VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
TRINH
THI
HANG
USING SOFTWARE TO IMPROVE FIRST-YEAR
ENGLISH MAJORS' PRONUNCIATION: AN ACTION
RESEARCH AT HONG DUC UNIVERSITY
SU DUNG PHAN MEM PHAT TRIEN KHA NANG PHAT
AM CHO SINH VIEN CHUYEN NGANH TIENG ANH NAM
THU
NHAT:
NGHIEN CUU HANH DONG TAI TRUONG
DAI HOC HONG DUC
M.A. Minor Program Thesis
Major: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code:
60 14 10
Supervisor: Do Tuan Minh, PhD
HANOI-2010
IV
TABLE OF CONTENT
Page
DECLARATION i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
ii
ABSTRACT iii
TABLE OF CONTENT iv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii
LIST

1.2.1. Vowel sounds 7
1.2.2.
Consonant sounds 8
1.2.3. Word stress 9
1.2.4.
Sentence stress 9
1.2.5.
Rhythm
, 10
1.2.6.
Intonation
, 10
1.2.7.
Other aspects of connected speech
11
1.3. Approaches to pronunciation teaching
11
1.3.1. Explicit or Implicit
H
1.3.2.
Top-down or Bottom-up 13
1.4.
Computers-assisted
language learning (CALL) and EFL learning and
teaching 14
1.5. Roles of CALL software in EFL teaching and learning 15
1.6. Benefits of using CALL softAvarc in EFL teaching and learning 16
1.7. Limitations of CALL software in EFL learning and teaching 17
CHAPTER 2.
METHODOLOGY

3.1.4. Intonation 26
3.1.5.
Linking 28
VI
3.2. The intervention 28
3.3.
Findings from the post-test 30
3.3.1.
English sounds 30
3.3.2. Stress 32
3.3.3.
Rhythm and thought groups
ii
3.3.4. Intonation 34
3.3.5.
Linldng
35
3.4. Further findings from the
teacher's obser>ation
and informal
intei-view
with students 37
PART
HI. CONCLUSION 39
1.
vSummary
39
2.
Pedagogical implication 39
3.

Table 5 Students' intonation of
statements,
yes-no questions, wh-questions,
requests
and
suggestions
27
Table 6 Students' intonation of lists 27
Table 7
Students'
performance of linking 28
Tabic 8 Aspects of pronunciation to
be integrated
in speaking
lessons
29
Table 9 Comparison of the students' pronunciation of English sounds in the
pretest and posttest 30
Table
10
Students' stress on important words 32
Table I
1
Students' stress on corrective words 32
Table 12
Students'
intonation of statements, yes-no questions, wh-questions,
polite requests
and
suggestions

matter
of fact, communication may break
down
when people
pronounce incorrectly.
Moreover,
learners
with good pronunciation are
usually
more
proficient speakers and more successful language learners than
those
with poor
pronunciation.
Since I started teaching at Hong
Due
University, I have taught speaking and pronunciation to
first-year
1-nglish
majors many times. 1 have always been trying my best to
help
my
students
pronounce better. However, I have had many frustrations because my
students
always have
many mistakes in their pronunciation.
1
have been investigating into the reasons for this, and I
have found that my students, most of whom are from rural areas in the

pronunciation. That
v/as
the reason why I conducted this study "Using software to improve
first-year English majors' pronunciation: An action research at Hong
Due University \
which
tried to
exploit
the software programs available in my speaking and pronunciation lessons with
an aim to improve first-year English majors' pronunciation.
2.
Purposes of the study
The purpose of this study is to improve English pronunciation for first-year English majors at
I
long
Due
University. Specifically, it has three purposes as follows:
- To
identify
students'
most common mistakes in
their
English pronunciation.
- To exploit the software program, namely Pronunciation Power as an intervention in
pronunciation
lessons
to
improve
students' pronunciation.
- To justify

how effective is it?
4.
Scope of the study
The study concentrates on improving first-year English majors at Hong
Due
University by
using the pronunciation software named Pronunciation Power, Within its scope, the research
was aimed at justifying the effectiveness of using this software program in teaching English
pronunciation to first-year English majors at Hong Due university.
5. Methods of the study
This study is conducted as an action research because it is aimed at improving first-year
English majors' pronunciation. In
order
to get data, a combination of different instruments,
namely class observation, informal interviews and audio-recording, is used. The data
collected
from the observation and interviews will be analyzed by qualitative method, and the data
collected through the tape scripts will be analyzed by quantitative method.
6. Significance of the study
Even though
there
have been numerous studies on pronunciation teaching, few investigations
into
the use
of software in teaching pronunciation are
conducted.
This
research
provides an
insight into the effectiveness of applying pronunciation software to the teaching of

communicative activities in which speakers and listeners engage in meaning communication.
It is obvious in my situation as a teacher of English that students' weak pronunciation has
negative effect on their ability to express themselves and their ability to listen to
others,
especially to native speakers. Speakers with wrong pronunciation find it difficult to make
themselves understood by the teacher and other students, which makes them embarrassed and
hesitant to continue speaking. Moreover, when a learner has already stuck to the wrong way of
pronouncing a particular word, phrase or sentence, (s)he is unlikely to recognize the authentic
pronunciation by a native speaker and fail to
interpret
what the speaker
means.
Therefore, it can be concluded that pronunciation play an essential
role
in
learning
a foreign
language because it is
intelligible
pronunciation that make communication possible and
even
if
a
speaker
uses the right words with
the
right structure hut without
correct
or
inlclligibic

mouth in an obstructed
manner,
without any
interruption.'"
According to Roach
(1998),
vowels are
"'sounds
in the production of which there is no
obstruction to
the
flow of air as it passes the larynx to the
lips.''
Vowels can be classified in
terms of:
- the height of
the
bulk of
the
tongue in the mouth.
- the front/back position of
the
tongue in the mouth the degree of lip-rounding.
- the length of vowels.
The classification can be shown in
the
following diagram:
•
i:
\

1
Diagram 1. English vowels
8
1.2.2.
Consonant sounds
According to Kelly. G, (2003:24),
"'consonants
are formed by interrupting, restricting or
diverting the airflow in a variety of
ways.'"
Roach
(1998)
define consonants as ""sounds in which there is obstruction to
thejlow
of air as
it passes the larynx to the lips.
"
Consonants are classified according to:
-
the manner
of articulation
- the place of articulation
- the force of articulation
The classification of English consonants can
be
shown in the following tabic:
Table /. English consonants
;
s
1

dental
f V
.:;*^s':
Imor
dental
e
d
Alveolar
[ d
S 2
n
•!p?^l
.Alveo-
palatal
^
3
tJ rfsl
Palatal
j
Vi-h.r
k
J]
D
Siflfe orihr(;iottis
i Voiced
\
Gioital
V
h
j

sentence,
one content word receives
greater stress than all others, which is referred as the major sentence stress. In most cases, the
major
sentence
stress falls on the last content word within a sentence.
However,
there are also
cases in which the major sentence stress will not fall on the final content word of the sentence.
It depends on the speakers who decide which word in their speech they want to give more or
less prominence. A word may be given less weight because it has been said already, or it may
be given
more weight because the speaker want to highlight it.
The use of incorrect stress in English can make it difficult for listeners to identify the meaning
of the sentence. Kenworthy (1987) demonstrates that there is a great deal of evidence that
native speakers rely very much on the stress pattern of words when they are
listening,
and that
when a native speaker mishears a word, it is because the foreigner has put the stress in
the
wrong place, not because he or she mispronounced the sounds of the word.
10
1.2.5,
Rhythm
Kenworthy (1987:30) claims 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. Dalton and Scidlhofer
(1994)
also
give the similar description of rhythm concentrating on the contrast

"//
is
a fundamental
part of the way we express our
o\yn
thoughts and it enables us to understand those of others.
"
Four basic tunes of English are as follows:
-
The
falling tune (the glide-down)
- The first rising tune (the
glide-up)
- The second rising tune (the
take-oft)
-The falling-rising tune.
Intonation has
the
function as
the
expression of
speaker's
altitude and purpose in
sa\ing
something
such as greeting you, telling you
something,
asking you, ordering
>ou.
pleading

disappearance of a sound.
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.
1.3. Ap|)roaches to pronunciation teaching
1.3.1.
Explicit or Implicit
In a summary of the application of explicit phonetic instruction in pronunciation teaching.
Derwing and Munrol (2005:388)
explain
explicit phonetic instruction as follows: 'Must as
students
learning
certain grammar points benefit from being explicitly instructed to notice the
12
difference between their productions and those of
LI
speakers, so students learning L2
pronunciation benefit from being explicitly taught phonological form to help them notice the
difference"
In a well-known study by Derwing, Munrol and Wiebe (1998), explicit instruction was given
to the experimental group and not to the control group. Both groups were evaluated before and
after the
experiment
by both trained and untrained listeners. The results
demonstrated
that
explicit phonetic instruction enhanced learners' pronunciation of the target language.

taught,
which
can only be implicitly learnt by long-term exposure to the target
language,
(pi95)
I myself believe that overt instruction is necessary in the speaking and pronunciation lessons,
especially for my first-year English major students at Hong
Due universitx
because they will
become teachers of English and they need to know
exactK how
a
sound,
a
word,
a
phrase,
an
utterance or a sentence is pronounced, so that they can teach their pupils in the forthcoming
luture, not just to learn pronunciation implicitly without thorough understanding of it.
However,
this does not mean that implicit learning is not important. Teachers should on the
one hand give explicit phonetic instructions and on the other hand encourage students to
continuously expose to the target language.
13
1.3.2. Top-down or Bottom-up
Pronunciation teaching consists of
2
parts: segmental (consonants, vowels and clustering) and
suprasegmental (thoughts group, prominence, intonation and syllable structure). Dalton &

emphasizes
the importance of teaching segmental prior to suprasegmental
features and argues that the communication can get through if the speakers use the wrong
prosody because the listeners can interpret what the speakers
mean,
but the speakers'
mispronunciation of
the
sounds in minimal pairs can lead to communication disruption.
Luchini
(2005:195),
however, balances these two approaches when he assumes that we should
equilibrate between
segmentals and suprasegmentals so that students can decide whether
the\
desire to be native-like speakers or not. He goes on to argue that both segmental and
suprasegmental features are important in making one's pronunciation intelligible.
In
the researcher's
intervention, she followed the bottom-up approach in which segmental
features were taught before suprasegmental ones.
14
1.4. Computers-assisted language learning (CALL) and EFL learning and teaching
During the last decades, much CALL research has explored the potential of technology as well
as
multimedia—the
combination of text, audio, video, graphics, and
animations—as
a tool to
teach and reinforce English language learning. These studies focus on justifying the

of
stringently selected studies published between 1997 and
2001.
Including technologies ranging
from video to speech recognition to web tutorials, Zhao found a significant main effect for
technology applications on
student
learning.
According to (Wood, 2001) and Nikolova (2002), multimedia is seen as supporting
vocabulary acquisition because it can effectively present new lexical items and enable learners
to practice them with visual
referents
and through gaming formats that include visual and
auditory information, which improve retention.
Multimedia
technology containing audio and video has also been shown to promote the
development
of listening skills (Brett, 1997. Merler. 2000), and computer mediated
communication (CMC) has also had positive effects on language acquisition (Chun, 1994;
Warschauer, 1997). Gulcan (2003), and Hagood (2003) contend that the
interpla\
of
multimedia
elements
improves learning to read a second language.
15
Stenson, Downing, Smith, & Smith
(1992)
hold the view that visual displays of language
learner speech and the opportunity to visually and aurally compare output to that of a native

learning.
Voice interactive CALL can also simulate
communicative
interaction. In the tool
role,
computers provide ready access to
written,
audio, and visual
materials relevant to the language and culture being studied. They also provide reference tools
such as online dictionaries, grammar and style checkers, and concordances for corpus analysis.
The
Internet
and databases can serve as tools for research.
In
the medium role, technology
provides
sites for interpersonal communication, multimedia
publication,
distance
learning,
community participation, and identity formation.
Specifically, Barr (2004) sees the roles of CALL software as follows:
- CALL
.software
as a learning aid.
Barr (2004) states that generic and specialized computer-assisted learning software have been
used to enhance the learning capabilities of students in many areas of study, including
language learning. Similar to Kern, Barr also regards computer software as a tutor,
''adopting
the role of

teachers,
and can be used repeatedly. Barr added that when
students
use CALL
packages,
the teacher
therefore
has more
time
to
devote
to preparing other types of classes, concentrating on specific
problems they may have. In addition, CALL has a certain academic value. Many modern
programs make effective use of graphics and color and recorded sound: they are therefore eye-
catching, which make students be attracted to the programs that teach tedious areas of
language learning. This view is further reinforced by Galavis
(1998),
who claimed that
"Video,
pictures,
and sound presented by computers stimulate sight and hearing simultaneously in
a
way traditional resources do
not'''
Galavis goes on to state that CALL software programs may provide considerable input and a
wide
variety of registers and accents. They ""provide access to authentic
materials".
Pacoex
(1997) also maintains that CALL software is able to offer comprehensible

audio
lessons, and even speech recognition software for pronunciation. The more advanced software
offerings
even
come provided with an interactive forum where students can interact with a
particular language professional and fellow students. All these characteristics help students to
immerse
in
authentic
materials and expose to native speakers.
It is due to these benefits of using software in language learning and teaching that the
researcher,
as a teacher of English of Foreign Language Department at Hong
Due
University.
decided to exploit the software to teach pronunciation to her first-year English majors.
1.7. Limitations of CALL software in EFL learning and teaching
Beside the precious
benefits
that CALL programs can bring to language learning and
teaching,
there reveal certain limitations that teachers should take into consideration when choosing
these programs to integrate into their lessons.
DAI HOC
QiJOC GIA
HA
NOl
TRUNG
TAM THONG TIN
THiJ

CHAPTER 2. METHODOLOGY
2.1.
Context of the study
The study was conducted at Hong
Due
university in Thanh Hoa province. This is a multi-
discipline university in which English is one of the majors. Students at Foreign Language
Department are trained to become teachers of English for secondary schools in Thanh Hoa.
Teachers of English training course
K12,
to which the study is targeted, is in its first year in
the academic year
2009-2010.
In
the
first
semester,
pronunciation is not designed as a separate subject but
integrated
into the
speaking course which is delivered within
15
weeks with 4 periods a week. The course book
being
used
is
""Let's
talk /
"
by

Arguments for the use of an action research
""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 general, and improving student outcomes. " (Mills, 2004:4)
According to Cohen and Manion (1985), the aim of action research is to improve the current
state of affairs within educational context in which the research is carried out.
20
Koshy (2005) also maintains that action research is a powerful and useful model for
practitioner research because research can be set within a specific context or situation and
researchers can be participants - they do not have to be distant and detached from the
situation.
The researcher, as a teacher, decided to choose action research as her methodology because
action research is classroom-based research conducted by teachers in order to
reflect
upon and
evolve their teaching. This meets the main purpose of my thesis, that is to gain understanding
of teaching and learning within my own classroom and to use that knowledge to increase my
teaching efficacy and improve my own students' pronunciation.
2.3.
Description of the software program
Pronunciation Power scries consisting of 2 CD-Roms is an interactive software program that
focuses on
developing
students'
individual sounds and basic

demonstrating
jaw, lip, and tongue protrusion movement. A written description, and at times
suggestions,
for
prcxkicing
the sound is
provided,
which the user can access as an auditory clip. The Speech
Analysis offers the user a look at graphic representations of the sound utterance as a
waveform. The user is able to record their own production of the
sound,
and then compare
their
waveform of the sound with that of the instructor. The
waxeforms
provide information
concerning the loudness (amplitude) and pitch (frequenc>) of sounds, as well as duration
(length).