Compared to secondary and high school students, English teaching andlearning at primary level is still new and difficult, especially the phonetic part.Determining the importance of phone
Trang 11 OPENING 1.1 Reasons for choosing the research:
English is considered the common language of the globe According to thecontinuous development of exchanges and international integration as deep astoday, English universalization has become an indispensable thing It is the key
to open the door to help us access the quintessence, progress in culture,education, science, technology and many other areas of humanity Not onlyadults want to be able to speak fluently with foreigners, but even small childrenwant to be able to communicate in English with international friends Therefore,the Education and Training sector has conducted a comprehensive renovation ofthe curriculum, teaching methods, the quality of English teachers to improve thequality of teaching and learning
Previously, Vietnam did not integrate with other countries in the world, theinvestment for students to improve English was still limited But today, in theintegration stage, learning foreign languages is extremely necessary So, theneed to learn English is very high today Seeing this importance, the Educationand Training sector brought English teaching and learning right at the primarylevel
As we all know, the ultimate nature of language learning is that we cancommunicate and even communicate fluently But looking back at the process ofapproaching English language, especially of Vietnamese students - we havespent a lot of time to learn grammar and vocabulary but forgotten the two mostimportant skills to be able to communicate proficiently are listening andspeaking skill So to listen well and speak well, we must have a good phoneticbackground If the pronunciation is correct, all other skills like listening -speaking - reading will become a lot easier Conversely, if the pronunciation iswrong or unclear, it will make the listener misunderstand or even not understandwhat the speaker wants to say
Compared to secondary and high school students, English teaching andlearning at primary level is still new and difficult, especially the phonetic part.Determining the importance of phonetics in particular and English in general,the Ministry of Education and Training is currently implementing the NationalForeign Language Project 2020 to improve foreign language capacity forEnglish teachers in the country In fact, after nearly ten years of teaching, I havefound that students' communication skills are limited, this is because theirpronunciation is not good To overcome this situation, I researched and studied anumber of measures to improve pronunciation for students This is the reason I
chose the topic of experience innovation: "Some experiences to help students
in grade 4 and 5 of Nga Bach Primary School pronounce English correctly
to communicate effectively".
1.2 Research purposes
Studying this topic, I want to:
Trang 2- Find practical solutions to improve the quality and effectiveness ofteaching and learning English in general and pronunciation ability in particularfor Nga Bach Primary School students
- Improve uneven quality between grades
- Help students have a good phonetic background to be more confident incommunication as well as better learning in later levels
1.3 Research subjects
Students in grade 4 and 5- Nga Bach Primary School- Nga Son Thanh Hoa Province
District-1.4 Research methods
During the implementation process, I applied the following method groups:
Methodology of theoretical research:
- Materials on teaching methodology
- Materials on phonetic teaching methodology
- Thematic language games, group activities
- Regular Training Program
- Studying the teaching and learning English of Nga Bach Primary School
Practical research methodology:
- Understanding the teaching and learning of teachers and students,colleagues
- Exchange, attend, discuss, talk with my colleagues
Experimental method:
- Conduct experiential teaching, control, exchanging experiences, assessingthe effectiveness of applying the innovation of content - teaching methods topupils in grade 4, 5 at Nga Bach Primary School
2 CONTENT 2.1 Theorical basis
Nowadays, all primary schools across the country have taught Englishprograms starting from the 3rd grade and some schools have taught English rightfrom the 1st grade At Nga Bach Primary School - where I am working, has and
is applying compulsory English program from grade 3 according to the textbookprogram published by the Ministry of Education and Training with a duration of
2 periods per week and grade 1, 2 according to the English elective program.However, many views that elementary school students are still small, theyhave not read and written Vietnamese well yet so it is hard to learn English andthey just need to learn to know, it is not necessary for them to pronouncecorrectly as native speakers But for me, on the contrary, we have to teach them
to speak correctly and right from when they start to learn English Because theold people often say: "Young bamboo is easy to bend" and partly due to personalexperience from many years of teaching elementary school students, I clearlysee the drawbacks of students If the teacher neglects to correct thepronunciation errors, does not give instructions to pay attention to the stress,intonation in the sentence when listening to other people correctly pronounce,
Trang 3they will not recognize and understand what the other person is saying On theother hand, students will be embarrassed not to know whether their teachers areteaching correctly or that other teachers are teaching correctly, it makes themshy and not confident in communication And the fact that there are manyteachers who often pronounce English sounds exactly the same to Vietnamesesounds, and usually do not pronounce the ending sounds of the words, it leads tothe students also mispronounced So long into a habit that is difficult to fix.Many students learn English at other extra classes with many different teachers.They have a comparison of pronunciation of the teachers They do not know iftheir teachers pronounce correctly or other This I have met a lot and it madestudents very confused.
For effective English pronunciation learning, it is necessary to regularlylisten and practice pronunciation according to the standard reading of nativespeakers and teachers In addition, learners should be equipped with some basicknowledge of how to pronounce English “But English pronunciation rules arenot simple And English is also not one of those languages that people can rely
on the syllables in the word to decide to accentuate Many authors of Englishhave said that English word stress is difficult to predict so the best way is that
we should consider marking the word stress as a characteristic of each word andwhen learning each word, we must learn how to mark the stress of that word.This is a valid view and nothing is exaggerated.”[5]
Therefore, the problem is that teachers must have a good phonologicalbackground, study appropriate methods to help students pronounce English well
2.2 Reality
Nga Bach Primary School is recognized as a second-grade nationalstandard school and is highly concerned, supported English teaching andlearning by parents and departments Besides, the textbook program withknowledge content is suitable for students' real life and has many beautifulpictures, easy to attract students, creates excitement for students Moreover, thedevelopment of science and technology helps teachers get more resources toteach more effectively In addition, teachers are very enthusiastic, responsible,eager to learn, always cultivate professional knowledge
But through the teaching practice for many years, I realized that the quality
of English at primary level is not high The students often say: learning English
is too difficult, especially pronunciation By withdrawing my own practicalexperience, exploring, investigating and consulting students, I noticed somecauses of the limitations:
- For the teachers: teaching in a large group (usually a class has about 30students or more), the level of awareness has many different levels, teachingaids are not synchronized These distract students 'concentration, greatly impact
on skills training for students, slow down the process of acquiring students'knowledge In addition, when at the university, the teachers did not learn muchand specialize in pronunciation, the background of English teachers' phoneticknowledge is limited, they do not master the pronunciation of all English
Trang 4sounds, so it is very difficult to teach students to pronounce correctly andexactly.
- For the students: because they are in rural areas, the practical application
of what they learn in everyday communication is limited They do not have theopportunity to communicate with foreigners to use what they have learned.Besides, they are not aware of the importance of this subject Students go toclass are compulsory because English is a subject in the curriculum Manychildren are afraid of making mistakes, so they do not dare to speak, do not dare
to practice in front of the crowd In addition, students in Nga Bach are affected
by the local accent, so English pronunciation is not good And because inEnglish there are many different sounds than Vietnamese, it is very difficult forthem to pronounce correctly In addition, the children are at a very playful age,
so they have no sense of self-review at home Moreover, in rural areas, themajority of parents do not know English so they cannot help them revise athome
Because of the above situations, the quality of teaching and learningEnglish of students has not achieved high results as expected At the beginning
of the school year 2018-2019, I got students in grade 4 and 5 to do the test andhere is the result of speaking skill:
Grade students Total of
Mark 9-10 Mark 7-8 Mark 5-6 Mark < 5
Looking at the table of figures, we see that the number of students scoring
at 9-10 is small, while the number of students scoring at 5-6 and below 5 is high.Therefore, I have studied and proposed solutions to overcome the abovelimitations in order to improve the quality of English teaching and learning inNga Bach Primary School in general and students’ pronunciation in particular
2.3 Solution
During the teaching process, I realized that students still had manydifficulties in pronunciation As I said above, pronunciation plays a very importantrole in learning foreign languages in general and English in particular Thepronunciation is considered to be the basis of communication, which is the basis forthe learners' speaking and listening skills Good pronunciation, learners will bemore confident when speaking and listening better The question is why many of uslearn English for a very long time but cannot communicate with native speakers,
we say they do not understand or misunderstand what we want to say and viceversa Therefore, if the pronunciation is wrong, or not remember the pronunciation,
Trang 5especially with words that are difficult to pronounce or words with many syllables,
it will make the students less confident when speaking which leads to poor Englishspeaking and poor listening Due to can not read, they will have heavy psychology,
do not want to read and became more and more inferior As a teacher, I always try
to motivate and encourage students and especially create a comfortableatmosphere, use lively and funny visual images to introduce words or sentences tomake students excited to learn and like to talk more
So how to help students pronounce English better? This is a question askingEnglish teachers in general and myself in particular to answer with manydifferent methods to help students pronounce and practice pronunciation better.And when teaching phonetics we have to focus on the three main parts: teachingindividual sound, the stress of the word and intonation in the sentence So I havecome up with the following methods:
2.3.1 Help students pronounce English well through using the international phonetic alphabet- IPA
I realize that, for primary students, the English phonetic system is too newand complicated In Vietnamese, if we memorize the alphabet, we canpronounce all the words But in English there is very little connection betweenthe alphabet and the transcription There are only 26 letters but there are 44sounds A letter can make a lot of sounds and vice versa many different letters indifferent words have the same pronunciation Besides, there are many sounds inEnglish that there are not in Vietnamese and English is different fromVietnamese, so students have difficulties in English pronunciation So in order toavoid confusion between sounds and letters, we have to introduce the phoneticalphabet to students because in English there is a difference between writing andreading There are a lot of people wondering whether in English it can be spelled
as in Vietnamese? The answer is yes if we master the sounds in the internationalphonetic alphabet So let's find out what an international phonetic alphabet is
The international phonetic alphabet- IPA
Trang 6IPA or International Phonetic Symbols is a system of phonetic symbolscreated and used by linguists to represent syllables in all human languages in aprecise and separate way The international phonetic alphabet is used in learning
a new language for pronunciation and listening ability It is also used in voicetraining for actors to have an inspiring voice or change the tone of the language.IPA can help to use mouth, lips, teeth, tongue position and how to controlairflow to produce standard sound when learning a foreign language
Similar to the Vietnamese spelling table, the IPA international phoneticalphabe has 44 sounds including vowels and consonants The above three linesare vowels, the following three lines are consonants The vowel consists of 20sounds that are divided into 2 halves, on the left is monophthongs (there are 12monophthongs), on the right is dipthongs - assembled by 2 monophthongs (thereare 8 dipthongs) Monophthongs will be arranged in pairs, with the opening ofthe mouth growing from top to bottom Vowels with /: / beside are long vowels.Consonants include 24 sounds, including non-vibrating consonants and vibratingsub-sounds (voiceless and voiced sounds)
After grasping the international phonetic alphabet, students will distinguishthe difference between spelling and pronounciation They will read better whenlooking at the transcription of that word in the dictionary
2.3.2 Teach sounds in conjunction with practising words and sentences
The biggest reason why we can't learn English is we have learned FALSE
We learn the wrong pronunciation, the wrong method so the more we learn, themore wrong we are, then the correction will take a lot of time and effort.Remember when learning English we must be determined to read correctly Why
we must read correctly? Read right to communicate What is the benefit oflearning without speaking? Read correctly to practise the muscles of the mouth.Our English is not fluent because our mouth muscles are hard Read exactly tolisten easily Native speakers read correctly, you also read correctly, so it will beeasy for you to recognize the words that they say
So, the first important thing is that we have to teach students to pronounceeach sound exactly Learning to pronounce each syllable correctly, you will beable to pronounce each word correctly and then to higher levels are phrases andsentences You will not encounter the situation you say you understand Besides,you will understand the pronunciation of a new word by searching it in thedictionary and combining the sounds to pronounce the words correctly
To teach a sound and make it easy for students to acquire and pronounce,
we follow the following process:
Presentation:
- The teacher lets students listen to the recording made by native speakersseveral times
- The teacher reads aloud a few times, students listen
- The teacher writes that sign of the sound on the board
- The teacher hangs the diagram showing the pronunciation of the soundand then describes how to pronounce to the students to understand
Trang 7(how the position of teeth, lips, tongue is)
- Ask students to read in chorus, in groups and finally call some of them toread it again
Practice:
- The teacher turns on the tape for students to hear the words that containthat sound and then the sentence twice Students listen
- The teacher reads words and sentences again, students listen
- Then the teacher asks the whole class to look, listen and repeat in unison,then in groups and individuals
- In the process of students' practice, the teacher monitors and corrects themistakes
Production:
- The teacher can offer some games or activities to reinforce knowledge,help students practice and memorize sounds Such as :
Silent sounds: teachers will pronounce without sound the sounds they are
learning Students observe the teacher's mouth movement and guess what theteacher is saying The teacher then divides the class into groups of 3-4 to play inthe same way
One or Two (or three): the teacher writes on the board two or three
international transcriptions, and numbers one, two or three, respectively Afterthat the teacher reads the words one by one and the students listen and guess thatword contains which sound then say 1, 2, or 3
Minimal Pairs: The teacher writes the same pairs of sounds on the board,
students list similar pairs of words that contain those sounds
Missing words: the teacher gives some sentences in which one word is
missed, then reads the sentences, the students listen and write the missing word
in the blank (the missing word is the word containing the sounds being learnt)
Circle the odd one out: students circle the word with the underlined part
being pronounced differently from the other words
Find out the words: teachers write phonetic transcription of some words
that contain learning sounds, students look at phonetics to write the right words
Example:
In Unit 11- Lesson 3 - Part 1,2,3- Grade 4 Students’ book 2
When teaching 2 sounds / ʊ / and / u: /, I teach the following process:
Presentation:
- The teacher has students listen to the recording the / ʊ / sound 2 times
- The teacher lets the students listen and repeat twice
- The teacher pronounces the /ʊ/ sound 2 times, students listen and observeteacher’s mouth
- The teacher writes / ʊ / on the board
- The teacher hangs the description diagram of the /ʊ/ sound and explainhow to make sound /ʊ/:
Trang 8The diagram depicting the pronunciation of the /ʊ/ sound
When pronouncing, the mouth is rounded a little, the lips are slightlyforward, back of the tongue is up little in the oral cavity and pronounced fast.This is a short vowel (pronounced like sound / ua / in Vietnamese but faster andshorter)
- Students listen and the whole class repeat again, then in groups andindividuals
- The teacher monitors and corrects the mistakes for students
Practice:
- The teachers reads the words containing sound / ʊ / - cook, book; students
listen and repeat in unison, groups and individuals
- The teacher reads the sentences with words containing sound / ʊ /;students listen and repeat
My mother cooks at six o’clock.
Your book is on the table.
- The teacher shows students how to identify sound / ʊ /: letters that cometogether often make up the / ʊ / sound, such as: u / oo / ou / o
Example: woman /'wʊmǝn/, foot /fʊt/ , sugar /'ʃʊgǝr/ , should /ʃʊd/
With the sound / u: /, the teacher teaches the same process
When pronouncing the sound / u: /, we first pronounce the sound / ʊ/, butthe mouth is more rounded, the lips are forward, then back of the tongue is upand retracted behind in the oral cavity, make it longer We will get the sound / u:/ This is a long vowel
The diagram depicting the pronunciation of the /u:/ sound
Trang 9- The teacher shows students how to identify sound / u: /: letters that cometogether often make sound / u: /, such as: oo / ou / oe / u / ue / ew
Example: too /tu:/ , group /gru:p/, shoe /ʃu:/ , blue /blu:/
- The teacher asks the class to pronounce the two sounds again, then call a3-4 students to pronounce and show the differences
Students in Class 4A are working in groups of 4 to write words containing sound /ʊ/ and /u:/
- Then the teacher and the whole class check and remark
After students have known the pronunciation of each sound correctly, Inoticed they pronounce it better In addition, when they look at the transcription
of a word in the dictionary, they can read it
Trang 102.3.3 Teach communication in conjunction with the correct pronunciation
When the students have mastered the pronunciation of each sound, thematching of sounds to read words will be very easy and simple like that inVietnamese But there is another thing here: in English, if the word has 2 ormore syllables, it must be read with accent And in English there are 2 types ofaccents, they are word stress and sentence stress
* Word stress:
First of all, we have to explain for students what the word stress is Aword with two or more syllables will have accent The stress of a word is asyllable of the word that is read stronger, longer and higher than the othersyllables The word stress is always fixed English accents are very important,what will happen if the accent is wrong? That is:
- Can change the meaning of the word With the same word, the position ofthe stress changes will change the word form and the meaning of the word
Example: : with the word “record”, if we stress on the first sound / ri'kɔrd /
then it is a verb and means to register sound
If we stress on the second sound / 'rekǝrd / then it is a noun and meansinformation or data on particular subject collected and preserved
- It will be difficult for the listeners to listen, and they may misunderstand or
do not understand the meaning of the speaker
- Even the listeners will feel disregarded, ridiculous or even the conversationcan be obstructed
Word stress in English is divided into four categories They are primary stress,secondary stress, tertiary stress and weak stress However, English 4 and 5 onlyrefers to a type of stress that is the primary stress with the sign “ ' ”
Example: 'elephant, e'normous, kanga'roo, 'visit
Because each lesson has only 35-40 minutes, the teacher does not have time
to explain all the accent rules Moreover, the students are primary schoolstudents, so they cannot understand all of the rules, they only grasp the stress ofwords in books and simple rules In order to remember the word stress, studentshave to practise a lot
Students in class 5A are learning the word stress
Trang 11When teaching the word stress, I often do the following process:
- Have students listen to the tape twice to identify the stress of the words,then ask the students to repeat it twice
- Call some children to read it again
- Have the students listen to the sentences that contain the words and repeat,then call some students to read them again
- When students read the words, the teacher one finger to make an accentsymbol then write the words on the board with their phonetic transcription andaccents so students look at that to read easily
The teacher gives some rules to emphasize accent (in the rules there will beexceptions):
A word has only one main stress PIlot, MOther, PHARmacy
2 - syllable nouns and adjectives often
have the stress on the first syllable
DOCtor, CLEver
2-syllable verbs usually have the accent
on the second syllable
to enJOY, to inVITE
If the noun and verb have the same
spelling, then we stress on the first syllable
when it is noun, stress on the second
syllable when it is the verb
PREsent, preSENT
The words end by is -ic, -ion, -tion, we
press the accent in the sound just before it
teleVIsion
The words with the end is: -cy, -ty, -phy,
-gy, -al, we press the stress on the 3rd
syllable from the ending syllable
Mark the word stress: the teacher give some words to ask students to mark
the stress of those words
Example: Look at the words Write them with stress marks (') and say them
aloud – unit 18 – grade 4:
ruler, invite, repeat, hungry, jacket, complete, enjoy, trousers