INCORPORATING BASIC PHONETIC KNOWLEDGE INTO TEACHING SPEAKINH AT lehongphong HIGH SCHOOL

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One: INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................
1.1 Background and rationale...........................................................................................
1.2 Aims of the study........................................................................................................
1.3 Significance of the study............................................................................................
Chapter Two: METHODOLOGY.........................................................................................
2.1Study setting............................................................................................................... 4
2.2. Participants............................................................................................................... 4
2.3. Empirical teaching of ACS ...................................................................................... 4
2.3.1 The practice of ACS ............................................................................................ 4
2.3.1.1 Preparation stage............................................................................................ 4
2.3.1.1.1 Material selection........................................................................................ 4
2.3.1.1.2 Activities for teaching ACS......................................................................... 4
2.3.1.2 The teaching of ACS in practice..................................................................... 6
2.3.1.3 Pre-test and post-test...................................................................................... 7
2.3.2 Evaluative instruments......................................................................................... 7
2.4 Analytical framework ............................................................................................... 7
Chapter Three: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION......................................................
3.1 Results from the diagnostic test................................................................................. 8
3.1.1 Problems with rhythm....................................................................................... 8
3.1.2 Problems with assimilation............................................................................... 8
3.1.3 Problems with elision........................................................................................ 9
3.1.4 Problems with linking........................................................................................
3.2 Results from the achievement test(the Post-test)..................................................... 10
Chapter Four: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS.......................................13
4.1 Conclusion............................................................................................................... 13
4.2 Recommendations for applying ACS....................................................................... 14
4.2.1 The practitioners of ACS and teachers of English............................................. 14
4.2.2 Educational administrators............................................................................... 14
4.3 Strategies for teaching ACS..................................................................................... 15
4.3.1 Strategies for teaching rhythm.......................................................................... 15

4.3.2 Strategies for teaching linking.......................................................................... 15
4.3.3 Strategies for teaching assimilation and elision................................................ 16
4.4 5.4 Suggestions for further study......................................................................... 17
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................... 18

CHAPTER 1

1


INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
It is common knowledge that English has become an international language and in
Vietnam especially, it is nowadays considered crucial to job-seekers and scholarship
hunters, as well as pursuers of higher education. Thus, more and more students are taking
international tests such as TOEFL and IELTS to find educational opportunities at overseas
universities, and the TOEIC certificate is presently required by many Vietnamese
universities as a necessary condition for graduation. It is not just the matter of compulsory
document that counts; a great number of Vietnamese people are learning how to better
communicate in English because the 21th century is the era of globalization, in which
English is the common language for most interactions, as stated by James (2001): “English
is the language of globalization, of international business, politics... It is the language of
computers and the Internet... it is the dominant international language in communications,
science, aviation, entertainment, radio and diplomacy....”
Aspects of connected speech (hereafter reduced to ACS) belong to the suprasegmental sphere of phonetics and phonology which includes various issues, namely
rhythm, assimilation, elision, and linking. All of them exert a certain impact on the
learner’s oral communication because their object is language in action and the interrelation
between words in a sentence and even between sentences. Notwithstanding such
significance, these items have so far not been given commensurate recognition both from
teachers and students at a high school level. Here arises a question about whether it is

possible to make the foreign language learning situation at high schools better through the
introduction of basic knowledge about distinctive aspects of connected speech and whether
the target students can incorporate this knowledge with their rudimentary command of
segmental phonetics to achieve success in real-life communication. The course of finding
the answer to this question thus gives reason for the being of this study.
1.2 Aim of the study
Aspects of connected speech are too large a subject to study in full detail together
with its pedagogical application within the limit of a research. Therefore, the researcher
would hereby certify that only basic features of the aspects of connected speech that help to
improve learners’ oral communication will be examined.
With the scope defined above, the thesis aims at finding out the problems related to
ACS faced by the students when they take part in authentic communication situations. The
researcher would, through this study, also like to investigate if the educational values of
ACS can help the students better their oral communication, and assert the fact that aspects
of connected speech should be introduced at a high school level to improve the students’
oral skill.

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1.3 Significance of the study
The notion of bringing parts of the supra-segmental features, i.e. ACS, into the
teaching of English at high schools in Vietnam in general and at Le Hong Phong High
School in particular has never been officially reported, so this research may complement the
current practice of teaching and learning English at such educational institutions.
The study is intended for the advance of the students in oral communication. It can,
therefore, be hailed as a contribution to changing the viewpoints on teaching the oral skill,
which hopefully bears fruit in reaching the standard of natural English.

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CHAPTER 2
METHODOLOGY
In order to fulfill the aims of this study and come up with the answers to the
research questions introduced in Chapter 1, the following methods are employed to carry
out the study.
2.1 Study setting
The study was conducted at Le Hong Phong High School for the pupils in Thanh
Hoa Province. The school’s main targets are to train excellent students for the annual
national exams and to teach them toward the university entrance exams so that they can
stand a better chance of getting a place in the universities of their choice. With these
targets in mind, both teachers and students have to work hard together and the quality of
teaching and learning at the school has been very good according to the ranking of the
Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training.
2.2 Participants
The study was carried out with 82 participants from the two classes 10A2 Englishmajor and 10A6, literature-majored aged 16, who had been learning English intensively
for a year. These students were introduced to ACS after taking the pre-test with a view to
discovering the progress made in their oral communication.
2.3 Empirical application of ACS
2.3.1 The practice of ACS
The practice of ACS consists of 2 stages, namely preparation and implementation.
The preparation stage revolves around the tasks of choosing the materials for introducing
ACS to the students and creating the attractive activities to help them acquire ACS at
their best. The second stage, implementation focuses on reviewing the practicality of
teaching ACS at Le Hong Phong High School.
2.3.1.1 Preparation stage
2.3.1.1.1 Material selection
This is the first year (2014) when the new text book English 10, obviously
designed to target communicative proficiency, is brought into its experimental stage.

Meritoriously, Le Hong Phong High school has been teaching this well-tailored material.
It is, therefore, convenient to utilise the speaking-skill sections of the book to introduce
ACS.
2.3.1.1.2 Activities for teaching ACS
The activities for teaching ACS were selected and adapted from the those
recommended by Celce-Murcia et al. (1996, pp. 8-9). However, only appropriate
activities were used in the class because the researcher reckoned that it was beneficial to
focus on some specific drills rather than applying too many kinds of them, which might
result in the students’ distraction from the points being taught.
Some of the in-class activities are described in details in the table below.

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Activities

Aims

Group
work

Preparatio
n

Procedure

Listen
and
Imitate

- Help acquaint the
students with the
rhythmic pattern of
English as well as
other ACS.
- Help teacher keep
track of students’
performance and
detect any problems
encountered by
them.

- The
whole
class
repeat in
chorus,
then
students
drill
individuall
y.

- The tasks
adapted
from the
book and
the videos
downloade
d from

Youtube.

- Let students watch the
videos or listen to the
recording then ask them
to repeat after the voice
they hear.
- Teacher explains further
with the theories of ACS.
- Students practice by
themselves and then
present in front of the
class.

Speed
dictation

- Enhance students’
recognition of the
sounds.
- Give students an
opportunity to be
exposed to natural
English.

- Work in
group

- Choose
the suitable

videos or
recordings.

- Ask students to group
themselves to compete
against other groups in the
class.
- Hand out pieces of paper
for them to write down
what they hear.
- Teacher decides the
winner by comparing the
students’ result with the
reading.

Backchaining

- Familiarize the
students with ACS
such as linking,
elision and rhythm.

- In
groups or
individuall
y

- Prepare
the backchaining
sentences

at home.

- Ask students to repeat in
chorus.
- Call on some students to
repeat individually.
- Ask for volunteer to
repeat the long backchaining sentences using
ACS.

Jumbled
pictures

- Help students use
- In
English naturally
groups
through story-telling.
- Enhance
teamwork spirit and
the students’
creativity in using
language.

- Make
photocopie
s of the
pictures.
- Prepare
handouts

of
suggested

- Divide the students into
6 groups.
- Assign 2 groups the
same pictures of the same
stories and ask them to
rearrange the pictures to
make a logical story.
- Ask a representative

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“The
- Help students
Pursuit of practice ACS with
words”
fun.
- Improve students’
game
natural reaction in
using ACS.

Act it
out!

- In groups
or

individuall
y

- To improve
- In
students’ oral
groups
fluency by using
ACS.
- Give students more
drills on ACS.

stories.

from each group to tell
their story to the class.

- Prepare
pictures of
different
themes
with ideas
or words
hidden in
them.
- Prepare
gifts for
the
winners.

- Put the students into
groups.
- Explain the rules of the
game to the students.
- Ask the students to study
the pictures carefully in
20 seconds and then speak
out the words, phrases, or
sentences the pictures
suggest.

- Prepare
handouts
of short
conversatio
ns
involving
two or
more
speakers.

- Instruct students to act
out the conversation using
ACS.
- Choosing a board of
judges to decide the
winner.

2.3.1.2 The teaching of ACS in practice
The knowledge of ACS was introduced to the students for a duration of 8 fourtyfive-minute periods. The prominent characteristics of the instruction of ACS are

summarized as follows.
At the very start of the academic year, the objectives of and rationale for
introducing ACS were clarified to the students so that they could be prepared for
attending the experimental teaching that would come later. The teacher and researcher
then set out to prepare the prerequisites for teaching ACS such as the lesson plans, the
suitable activities, and teaching aids before embarking on guiding the students to obtain
ACS. As for the activities employed for teaching ACS, the researcher adapted the
techniques and games as reviewed by Kelly (2000) and Celce-Murcia et al. (1996) which
were discussed earlier in the previous chapter. Those activities include chaining, roleplaying, miming, listening and imitating, using visual aids, etc. The selection of specific
techniques and activities was largely based on the researcher’s teaching experience and
was clearly stated in the sample lesson plan.
2.3.2 Evaluative instruments

6


The instruments that the researcher employed to sort out the results of the value of
ACS were a pre- and post-test.
2.3.2.1 Pre-test and post-test
In order to test the students’ performance in oral communication in association
with ACS, a pre-test was designed based on the foundation laid out in Chapter 2. A set of
twelve sentences was formed substantializing the different aspects of connected speech.
For the convenience of analysis, the test was put into 4 parts. The first three sentences
were supposed to test the students on rhythm, the next three on assimilation, then on
elision, and the last three on linking.
The post-test was actually the same as the pre-test to ensure the uniformity of the
results collected so that the progress made could be clearly affirmed.
2.4 Analytical framework
Quantitative analysis of pre- and post-tests
To determine the extent of progress made by the students in using ACS to better

their oral communication after experimental teaching, a detailed analysis of the test was
carried out. The expected results from the scores gained by the students were analyzed
using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) of version 16.0. Firstly, it
calculated the mean score of each part as well as the total score of the pre- and post-test.
Then a paired samples t-test was run to analyze any statistical difference in the mean
gains between the pre- and post-test. Some relevant statistical values such as standard
deviation, degrees of freedom (d.f.), and Sig. were also included to give evidence to the
researcher’s conclusion of the students’ improvement in oral communication.

7


CHAPTER 3
DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
This chapter analyzes and discusses the students’ results as obtained from the pretest and post-tests’ scores. The analysis and discussion of findings chapter serves to
discover the students’ difficulties in using ACS in communication and to find out the best
approach to help them effectively learn to use ACS in oral communication naturally.
3.1 Results from the diagnostic test (Pre-test)
The test consisted of 12 questions covering all four aspects of connected speech surveyed
in the study. It required the students to read the model sentences in a way as natural as
possible to the best of their ability. Therefore, this section is further split up into the four
themes closely following these aspects of connected speech: rhythm, assimilation,
elision, and linking. They will be presented in turn in the following four sub-sections.
3.1.1 Problems with rhythm
Amongst the 45 testees, a substantial number of 31 students that accounted for 68.9%
scored good points (little or no problem) in the first three questions regarding rhythm. This is
followed by a less crowded group of 14 students (31.1%) who exposed the sole problem of not
lending proper weight to different words in a sentence. These students had a few problems with
syllable-timed rhythm; they, however, had difficulty dealing with stress-timed rhythm and
seemed to treat every word with equal importance resulting in the monotonous and non-rhythmic

speech. The data collected are presented in the following table.

Rhythm

Problems

Raw count

Percentage

No or little problem

31

68.9%

Problems with stress-timed rhythm

14

31.1%

Students’ problems with rhythm
3.1.2 Problems with assimilation
The next three questions of the test were engineered for judging the students’
performance related to assimilation. The researcher noticed a stark contrast to the
favorable result obtained from analyzing the first three questions, which was presented in
the chart below.

8

Students’ problems with assimilation
The chart clearly manifests the lack of knowledge of ACS in casual oral
communication. All the respondents, as expected, could not handle regressive and
coalescent assimilation; thus the output received revealed their unnaturalness in actual
speech. The only part of assimilation that the students proved to have no difficulty
acquiring was to pronounce sequences of sibilant or stop consonants with only 8.9%
failing to satisfy the examiner.
3.1.3 Problems with elision
The third part of the test looked into the students’ difficulty with elision. Among
the 34 test-takers, almost none showed serious problems in elision of weak vowels and
/v/ in /əv/, but up to 64.4% underwent a hard time pronouncing consonant clusters. They
tended to pronounce all the consonants clearly, which makes their speech awkward and
adversely affects fluency. The table below summarizes the statistics discussed above.

Elision
Type of problems

Raw count

Percentage

Problems with weak vowels

2

4.4%

Problems with elision of /v/ in /əv/

1

2.2%

Problems with consonant clusters

29

64.4%

Students’ problems with elision
The figures suggest a telling sign of great difficulties faced by students when they
deal with consonant clusters. As Loc (2008) asserts, there are no cases of three
consonants standing one after another in a word in Vietnamese (i.e. the students’ mother
tongue); therefore, it causes a real hindrance to students’ acquisition of this aspect.
3.1.4 Problems with linking
The final test items served the researcher’s purpose of finding out the students’
trouble associated with linking sounds in English. While the students reported in their
9


questionnaires that they were familiar with linking, in practice many a problem were
pinpointed. Out of the 45 participants, more than a half (53.3%) did not link ending
consonants to vowels in their speech. The results were even more appalling as far as
other linking techniques were concerned. No single testee utilized glides in cases of two
vowels standing one after another, and the same situation applied to the case of
intrusive /r/. The data for these questions are visualized as follows.

Students’ use of linking techniques

To sum up, the results of the pre-test brought to light the fact that the students did
not have an adequate knowledge of ACS and they could not effectively apply what they
assumingly had known in real life practice of producing natural speech.
3.2 Results from the achievement test (Post-test)
After 4 weeks (with a total of 8 forty-five-minute periods) of reviewing the
knowledge of ACS, the students took the test again and the results were analyzed against
those of the pre-test so that the researcher could assess the progress made by the students
by comparing the two. The statistics are illustrated in the following table:
Problems

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Pre-test

31.1% 100%

100%

8.9%

2.2%

64.4% 53.3% 100%

100%

Post-test

11.1% 24.4% 11.1%

4.4%

2.2%

17.7% 13.3% 62.2% 71.1%

Table 4.3: Students’ results of the two tests
Legends for the nine problems as shown in the table above are explained right
below:
Problem 1: Failure in using stress-timed rhythm
Problem 2: Failure in using regressive assimilation
Problem 3: Failure in using coalescent assimilation
10

Problem 4: Failure in using assimilation related to sequences of consonants
Problem 5: Failure in omitting /v/ in /əv/
Problem 6: Failure in using elision for consonant clusters
Problem 7: Failure in linking consonants to vowels
Problem 8: Failure in using intrusive /r/ to link vowels
Problem 9: Failure in using glides to link vowels
As compared in Table 4.3, the extent of progress made by the students in
overcoming their weaknesses was remarkable. Of the nine problems they faced in the
pre-test, up to eight had been successfully tackled after 4 weeks reviewing ACS. The
results of the post-test showed an upward trend with an impressive improvement
witnessed in the case of using coalescent assimilation. In the pre-test no one among the
student subjects could overcome the ordeal of utilizing this aspect. However, the number
of the students who could use this with ease in their speech soared to 89.9 percent in the
post-test. The two most problematic aspects for the students proved to be the use of the
intrusive /r/ and glides in linking sounds. The pre-test reported a disappointing fact that
all the students could not handle these aspects, and the results of the post-test still did not
satisfy the researcher teacher because only a marginal number of them (37.8% and 29.9%
respectively) could apply these linking techniques in their natural speech. Also
noticeably, the students’ performance in dealing with regressive assimilation had revealed
a wide discrepancy of 75.6% when the pre-test and post-test results were compared.
The researcher then compared the mean gains after the two tests, and the statistics
were shown in the table below.

Pair 1

Mean

N

Std.
Deviation

Std. Error
Mean

Pretest

4.47

45

.968

.144

Posttest

6.62

45

1.072

.160

Table 4.4: Descriptive statistics of post-test scores
As can be observed from this table, the mean score of the post-test was 6.62, much
higher than that of the pre-test with a difference of 2.15. Therefore, it could be said that
the experimental teaching did help improve the students’ scores which came to mean the

improvement in oral communication competence.

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Paired Differences
95% Confidence
Interval of the
Difference
Std. Error
Std.
Mean Deviation
Mean
Lower Upper
Pre-test –
Post-test

-2.156

1.086

.162

-2.482

T

-1.829 -13.313

Df

Sig.

44

.000

Table 4.5: A t-test for the mean difference between post- and pre-test scores
Table 4.5 above presents the mean gains between the pre- and post-test scores. It
revealed that after one month of an intensive experimental course, the students made
remarkable improvements which were indicated by the statistically significant total mean
gains (with the Sig. level lower than .05 for the observed t value of 13.3). It can then be
inferred that the students could significantly improve their oral communication after
being introduced to ACS.
It would be unsatisfactory to leave unexamined the four parts that made up the test
to see whether the students failed to make progress in any part. The results were
presented in the following table.

Pre-test vs Posttest

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

N

Mean

45

45
45
45

-.556
-.722
-.633
-.244

Std.
deviation
.373
.459
.007
.313

T

Df

Sig.

-10.00
-10.55
-8.239
-5.239

44
44
44

44

0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00

Table 4.6: Descriptive statistics of the mean gains between post- and pre-test scores of
different parts of the test
The table obviously reinforced the belief that the knowledge of ACS could bring
about improvements to the students’ oral communication. Evidently, they showed
progress in all the four parts of the test, namely rhythm, assimilation, elision, and linking
with the Sig. of 0.00 lower than the probability level of .05. They made the greatest
progress in dealing with assimilation with the mean difference of 0.72, followed by
elision at 0.63. As for rhythm and linking, the former saw more improvements with the
mean difference of 0.55, and the students made the least progress with the latter – linking.
This could be understandable because this aspect of connected speech, as having been
asserted earlier, was fairly familiar to the student subjects.

12


13


CHAPTER 4
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The final chapter of the study presents the conclusion drawn from the discussion
of the findings of the research to give the answers to the two research questions. Besides,
the recommendations for the application of and the techniques for teaching ACS, as well

as the limitations of the study and some suggestions for further studies are also included.
4.1 Conclusion
The current study was prompted by the need to examine the students’ difficulties
in using ACS and find the way to help them and the teachers to solve the problems
encountered in learning and teaching ACS. In order to achieve these goals, it was based
on the following two research questions as posed in Chapter 1:
(1) What problems do students encounter when they deal with connected
speech?
(2) To what extent can the introduction of ACS help students solve those
problems and achieve better oral communication skill?
The findings, as discussed in the previous chapter, show that:
(1) The students faced a lot of problems related to ACS, which adversely affected
their performance in oral communication. There were nine problems of stresstimed rhythm, regressive assimilation, coalescent assimilation, assimilation
related to sequences of consonants, omission of /v/ in /əv/ elision for consonant
clusters, link of consonants to vowels, use of intrusive /r/ to links vowels, and
use of glides to link vowels discovered through analyzing the pre-test, and they
were the most conspicuous and prevalent ones.
The fact that research question 1 was positively answered gave rise to the need
for studying the possibility and the extent to which the knowledge of ACS
could help alleviate those above-mentioned problems. On the course of finding
out how much the knowledge of ACS served to improve the students’ oral
communication skills, the answer to research question 2 took form.
(2) The pre- and post-tests’ results revealed statistical evidence about the students’
progress. To double-check it, the t-test analysis for the disparity in the mean
score of the pre- and post-test was run which produced the Sig. value well
below the probability level of .05 as reported in the previous chapter. This led
to an inferential conclusion that the introduction of ACS could make a
statistically significant improvement in the students’ performance on oral
communication. Therefore, the second research question has also been
answered.

The satisfactory outcome realized by successfully answering the two research
questions again reinforces the undeniable fact that the subject students do have problems
in communication due to the lack of ACS knowledge and that under the ACS instruction
of the teacher, they can troubleshoot those problems.

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4.2 Recommendations for applying ACS
The findings of this study have given the encouragement for the introduction of
ACS in high schools.
4.2.1 The practitioners of ACS and the teachers of English
In order to teach and learn ACS successfully, practitioners should have adequate
basic knowledge of English phonetics and phonology. However, even low level learners
can still benefit from the knowledge of ACS by following the following steps.
1. Research students’ interest so that appropriate activities can be employed to
encourage them to enjoy learning ACS.
2. Multimedia should be used so that learners can have an opportunity to be
exposed to authentic and native voices which will little by little help the them
develop a feeling for the language.
3. Instruct students to self-study to improve their use of ACS. “Practice makes
perfect” is necessary for English learners, so the teacher needs to encourage
them to practice at home through his/her guidance.
4. Keep track of students’ improvement, give them incentives, and record their
voices to compare with those of native speakers so that they will know what
the target to achieve is.
5. Assess the teaching method through feedbacks and test results to detect the
shortcomings and make any necessary changes so as to have better outcome
each year. The teaching and learning of ACS will be better with the
participation of a large community. Therefore, the teacher can collaborate with

his/her colleagues in popularizing the programme so that the experience can be
shared and the students can have a positive competitive atmosphere to develop.
4.2.2 Educational administrators
Besides the efforts of the practitioners and the teachers of English, a successful
application of ACS needs the support and guidelines from educational administrators.
Following are some suggestions for them to do to realize the hope of creating a
generation of students who can communicate effectively in English.
Firstly, the administrators should consider organizing annual speaking or eloquent
competitions in order for the students to have a playground to express themselves,
through which the teacher can reflect on his/her work and make timely changes. Also, the
students’ peers are expected to develop an awareness of learning English not only to take
written exams but also to communicate orally.
Secondly, the administrators can guide the teachers’ more focus on spoken skills
and work toward bettering the students’ use of the language which targets the knowledge
of the language alone.
Finally, ACS is a large field and can be studied separately; thus the school
administrators can encourage building up individual projects to better help the students
acquire ACS through extra-curricular classes.
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4.3 Strategies for teaching ACS
4.3.1 Strategies for teaching rhythm
In order to acquire rhythm, students are to be encouraged to blend themselves into
the English language environment as much as possible. Multimedia will work miracles in
the case of lack of real-life exposure to native speakers. Listening to English news or
music every day or watching English movies helps build a sense of English rhythm
which will in turn enormously benefit speaking and listening skills even without the
students’ noticing it.
Some useful activities recommended by Murphy (2012) to help the students learn

rhythm are identifying stress, speaking in chorus, tone imitating, shadowtalking, role
playing, and games and songs, etc.
The first thing first in acquiring rhythm is that students can identify the stress in a
sentence. They should be reminded of the rule of accentuating the content words (words
referring to non-linguistic meaning) and gliding over function words (words expressing
grammatical relationships).
Speaking in chorus has traditionally been used for teaching rhythm, in which a
model sentence is prepared by a teacher, and then he/she makes a model of English
rhythm by reading the sentence out loud and finally asks students to repeat in chorus.
Another interesting activity for teaching rhythm is tone imitating. The tones of a
person’s speech differ a lot according to their moods. A newsreader will assume a
different rhythm compared with that of someone else. An extract from a song or a movie
will add color to one’s teaching and motivate one’s students.
Shadowtalking indicates the act of trying to speak at the same time as the voice in
the tape or recording. This activity can be done in the classroom or outside the class at
home alongside fast speech drills.
Role playing, games and songs are good for language teaching including teaching
rhythm. Students play the role of different characters and perform in front of the class.
This can be effectively carried out through group projects and let the students’
imagination and creativity fly. Together with role playing, games bring a lot of fun and
life into the rhythm lesson. The games stop the bus or bingo can be employed in teaching
rhythm. For example, the class is divided in to groups and given jumbled sentences in
word cards. The groups must rearrange the words to make a meaningful sentence then
Stop the bus and read the sentence out loud in the tone specified.
4.3.2 Strategies for teaching linking
Linking is one of the important factors that English learners need to acquire to
sound more like a native speaker. However, the 10 years teaching English at a high
school help the researcher realize that the formal introduction rules for linking sounds in
English is crucial because it is simply too hard for the students to learn complex linking
rules unconsciously. Thus, the preliminary stage of learning linking should be the

teacher’s explanation of the rules.
After introducing the rules of linking, the teacher is supposed to use a variety of
activities for drills. Listen and repeat, guessing, miming, and noughts and crosses as
suggested by Widmayer and Gray (1999) can be used in teaching rhythm creatively.

16


Listen and repeat is a simple approach to teaching linking. The teacher is advised
to add variety to this activity by using the tongue twisters such as:
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper.
Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled pepper?
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper,
Where's the peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked?”
Guessing and miming are beneficial as far as instruction of linking is concerned.
This activity can be carried out as a game for linking revision. The teacher may put the
class into teams then he/she read the clues for the students to guess. For example:
Clue 1: It is a type of car
Clue 2: It is not used on normal roads
Clue 3: It is used for racing
The answer is “formula A”, but one thing should be kept in mind is that the
students must use linking in the answer to score a point; thus the winning answer is
“formula /r/ A”.
Employed much in the same manner, miming emphasizes on actions and gestures.
The teacher can ask a representative of each team to mime the target phrases for the class
to guess.
Noughts and crosses is carried out by drawing the table on the board and two
teams are formed to play this game. The teacher puts some questions and the team that
gives the correct answer will make a move. The process is repeated until there is a
winner. This activity can be time-consuming and requires careful preparation in the

teacher’s part because a plethora of questions must be asked before the winner is found.
4.3.3 Strategies for teaching assimilation and elision
It is recommended by the researcher that assimilation and elision introduction be
carried out following the steps for teaching linking, which is to present the rules before
having the students practice.
After the students have been famaliarized with the rules of assimilation and
elision, the teacher can march on with some activities to help them practice the points.
Listen and repeat, guessing, miming, and noughts and crosses which are employed in
teaching linking can also be reused for teaching assimilation and elision. Besides, the
game “Pursuit of words” (simply put here Đuổi hình bắt chữ) can bring laughter into
one’s class. The game is played by showing students one or two or more pictures which
hide in them a word or phrases. The students will study the pictures, try to link the ideas,
and form a corresponding word or phrase. For instance, the two pictures of a face and of
a book can be linked to create facebook – a popular social network. The teacher should
always remind the students of using assimilation or elision in their answers.
4.4 Suggestions for further study
The researcher would affirm that what he has done in this study on ACS can only
be considered as the first step for the further exploration of some other issues related to
ACS. If possible, research should be done in a longer span of time, with more teacher and
student participants from more schools, and include students of different levels so that the
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findings of the study can be more reliable and persuasive. Besides, the techniques and
strategies for teaching ACS can be very helpful to teachers and learners all the same.
Therefore, a research study into this issue will also be of great value.
Promises
I really want to make sure that my thesic is stored during the long period of
teaching at Le Hong Phong High school. It is not copied by anyone.

Bim Son, May, 25th, 2019
The author’s full name and signature

Administrator’s confirmation

Pham Van Tien

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