VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE ---- EXPLORING WAYS TO LEARN ENGLISH STRESS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION HCMC A thesis submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in TESOL By TRUONG THI HOA Supervised by LE HOANG DUNG, PhD HO CHI MINH CITY, JULY 2012 Acknowledgements This thesis would have not been possible without the help and assistance in various forms and from different sources. First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest thanks and gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Le Hoang Dung, whose enthusiasm, advice, and encouragement have guided me through the stages of this study. My special thanks also extend to the coworkers, whose insightful recommendations have greatly helped me in making necessary adjustments on this research. I would also sincerely thank University of Technical Education-Ho Chi Minh City, who have so far sponsored my studying. This study could not have been completed without the very willing participation of all respondents from the Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Technical Education- Ho Chi Minh City. To all of their great help am I in debt. Last but never least, my special love and thanks are also extended to my beloved family, including my parents, my husband and my little son, whose love, encouragement and expectation have nurtured my life in this work and without whom I could have not been able to complete this research. I Certificate of originality I hereby certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: EXPLORING WAYS TO LEARN ENGLISH STRESS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION HCMC in terms of the statement of Requirements for Theses in Master’s Programs issued by Higher Degree Committee. Ho Chi Minh City, July 2012 Truong Thi Hoa II Retention and use of the thesis I hereby state that I, Truong Thi Hoa, being the candidate for the degree of Master in TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s theses deposited in the library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan or reproduction of the thesis. Ho Chi Minh City, July 2012 Truong Thi Hoa III Table of contents Acknowledgements............................................................................................... i Certificate of originality....................................................................................... ii Retention and use of the thesis ............................................................................ iii Table of contents ................................................................................................ iv List of abbreviations .........................................................................................viii List of tables ....................................................................................................... ix List of figures................................................................................................... xi Abstract……...................................................................................................... xii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................1 1.1. Background to the study ...............................................................................1 1.2. Rationale .......................................................................................................1 1.2.1. Teaching and learning English stress at high school level..........................1 1.2.2. Teaching and learning English stress at tertiary .........................................2 1.2.3. Teaching and learning English stress at HCMCUTE .................................3 1.3. Significance of the study ...............................................................................5 1.4. Purpose of the study .....................................................................................6 1.5. Research questions ........................................................................................8 1.6. Delimitations and limitations .......................................................................8 1.7. Organization of the study ............................................................................. 9 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW.............................................................10 2.1. An overview of English stress .................................................................... 10 2.1.1. Definitions of English stress ................................................................... 10 2.1.2. A contrastive analysis between Vietnamese tones and English stress......12 2.1.3. Stress problems facing Vietnamese learners of English ..........................13 2.1.4. Stress and communicative ability ............................................................15 2.2. An overview of stress learning strategies.....................................................18 IV 2.2.1. Definition of stress learning strategies .......................................................18 2.2.2. Importance of stress learning strategies ....................................................20 2.2.3. Factors affecting learner strategy use.........................................................22 2.2.4. How to identify stress learning strategies ..................................................24 2.2.5. Related studies on stress learning strategies ..............................................26 2.2.6. Eckstein’s (2007) model ..........................................................................34 2.3. Conceptual framework ................................................................................40 CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY .......................................................................45 3.1. Research method .........................................................................................45 3.2. Respondents of the study ............................................................................45 3.3. Sources of data ............................................................................................48 3.3.1. Questionnaire to student respondents........................................................48 3.3.2. Pronunciation scores .................................................................................48 3.3.3. Structured interviews ...............................................................................51 3.4. Pilot study ....................................................................................................51 3.5. Research instruments ..................................................................................52 3.5.1. Questionnaire to student respondents........................................................52 3.5.2. Structured interviews ...............................................................................55 3.6. Research design ...........................................................................................56 3.7. Collection and analysis of data ....................................................................58 3.7.1. Collection of data .....................................................................................58 3.7.2. Analysis of data .........................................................................................58 CHAPTER 4 DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF RESULTS ............60 4.1. Data analysis ...............................................................................................60 4.1.1. Analysis of background information .........................................................60 4.1.2. Analysis of stress learning experience .......................................................62 4.1.2.1. Phase 1A: Input 4.1.2.1.1. Questionnaire to student respondents..................................................63 V 4.1.2.1.2. Structured interviews ..........................................................................65 4.1.2.2. Phase 1B: Practice 4.1.2.2.1. Questionnaire to student respondents...................................................66 4.1.2.2.2. Structured interviews ..........................................................................68 4.1.2.3. Phase 2: Noticing/ feedback 4.1.2.3.1. Questionnaire to student respondents...................................................68 4.1.2.3.2. Structured interviews ..........................................................................70 4.1.2.4. Phase 3: Hypothesis forming 4.1.2.4.1. Questionnaire to student respondents...................................................71 4.1.2.4.2. Structured interviews ..........................................................................73 4.1.2.5. Phase 4: Hypothesis testing 4.1.2.5.1. Questionnaire to student respondents ..................................................74 4.1.2.5.2. Structured interviews ..........................................................................76 4.1.3. A summary of SLSs found in first-year English majors ............................77 4.1.4. A summary of SLSs found in third-year English majors ...........................79 4.1.5. Analysis of reference sources for stress learning strategies.......................83 4.1.5.1. Questionnaire to student respondents.....................................................83 4.1.5.2. Structured interviews .............................................................................84 4.1.6.1. Questionnaire to student respondents...................................................85 4.1.6.2. Structured interviews ...........................................................................86 4.1.7. Analysis of frequency of class instructions on stress learning ................87 4.1.7.1. Questionnaire to student respondents...................................................87 VI 4.1.7.2. Structured interviews ..........................................................................87 4.1.8. Analysis of effectiveness of stress learning strategies ............................88 4.1.8.1. Questionnaire to student respondents...................................................88 4.1.8.2. Structured interviews ..........................................................................88 4.1.9. Analysis of interest of an English stress class.........................................88 4.1.9.1. Questionnaire to student respondents...................................................88 4.1.9.2. Structured interviews .........................................................................89 4.2. Discussion of results ..................................................................................89 4.3. Major findings ............................................................................................91 CHAPTER 5 SUGGESTIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION ...................................................................95 5.1. Suggestions................................................................................................95 5.2. Contributions of the study .........................................................................98 5.3. Recommendations for further research .....................................................98 5.4. Conclusion.................................................................................................99 REFERENCES ................................................................................................... 101 APPENDICES .................................................................................................... 107 APPENDIX A – A summary of responses to the questionnaire ..................... 107 APPENDIX B - The questionnaire ................................................................. 110 APPENDIX C – Structured interviews ........................................................... 114 APPENDIX D - Speaking test guidelines ........................................................ 115 APPENDIX E – Speaking test scoring criteria ................................................. 116 APPENDIX F – Student score sheet ................................................................. 117 VII List of abbreviations EFL English as a foreign language HCMCUTE University of Technical Education- Ho Chi Minh City L2 Second language L1 Mother tongue LLSs Language learning strategies MOET Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training PLSs Pronunciation learning strategies SLSs Stress learning strategies SLA Second language acquisition VIII List of tables Table Page 1.1 The syllabus of Speech Training course at HCMCUTE ............................ 4 2.1 Pronunciation learning strategies in academic articles .......................... 31 2.2 Pronunciation learning strategies in pedagogy books and workbooks.... 33 2.3 Connection between Kolb’s (1984) construct, SLA and PLSs .................. 35 2.4 Connection between Kolb’s (1984) construct, SLA and SLSs from academic articles, pedagogy books and workbooks ................................................. 42 3.1 A summary of respondents ....................................................................... 46 3.2 A summary of successful and unsuccessful learners of pronunciation ..... 50 3.3 A summary of the questionnaire items ..................................................... 53 4.1 A summary of respondent profile .............................................................. 61 4.2 Opinions on perception strategies of English stress ................................ 63 4.3 Opinions on production strategies of English stress ................................ 66 4.4 Opinions on evaluation strategies of performing English stress .............. 69 4.5 Opinions on the ways of encountering with English stress errors............ 72 4.6 Opinions on the ways of implementing changes in learning English stress……………………………………………………………………………………….. 75 4.7 A summary of SLSs found in first-year English majors ............................ 77 4.8 A summary of SLSs found in third-year English majors ........................... 79 4.9 A summary of stress learning strategy use................................................ 81 IX 4.10 A summary of stress learning strategies with high mean scores .............. 82 4.11 Opinions on reference sources for stress learning strategies.......................... 84 4.12 Opinions on time for self-studying English stress out of the classroom .......... 85 4.13 Opinions on frequency of class instructions on self-studying English stress .. 87 4.14 Opinions on the effectiveness of stress learning strategies ............................. 87 4.15 Opinions on the interest of an English stress class ......................................... 88 4.16 A summary of major findings ............................................................................ 92 X List of figures Figure Page 2.1 Kolb’s (1980) learning cycle construct........................................................ 37 2.2 Connection between Kolb’s (1984) learning cycle construct and SLA ............ 38 3.1 Research procedure ......................................................................................... 57 4.1 Opinions on perception strategies of English stress ........................................ 64 4.2 Opinions on production strategies of English stress ....................................... 67 4.3 Opinions on evaluation strategies of performing English stress ..................... 70 4.4 Opinions on the ways of encountering with English stress errors................... 73 4.5 Opinions on the ways of implementing changes in learning English stress..... 76 4.6 A summary of stress learning strategy use....................................................... 81 5.1 Relationship between major findings and suggestions .................................... 96 5.2 Suggestions on stress learning strategies ........................................................ 97 XI ABSTRACT This research was conducted to analyze stress learning strategies of first- year and third-year English majors at University of Technical Education - Ho Chi Minh City. The study reviews Eckstein’s (2007) idea of combining between Kolb’s (1984) learning cycle and pronunciation acquisition theory together with pronunciation learning strategies from academic studies, pedagogy books and workbooks on pronunciation and then comes up with the conceptual framework. For the collection of data, eighty-four English majors in their first year and sixty-six in their third year were surveyed and interviewed. The data were statistically processed through mean scores of a five-point scale and frequency. The study came up with three major findings on both stress learning strategies and factors affecting learner strategy use. Analyses of the data revealed that (a) the majority of English majors in their third year frequently used a wide variety of stress learning strategies in four phases of pronunciation acquisition including strategies of perception and production, evaluation, prediction and self-correction, (b) the difference in the strategy use between the two groups of first-year and third-year English majors as well as between successful learners of pronunciation and unsuccessful learners of pronunciation lies in higher frequency and a wider variety of strategies being used, (c) the learner strategy use was mainly affected by their level of proficiency, motivation for improving pronunciation and instructions on stress learning strategies. These three major findings led to three major suggestions of stress learning for improving learners’ pronunciation skill and enhancing communicative ability. XII CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1. BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY According to Negrin-Cristiana (1997), English stress is a challenging part for EFL learners to acquire. This likely helps to explain why Joseph (2003) suggests that it should probably be learned as early as possible in second language (L2), as indeed it is in mother tongue (L1). He also claims that speakers of syllable-timed or tone languages have particular difficulty with stress patterns in English. This means Vietnamese learners of English whose native language is a tonal language are not exclusive. In fact, during the teaching at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Technical Education - Ho Chi Minh City (abbreviated to FFL, HCMCUTE), the poor performance of English stress of some English majors has come to the researcher‘s attention. For example, some of the students misplaced primary stress. Besides, some stressed all words in an utterance more or less equally, without one prominent stress. Some missed entirely performing stressing. In addition to these stress problems, one of the most frequent questions the researcher encountered in the classes of Speaking and Speech Training is ―How to learn English stress effectively?‖. It can be inferred that learning English stress is one of the most challenging problems facing EFL learners in general and English majors at HCMCUTE in particular. This problem will be presented in more detail in the next section. 1.2. RATIONALE 1.2.1. Teaching and learning stress at high school level In most of schools in Vietnam, English has been widely taught in recent years from grade six to grade twelve. Attention given to the four macro-skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing is to some extent equal according to the new set of English textbooks first issued by Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) in 2002. However, there is unequal division of stress, looking at pronunciation section of English textbooks from grade 10 to 12. For example, the 1 section Pronunciation in English textbooks of both grade 10 and 11 focuses just on sounds. In English textbooks of grade 12, knowledge of English stress is presented just in four lessons. It can be seen that English stress is almost ignored in English teaching and learning at high school. There are some common reasons why stress seems to be skipped during teaching and learning English at high school. First of all, the main reason for this unequal distribution of attention is that all exams, which students are supposed to take during the semester and at the end of each semester, as well as when finishing high school, are in written form. As Nguyen Thi Nhan Hoa (1997) mentions in her MA thesis of listening strategies of Vietnamese EFL students that the assessment of the quality of teaching and learning a foreign language in general and English in particular at school consists of the scores students get in written exams. For instance, the most important exams at school including final exams at the end of middle school and high school as well as university entrance examination all are in written form. It can be clear that neither teachers nor students have sufficient motivation to teach or learn pronunciation and so the need for improving English stress is also neglected. Other possible reasons for ignoring teaching English stress at school include large class-size (there are often more than forty students in a class), bad teaching aids (lack of labs or CD players) and the weak communicative competence of the teachers themselves (Vietnamese teachers at school are almost trained in Vietnam with no access to an English-speaking environment). Phan Khanh Van (2006) states that Vietnamese teachers confess a lack of real exposure to English-speaking communities. In addition to these reasons, the lack of strategies to teach and learn stress effectively may be another reason for ignoring English stress. Together with the dominant place of written exams, it can be logically concluded that all these causes contribute to the exclusion of stress from the English curriculum at the majority of schools in Vietnam. 1.2.2. Teaching and learning stress at tertiary level The rationale of teaching and learning stress at tertiary level is likely similar. According to the study of intonation as a means to better English non- 2 majored students‘ oral skills by Nguyen Thi Nguyet Anh (2009), intonation has been one of the most neglected areas not only in classroom but also in materials purposely designed for teaching and learning English. Furthermore, a large number of studies in Vietnam showed stress problems faced by university students. For example, in the study of the role of basic pronunciation knowledge by Ha Thanh Bich Loan (2005), only 14 of 110 students declare that they are never confused in using word stress. In another study of pronunciation problems faced by Vietnamese learners of English at Mekong University, Nguyen Thi Kim Ba (2009) shows that nearly 30 % of pronunciation errors is related to stress. Besides, stress errors in reading aloud in Vietnamese learners of English were found in another study by Le Thuy Chi (2000). It seems that stress problems of university students were commonly found in a large number of the previous studies by different researchers, which means stress is also a challenge for Vietnamese students of English. 1.2.3. Teaching and learning stress at HCMCUTE For the case of this paper at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, HCMCUTE teaching focuses on all four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. As there is distribution of attention given to each individual skill, the gap between these skills at HCMCUTE is not as big as that at high school. Actually, there is definite time available for teaching each specific skill in the curriculum. However, in terms of time distribution, teaching reading and writing is always given top priority, while teaching pronunciation and particularly stress is likely to sit at the bottom of the list. For instance, English majors at HCMCUTE take five three- credit-courses of speaking, six three-credit courses of writing, five three-credit courses of reading, two two-credit courses of translation but only a two-credit course of speech training and a two-credit course of phonetics and phonology which are directly related to stress. First, the course Speech Training is intended for the first semester of first- year English majors at HCMCUTE. This course provides students with the English sound inventory and its pronunciation from a Received Pronunciation perspective. 3 The course aims at developing the students‘ awareness of the nature of the English pronunciation through a systematic and thorough introduction to English sounds. On successful completion of this course, students are expected to be able to (i) differentiate between consonants and vowels, (ii) properly pronounce English sounds in isolation and in connected speech, (iii) get to know different types of stress and intonation in English. The training course lasts fifteen weeks with two forty-five-minute periods each as shown in Table 1.1 (p.4). Table 1.1 The outline of Speech Training course at FFL, HCMCUTE Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Vowels Vowels Vowels Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Vowels Vowels Vowels Week 7 Week 8 Week 9 Mid-term test Consonants Consonants Week 10 Week 11 Week 12 Consonants Consonants Consonants Week 13 Week 14 Week 15 Stress Intonation Consolidation (Source: Syllabus of Speech Training course at FFL, HCMCUTE, 2011) As shown above, the very limited time (only two periods) is spent on teaching stress in comparison with time on segmental features (twenty-four periods). That partly explains why English majors at HCMCUTE, who have poor understanding of stress and its functions in communication at school level, are not still well-equipped with the knowledge of English stress at tertiary level, which negatively affects their oral performance and listening comprehension in English (Avery and Ehrlich,1995; Kenworthy, 1987; O‘ Connor, 1980). Besides, these subjects take another course of pronunciation English Phonetics and Phonology in their late second year, the content of which is directly related to segmentals and supra-segmentals and presented in more detail than the previous course Speech 4 Training in their first year. However, there is a big gap from the first course Speech Training in their early first year to the next course English Phonetics and Phonology in their late second year. In addition to these courses, which are directly related to stress, there are speaking courses which help students improve their oral skill including pronunciation. However, stress is not the main focus of speaking courses. Nevertheless, it is likely impossible to suggest further time for training English majors‘ stress due to the time limits of the new curriculum that only consists of 150 credits as required by HCMCUTE in academic year 2012 and 2013 compared with the current curriculum which consists of 204 credits. According to the design of the 2012-2013 curriculum, the time for studying outside the classroom is twice more than the time for studying in class. This leads to the fact that developing self-learning strategies is in a big demand when time for training in class is not sufficient. In addition, unlike most other learner characteristics (e.g. aptitude, attitude, motivation, personality, general cognitive style), learning strategies are readily teachable (Brown, 1987). It is thought that if the strategies of successful language learners can be identified, it would be possible to teach them to unsuccessful language learners and, thus, increase their learning outcomes. That is the reason why the study focuses on exploring stress learning strategies, correlation between strategy use and scores as well as factors affecting strategy use in the hope of improving learners‘ English stress as well as their communicative ability, but not others although the researcher is fully aware of the important role of other factors such as teaching, materials or equipment. In brief, with the limited time of two periods on teaching English stress to subjects during their study, it can be clear that stress is largely neglected in the curriculum at FFL, HCMCUTE, which implies that a survey for stress learning strategies (abbreviated to SLSs) to help these subjects self-improve English stress on their own is really necessary. 1.3. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 5 Stress has been found to influence listeners‘ judgments of comprehensibility and accentedness of L2 speech (Anderson-Hsieh, Johnson, & Koehler, 1992), revealing their importance in L2 learning. Because of the importance that stress plays in English learning, the study needs to be done in careful consideration in the hope of assisting the English majors at HCMCUTE to successfully achieve good pronunciation which requires accurate performance on stress as well as improving their communicative ability. Besides, the study has contributed enormously to our understanding of EFL learners‘ strategies in approaching English stress. In the previous studies, pronunciation learning strategies have been investigated (Peterson, 2000) and stress teaching strategies have been suggested (Phan Thi Lan Anh, 2010), or English stress errors in Vietnamese students have been also analyzed for stress teaching (Le Thuy Chi, 2000), but it seems that few studies so far have critically surveyed strategies for English stress learning only. Finally, the study helps EFL teachers gain a proper understanding of EFL learners‘ stress approaching, so it‘s easier to design appropriate activities for teaching. For EFL learners, the study suggests SLSs of successful learners to unsuccessful learners in full consideration of the correlation between strategy use and scores as well as factors affecting learner strategy use. 1.4. PURPOSE OF THE STUDY Learning to perceive and produce English stress, and understand how English stress functions and how it is implemented in L2 is an important skill for adult language learners who want to maximize their L2 intelligibility and continue to improve their oral skills following the completion of classroom instructions. Improving language skills is an ongoing process and having access to strategies that allow language learners to take control of their own stress learning is considered essential for achieving academic and professional success in L2 contexts (Morley, 1991). Researchers have discovered that successful L2 learners, compared with their unsuccessful classmates, used more strategic mental processes (learning strategies) and employed them more frequently; As Ellis (2008) 6 comments in his latest overview of research in the field of second language acquisition (SLA), ―The study of learning strategies has been motivated by both the wish to contribute to SLA theory by specifying the contribution that learners can make to L2 learning and by the applied purpose of providing a research- informed basis for helping learners to learn more effectively through identifying strategies that ‗work‘ and training them to make use of those‖. Since learners cannot always find the chance to ask their language teacher for help in real life contexts, they should be stimulated to come to a stage where they can make their own decisions about their own stress learning. Students can be actively involved in their own learning. Thus, a primary motivator for this study was the desire to identify effective strategies for improving English stress that learners could use independently, without access to specialized resources and learning strategies; however, few recent studies have been done on stress learning strategies. It can be clear that there is an urgent need to investigate stress learning strategies of L2 learners because this is still an unexplored area. This study is an attempt to partly give an in-depth insight into stress learning of English majors. It aims to find out what strategies these students employ to learn English stress. Many researchers have suggested that the conscious use of language learning strategies makes good language learners (Wenden, 1991; Oxford, 1990). Researchers also believe that strategies of successful language learners can provide a basis for aiding unsuccessful language learners. O‘Malley & Chamot et.al. (1985) assert that the learning strategies of good language learners, once identified and successfully taught to less proficient learners could have considerable effects on facilitating the development of L2 skills. It can be clear that if language teachers know more about effective strategies that successful learners use, they may be able to teach these effective strategies to unsuccessful learners to enhance their language skills. With the desire of searching for effective ways of learning English stress to help English majors at HCMCUTE in mind to improve their pronunciation and communicative ability, the study therefore aimed to (1) find out English stress learning strategies used by first- year and third-year English majors at HCMCUTE; (2) compare stress learning 7