Download Luận văn An investigation into Phuc Trach Upper Secondary School students’ difficulties in learning English pronunciation
4.1.1.7. Students’ awareness of the concepts of stress, intonation and rhythm.
Regarded to students’ awareness of the concepts of stress, intonation and rhythm, I gave them question 7 asking the respondents whether they understood the concepts with 3 possible answers for them to choose.
-yes, understand very well
- yes, but vaguely
-not at all
With the first concept, stress, most of the students seemed to understand the concept. There were 82 students who chose the first choice “yes, very well”, and 15 ones chose the second choice “yes, but vaguely” meanwhile only 3 respondents said that they understood nothing about stress.
The second category asked students whether they understood intonation concept when they learn English or not. A small number (11%) chose the first choice “yes, very well”, meanwhile a considerable number of students (55%) said that they understood the concept but vaguely and 44% chose the last choice which means that they understood nothing about intonation.
More seriously, the concept “rhythm” seemed to be least perceived by the students here. Among 100 respondents, only 8 respondents answered that they understood rhythm well meanwhile 39 ones chose the second answer and the left (53 respondents) answered that they did not understand the concept at all.
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3.1. Methodology
3.1.1. The research questions:
The study was designed to seek the answer to the three following questions:
Do students in Phuc Trach Upper Secondary School have difficulties in learning English pronunciation?
What are their main difficulties as perspected by the students?
What may be the causes of these difficulties?
With these three research questions, the study will investigate secondary school students’ difficulties as well as the causes of these difficulties in learning English pronunciation.
3.1.2.Method orientation.
As stated in the first chapter, to gain the aims with high reliabiity, the research employed different methods of a case study. That is classroom observation and questionnaires. These methods were used to collect data from students in Phuc Trach Upper Secondary School in Ha Tinh with the intention of addressing the aims of the study and then anlyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. According to Larsen-Freeman and Long( 1991:14), both qualitative and quantitative paradigms are not competing but complementary and the choice between them is not necessary. They mentioned that to gain the aims with high reliabiity, researchers should make a combination of these two paradigms.
Because the study was designed to investigate the situation in a particular context, that is in Phuc Trach Upper Secondary School, the study was a case study.
3.1.3. The characteristics of a case study
To understand the characteristics of a case study, first of all, some definitions of the term “case study” should be presented.
As cited in Jaeger, (1988) by an unidentified student , a case study is what you call a case, in case, in case you don’t have anything else to call it”
According to Smith, cited in Stake (1988), the definition of case study is ambiguous. However, the term “bounded system” defines the method for him.
Johnson (1992) defines that a case study is a study which focuses holistically on an entity. In other words, a case study is a study which involves a detailed exploration of a single instance of, or example of, something.
Gillham (2000:1) defines a case as:
A unit of human activity embedded in the real world
Which can only be studied or understood in context.
Which merges in with context so that precise boundaries are difficult to define. Thus, a case study has some following characteristics. Firstly, The context isn’t necessarily a cultural context. It can be any context as long as the context is relevant to the research questions. The second characteristic is that it focuses on an individual. In other words, case studies seek to investigate one single small group of subjects only. It is concerned with the documentation and analysis of a single instance. A case study, that is to say, is one which seeks the different kinds of evidence which there is in only one setting, the case study. Another characteristic is that it provides a portrait of what going on in a setting. (as cited in Dr. Le Hung Tien’s lecture on case-study research). In other words, the researcher taking a case study does not start with a priori theoretical notions and in case studies the continual refining of hypothesis is not reflected. Because he can not know what theories or explanations make the most sense until he gets in there and select the data, gets to understand the context and analyzes the data. McDonough & McDonough (1997:212) claim that “ teachers spend their working lives dealing in different ways with individuals, and they need to understand those “cases”, not in the first instance to build theories and search for broader patterns, but to understand their learners’ behaviors’ learning styles, language development , success, failures, attitudes, interest and motivation.
The fourth characteristic of a case study is that it can have objective and subjective accounts of data. According to McDonough & McDonough (1997:204), the study of cases is not only a qualitative undertaking, nor does it present an either/or perspective in quantitative / qualitative terms. Most of case study is quantitative because the weight of discussion on case study is on interpretive approach. However, it depends on the size of scale trend to be qualitative or quantitative or both. For example, when the researchers need to study large scale trends, cases will be usually selected on the basic of random sampling and the data submitted to stastical analysis. A case study is always selected because it deals with a considerably current issue. A case study focuses holistically on an entity. However, each case selected may be a representative for a general category.
Because of these above characteristics, I decided to choose a case study for my research. The problems at Phuc Trach Upper Secondary School may be, to some degree, the same to those of many other mountainous schools in Vietnam. Furthermore, the aim of my research is to investigate the difficulties that Phuc Trach Upper Secondary students meet when they learn English pronunciation and to recommend some suggestions for teachers and learners to overcome these difficulties. The purpose of the study also stimulates me to choose a case study for my research methods.
3.1.4. The participants:
With the questionnaire and classroom observation instruments, the participants are the students in two randomly selected classes to be the participants. They are both male and female. Among 100 respondents, 59 were female and 41 were male. All of them are at grade 11th who have been learning English for five years. I chose these grade 11th students to be the participants of the study because, firstly, they have two years of working with the new textbook meanwhile the 10th grade students have only nearly one year and the 12th grade ones have no year working with the new textbook which emphasizes much on pronunciation than the old text book. So the 11th grade students also have more time to deal with learning pronunciation. Further more, the 11th grade students also have more time to Giúp me get the data meanwhile the 12th ones are busy preparing for the graduation exams.
These 100 students were chosen randomly without no criteria set before. With this random selection, I hope to receive the most reliable and honest data from the questionnaires. In the questionnaires, I explained that their answers would be anonymous and my aim at giving them the questionnaires are just to get the data for the research without any other aims.
With the interview instrument, the participants were ten teachers of English at Phuc Trach Upper Secondary School. Among them, there were seven male teachers and three female ones. They have been teaching at that school from one to six years.
3.1.5. The instruments.
As I stated in the Introduction part, the research will be carried out by classroom observation, questionnaires and interviews
The questions and interviews are designed into investigate these main following categories:
- General attitude to learning English as well as speaking skill.
- Students’ main difficulties in learning English pronunciation as experienced by the teachers.
- The main causes of those difficulties.
3.1.5.1. The questionnaires:
As we know, one of the most popular means of collecting data is using questionnaires. The reason for this is that, firstly, it is easy for us to construct and it does not either consume time or cost money. Secondly, questionnaires can Giúp us to collect data in field setting, and the data themselves are more amenable to quantification then discursive data such as free-form field-notes, participant observers’ journals or transcripts of oral language (David Nunan 1992:143). Further more, we can achieve respondent anonymity when applying this type of instrument. There are two types of questions, closed and open-ended questions. The former kind of questions are often used to get answers which are factual or fairly predictable, meanwhile open-ended questions are preferred when the researchers expect to get answers which are in terms of opinions, beliefs or judgments. Further more, open-ended questions also give the respondents chances to express more opinions individually . Because of these above reasons, both two types of questionnaires were employed to get the data.
To get the data reliably and avoid problems such as respondents’ shyness, the questionnaires were started with explaints about its aims as well as its respondent anonymity. In order that the students had no pressure of time and freedom, they were let to finish the questions at home for one day. Further more, all the questions were written in Vietnamese so that they could be at their best to understand the questions and exp...
Download miễn phí Luận văn An investigation into Phuc Trach Upper Secondary School students’ difficulties in learning English pronunciation
4.1.1.7. Students’ awareness of the concepts of stress, intonation and rhythm.
Regarded to students’ awareness of the concepts of stress, intonation and rhythm, I gave them question 7 asking the respondents whether they understood the concepts with 3 possible answers for them to choose.
-yes, understand very well
- yes, but vaguely
-not at all
With the first concept, stress, most of the students seemed to understand the concept. There were 82 students who chose the first choice “yes, very well”, and 15 ones chose the second choice “yes, but vaguely” meanwhile only 3 respondents said that they understood nothing about stress.
The second category asked students whether they understood intonation concept when they learn English or not. A small number (11%) chose the first choice “yes, very well”, meanwhile a considerable number of students (55%) said that they understood the concept but vaguely and 44% chose the last choice which means that they understood nothing about intonation.
More seriously, the concept “rhythm” seemed to be least perceived by the students here. Among 100 respondents, only 8 respondents answered that they understood rhythm well meanwhile 39 ones chose the second answer and the left (53 respondents) answered that they did not understand the concept at all.
Để tải bản DOC Đầy Đủ xin Trả lời bài viết này, Mods sẽ gửi Link download cho bạn sớm nhất qua hòm tin nhắn.
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Tóm tắt nội dung:
rch methodology was presented briefly in the first chapter, the Introduction. In this chapter, once again, it will be discussed in more details.3.1. Methodology
3.1.1. The research questions:
The study was designed to seek the answer to the three following questions:
Do students in Phuc Trach Upper Secondary School have difficulties in learning English pronunciation?
What are their main difficulties as perspected by the students?
What may be the causes of these difficulties?
With these three research questions, the study will investigate secondary school students’ difficulties as well as the causes of these difficulties in learning English pronunciation.
3.1.2.Method orientation.
As stated in the first chapter, to gain the aims with high reliabiity, the research employed different methods of a case study. That is classroom observation and questionnaires. These methods were used to collect data from students in Phuc Trach Upper Secondary School in Ha Tinh with the intention of addressing the aims of the study and then anlyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. According to Larsen-Freeman and Long( 1991:14), both qualitative and quantitative paradigms are not competing but complementary and the choice between them is not necessary. They mentioned that to gain the aims with high reliabiity, researchers should make a combination of these two paradigms.
Because the study was designed to investigate the situation in a particular context, that is in Phuc Trach Upper Secondary School, the study was a case study.
3.1.3. The characteristics of a case study
To understand the characteristics of a case study, first of all, some definitions of the term “case study” should be presented.
As cited in Jaeger, (1988) by an unidentified student , a case study is what you call a case, in case, in case you don’t have anything else to call it”
According to Smith, cited in Stake (1988), the definition of case study is ambiguous. However, the term “bounded system” defines the method for him.
Johnson (1992) defines that a case study is a study which focuses holistically on an entity. In other words, a case study is a study which involves a detailed exploration of a single instance of, or example of, something.
Gillham (2000:1) defines a case as:
A unit of human activity embedded in the real world
Which can only be studied or understood in context.
Which merges in with context so that precise boundaries are difficult to define. Thus, a case study has some following characteristics. Firstly, The context isn’t necessarily a cultural context. It can be any context as long as the context is relevant to the research questions. The second characteristic is that it focuses on an individual. In other words, case studies seek to investigate one single small group of subjects only. It is concerned with the documentation and analysis of a single instance. A case study, that is to say, is one which seeks the different kinds of evidence which there is in only one setting, the case study. Another characteristic is that it provides a portrait of what going on in a setting. (as cited in Dr. Le Hung Tien’s lecture on case-study research). In other words, the researcher taking a case study does not start with a priori theoretical notions and in case studies the continual refining of hypothesis is not reflected. Because he can not know what theories or explanations make the most sense until he gets in there and select the data, gets to understand the context and analyzes the data. McDonough & McDonough (1997:212) claim that “ teachers spend their working lives dealing in different ways with individuals, and they need to understand those “cases”, not in the first instance to build theories and search for broader patterns, but to understand their learners’ behaviors’ learning styles, language development , success, failures, attitudes, interest and motivation.
The fourth characteristic of a case study is that it can have objective and subjective accounts of data. According to McDonough & McDonough (1997:204), the study of cases is not only a qualitative undertaking, nor does it present an either/or perspective in quantitative / qualitative terms. Most of case study is quantitative because the weight of discussion on case study is on interpretive approach. However, it depends on the size of scale trend to be qualitative or quantitative or both. For example, when the researchers need to study large scale trends, cases will be usually selected on the basic of random sampling and the data submitted to stastical analysis. A case study is always selected because it deals with a considerably current issue. A case study focuses holistically on an entity. However, each case selected may be a representative for a general category.
Because of these above characteristics, I decided to choose a case study for my research. The problems at Phuc Trach Upper Secondary School may be, to some degree, the same to those of many other mountainous schools in Vietnam. Furthermore, the aim of my research is to investigate the difficulties that Phuc Trach Upper Secondary students meet when they learn English pronunciation and to recommend some suggestions for teachers and learners to overcome these difficulties. The purpose of the study also stimulates me to choose a case study for my research methods.
3.1.4. The participants:
With the questionnaire and classroom observation instruments, the participants are the students in two randomly selected classes to be the participants. They are both male and female. Among 100 respondents, 59 were female and 41 were male. All of them are at grade 11th who have been learning English for five years. I chose these grade 11th students to be the participants of the study because, firstly, they have two years of working with the new textbook meanwhile the 10th grade students have only nearly one year and the 12th grade ones have no year working with the new textbook which emphasizes much on pronunciation than the old text book. So the 11th grade students also have more time to deal with learning pronunciation. Further more, the 11th grade students also have more time to Giúp me get the data meanwhile the 12th ones are busy preparing for the graduation exams.
These 100 students were chosen randomly without no criteria set before. With this random selection, I hope to receive the most reliable and honest data from the questionnaires. In the questionnaires, I explained that their answers would be anonymous and my aim at giving them the questionnaires are just to get the data for the research without any other aims.
With the interview instrument, the participants were ten teachers of English at Phuc Trach Upper Secondary School. Among them, there were seven male teachers and three female ones. They have been teaching at that school from one to six years.
3.1.5. The instruments.
As I stated in the Introduction part, the research will be carried out by classroom observation, questionnaires and interviews
The questions and interviews are designed into investigate these main following categories:
- General attitude to learning English as well as speaking skill.
- Students’ main difficulties in learning English pronunciation as experienced by the teachers.
- The main causes of those difficulties.
3.1.5.1. The questionnaires:
As we know, one of the most popular means of collecting data is using questionnaires. The reason for this is that, firstly, it is easy for us to construct and it does not either consume time or cost money. Secondly, questionnaires can Giúp us to collect data in field setting, and the data themselves are more amenable to quantification then discursive data such as free-form field-notes, participant observers’ journals or transcripts of oral language (David Nunan 1992:143). Further more, we can achieve respondent anonymity when applying this type of instrument. There are two types of questions, closed and open-ended questions. The former kind of questions are often used to get answers which are factual or fairly predictable, meanwhile open-ended questions are preferred when the researchers expect to get answers which are in terms of opinions, beliefs or judgments. Further more, open-ended questions also give the respondents chances to express more opinions individually . Because of these above reasons, both two types of questionnaires were employed to get the data.
To get the data reliably and avoid problems such as respondents’ shyness, the questionnaires were started with explaints about its aims as well as its respondent anonymity. In order that the students had no pressure of time and freedom, they were let to finish the questions at home for one day. Further more, all the questions were written in Vietnamese so that they could be at their best to understand the questions and exp...