PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale for the study
In recent time, English, as a language of international communication and
lingua franca, has been widely used and spoken worldwide for education, business,
communication, and others purposes. Admittedly, English has become a means of
international communication and one of the most popular languages in the world. It
is used for almost all aspects of human life, such as mass media, business, sports,
science and technology, education culture and so on. Therefore, the knowledge and
skills of English are highly valued. As a result, some educational institutions in
Vietnam have introduced English since the pre-elementary level. Moreover, in high
schools, it is one of three core subjects tested in the National Examination.
When speaking a foreign language, pronunciation is of great importance. If you
cannot pronounce correctly you are not able to make yourself understood. A
language is a tool of communication but bad pronunciation can never be a good
tool of communication. Therefore, tremendous misunderstandings are caused by
inappropriate pronunciation. This mispronunciation during daily communications is
sometimes so significant that we should pay much attention to avoid it. Admittedly,
in the real context of teaching and learning English as foreign language in Viet
Nam, pronunciation is one of the problems that need tackling.
As a teacher of English with more than 17 years of experience at Nong Cong 1
high school, I noticed that my students are not motivated and qualified enough to
practice pronouncing English confidently, naturally compared with students of
other regions nationwide. One reason for this is that they were not exposed to
natural speaking environment at their lower secondary school as well as other
practical setting to speak English. More importantly, they are not taught or
instructed in an appropriate way to English pronunciation. For them, learning
English means doing grammar exercise, reading tasks, writing sentences instead of
speaking during their English lessons. Despite their considerable knowledge of
phonetics, the students fail to use the knowledge to articulate their sentence to
communicate in real-life situations. This results in the lack of confidence,
demotivation to communicate in spoken form.

gather information about the students involved, monitor the progress of the
students when they are exposed to some common audiovisuals during their lessons
and determine the effectiveness of videos in teaching and learning pronunciation
based on the students’ reflection and pre-test, post-test result
The pre-tests were necessary to assess pronunciation competence the
students possessed in single utterances as well as in full presentation before the
intervention of the strategy and used as a baseline score. The post-tests were used
to determine the effectiveness of the strategy used by the students during the
experiment process by comparing the pre-test scores to the posttest scores taken at
the end of the study to conclude the hypothesis.

2


PART 2: DEVELOPMENT
1.1. Literature Review
2.1.1 Definition of pronunciation
Pronunciation is one of the important aspects in English, especially in oral
communication. Every sound, stress pattern, and intonation may convey meaning.
The non-native speakers of English who speak English have to be very careful in
pronouncing some utterances or he may create misunderstanding. Therefore,
having an intelligible pronunciation is necessary rather than having a native-like
pronunciation.
Lado [7: p.70] has stated that pronunciation is the use of a sound system in
speaking and listening. Here, pronunciation is merely treated as the act that
happens in speaking and listening.
Sharing the ideas, Kristina, Diah, et al. [6: p.1] defined that pronunciation is
the act or manner of pronouncing words; utterance of speech. In other words, it can
also be said that it is a way of speaking a word, especially a way that is accepted
or generally understood. In the senses, pronunciation entails the production and


Table 1. English Phonetic Symbols
2.1.4. The objectives of teaching Pronunciation
Teaching pronunciation in a high school is very essential. Teacher should
give certain attention in teaching pronunciation and decide the area of sounds that
become the basic need for students.
Native-like pronunciation is difficult for most young learners to achieve in a
foreign language. The achievement of it requires not only skilled teaching but also
a high level of internal motivation of the student. Most young learners are satisfied
with reasonably intelligible speech in the second language and this is an acceptable
goal for the English Foreign Language teacher. The teacher should give assistance
during the regular speaking lesson to students who are having difficulty with
particular sounds. The particular sounds that students will find it difficult will differ
for different language backgrounds.
4


Celce- Murcia, et al. [2; p.8] stated that the pronunciation should enable
learners to surpass the threshold level so that their pronunciation will not detract
from their ability to communicate
a. Ability
b. Consistency: the pronunciation should be smooth and natural.
c. Intelligibility: The pronunciation should be understandable to the listeners.
(Kenworthy [5; p.3])
d. Communicative Efficiency: The pronunciation should help to convey the
meaning that is intended by the speaker.
Based on the goals above, the intelligibility is considered the main goal of
pronunciation since the idea of pronunciation is to enable the listeners to
understand what the speaker says. Kenworthy [5; p.7] states that the main goal of
pronunciation for the learners is can be comfortably intelligible. It means that the

programs. It is an exciting means of communication. Useful instructional programs
are being telecasted regularly for the student community on television. A teacher
should utilize the TV programs and make them the basis for discussions on
relevant occasions.
Video is a viable aid towards effective learning and teaching. Teaching with
the help of video is called video-aided instruction. In video-aided instruction,
learners’ comprehension is generally tested through a questionnaire and video is
clearly an instructional medium that generates a much greater amount of interest
and enjoyment than the more traditional printed material.
Nowadays, educational video-cassettes are easily available in the market.
Educational CDs can be prepared on any aspect of the subject-matter and
curriculum.
2.1.7. The Advantages of Using Audio Visual Aids
According to Nupur [7; p.5], there are so many advantages of using audio
visual aids, such as:
* Best motivators: They are the best motivators. Students work with more
interest and zeal. They are more attentive.
* Fundamental to verbal instructions: They help to reduce verbalism
which is a major weakness of the schools. They convey the same meaning as
words mean. They give clear concepts and thus help to bring accuracy in learning.
* Clear images: Clear images are formed when we see, hear, touch, taste and
smell as our experiences are direct, concrete and more or less permanent. Learning
through the senses becomes the most natural and consequently the easiest.
* Vicarious Experience: Everyone agrees to the fact that the firsthand
experience is the best type of educative experience but such an experience cannot
always be provided to the pupils so in some situations certain substitutes have to be
provided. For this we find a large number of inaccessible objects and phenomenon.
In all such cases audio-visual aids provide us the best substitutes.
* Variety: Audio-Visual aids provide variety and provide different tools in
the hands of the teacher.

matched with the objectives of the learning program and students’ levels of
competence.
In the narrow scope of this study, I only focused on using some audiovisuals
to help students improve the students’ pronunciation (mainly focus on English
consonants)
2.2.3. The reality of teaching and learning English pronunciation at Nong
Cong 1 high school
As mentioned above, speaking skill (presenting skill) in Project lesson in
new Tieng Anh 10 is the last part if the eighth lesson that make up of one unit in the
textbook. In order to fulfill their project required in the Textbook, the teacher is
obliged to provide students with guidance how to do, what to do with their Project
in which targeted Grammar and structure of overall lesson is indispensible. The
students in our school, however, have been facing numerous challenges in speaking
lesson because of their poor source of phonetics knowledge. They are not confident
and competent enough to pronounce long sentence or present their ideas in front of
the whole class. Some get tired of speaking out, others speak English with much
hesitation. In addition, most of them have difficulty using the obtained phonetics
knowledge to produce their utterances. Moreover, Project- based learning is
unfamiliar to students from lower secondary schools. They are not experienced
enough to work in group and make their lesson outcome confidently.
7


The differences between the number of Vietnamese ending consonants (only
6 consonants appear at the end of words) and English ending consonants (endless
list of final consonants and final consonant clusters in English) make it hard for the
students to remember and pronounce correctly.
In addition to this, some problems of the teacher related to pronunciation
practice should be stated namely lack of knowledge about Pronunciation; lack of
motivation to teach Pronunciation; inappropriate techniques of teaching

diphthongs using lecturing technique combined with listen and imitate technique.
The videos called “Vowels & Diphthongs - English Listening & Pronunciation
Practice (Part 1&2)” were used for the first meeting. I showed many parts of the
8


videos as a model to pronounce certain words, then the students pronounced the
word altogether. After that, the students tried to pronounce the words individually.
In the second meeting I used the videos “Introduction to Articulatory
Phonetics (Consonants)” to teach the students basic knowledge about consonant.
In this video, students would focus on how linguists describe consonant sounds, in
particular in American English.
Finally, the last meeting was mainly about the labiodental sounds/f, v/, the
interdental sound / ð /, and the alveolar sound /s, z/. The names of the videos used
in this meeting were “Labiodental sounds Judith”, “"th" [θ] [ð] consonant
sounds- English Pronunciation Lesson”, and “English: How to Pronounce S and
Z consonants: American Accent”.

Picture 1: Students from class 10B5 at a pronunciation lesson
Step 4. Observing the study
In the two meetings, the condition of the classroom was perfectly controlled.
The students didn’t make unnecessary noise during the action of the research. After
the first meeting, there was a progress in the classroom situation. Haft of the
students confidently pronounce the words that they have learnt in front of the class.
The others still struggled with the vowel and the diphthongs. However, in the
second meeting, most of the students were able to pronounce correctly the
consonants although this was the first time they had a chance to learn the
consonants clearly. They seemed to be interested in watching videos to enhance
their pronunciation.


The test was given to the students after four times treatment. The test has the
same format as pretest. Both the pre and posttest are equal in term of level of
difficulty. The posttest was also conducted 10 minutes. The same tool of pretest
evaluation was used to mark student’s posttest. The results of posttest were in
comparison with that of pretest so as to reveal the impact of adapting audio-visual
method for improving English Pronunciation.
Pre-test
The participants were required to do pretest before the experimental
teaching. The pretest was designed to access students’ English pronunciation.
students had to complete the test in 10 minutes. There was no guidance or help
given during the test. The test consisted one parts which is a range of most
commonly mispronounced words by non-native English language learners in
Vietnam. It was aimed to find out whether the students already know how to
pronounce some words in English correctly or not. In the first part, the wordlist
contained fourteen words which ended with six final consonant sounds that are
foreign to Vietnamese speakers (/s/, /z/, /l/, /ð/, /f/, /v/) and for the second part, the
students will read some random sentences. Students should aware of being
evaluated on pronunciation and therefore slowly enunciate each syllable.
Posttest
There are two parts of the posttest. In the first part, the teacher asked students
to read 14 commonly mispronounced words by Vietnamese English language
learners. Then, they will be asked to read out some sentences. The students’ tests
were assessed by basing on the checklist. The maximum score a student can
achieve is 100. The teacher rated each student’s reading of the wordlist and reading
sentences and assigned numerical values to represent the level of accuracy with
which they produce each sound.

11



handbook containing materials and
student worksheets) by explaining the
materials and doing exercise on the
handbook.
3. Your teacher teaches pronunciation by
dictating and drilling
4. I often have problem in pronouncing a
final consonant and put right stress in the
right syllable\word
5. Lack of time to practice pronunciation
is the good reason for bad pronunciation
6. Wrong methods of self-study and
wrong teaching methods of teachers can
lead to incorrect pronunciation
7.You often have a habit of pronouncing
the sounds of English like the sounds of
Vietnamese
8.When you see the words is not familiar

55%

33.3%

8.3% 1.7%

1.7%

96.7%

3.3%


10%

8.3%

33.3%

21.7%

13.3
%

15%

16.7%

80%
5%

11.7%
3.3%

1.7% 3.3%
8.3% 8.3%

3.3%
75%
12



(proficient)
No
%
No
%
10
22.5
4
10
Table 3: Initial Student scores

Level 4
(excellent)
No
%
0
0

The data showed that most students’ pronunciation levels were rather low.
The percentage of each final consonant was pronounced in the wordlist and the
sentence by 40 students was unsatisfactory. This percentage is a summary of the
score of each final sound when I evaluated the recordings as seen in Appendix 2.
Base on the recordings, when reading from the sentences with less time focus on
formulating the specific sounds, mistake made more frequently.
Level 1
(insufficient)
No
%
10
25

3.2. Discussion of the main findings
3.2.1. Student’s perception
After students watched videos they often imitated the models even after the
class was over. Since they were accustomed to listening to dialogues spoken by
natives, they could easily remember how to pronounce the consonants correctly.
That was the proof that videos could motivate students to produce correct
pronunciation.
Videos also add students’ interest to pronunciation. It is proved by students’
answers in questionnaires. They were stated that they were interested to learn
pronunciation after watching videos
Videos that are able to create fun and enjoyable atmosphere gave a huge
contribution to the change of class situation from dull and passive to cheerful and
active. The students could easily express their feelings during the lesson. They were
able to give criticism to the teacher or simply reminded the teacher to pray and fix
little mistakes done by the teacher. Besides, they were able to give right position of
each consonant.
Videos are able to stimulate students to action. In this case, the students were
stimulated and to produce English sounds as much as possible. They could make it
although it was something new for the students since they were accustomed to
produce Vietnamese sounds.
Videos are audiovisual media that have a lot of benefits to pronunciation
practice. Compared to other media, videos provide something that not easily
provide by other media. They provide enjoyment and a good learning model at
once. That is why the students look happy and relax during the lesson.
Based on the explanation above, it can be concluded that the hypothesis of
this study is accepted. Videos are effective media to improve the students’
pronunciation ability. The use of videos in teaching pronunciation encourages the
students to learn pronunciation in an easy and enjoyable way.
3.2.2. The students’ performance
Based on the data discussed above, it is a satisfactory conclusion that

The study has achieved its aims; however, there are still a few drawbacks
that should be considered for future study. Firstly, because of time and some other
factors, the data collected could only be carried out among small groups of students
not all the 10th grade students of one school, so the findings could not be
generalized to the students of the whole school. Secondly, the time for exploring
online videos was only in four lessons, which might be not enough to investigate all
students’ reflections. And the tests might not fully reflect the students’
performances in quite short procedures. Therefore, the author hoped that more
studies would be conducted to measure the effectiveness of this method as well as
help improve students’ English pronunciation.
3.3.2. Suggestions for further study
15


Firstly, pronunciation is considered an important language element that
should be taught as early as possible because it provides students with a basic
ability to help them listening to English utterances. Therefore, it is better for the
teacher to teach this part first before the others. Among pronunciation teaching
approach, cartoon films are supposed to be effective because it provides a good
pronunciation model to the students. However, in order to make full use of videos,
teachers should adjust videos presented with the material given and the level of the
students. It can also be used for other purposes such as practicing particular sounds
in the class.
Secondly, high schools dealing with English teaching-learning in their
programs should provide the appropriate facilities that support the teaching
learning process in order to improve the educational quality, such as an appropriate
language laboratory, audio visual room, internet, library et cetera. In addition to
this, high schools should encourage English teachers to use different techniques to
teach English especially pronunciation in order to improve quality of teaching
learning process.

6. Lado, Robert. 1964. Language Teaching: A Scientific Approach.
New York:
McGraw Hill, Inc.
7. Nupur (2014). What are the Main Advantages of Audiovisual Aids? Retrieved on
16/8/2015.2012032829111/what-are-themain- advantages-of-audiovisual-aids.html
8. Peter and Ehrlich, Susan. (1992). Teaching American English Pronunciation.
Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. Vietnam MOET. (2015). Tiếng Anh 10: Student book 1. Hanoi: Education
Publishing House and Pearson.

17


APPENDIX 1:
QUESTIONNAIRE
Survey Questionnaire for Students
This questionnaire is designed to collect information for the study on “Using
videos to improve 10th graders’ English Pronunciation”. Your participation in
completing the following items is highly appreciated. You can be certain that this is
for the study purpose only and that you will not be identified in any discussion of
the data
Please put a tick in the appropriate box to show how much you agree with the
following statements:
Statement
Totall Agree Not Disag Totall
y
sure ree
y
agree
disagr

□
□
4 final consonant and put right stress in the
right syllable\word
5 Lack of time to practice pronunciation is
□
□
□
□
□
the good reason for bad pronunciation
Wrong methods of self-study and wrong
□
□
□
□
□
6 teaching methods of teachers can lead to
incorrect pronunciation
You often have a habit of pronouncing
□
□
□
□
□
7 the sounds of English like the sounds of
Vietnamese
When you see the words is not familiar
□
□

School
His
Is
House
With
If
Of

Part 2: Read out loud the sentences below
Nam lives in a small house for whole life in the countryside with his mother but
Nam’s sister likes to live in a luxury house with her famous friends.
She would love to become a famous woman because she has a lot of talents.
If the small car has to be repaired, Nam will have to walk to school with his friends.
He doesn’t have to go down the pool with his cousins for a swim.
If Nam could choose his life, he would become a famous man and live with
parents in a small villa near the beach of South Asia
John is one of the best students in my school where a lot of famous students in the
world like to study.
If Life let you down, just keep moving forward.

-THE END-

19


APPENDIX 3:
POST-TEST
Part 1: Read out loud the words below
Small
Pool



21