VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
……………… ***………………….
ĐẶNG HOÀNG ÁNH
INTEGRATING PRONUNCIATION ELEMENTS INTO LISTENING
LESSONS FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS IN BACKAN
COMMUNITY COLLEGE.

KẾT HỢP CÁC YẾU TỐ PHÁT ÂM TRONG GIỜ HỌC NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN
NĂM THỨ NHẤT TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG CỘNG ĐỒNG BẮC KAN.

M.A MINOR THESIS Field: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
Code: 60-14-10


Supervisor: Dr. Lê Văn Canh HÀ NỘI, 2011
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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

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION 35
5.1 Major findings. 35
5.2 Limitations of the Study. 36
5.3 Recommendations for Future Research. 36
5.4 Conclusion 37
REFERENCES 38
APPENDIX…………………………………………………………………………………….I
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provides a review of the literature on the approaches to pronunciation teaching. 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
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. The role of
pronunciation and pronunciation teaching in second/foreign language learning has been
acknowledged by many researchers. 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
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

Imitative 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.
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
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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. 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.
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.

weeks. (Week 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12)
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3. 3.2 Questionnaires
The questionnaires were administrated to get more information about their attitudes of the
treatment and their perception of its effects on their improvement of pronunciation. The
questionnaire includes three main parts.
3.4. Data Collection Procedure
3.4.1 Treatment
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.
3.4.2 The tests.
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.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.
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CHAPTER 4 PRESENTATION AND THE ANALYSIS OF RESULTS
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.
4.1 Results and analysis.

increased much more than the ones of medium and high-level students. However, the
questionnaires data revealed that the students enjoyed learning pronunciation elements with
this new technique. All the students found the teaching was useful and fun, and considered it a
new way of learning English pronunciation.
5.2 Limitations of the Study.
Firstly, several students were absent for one or more of the pronunciation practice exercises.
This reduced the small size of the experiments and therefore reduced the possibility of the
results statistically significant. Secondly, the intervention was conducted in a short time (12
weeks), which limited the ability to clarify how the intervention affects the students’
pronunciation in longer time. In addition, there is a limitation in the study design with only
one group. It would be better if the author could examine the intervention in both an
experimental and a control group to find out the differences.
5. 3 Recommendations for Future Research.
For these above limitations of the study, the author would like to recommend future research
in with larger numbers of participants and the design of a control group to compare the results
of the intervention.It would have been preferable to conduct future research longer in order to
investigate the improvement of students’ pronunciation with a long time of the
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intervention.The results of the test are mainly based on the recognition ability of the students
not the production of stress and intonation.
5.4 Conclusion.
The results in general revealed that the teaching is truly effective in helping students improve
the intelligible stress and intonation. The results from the students’ questionnaire also proved
that students are eager with the teaching and felt that their pronunciation ability of stress and
intonation are better after twelve weeks of practice. Much more study is needed so that we can
understand better how the integration of pronunciation elements affects the improvement of
students’ performance. In short, the study examined how the integration of the pronunciation
elements into listening lessons affect students’ pronunciation in a Vietnamese classroom. The
author suggests the technique as a possibility for teaching stress and intonation in