students who learned in the same high schools may be scattered over a number of classes at the department. Therefore, they may have the same pronunciation problems rooted from the same way of teaching method. In addition, due to random sorting, it can be assumed that there is an equal division of students’ level of English proficiency in different classes. Obviously, there may be the possibility that some classes may have more students whose English is better than others. However, this is the common practice in any language classes. Therefore, it should not be treated as a major cause for the impossibility of generalization. 3.3 Background of the study 3.3.1 Participants The participants of the research were selected on the basis of cluster sampling. The researcher, who is also a teacher, was in charge of teaching speaking and pronunciation for first year students in group 07.E9, English Department, CFL, VNU during the first semester. Naturally, they became ideal samples for the research. With the method of cluster sampling, the research ensures the variety of the students’ background, which varies from one to another as the group was chosen by chance. This also enables for a wider range of application to other classes, which, to some extend, shorten the limitation of an action research. However, as the research was conducted during the first semester of the students’ first year, there were some problems relating to the consistency of the participants. After the first two weeks of the first semester, a competition was held at the English Department to select best students for the Fast-track group. Some students in the experimented group attended the competition, passed and then they moved to that group. Thus, they were not able to attend the research program any more. In turn, after some weeks, some new students became members of the experimented group as a result of the redistribution of the students in the department. These students could not be proper participants of the research program due to their lack of participation in the very initial steps of it. In addition, as the program was conducted extensively during the first semester, with a lot of extra-class time, in which students had to come to school to take part in audio recording sessions even when they had no class at school, some students missed some sessions due to their personal businesses. Thus, their performance should not be treated as a trusted source of information. Taken every factor into consideration so as to minimize the risk of invalidity and to ensure that every single participant was treated under the same conditions of the research, the researcher reached the final number of 20 students whose performance would be appropriate data provider for the research. They were the one who participated thoroughly in the research from the beginning to the end. In order not to make other students feel excluded, the teacher still let them participate in the research program. Nevertheless, their performance was not counted on to yield any comments or interpretation of the research. Further observation, investigation and talks with the students revealed more information about them. Most of the students are of the age 18-20 and many are from the countryside. When entering university, they faced many problems in life, not only in getting acquaintance to a new lifestyle and living environment, but also with the new style of studying in university, which requires a great amount of self-study. Therefore, they needed great help from the teachers. As for language competence, some of the students were from gifted English secondary schools, but many were not. The university exam comprised of three subjects, namely mathematics, literature and English, among which the mark for English was doubled. This also meant some students who got a low mark in English, but high marks in mathematics and literature were still eligible to enter the university. In general, the students’ reading skill and grammar were quite good. However, their listening, writing and speaking skill, including their English pronunciation were of a lower level. The good news was the students were willing and determined to improve these weak skills. 3.3.2 The speaking and pronunciation programs A semester at the English Department lasted 15 weeks. Four periods per week (accounting for 180 minutes) was devoted to the teaching of speaking skills and pronunciation. The pronunciation period was often the last period, which lasted for 45 minutes. As the tasks designed for the pronunciation period were closely related to the speaking periods, we would like to present the content of both speaking and pronunciation programs. * Objectives The objectives of the speaking and pronunciation programs were stated clearly stated in the course-outline of Division 1, English Department, CFL, VNU. As for speaking, by the end of the semester, students would be able to: - function in social and personal interactions with considerable confidence - conduct a short discussion on common topics using proper verbal and non-verbal language - have built up basic skills of presentation As for pronunciation, the course aims at building students’ pronunciation in a practical way. It was stated that, “By the end of the first semester, students will be able to have relatively correct pronunciation of vowel sounds, difficult consonant sounds and ending sounds, so that the listeners can understand.” * Materials: The textbook that was used to teach speaking skills for first year students at the English Department was Inside Out (Pre-Intermediate). As for pronunciation, the name of the course-book was Practise Your Pronunciation and Speaking Skills. Practise Your Pronunciation and Speaking Skills was designed by the teachers of Division 1, English Department and had been used for teaching pronunciation for the past three years. The pronunciation exercises in the book were designed in a practical way, in which all the words are taken from the correlative units in Inside Out. Each unit consists of six pronunciation exercises, aiming at helping students familiarize and be able to pronounce the words they have encountered in their speaking lessons. * The pronunciation syllabus All exercises of each unit in the pronunciation course-book must be done beforehand by the students at home. During the pronunciation class, three or four of the exercises, chosen by the teacher, would be corrected in the class. The choice over what exercises to correct in the class depended largely on the teacher, according to what aspects of pronunciation s/he thought the students were weak at. Normally, some students were called to do the exercises. After the teacher gave feedback, the typical activity was reading aloud, either individually or as a whole class after the teacher. The teacher was free to choose any other extra class activity so as to make the lesson more interesting. A typical feature of this syllabus, which made it different from traditional pronunciation course, was that there was no pre-determined focus of each pronunciation lesson for each week. The words that students were to practised were taken from another book based on their appearance. From week 11 to week 14, students were to do pronunciation assignments by groups of 4-5. They were to read a passage chosen by the teacher at home beforehand, record it, and then bring to the class on the day of performance. The students of the group would have to analyze particular features of pronunciation they aimed at when reading the passage (normally suggested by the teacher), and make the whole class aware of those features. In other words, they played the role of the teacher in guiding the whole class through the lesson. * The speaking and pronunciation test Tests of speaking skills and pronunciation were incorporated into one test delivered at the end of the first semester under the name of the Speaking Test. Students took the test in pairs. The test consisted of three parts: 1. Social interaction (2 points) Students introduced themselves to the examiners or introduced themselves to each other. This was aimed at checking students’ ability to make initial interaction. 2. Reading aloud (3 points): Students were required to read aloud a passage of about 70-100 words. This passage was taken from Inside Out (Student book). This part was aimed at checking the students’ pronunciation competence. 3. Topic (4 points): Students were asked to discuss one topic with each other. The topics were within the content of the speaking units in the first semester. Students’ manner was assessed during the whole test and if the students were marked as polite, friendly and natural, they would get the last point to make up the maximum mark of ten. The students’ performance was assessed based on the following criteria: * Accuracy * Fluency * Manner * Timing The marking scale showed that pronunciation was one of the major focuses for the first year students. As we can see, the second part (reading aloud) accounted for 30% of the whole speaking test. In addition, students’ pronunciation also contributed to the other two parts of the test (social interaction and discussion), because it would be assessed against the Accuracy criteria. It was natural that students would not be able to gain high points in other parts of the test if their pronunciation was not good. Therefore, actually, pronunciation accounted for more than 30% of the test. This reflected the concern of teachers about the students’ pronunciation at the very first year at university. 3.4 Instruments In order to ensure the validity of the research, a number of different instruments were implemented, which were largely qualitative. * Observation As the researcher herself was the head teacher of the class whose students participated in the research program and was also in charge of teaching speaking and pronunciation, this provided a perfect opportunity for her to have a thorough observation on the performance of the students, particularly their English pronunciation. As for action research, observation is obviously one of the main instruments because it provides the researcher with a deep insight into how the research program is going. Regarding this study, observation was conducted through the whole research program. The researcher paid great attention to the students’ pronunciation not only in pronunciation class but also in speaking class. This helped her find adequate amount of data to yield any conclusions about the students’ pronunciation problems, as well as how much progress they made during the research. * Questionnaire A questionnaire was conducted at the first week of the research. This aimed at collecting personal information of the students, particularly that related to their studying at secondary schools and their attitude toward learning pronunciation (See appendix). By doing so, the researcher was in the hope of finding possible factors that affect students’ pronunciation. The questionnaire, in cooperation with some interviews, which were taken later, could help the researcher identify possible reasons for students’ weak pronunciation. * Interviews Two interviews were conducted with individual students throughout the research so that the researcher could be able to find explanation for the students’ choices when they answered the questionnaire, and get a deeper understanding of the pronunciation problems that the students made. The first interview was delivered right after the students did the questionnaire. It was aimed at finding evidence for the students’ choices over some questions, such as “My phonetic ability is not good.”, or “My pronunciation is affected by my dialect.” In the interview, the researcher asked the students to explain their choice by providing evidence for that. For example, when a student coming from a central province of Vietnam claimed that her English pronunciation, especially her intonation, was badly affected by her dialect, the researcher checked this by asking her to speak freely about a topic in English. In this way, she could have a closer look at whether it was a real problem that the student had. Another interview was conducted at the end of the research in the hope of finding reasons for the students’ remaining problems. We were fully aware that there might be differences between the pronunciation performance of different participants even though they all participated in the same research program. Therefore, an interview was necessary to justify those differences, which was much beneficial to work out a more effective pronunciation program to apply to other classes. * Mock speaking tests (Audio recording) During the research program, the students were asked to attend two mock speaking tests. The first test was conducted in the second week, and the second test was delivered in week 15. They were designed according to the real speaking test’s model, excluding the first part (social interaction). The two tests were audio recorded and then compared so as to reveal any improvements that students’ made during the progress of the research. There are some reasons for the choice of using mock speaking tests. Firstly, students should be familiarized with the speaking test’s format during the first semester because it was used to assess their speaking and pronunciation. It was the teacher’s task to inform students about the format of the speaking test right at the beginning of the semester so as students were well prepared for it. It might be argued that if the mock speaking test was conducted right in the second week of the research program, the students would not have enough familiarity, as well as preparation, for it. Therefore, their results might be affected badly and it was naturally expected to be worse than the second mock test (conducted at the end of the research program). This might lead to inappropriate conclusions about the effectiveness of the program. However, in fact, this was not problematic, because the researcher only focused on the students’ pronunciation of English consonant sounds. Other aspects of their speaking skills such as manner or fluency were not taken into consideration. Therefore, it would not pose any problems regarding the different time in which the mock speaking tests were distributed. Secondly, the format of the mock speaking tests allowed the researcher to have a thorough look into the students’ pronunciation. The tests consisted of two parts: reading aloud and discussion. For the first part, by providing an appropriate passage for the students to read, the researcher was able to identify almost every pronunciation mistakes regarding consonant sounds that the students made. For the second part, she could check the students’ pronunciation in their real-life speaking. Last but not least, it was widely acknowledged that motivation had a lot effect on the students’ performance. When the mock speaking tests were designed in exactly the same way as they were conducted in the real life, students would be more willing to participate in it. They would also try to have a better preparation for it, which, to some extend, may help reduce the negative effect of fluency over accuracy. This helped us gain a more accurate understanding about the students’ pronunciation of single English sounds. * Passages (Audio recording) Students were asked to read aloud four passages during the research program. This was taken outside the class. This was aimed at finding students’ typical pronunciation mistakes regarding English consonant sounds. The use of reading-aloud exercises has been criticized as unrealistic by a number of researchers. They argue that the spelling of a word may have a negative impact on students’ pronunciation of it. Furthermore, with other aspects of pronunciation such as intonation, rhythm, elision, etc., reading aloud is certainly not a good choice because it makes students “speak in an unnatural way”. Speaking spontaneously obviously reflects more accurately the actual speaking skills of the students. When speaking spontaneously, students are free to choose what they are going to say, and therefore can adopt their rhythm and intonation more properly according to what they want to focus in their speech. This is hardly achieved in reading-aloud exercises where everything is far beyond the control of the students. They are asked to read certain words, phrases and sentences which may not be of their interest; and sometimes it is difficult for them to justify what the main purpose of the writer is. However, when the focus is on the pronunciation of single English sounds, the problem of using reading-aloud exercises seems to be solved perfectly, especially when this kind of exercise is used to enhance students’ speaking performance, not to assess it. As stated in previous chapter, students’ awareness plays an important role in their pronunciation. Therefore, with this type of exercise, students are fully aware that they have to concentrate on the pronunciation of the words and try to pronounce correctly. They do not have to worry about other aspects of connected speech. Therefore, they tend to read more accurately. If this type of exercise is practised at a regular basis and recorded so that students can identify their mistakes, it is expected that the pronunciation of the single sounds will be carved deeply in their minds. Over a long period of time, it is very much hoped that students will be able to pronounce the sounds correctly in their natural speaking, which serves as a basic ground for the promotion of other aspects of connected speech. The passages were taken from authentic audio listening exercises in an IELTS series. This would make it an easier task for the teacher when comparing the accuracy of the students to the target source, with the focus mainly of the pronunciation of single sounds. The passages chosen were those which consisted of a large number of words bearing the sounds that the teacher wanted the students to improve. As the focus of the research program was English consonant sounds, the passages were not chosen randomly but those that consisted of a lot of sounds that the researcher would like the students to focus on. In this way, the researcher drew the students’ attention to the sounds they were really weak at. 3.5 Intervention Regarding feedback as an important factor to improve students’ pronunciation in English, the researcher would like to make use of it extensively. In this research, first and foremost, “feedback” does not only mean the specific strategy that was used but it was also a reflection of what the researcher had found out about the pronunciation problems of the students. The decision of focusing on the English consonant sounds that most of the students made to teach and provide intensive feedback during the semester was actually a kind of feedback from the teacher. Corrective feedback was provided by the teacher under two forms: in-class feedback and out-of-class feedback. These two types were combined closely together, with in-class feedback provided during the pronunciation lesson, and out-of-class feedback provided to individual students every three weeks. 3.5.1 Feedback forms * In – class feedback As presented above, pronunciation lesson accounted for 45 minutes per week, during which students were asked to do a certain number of pronunciation exercises in the textbook. In order not to affect the general practice of the whole curriculum, the researcher only made use of twenty five minutes of each pronunciation lesson to focus on the English consonant sounds that she wanted the students to practise. This was done by a number of steps and class activities. First, as the teacher knew that many students were unable to produce consonant sounds accurately, she felt that it was the first task to help the students know how to pronounce them. That was why she gave the students a thorough introduction of how those sounds were formed by providing adequate input. With the use of two textbooks on pronunciation, which were English Pronunciation in Use and Sheep or Ship, students were guided thoroughly on how to form the English sounds. This was done in about five minutes. Then, the teacher asked students to do a number of exercises focusing on those sounds individually. After that, the students were then engaged in pair work, in which they took turn to read aloud a number of words consisting the sounds and the other student would be a dictation writer. During the time their practised with each other, the teacher moved around the class and provided feedback to the problems that were reported from the students when they could not figure out which sounds their partners were saying. This was done in about ten minutes. Lastly, the teacher asked individual students to stand up and read a number of words consisting the target sounds. These students were not chosen at random but those who made the most mistakes according to her observation. The teacher provided feedback to the student and made other members in the class practise again the words that the student mispronounced. In short, the students got two forms of corrective feedback in the class: peer feedback from other students, and teacher’s feedback. * Out-of-class feedback Beside in-class feedback, the teacher required the students to attend a number of individual training on the English consonant sounds. Students were asked to read four passages in English. The voice of the students was recorded and then played again for the students themselves to find out the mistakes they had made. After the students realized the mistakes they had made, the teacher helped them form the sounds in a correct way and pronounced the words again until they could do it correctly. This was a bit time-consuming and might make other students impatient to wait for their turn. That was why the students were appointed to come at different time intervals so that they did not have to wait for too long before their turn came. Out-of-class feedback took up a lot of time, so it was the researcher’s responsibility to make students fully aware of that. Besides, the students were free to choose whether they wanted to participate in the program or not. Fortunately, the students could see the benefits that kind of feedback brought to them, so they were eager to come and did their task seriously. 3.5.2 Feedback types Three types of feedback were exploited during the research. The first type of feedback that was used extensively was corrective feedback. It was used both inside and outside the class. In the class, the researcher was alert to point out the mistakes that the students made regarding their pronunciation. Right after the students mispronounced a word, she asked her to correct it again. This was also done outside class in sessions in which the students were asked to read aloud a number of passages in English, and their voice was recorded. After the students had finished, the researcher let them listen to what they had said again and find out the mistakes they had made. If the students were unable to do this, the teacher pointed them out and helped the students make the correct sounds. The other types of feedback did not involve the role of the researcher, namely auditory feedback and delayed auditory feedback. Observation showed that auditory feedback was used by the students when they spoke English in the class as well as when they worked individually with the researcher. For example, when they mispronounced a word, they stopped for a moment and then corrected the mistake immediately, without the intervention of the teacher. During the research, it was a good sign that most students made use of auditory feedback effectively. Delayed auditory feedback was used outside the class, when students participated in audio-recording sessions with the researcher. After the students finished their task of reading aloud a passage, they listened to what they had read again and found out the mistakes themselves. Then, they would make any necessary correction. The researcher once again emphasized on their mispronunciation and then corrected the remaining mistakes. In conclusion, the research was a combination of all three types of feedback. First and foremost, students had an opportunity to figure out their mispronunciation. If they were unable to do that, the researcher would provide her help. 3.6 Research program The research was conducted in 15 weeks, corresponding to the 15 weeks of the first semester, from September 16th to December 28th, 2007. The focus of the research was on English consonant sounds. With three