(Luận văn thạc sĩ) integrating pronunciation elements into listening lessons for first year students in backan community college

v

TABLE OF CONTENT
CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT. ............................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
ABSTRACT .............................................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................... iii
PREFACE .................................................................................iError! Bookmark not defined.
TABLE OF CONTENT……………………………………………………………………..…v
LIST OF TABLES. ...................................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.i
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................... ix
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................1
1.1. Rationale to the Study ..................................................................................................... 2
1.2. Objectives of the Study. .................................................................................................. 2
1.3. Research questions. ......................................................................................................... 2
1.4. The scope of the study..................................................................................................... 3
1.5. Organization of the Study. .............................................................................................. 3
CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE ...........................................................4
2.1. Some main features of pronunciation teaching. .............................................................. 4
2.1.1 The importance of pronunciation and pronunciation teaching. ............................... 4
2.1.2 Models of pronunciation........................................................................................... 5
2.1.3 Intelligibility ............................................................................................................. 7
2.2. Approaches of the teaching of pronunciation ................................................................. 8
2.2.1 Bottom-up and top-down approach. ......................................................................... 8
2.2.2 Intuitive-imitative and Analytic-linguistic approach................................................ 9
2.2.3 Communicative approach. ........................................................................................ 9


vi
2.2.4 An integrated approach. .......................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
2.3. Integrating pronunciation into listening ......................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
2.4. Empirical research on the integration of pronunciation into listening. Error! Bookmark

not defined.
CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY .............................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
3.1 The context of the study .................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
3.2 Subjects .......................................................................................................................... 15
3.3. Instruments .................................................................................................................... 16
3.3.1 The tests. ................................................................................................................. 16
3. 3.2 Questionnaires ....................................................................................................... 16
3.4. Data Collection Procedure ............................................................................................ 17
3.4.1 Treatment ............................................................................................................... 17
3.4.1 The tests ................................................................................................................. 19
3.4.3 Questionnaires ........................................................................................................ 19
CHAPTER 4 PRESENTATION AND THE ANALYSIS OF RESULTS ..... Error! Bookmark
not defined.
4.1 Results and analysis. ....................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.1.1 Results from the pretest and six progress tests. ....... Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.1.2 Results from the pretest and post test. .................................................................... 26
4.1.3 Results from the students’ questionnaires. ............................................................. 27
4.2 Discussion ....................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.2.1 The students’ scores in pronunciation tests. ............ Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.2.2 The questionnaires.................................................................................................. 34
CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................35
5.1 Major findings. ............................................................................................................... 35


vii
5.2 Limitations of the Study. ................................................................................................ 36
5.3 Recommendations for Future Research. ........................................................................ 36
5.4 Conclusion...................................................................................................................... 37
REFERENCES ..........................................................................................................................38
APPENDIX…………………………………………………………………………………….I

viii

LIST OF TABLES.

Table 1.1 Comparison of the scores in the pre-test and week-2 progress test.
Table 1.2 Comparison of the scores in the pre-test and week-4 progress test.
Table 1.3 Comparison of the scores in the pre-test and week- 6 progress test.
Table 1.4 Comparison of the scores in the pre-test and week- 8 progress test.
Table 1.5 Comparison of the scores in the pre-test and week- 10 progress test.
Table 1.6 Comparison of the scores in the pre-test and week-12 progress test.
Table 1.7 Comparison of the scores in the pre-test and post test.
Table 1.8 Comparison of students’ scores during 12 weeks


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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1 Students’ opinions toward English pronunciation study.
Figure 2.2 Students’ opinions toward classroom pronunciation activities.
Figure 2.3 Students’ opinions toward studying stress and intonation.
Figure 2.4 Students’ opinions toward the usefulness of integrating stress and intonation into
listening lesson is useful.
Figure 2.5 Students’ likeness of integrating stress and intonation into listening lessons.
Figure 2.6 Students’ opinions about the appropriation of lesson design.


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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale to the Study
To many learners, learning English is very difficult because of many differences between it
and Vietnamese. Pronunciation is considered as one of the most difficult one. It is the biggest
challenge because a word pronounced incorrectly may lead to misunderstandings of listeners.
These sometimes bring unexpected effects or even break communication.
The approaches to teaching pronunciation have been changed according to the EFL teaching
methodological changes. However, EFL teachers still face up with many problems in finding
ways to teach pronunciation effectively.
In terms of an integrated approach to teaching English, many researchers have agreed with the
views of integrating pronunciation into all the areas of language work. However, teachers
mostly are confused about how to apply this approach in their classroom. Levis and Grant
(2003) have pointed out
Approaches favoring the integration of pronunciation into oral communication have
been espoused for more than 10 years, but teachers have received little clear direction
about how to accomplish this.( Levis and Grant(2003:1)
Teachers in Vietnamese schools and universities have applied different approaches and
techniques in teaching pronunciation. However, the teaching and learning process still gained
not much progress. In Backan Community College, the teaching of English pronunciation still
faces up with many difficulties. With the aims of finding new ways for pronunciation
teaching, the researcher would like to find out whether an integrated approach can be used in
this context. In order to investigate how an integrated approach of pronunciation teaching can
be applied to help students improve their pronunciation, the researcher decided to do an action
search on the teaching of stress and intonation entitled: “Integrating pronunciation elements
into listening lessons for first- year students in Backan College of Community”. The study was
conducted to seek the answers to which extent the integration of pronunciation elements into


2

listening lessons affects the improvement of L2 learners‟ pronunciation in an English
classroom in Vietnam. It was expected that the findings of this research present to ESL
teachers, especially Vietnamese ESL teachers, a set of general ideas about this approach. Then
on the basis of these findings, some recommendations for English teaching pedagogy will be
given.
2. Objectives of the Study.
This study investigates the extent to which the integration of pronunciation elements improves
students‟ English pronunciation. Specifically, the research has two main objectives:
1. To examine the extent to which integrating pronunciation elements into listening
lessons improve L2 learners’ pronunciation.
2. To examine the attitudes of Vietnamese learners of English about the integration of
pronunciation elements into listening lessons.
3. Research questions.
The researcher aims at answering the two research questions:
a. What are the effects of the integration of pronunciation elements into listening
lessons to students’ pronunciation?
b. What are the students’ attitudes toward and perceptions of the integration of
pronunciation elements into listening lessons?
4. The scope of the study.
This is an action research with a focused group of 45 students in Backan Community
College. This study was aimed exploring how the integration of pronunciation elements into
listening lessons affect students‟ performance in pronunciation.


3

5. Organization of the Study.
The thesis is structured in five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the study. It includes the
objectives, the scope, and the significance of the study.
Chapter 2 provides a review of the literature on the approaches to pronunciation teaching with

a focus on an integrated approach to pronunciation teaching, i.e., integrating pronunciation
into listening lessons.
Chapter 3 presents the research methodology and the instruments used to collect data.
Chapter 4 presents the results of the study, along with analysis and discussion of the data.
Chapter 5 offers a summary of the findings of the study, conclusions, and suggestions for
future research.


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CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Many researchers have pointed out the educational benefits of an integrated approach to
second and/or foreign language teaching. A number of studies have examined the possibilities
and advantages of integrating pronunciation integrating pronunciation into other language
activities. However, relatively few studies on integrating pronunciation elements into listening
have been documented in the ELT literature.
In this chapter, the author will first define some important terms of teaching pronunciation and
then review some studies on the integration of pronunciation into listening in different
contexts so that their findings may be revealed in relation with the findings of the present
context.
2.1. Some main features of pronunciation teaching.
2.1.1 The importance of pronunciation and pronunciation teaching.
Communication is the most important component of any human society. To communicate
properly, we need intelligible pronunciation because pronunciation affects very much on the
understanding of the meanings of the words. Mispronunciation or unintelligible pronunciation
is likely to lead to misunderstandings and even communication breakdown.
The role of pronunciation and pronunciation teaching in second/foreign language learning has
been acknowledged by many researchers. According to Morley (1998), the limitation of a
learners‟ pronunciation may lead to the lack of self- confidence and reducing social

interactions and affecting badly their credibility and ability. Celce-Murcia (1996) states that
There is a threshold level of pronunciation in English for non-native speakers of
English; if they fall below this threshold level, they will have oral communication
problems no matter how excellent and extensive their control of English grammar and
vocabulary might be. (p7)


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She goes on to argue that the focus on language communication leads to “the urgency
to the teaching of pronunciation”. Hewings (2004) argues that an understandable
pronunciation plays an important role to the students‟ communication skills and therefore
pronunciation teaching should be integrated into other areas of language work. Generally
speaking, there is no need in turning learners sounding like native speakers but teachers do
need to get them to be capable of being understood by a variety of listeners.
It is believed that teaching the right pronunciation of English to the learners is very important,
so that they may communicate exactly what and how they want to communicate.
Pronunciation is one of the most difficult areas for learners, as well as for teachers but their
intelligibility can be greatly improved by effective pronunciation teaching. Goodwin (2001)
claims that “the teaching of pronunciation is so crucial to our students.”(p17). According to
Pennington(1989), teachers who are trained formally in pronunciation and teaching
suprasegmentals in communicative language program can create a difference of learners‟
pronunciation. Harmer (2001) also argues that pronunciation teaching not only helps students
to be aware of different sounds and sound features but also improve their speaking
immeasurably. Subsequently, he claims
...concentrating on sounds, showing where they are made in mouth, making students
aware of where words should be stressed- all these things give them extra information
about spoken English and help them achieve the goal of improved comprehension and
intelligibility. (p183).
In short, all the researchers have an agreement on the role of the teaching of pronunciation and

encourage teachers to play the role as facilitators in students‟ pronunciation learning.
2.1.2 Models of pronunciation
The choice of a pronunciation model for L2 learners has become an important issue among
teachers and educators concerned with teaching English. They have tried to answer the
question to what extent models of pronunciation should be explored to teach pronunciation.


6

When an English language teacher conducts a pronunciation activity, he should be aware of
what form of pronunciation that activity focuses on.
In the literature, there are different models of teaching pronunciation. According to Kelly
(2000), the term “model” refers to the pronunciation characteristics of the language a teacher
presents to learners in the classroom. Richards et al (1985), define model as " someone or
something which is used as a standard or goal for the learners” (cited in Brown, 1994:36).
There many models of English which can be a standard or dominant accent, for instance, the
Queen‟s English, standard American or a locally produced variety like Indian Accent.
Although we commonly talk about „English pronunciation‟ obviously not all speakers of
English pronounce it in the same way. Even among countries where English is the first
language of the majority of the population there are considerable variations, and we can
distinguish between the pronunciation of British English, American English, Australian
English, South African English, and so on. And it is necessary to consider varieties of English
used in Britain, Ireland, the USA, Australia and Canada.
Traditionally, the most widely used pronunciation models for ESL/EFL learners was the
Received Pronunciation accent of English. Received Pronunciation is firstly given by
dialectologist, Ellis in 1969. The pronunciation by which British speakers are distinguished in
Received Pronunciation( RP), Oxford English, Public School English, BBC English or
standard British English. Tench (2003) described RP as Educated Southern English and
Southern British Standard. It is commonly known as Oxford accent, or the BBC accent.
However, it has been recognized that there is no such thing as „received pronunciation‟.

Other alternatives for RP proposed includes General American (GA) and Scottish English(
SE). Wells (1982:118) explained General American as the speech of „the two-thirds of the
American population who do not have a recognizably local accent‟. The spread of this accent
is related to the export of American TV programmes, films and pop music over the world.


7

Dretzke (2008) explains that there is no recognized standard pronunciation for the whole of
the United States as there is for England. The author claims
“American English pronunciation includes three major areas, ie eastern, southern and
the rest of the country. The pronunciation in the rest of the country is particularly
uniform and labeled General American English.”
(p.164).
Brown ( 1994) states that Scottish English even with a much smaller number of native
speakers( only 5 millions) and has little influence in other part of English-speaking world.
However, he points out that a reasonable homogeneity exists between typical accents of
English in Scotland, such that a category of SE can be used.( p.36)
Even the diversity of how English is pronounced is real but what is common to all speakers of
English (the commonality) is much greater. Thus, it is believed that the ultimate target of both
the teaching and the learning of ESL pronunciation would be an intelligible accent. Because
There is no problem in allowing a distance exist between what is presented to the learner
(model) and an acceptable achieved performance by the learner‟ ( Brown,1994, p. 40). Thus,
teachers must choose the appropriate materials for pronunciation teaching to help students to
be understood by varieties of listeners.
2.1.3 Intelligibility
Some teachers claim that pronunciation teaching is discouraging because they believe that
students should achieve native-like pronunciation, but very few learners can do that. In fact,
many of these learners master the elements of language such as syntax, morphology, or even
semantics but often fail to master phonology. But it is worth emphasizing the fact that nativelike pronunciation should not be the goal for pronunciation teaching. The major difficulty

facing almost any ESL/EFL learner is the achievement of acceptable pronunciation that
enables them to be understood by the L1 English speakers.


8

According to Kenworthy (1987:3) „ for the majority of learners a far more reasonable goal is
to be comfortably intelligible .

Intelligibility is the degree to which a listener can be

understand what is being said, or in the words of Kenworthy (1987) “Intelligibility is being
understood by a listener at a given time in a given situation”( p13). Following the same ideas,
Harmer (2001) also agrees that a „perfect’ pronunciation is achieved extremely rarely by
students (p185). Silveira (2002) states that followers of the Communicative approach all
consider intelligible pronunciation more important than the total accuracy.
Taking everything into account, it appears that native-like pronunciation is an inappropriate
aim for most learners. Achieving pronunciation which is good enough for students to be
always understood should be one of the main goals of foreign language learners.
In short, it can be seen that teaching pronunciation should aim at an understandable
pronunciation rather than a perfect model. So, the overall aim is for learners to develop spoken
English that will serve their individual needs and allow them to form a positive image of
themselves as speakers of a foreign language.
2.2. Approaches of the teaching of pronunciation
Approaches to the teaching of pronunciation have changed throughout the recent history of
language teaching. The most important change is the movement from an emphasis on the
accurate production of individual speech sound to the concentration more on the broader,
communicative aspects of connected speech. There are different approaches of pronunciation
teaching such as bottom-up and top-down approach by Dalton (2003); Intuitive-Imitative and
analytic-linguistic approach by Murcia (1996); Communicative approach or integrated

approach by later researchers.
2.2.1 Bottom-up and top-down approach.
In the book “Teaching pronunciation” Dalton compared the two main approaches to
pronunciation teaching: the bottom-up and top-down approach. In the bottom-up approach,
teachers start with articulations of individual sounds and then focus on intonation. In the top-


9

down approach, teachers work with patterns of intonation and add individual sounds if
required. Most important, he emphasized that the choice of the approach depends on the
learning purposes and the stages.
2.2.2 Intuitive-imitative and Analytic-linguistic approach.
Celce-Murcia (1996) presents two general approaches to the teaching of pronunciation
including the intuitive- imitative approach and the analytic-linguistic approach. An IntuitiveImitative approach is related to the capacity of the learners in listening and imitating the
rhythms and sounds of the language and no explicit information is intervened. The quality of
phonograph records, tape records and language labs in the mid-twentieth century, and more
recently of audio-videocassettes and compact disc are considered to be good models for
learners. The second approach is believed to complement the first approach. Teachers use
information and tools such as alphabet, articulatory descriptions, charts of the vocal apparatus,
contrastive information and other supplementary materials to provide explicit information to
the learners and attention to the sounds and rhythm.
2.2.3 Communicative approach.
Since the communicative language teaching has been rising, there were tendencies of a
communicative approach to pronunciation teaching. In the past, the teaching of pronunciation
is concerned much with practicing isolated sounds or stress and intonation patterns without
considering the context in which these sounds and patterns produced. However, there has been
a change from the teaching of segmentals (individual vowel and consonant sounds) to the
teaching of suprasegmentals (stress, rhythm, and intonation). Other authors including Jones &
Evans( 1995:224) suggest that teachers still have different ways to present pronunciation

communicatively with most teaching materials.


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2.3.4 An integrated approach.
The pronunciation teaching is not an end in itself, as it is closely intertwined with listening and
speaking skills, as well as with other language areas such as grammar and vocabulary. Most
literature supports the views of an integrated approach to pronunciation teaching in which it is
combined with other language works.
According to Chera Flores (2001), it is very important to apply an integrated approach in
pronunciation teaching because
… the integration of pronunciation into other language activities from the beginning
stages of learning and throughout a complete program would allow the learner to reach
stage of phonological development suggested as necessary to achieve results from
pronunciation training. (p. 1)
Murphy (1991) maintains that pronunciation instruction needs to be integrated with broader
level communicative activities in which speakers and listeners engage in meaningful
communication (p. 60). Gilbert and Rogerson (1990) suggest that teachers may use different
ways to integrate pronunciation. These include reading- phrasing, writing- spelling and
punctuation, vocabulary- marking word stress, reduced weak form, speaking with all elements.
Morley (1991) points out that students can improve their English pronunciation in the case„the
pronunciation class is taken out of a meaningless isolation and becomes an integral part of the
oral communication class.‟(p. 496)
According to Pennington and Richards (1986)
It is artificial to divorce pronunciation from communication and from other aspects of
language use, for sounds are a fundamental part of the process by which we
communicate and comprehend lexical, grammatical and sociolinguistic meaning‟.
(p208). They suggested that there is a natural link between pronunciation and other
aspects of language use such as listening, vocabulary and grammar. Thus, teaching

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activites need to investigate this interdepence. They emphasized that „Pronunciation
ought to be taught as an intergral part of oral language use, as part of the means for
creating both referential and interfectional meaning, not merely as an aspect of the oral
production of words and sentences.(p219).
In Nooteboom‟s (1983:183-94) words, the speech production and the speech perception are
closely related, Thus, teachers need to integrate pronunciation into communicative activities
and provide opportunities to student to develop their pronunciation by listening and speaking.
In order to communicate with native speakers effectively, students need to learn pronunciation
in communicative practices. Jones (1997) agrees that “Pronunciation will, whenever possible,
be taught in concert with other skills, not as a separate entity, but as another string in the
communicative bow”, (p.185).
Similarly, Levis and Grant (2003) also agree with the ideas that pronunciation should be
taught in combination with other language skills. These ideas support the views of Gilbert
(1990) and Murphy (1991) as discussed above.
In this sense, the researcher would go along with the views that pronunciation should be
integrated into listening and speaking skills development. And teachers should identify and
deal with their learners´ immediate pronunciation needs regarding the aural-oral activities of
the language course.
2.3. Integrating pronunciation into listening
With regard to the integration of pronunciation elements into listening, most researchers deal
with how and why the teaching affects students‟ improvement of pronunciation.
Gilbert (1990) presents his ideas about the connection between listening and pronunciation. To
his views, pronunciation is an important aspect of both speaking and listening and an
understandable pronunciation is crucial to their communication skills. Thus, teachers should
integrate it with other areas of language work.

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Moreover, he recommended that authentic unscripted recordings from the cassettes can be
used in an effective way which explores the recordings as natural speech to raise the students‟
awareness of elements of connected speech and realize the crucial relation between developing
pronunciation and listening skills.
Murphy (1991) states that Increasing numbers of ESL methodologists argue that L2
pronunciation practice needs to be intimately linked with the listening process (p. 285).
According to Kelly (2003), teachers should consider the noticing process which affects
students‟ achievement of L2 pronunciation. When pronunciation study and listening activities
are combined, students will notice things about the language and its use better. The concept of
noticing is crucial in pronunciation work. Jones (1997) has pointed out “Listening will
continue to play a large part in pronunciation training, with perhaps more authentic listening
tasks with a variety of accents.” (p. 185)
In general, it can be concluded that most researchers supported the integration of
pronunciation into listening for the following advantages: the authentic materials for
pronunciation practice, the development of the students‟ awareness of elements of connected
speech and the contribution to the noticing process which supports students in pronunciation
learning process.
2.4. Empirical research on the integration of pronunciation into listening.
As it has been pointed out in Chapter I, very few studies have focused on examining the
effects of the integration of pronunciation into listening. Most of the literature on the
integrating pronunciation into other language activities is opion-based, rather than data-driven.
Gutknecht (1978), in his study, argued that the description of intonation problems could not
be carried out without considering all other aspects of language and language use. Language
teaching itself should include the teaching of intonation at every stage and in all areas.


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Leech and Svartvil (1975) suggest that the teaching of intonation should be included in every
single paragraph of the work.
Overall, there has been very little research on the integration of pronunciation into listening.
Knowledge of how the approach can be applied in an ESL setting is still limited. No research
has evaluated the use of this approach in an ESL classroom in the context of Vietnam. Thus,
the aim of this study is to fill this major research gap.

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY


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This chapter presents the context of the study, the subjects of the study, the procedure of data
collection.
The aim of the study, as stated in Chapter 1, is to examine whether or not the teaching of
integrating pronunciation elements into listening lessons is effective with students at Backan
Community College. In order to measure the effectiveness of the intervention, the researcher
decided to conduct an experimental research. The research methodology for this aspect of the
study was a pre-experimental design (One-group pretest-posttest design). The pre-test were
therefore utilized to assess the pronunciation ability of stress and intonation of the students
prior to the study. Then, students did the six progress tests and the post-test. The dependent
variable was the scores on the tests. The scores were compared to measure to the effects of the
treatment on students‟ pronunciation.
In order to evaluate the students‟ attitudes toward and the perceptions of students on the
teaching, the questionnaires were given to the students after the intervention.
3.1 The context of the study
Backan Community College is a local public college located in the North of Vietnam. The
number of students in each class remains about 45-70 students. The classroom for English
lessons is not equipped with multimedia facilities. The teachers only used cassette players for

listening lessons.
The Department of English in the college has a teaching staff of 6 permanent members and a
student body of approximately 500. Each teacher must follow a set of guidelines with regard
to the content, focus and duration of a course. Teachers have the freedom to make decisions
concerning appropriate teaching approach and methodology to use. All the materials using for
teaching and learning are the text book “New Headway” by John & Liz Soars (2000) and
cassettes attached. In the textbook, four macro language skills are equally developed.
However, pronunciation is not focused as much as other skills.


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In Backan Community College, students are majored in different subjects to become teachers
in secondary schools. English is not considered a major. Every academic year, there are about
500 new comers who study English as a compulsory subject. They have already learned
English at secondary and high school, about 3 to 7 years. Students are from different ethnic
minority groups in Backan province such as Tay, Dao, Mong, Nung. Each group has its own
customs and values. Most of them can speak both their own language and Vietnamese. In
other words, English can be considered to be their third language. As being observed, their
accents of their own language partly affect the way they speak Vietnamese and English.
It is believed that different culture value leads to different learning behavior. Since learning
becomes more learners centered, the institutional culture plays an important role in language
learning environment and contributes to the effective learning. As the cases of other
mountainous provinces in the North of Vietnam, the learning and teaching of English is
considered as a compulsory subject in schools. Parents and teachers only focus on the socalled „learning for testing‟ style in which learner‟s aims at memorizing language items for
reading and writing tests. Listening and speaking skills are rarely spent much time on both
inside and outside the classrooms. In addition, there are little chances for communicating in
English with foreigners or native- speakers.
To students in BCC, English is a compulsory subject in to fulfill their program at the college.
Thus, most of the students only desire for high scores of the written test at the end of the

semester. In the academic year 2011, the staff decided to change the new form of testing
including three written tests and a final oral test. This aims at enhancing students in using
English communicatively.
3.2 Subjects
The subjects of this study were originally 45 first-year students in Backan College of
Community They were on average 20 years old. All were in Department of Education of
Backan Community College. All were exposed to the same learning situation and teachers in
the college. Each member of the group has a different level of English education. They had


16

already gone through about three to eight years of English. Due to the recent schedule, they
have taken five periods each week in English.
3.3. Instruments
Two research tools were used in this study: the tests( pre-test, post-test and progress tests) and
the questionnaires.
3.3.1 The tests.
There are three kind of test including the pre-test, post-test and progress test. The tests were
designed by the researcher. The words and sentences in both the test were picked out from the
conversations in listening tasks in New Headway Elementary. Each test was designed with
three main tasks: Task 1 required students to mark the word stress of twenty random words
and then put them into three categories (First-syllable, second- syllable and third- syllable
stress); Task 2 required students to mark the sentence stress; Task 3 required students to
discriminate two kinds of intonation of given sentences (the rise and the fall).
The pre-test was administrated to measure the students‟ ability of pronunciation performance
before the intervention.
The post-test was designed with the selected words and sentences from the pronunciation
practice during twelve weeks in order to measure the students‟ ability of pronunciation
performance after the intervention.

The six progress tests contained the words and sentences from the ones practiced during two
previous weeks. (Week 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12)
3. 3.2 Questionnaires (see Appendix 5)
At the end of the twelve-week intervention, once all the pronunciation practices and tests had
been completed, the questionnaires were administrated to get more information about their
attitudes of the treatment and their perception of its effects on their improvement of


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pronunciation. The questionnaire includes three main parts. The first part contains different
items related to the students‟ attitudes and perceptions toward English pronunciation learning.
The second part contains three items related to the intervention applied in 12 weeks. The third
part is for three open questions for other opinions related to the intervention.
The questionnaires includes three main categories: (a) Attitudes toward studying English
pronunciation, (b) Attitudes toward the teaching of pronunciation by integrating it into
listening lessons and (c) Other opinions about the intervention.
3.4. Data Collection Procedure
Having described the instruments used in the study, this part will proceed by outlining the data
collection procedure.
3.4.1 Treatment - Integration of pronunciation exercises into listening lessons (see
Appendix 4)
The treatment was a series of 24 pronunciation practice lessons. The aim of the treatments is
to raise the awareness of students in the two pronunciation elements consisting of stress and
intonation. The students were helped to recognize significant variation in stress and intonation.
The contrasts that students can recognize or produce were very general indeed.
Every week, an appropriate dialog in listening lessons was utilized to help students practice
word stress, sentence stress and intonation.
The treatment consists of three stages: recognition, practice and production. It was adapted
from the article “Teaching with functional materials: the problem of stress and intonation”

written by Roberts (1983). The main stages of each treatment are described as following:
Stage 1: Recognition


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After listening tasks, students repeated the dialogues a line at a time (chorally and
individually). First, they marked the word stress and sentence stress and intonation on
sentences in the dialogue.
Then, the teacher played the tape line by line and marked major features of stress and
intonation according to students‟ answers. Students followed and wrote down their answers in
the second part.
Sample 1: Checking sentence stress and intonation.
Tape: First, I‟m going to Holland.
Teacher: Is The stress of “Holland” on First or second syllables ?
Teacher: Which are the strongest syllables?
Teacher ( Marks sentences on the board)
Now does her voice go up

or

does her voice go down

? Listen. Is it

or

?

S1: Down

Teacher: Do you agree? Ok( Marks the board: ……………
The analysis of the dialogue helped students to pay attention on these linguistic features and in
the next lessons; they would be likely to recognize similar features. Teacher did a quicker
version in the following lessons in which students are familiar with the steps.
Stage 2: Practice
Students practiced the dialogues among group members and individual. Teacher called some
pairs to present the conversations.
Stage 3: Production.


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Teacher gave some other similar words and sentences and asked students to pronounce with
the correct stress and intonation. Teacher listened and examined how they could apply what
they had learnt in new sentences and conversations
3.4.2 The tests.
a/ The pretest and post test.
The pretest was administrated to the students at the second week of the second semester. The
teacher collected the pretest for the score analysis.
After 12 weeks of treatment, the post test was given to check the extent to which the students
improve their ability in producing stress and intonation. The score of post test was used to
compare with the scores of pretest to justify the students‟ improvement after the teaching.
b/ Six progress tests
During the 12 weeks of treatment, there were six tests which aim at exploring how the scores
changed after 12 weeks. The tests were administrated after every two week (Week 2, 4, 6, 8,
10 and 12).
3.4.3 Questionnaires
The questionnaires were delivered to the students after the intervention. The researcher
collected the data for further analysis.

CHAPTER 4 PRESENTATION AND THE ANALYSIS OF RESULTS
The tests were scored manually by the researcher herself. Each correct answer was assigned
with 1. The scores of the pre-test, the post-test and six progress tests were analyzed by
calculating mean and standard deviation with the help of the SPSS program. In order to


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determine the effect of the intervention, the mean and standard deviation of the tests were
compared. Firstly, the author decided to compare the scores of the pretests with six progress
tests. Finally, the scores of the pretest and post test were examined.
4.1 Results and analysis.
4.1.1 Results from the pretest and six progress tests.
a) The scores in the pre-test and week-2 progress test.
Score range

Pre-test

W2

P

n = 32

Percentage

n = 32

Percentage

( ≥ 8)

0

0.0%

0

0.0%

( 7 ≤ < 8)

3

9.4%

3

9.4%

( 5 ≤ < 7)

13

40.6%

14

43.8%

(3<

8

25.0%

8

25.0%

( ≤ 3)

8

25.0%

7

21.9%

Total

32

100.0%

32

100.0%

< 5)

Mean ± SD

4.53 ± 1.39

4.63 ± 1.39

Max

7

7

Min

2

2

P = 0.08

Table 1.1 Comparison of the scores of pretest and week-2 progress test.
As indicated in Table 1.1, there is not much difference in the students‟ scores between the pretest and the progress test administered after two weeks of intervention. Not a single student
scored 8 and higher in both tests while the number of students scored (7 ≤ - < 8) was the same
(9.4%) in both tests. A striking feature is that while nearly half of the students achieved the
scores of 5 ≤ - < 7, the number of the students of this category is slightly higher (43.8%) in
the week -2 progress test in comparison with the pre-test (40.6%). The number of students
who scored of 3 <- < 5 remained the same (25%). Another important observation is that the
number of the students who scored of 3 and lower than 3 is slightly reduced (21.9% vs. 25%)