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ABSTRACT

English is now considered to be one of the most popular means of communication
in the world. One of the most important goals of learning a foreign language is to
communicate while oral communication of human beings bases on sounds. Learning good
pronunciation is a vital part of learning a new language. If people do not pronounce
correctly they will have many difficulties in exchanging ideas or sometimes it may lead to
the communication breakdown.
In fact, up to now, in language teaching and learning at upper-secondary
school level, pronunciation is paid less attention compared with vocabulary, grammar and
language skills. This is because of a number of reasons: First, the textbooks (English 10 -
11 - 12) have few focuses on pronunciation knowledge and practice and therefore,
teachers often find that they do not have enough time in class to give proper attention to
this aspect of English instructions. Second, all important English exams at schools as
well as college entrance exams to universities are always in written form, so most
teachers and students have little motivation to teach and learn pronunciation. As a result,
students are often shy and unconfident to speak in English. This situation calls for the
urgent need of cultivating learner autonomy in their pronunciation learning.
The concept of learner autonomy has long been introduced and applied to the
process of language learning. However, research focusing closely on learner autonomy in
pronunciation learning is few and far between. This is inappropriate because pronunciation
is central to language learning and learners’ abilities to build, expand and refine their
pronunciation on their own outside their classrooms can be the deciding factors in their
language learning success. In an attempt to investigate this topic, the researcher has
decided to conduct a study on “Students’ Autonomy in Learning English Pronunciation
Skills at Bim Son High School, Thanh Hoa”.
As one of the first attempts to explore the application of learner autonomy in the
context of learning English pronunciation skills at Bim Son High School, this paper seeks
to explore the current techniques utilized by teachers and learners in fostering learner

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration………………………………………………………………………… i
Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………ii
List of charts and tables………………………………………………………… iii
Table of contents…………… ……………………………………………………iv
Abstract………………………………………………………………… …………v

PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Statement of the problem and rationale for the research … ……………………1
2. Aims and objectives of the study……………………………………………… 1
3. Scope of the study………………………………………………………… ……2
4. Signification of the study……………………………………………………… 2
5. An overview of the rest of the paper…………………………………………… 2

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………… ………4
1. Learner autonomy ……………………………………………………………… 4
1.1. Definition of learner autonomy ……………………………………… 4

1.3. Affective factors………………………………………………………24
1.4. Attitudes towards tasks and assignments…………………………… 25
2. The factors that affect learner autonomy in learning pronunciation skills
………………………………………………………………………… ……25
3. Techniques have been utilized by the students for their learning
pronunciation autonomously…………………………………………………………… 26
3.1. Students’ sources of pronunciation learning ……………………… 26

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3.2. Techniques utilized by the students to learn pronunciation………… 27

PART C: CONCLUSION……………………………………………………… 29
1. Major findings of the research …………………………………………….……29
2. Pedagogical implications ……………………………………………………….30
3. Limitations and Suggestions for further studies……………………………… 32

REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………… ……34

APPENDICE………………………………………………………………….……………I
Appendix 1: Student Survey Questionnaire…………………………………………I
Appendix 2: Teacher Survey Questionnaire…………………………………… XII
Appendix 3: Questions for Semi-Structured Student Interview…………………XIX
Appendix 4: Questions for Semi-Structured Teacher Interview…………………XX
Appendix 5: Classroom Observation Sheet…………………………………… XXI

strategies so that they can employ in their self-study time. In this case, the success of
learning pronunciation depends very much on how effectively and autonomously the
students practice pronunciation self-study.
For all the reasons above, I have decided to undertake a study on Students’
Autonomy in Learning English Pronunciation Skills at Bim Son Upper Secondary
School, Thanh Hoa.
2. Aims and objectives of the study
The study mainly looks at learner autonomy in pronunciation learning at Bim
Som Upper Secondary school in Thanh Hoa: the nature of and the factors affecting the
learner’s ability to take charge in learning pronunciation skills.
From the picture of current issues, the researcher hopes to propose some solutions
to help teacher’s instruction better facilitate students’ autonomy in pronunciation learning.
In brief, the study would seek to answer the following questions:
- What is the nature of learner autonomy – the ability to take charge of their own
learning English pronunciation skills at Bim Son Upper Secondary School?

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- What are the factors that affect the learners’ autonomy?
3. Methods of the study
In order to collect data for this study, a survey questionnaire is delivered to 6
teachers and 160 students at Bim Son Upper Secondary School. Some observations and
interviews with some teachers and students were also conducted for supplementary
information. Then, the results obtained from questionnaires and observations were
discussed and some useful pronunciation teaching techniques were recommended.
4. Signification of the study
This study provides a closer look at learner autonomy in teaching and learning
pronunciation skills at upper secondary school, from which constructive suggestions are
hoped to be found in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning these skills.
5. An overview of the rest of the paper
In this part (Part A. Introduction), the researcher has elaborated about:

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter addresses a review of the literature related to learner autonomy and
pronunciation learning and teaching. In each section, the definition or explanation of the
key terms is presented together with the studies worldwide.
1. Learner autonomy
1.1. Definition of learner autonomy
The term “learner autonomy” was first introduced formally by Henri Holec in 1981
when he wrote Autonomy and foreign language learning - his contribution to the Council
of Europe’s work in adult education. The so-called “father” of learner autonomy, provides

situational awareness, and task awareness.
1.2. Roles of learner autonomy
Learner autonomy can be regarded as an offspring of learner-centered approach,
which is an innovative and effective one in the literature of second language learning. The
benefits of cultivating autonomy in learners have been disclosed by a variety of researchers
and practitioners. Learner autonomy can lead to increase in motivation and cooperation as
well as responsibilities in their studying process, which means more effective learning
(Deci, 1995, p.2). Furthermore, the concept of autonomy is not restricted in school aspect.
Once students acquire autonomy in learning in the school curriculum, they slip easily into
autonomy for other activities outside class. In other words, autonomous learners evolve
life-long learning and hereby they are capable of authoring the world in which they live.
1.3. Characteristics of learner autonomy
Many scholars agree on the hypothesis that learner autonomy entails reflective
involvement in planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating learning. However,
different scholars may contribute additional attributes of learner autonomy to these core
features.
According to Scharle and Szabo (2000), an autonomous student must have built
four blocks, such as: motivation and self-confidence, monitoring and evaluation, learning
strategies, and cooperation and group cohesion. While motivation and self-confidence refer
to the intrinsic motivation and willingness to take responsibility in learning, cooperation
and group cohesion indicates that learners should liaise with each other in the learning
process. The second and third factors cover the same notion as the core features.
Monitoring skills emphasize the need to focus on the process of learning rather than the
product. This step is followed by self-evaluation, which means learners judge their own

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works as objectively as they can, acknowledging their level of proficiency, their strong and
weak points.
1.4. Teacher’s roles in learner autonomy
Autonomous learning must be the characteristic expected to nurture in students

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roles than before as facilitators, counselors, motivators, awareness raisers as well as
resources in this development. This implies the “reappraisal of teachers and learners’
roles” (Lynch 2001, p. 394). Autonomy inevitably involves a change in power
relationships and in both teachers’ attitudes.
However, this change cannot occur effortlessly. It is a process and it should be
characterized as “a continuum” (Voller, 1997, p. 100). In accordance with this viewpoint,
Sharle and Szabo (2000) illustrate a continuum of teacher attitudes ranging from traditional
to learner autonomy attitude and suggest that teachers should move toward the right hand
side of the continuum (teacher autonomy attitude). They further denote that this transition
should be gradual rather than abrupt and dramatic to allow time for the involved parties to
adapt themselves to the new practices. It is worth noticing that however difficult and time-
consuming the transformation will be, it is the first priority for the teachers to modify
themselves first if they expect to change their students’ attitudes.
1.5. Ways to develop autonomy
As learner autonomy is so pivotal in second language acquisition, scholars,
researchers and teachers have long been searching for methods to magnify this character in
learners. It is suggested that this transition must be taken through raising awareness,
changing attitudes, and transferring roles (Scharle & Szabo, 2000).
The starting stage in cultivating autonomy in learners is raising awareness of
pedagogical goals, contents and strategies (Nunan, 1997). This phase functions as an
impetus to initiate learning the second language and “opening the learner’s eyes to new
ways of thinking about their learning” (Scharle & Szabo, 2000, p. 15). It is grounded in the
belief that even when teachers provide all the necessary circumstances and input, learning
cannot happen if learner is not willing to contribute. Thus, teachers must initially present
new perspective and new experience to learners and encourage them to think consciously
in their inner learning processes. This is a tightly-teacher-controlled stage on the
consumption that learner are not yet responsible in their learning.
However, only raising students’ awareness cannot guarantee students’ self-
directed learning. Once they take on new viewpoints in learning purposes, processes and

Different classroom cultures may entail different teachers’ responsibilities and
students’ roles, which means the borderline between the suggested activities in changing
awareness and transferring attitudes are vague. In other words, to cultivate learner
autonomy, learners should first have the right attitude towards learning and knowledge of
strategies in second language learning. Secondly, they must involve in the learning process
themselves as “language learning depends vitally on language use” (Deci, 1995).
Practitioners, researchers have suggested a number of activities for learners’ involvement.
They have reported on the effectiveness of using motivating activities (Barrett & Daborn,
2001; Kavaliauskiene, 2003; Luchini & Rosello, 2007); portfolios, assignments, projects

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and homework (Coombe, 2001; Ali, 2000; Malcolm, 2001; Nakayama, 2000;
Kavaliauskiene, 2003), self evaluation and peer assessment, diary and journal keeping on
strengthening their responsibility and nourish this activities.
In short, there are three phases in culminating learner autonomy, namely raising
awareness, changing attitudes and transferring roles. The activities in each part should be
adapted in line with students’ level of self-direction and educational milieu. During the
transition, motivation is crucial as learning is usually most efficient and rapid when the
learner is motivated and attentive. A range of current perspectives has now put motivation
on a different footing, integrating psychological considerations with social conditions. The
question is how to make students like what is required. The answer lies in the students’
investment in studying. Even when students like the subject, learning will not happen if
they do not invest enough time, money and energy. “Required motivation” is now said to
be “more important to acknowledge the diversity of motivations and reorient them in a
more holistic and richer framework of SLA” (Zuengler & Miller, 2006). Bony Norton
Peirce (1995) used the term ‘investment’ to emphasis on the commitment to target
language study. students’
Whereas other researchers often focus on one of these three steps to promote
students’ learning responsibility (only raising students’ awareness of the matter, or asking
students to keep portfolio and assignment, or letting them to self-assess, the researcher

learning strategies, which are regarded as the tools for students to expand their language
competence and to undertake their own learning responsibility. Students should be shown a
variety of available strategies and encouraged to find out which strategies work best for
them in certain contexts. Meanwhile, certain attitudes are also required of teachers. They
should be willing to share information with the learners in terms of both short and long
term objectives, to take consistent control by clearly establishing expectations towards
learners and lastly to delegate tasks and decisions to learners.
With a view to reinforcing these skills and attitudes for learners and teachers,
Scharle and Szabo (2000) go on to detail the process of developing responsibility that
learners and teachers go through. This process is divided into three phases: raising
awareness, changing attitudes and transferring roles. First, the stage of raising awareness
includes highly controlled activities which are intended to present new experiences to
learners and to make them conscious of the inner processes of their learning. Second, the
changing – attitude – stage allows repeatable, less controlled activities through which
students practice and reinforce their new roles and habits. Finally, the stage of transferring
roles contains loosely structured activities that give students considerable freedom. It is
clear that as learners move from one phase to the next, they are facilitated to exercise
greater autonomy and more responsibility.

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More specifically, Vieria (2003) puts principles in a common framework for learner
and teacher development. This framework should be highly recommended for its thorough
presentation of action principles to promote learner autonomy. Besides, it nicely compares
autonomous learner development side by side with reflective teacher development.
However, for the scope of the present study, the researcher will only make use of the
principles concerning learners. According to Vieria (2003: 226), the action principles to
develop learner autonomy include:
Reflection: Developing language / learning awareness
 Developing awareness of language (formal and pragmatic properties; socio-cultural
dimension)

Dalton, (1994: 3) describes pronunciation in general term "as the production of
significant sound in two senses. First, sound is significant because it is used as part of a
code of a particular language. In this sense we can talk about pronunciation as the
production and reception of sounds of speech. Second, sound is significant because it is
used to achieve meaning in contexts of use. Here the code combines with other factors to
make communication possible. In this sense we can talk about pronunciation with
reference to acts of speaking".
In this paper, the author has no intention of pointing out which definition of
pronunciation is the most precise but only wishes to find an appropriate definition
facilitating the understanding of pronunciation in language study. Therefore, the definition
of pronunciation proposed by Ur (1996) is adopted.
2.2. Roles of learner autonomy in teaching and learning pronunciation
Among many other factors, learner motivation and autonomy play a vital role in
learning in general, and learning a foreign language in particular; learning pronunciation
skills is included.
In teaching and learning pronunciation, if teachers play the roles of a “speech
coach”, students themselves need to involve in this process as much as possible in order to
get good results. According to Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Ngoc (2001), students need to
satisfy some demands. Firstly, they need to perceive the model as exactly as they can.
Secondly, they need to response as much as and as well as possible to the recognition, the
imitation and repetition activities. Lastly, beside the help of the teachers, students should
do self-correction of their pronunciation mistakes.
2.3. The teacher’s roles and student’s roles in teaching and learning pronunciation
Because of the importance of teaching pronunciation mentioned above, teachers
play a key role in teaching and learning pronunciation. Many authors share this idea and
they all give out the similar roles of teacher's and students' in pronunciation practice.

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However, in this study, the literature of Kenworthy (1987: 1-2) about the teacher's role was
chosen. The roles of the teacher and students can be derived in the following parts.


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model correctly. Students need to respond as much and as well as they can to the
recognition, with repetition activities because "practice makes perfect". Finally, students
should correction of their pronunciation mistakes. 22
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

This chapter is devoted to presenting the methodology of the current research,
including the research design, the participants, the data collection instruments and
procedure, and data analysis.
In the preceding chapter, the literature on the research topic was reviewed for the
theoretical basis of the study. In order to lay a practical background for the study, the
research was carried out with strictly justified methods of data collection and analysis.
The study was carried out in 4 months from May to September of 2011 among 160
students of all grades and 6 teachers teaching English at Bim Son Upper Secondary
School.
1. An overview of the situation of teaching and learning English at Bim Son Upper
Secondary School
1.1. Current learning and teaching of English at Bim Son Upper Secondary School
There are 6 teachers of English at Bim Son Upper Secondary School. All the
teachers are very eager for knowledge, enthusiastic with teaching, ready to change for the
better, willing to apply better ways to fortify their teaching quality and improve the quality
of English teaching and learning.
In the light of communicative approaches, Pronunciation is designed in English
books for high-school students. For each book among English 10, 11 and 12, pronunciation
accounts for 10 percent of the designed amount of knowledge. More precisely, in English
textbook in particular, each unit (among 16 units of the whole book) is made up of by five

self-study time and then I will suggest a pronunciation-learning strategy training
programme with my students. I have been working at Bim Son Upper secondary school for
six years. In this case study, I was the practitioner and the researcher at the same time.
1.2. Participants
Teachers are considered to play an important part in guiding and monitoring the
development of learner autonomy in their students. The study, therefore, invited for the
participation of six teachers in the foreign language group.
The subjects are 160 students at Bim Son Upper Secondary School. All of them
have learned English since 6
th
grade (about 12 years old) at least. They are chosen at
random basing on their order number in the attendance register then the name attached to
these numbers were collected. Most of them can do written English tasks quite well, but
rather badly with spoken language with a lot of mispronounced words. They demonstrate
very little knowledge about phonetics.
The above things can conclude that the subjects of the study are compatible in
terms of age, gender and knowledge of both mother tongue and foreign language.

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2. Data collection instruments
In order to obtain in-depth, rich data and information for investigating the situation
and the difficulties that teachers and students have in teaching and learning pronunciation,
the study used three methods of data collection: questionnaire (conducted in late June
when students generally fulfill their pronunciation lessons in English Textbook), classroom
observation (done from June to late August) and informal interview (done from July to
August).
2.1. Questionnaires
Basing on certain knowledge about students’ problems in pronunciation learning,
the investigator designed two kinds of questionnaires which include both closed questions
(students and teachers only choose one option) and open- ended questions (with more

in the last question, techniques to promote learners’ autonomy in improving pronunciation
skills that the participant is using are listed, the teachers can tick at as many options as they
wish.
After collecting all the questionnaire responses from both teachers and students, the
researcher has calculated the numbers of responses and the percentages respectively of the
questions in each questionnaire. The results, then, have been arranged to two main items
based on the first two research questions.
 Reality of teaching and learning pronunciation at Bim Son Upper Secondary
School.
 The ways that teachers and students promote autonomy in learning
pronunciation skills.
2.2. Classroom observation
Apart from two survey questionnaires for teachers and students, classroom
observation is also applied in order to clarify and test the validity of information about the
current situation of teaching and learning pronunciation, the challenges in teaching and
learning have to face up with. The observation was carried out before the time the
questionnaires were conducted in Language Focus periods of different classes taught by
three different teachers. Hopefully, the results from the classroom observation will
contribute much to finding out the solutions to the improvement.
2.3. Interviews
In order to understand better about the reality of pronunciation teaching and
learning and challenges that teachers have to face during pronunciation lessons, the
researcher had unconventional talk with some students and teachers. The questions in the
interview were basically based on those in the questionnaire in order to find out real
reasons for their answers as well as to understand more about reality of teaching and

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learning pronunciation through points of view that the researcher could not think of when
designing the questionnaires. Therefore, the data of the informal interview will be shown
as the explanation after analysis of every question in both questionnaires instead of

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from the interviewees. The interviewees were encouraged to speak out whatever they
thought about the subject matter. However, reorientation was made when necessary so as
to bring focus onto the investigated areas.
Student interviews: Getting personal contacts from the questionnaires, the
researcher asked for the participation of ten students in the interviews. The procedures of
conducting the student interviews were similar to those of the teacher interviews.
Phase 4: Observation
Observation was done when the subjects were speaking English naturally without
awareness of being observed in the classroom lasting from my start of teaching the
subjects’ class to the start of research. After each time of teaching the subjects’ class, I
took notes carefully in a notebook immediately. At the time of the study, I have been
teaching the informants about 20 hours.
Thanks to the practicum the researcher asked for permission to observe four
classes. An observation checklist was completed. Besides, further notes were taken and
revised. Short discussion about the lessons was conducted with the teachers and the
students right afterwards to get the immediate general impression and feedbacks.
Information was refined within the day to get the next observation better structured and
informed.

4. Data analysis methods and procedure
The collected data was first classified according to the research questions. The
students’ responses were considered first. Teachers’ responses were analyzed in
comparison and contrast with the students’ responses. Interview responses and classroom
observation served to solidify the conclusion.
The questionnaires had already been divided into sections from the design stage
basing on the research questions. Therefore, it was convenient to classify the information
gathered. Data collected from the questionnaires was then synthesized and illustrated by
diagrams or tables according to each research question. As for the data collected from the
interviews, they were first transcribed. The information was then classified to see which