Some experiences to help students in grade 4 and 5 of Nga Bach Primary School pronounce English correctly to communicate effectively

1. OPENING
1.1. Reasons for choosing the research:
English is considered the common language of the globe. According to the continuous development of exchanges and international integration as deep as today, 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 only adults want to be able to speak fluently with foreigners, but even small children want to be able to communicate in English with international friends. Therefore, the Education and Training sector has conducted a comprehensive renovation of the curriculum, teaching methods, the quality of English teachers to improve the quality of teaching and learning.
Previously, Vietnam did not integrate with other countries in the world, the investment for students to improve English was still limited. But today, in the integration stage, learning foreign languages is extremely necessary. So, the need to learn English is very high today. Seeing this importance, the Education and Training sector brought English teaching and learning right at the primary level.
As we all know, the ultimate nature of language learning is that we can communicate and even communicate fluently. But looking back at the process of approaching English language, especially of Vietnamese students - we have spent a lot of time to learn grammar and vocabulary but forgotten the two most important skills to be able to communicate proficiently are listening and speaking skill. So to listen well and speak well, we must have a good phonetic background. If the pronunciation is correct, all other skills like listening - speaking - reading will become a lot easier. Conversely, if the pronunciation is wrong or unclear, it will make the listener misunderstand or even not understand what the speaker wants to say.
Compared to secondary and high school students, English teaching and learning 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 National Foreign Language Project 2020 to improve foreign language capacity for English teachers in the country. In fact, after nearly ten years of teaching, I have found that students' communication skills are limited, this is because their pronunciation is not good. To overcome this situation, I researched and studied a number 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:
- Find practical solutions to improve the quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning English in general and pronunciation ability in particular for Nga Bach Primary School students
- Improve uneven quality between grades.
- Help students have a good phonetic background to be more confident in communication as well as better learning in later levels.
1.3. Research subjects
Students in grade 4 and 5- Nga Bach Primary School- Nga Son District- Thanh Hoa Province.
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, assessing the effectiveness of applying the innovation of content - teaching methods to pupils in grade 4, 5 at Nga Bach Primary School.
2. CONTENT
2.1. Theorical basis
Nowadays, all primary schools across the country have taught English programs starting from the 3rd grade and some schools have taught English right from 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 textbook program 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, they have not read and written Vietnamese well yet so it is hard to learn English and they just need to learn to know, it is not necessary for them to pronounce correctly 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 the old people often say: "Young bamboo is easy to bend" and partly due to personal experience from many years of teaching elementary school students, I clearly see the drawbacks of students. If the teacher neglects to correct the pronunciation errors, does not give instructions to pay attention to the stress, intonation in the sentence when listening to other people correctly pronounce, they will not recognize and understand what the other person is saying. On the other hand, students will be embarrassed not to know whether their teachers are teaching correctly or that other teachers are teaching correctly, it makes them shy and not confident in communication. And the fact that there are many teachers who often pronounce English sounds exactly the same to Vietnamese sounds, and usually do not pronounce the ending sounds of the words, it leads to the 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 if their teachers pronounce correctly or other. This I have met a lot and it made students very confused.
For effective English pronunciation learning, it is necessary to regularly listen and practice pronunciation according to the standard reading of native speakers and teachers. In addition, learners should be equipped with some basic knowledge of how to pronounce English. “But English pronunciation rules are not 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 English have 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 and when 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 phonological background, study appropriate methods to help students pronounce English well.
2.2. Reality
Nga Bach Primary School is recognized as a second-grade national standard school and is highly concerned, supported English teaching and learning by parents and departments. Besides, the textbook program with knowledge content is suitable for students' real life and has many beautiful pictures, easy to attract students, creates excitement for students. Moreover, the development of science and technology helps teachers get more resources to teach 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 practical experience, exploring, investigating and consulting students, I noticed some causes of the limitations:
- For the teachers: teaching in a large group (usually a class has about 30 students or more), the level of awareness has many different levels, teaching aids 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 much and specialize in pronunciation, the background of English teachers' phonetic knowledge is limited, they do not master the pronunciation of all English sounds, so it is very difficult to teach students to pronounce correctly and exactly.
- 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 the opportunity to communicate with foreigners to use what they have learned. Besides, they are not aware of the importance of this subject. Students go to class are compulsory because English is a subject in the curriculum. Many children 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 in English there are many different sounds than Vietnamese, it is very difficult for them 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, the majority of parents do not know English so they cannot help them revise at home.
Because of the above situations, the quality of teaching and learning English 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 and here is the result of speaking skill:
Grade
Total of students
Mark 9-10
Mark 7-8
Mark 5-6
Mark < 5
SL
%
SL
%
SL
%
SL
%
4
126
12
9,5
35
27,8
56
44,4
23
18,3
5
117
10
8,5
30
25,6
57
48,8
20
17,1
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 above limitations in order to improve the quality of English teaching and learning in Nga Bach Primary School in general and students’ pronunciation in particular.
2.3. Solution 
During the teaching process, I realized that students still had many difficulties in pronunciation. As I said above, pronunciation plays a very important role in learning foreign languages ​​in general and English in particular. The pronunciation is considered to be the basis of communication, which is the basis for the learners' speaking and listening skills. Good pronunciation, learners will be more confident when speaking and listening better. The question is why many of us learn 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 vice versa. Therefore, if the pronunciation is wrong, or not remember the pronunciation, especially 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 English speaking 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 comfortable atmosphere, use lively and funny visual images to introduce words or sentences to make students excited to learn and like to talk more.
So how to help students pronounce English better? This is a question asking English teachers in general and myself in particular to answer with many different methods to help students pronounce and practice pronunciation better. And when teaching phonetics we have to focus on the three main parts: teaching individual sound, the stress of the word and intonation in the sentence. So I have come 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 new and complicated. In Vietnamese, if we memorize the alphabet, we can pronounce all the words. But in English there is very little connection between the alphabet and the transcription. There are only 26 letters but there are 44 sounds. A letter can make a lot of sounds and vice versa many different letters in different words have the same pronunciation. Besides, there are many sounds in English that there are not in Vietnamese and English is different from Vietnamese, so students have difficulties in English pronunciation. So in order to avoid confusion between sounds and letters, we have to introduce the phonetic alphabet to students because in English there is a difference between writing and reading. 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 international phonetic alphabet. So let's find out what an international phonetic alphabet is.
The international phonetic alphabet- IPA
IPA or International Phonetic Symbols is a system of phonetic symbols created and used by linguists to represent syllables in all human languages in a precise and separate way. The international phonetic alphabet is used in learning a new language for pronunciation and listening ability. It is also used in voice training 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 control airflow to produce standard sound when learning a foreign language.
Similar to the Vietnamese spelling table, the IPA international phonetic alphabe has 44 sounds including vowels and consonants. The above three lines are vowels, the following three lines are consonants. The vowel consists of 20 sounds that are divided into 2 halves, on the left is monophthongs (there are 12 monophthongs), on the right is dipthongs - assembled by 2 monophthongs (there are 8 dipthongs). Monophthongs will be arranged in pairs, with the opening of the mouth growing from top to bottom. Vowels with /: / beside are long vowels. Consonants include 24 sounds, including non-vibrating consonants and vibrating sub-sounds (voiceless and voiced sounds).
After grasping the international phonetic alphabet, students will distinguish the difference between spelling and pronounciation. They will read better when looking 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, the more 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 of learning without speaking? Read correctly to practise the muscles of the mouth. Our English is not fluent because our mouth muscles are hard. Read exactly to listen easily. Native speakers read correctly, you also read correctly, so it will be easy for you to recognize the words that they say.
So, the first important thing is that we have to teach students to pronounce each sound exactly. Learning to pronounce each syllable correctly, you will be able to pronounce each word correctly and then to higher levels are phrases and sentences. You will not encounter the situation you say you understand. Besides, you will understand the pronunciation of a new word by searching it in the dictionary 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 speakers several 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 sound and then describes how to pronounce to the students to understand
(how the position of teeth, lips, tongue ... is)
- Ask students to read in chorus, in groups and finally call some of them to read it again.
Practice:
- The teacher turns on the tape for students to hear the words that contain that 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 the mistakes.
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 the teacher is saying. The teacher then divides the class into groups of 3-4 to play in the 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. After that the teacher reads the words one by one and the students listen and guess that word 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 observe teacher’s mouth.
- The teacher writes / ʊ / on the board
- The teacher hangs the description diagram of the /ʊ/ sound and explain how to make sound /ʊ/:
The diagram depicting the pronunciation of the /ʊ/ sound
When pronouncing, the mouth is rounded a little, the lips are slightly forward, 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 and shorter).
- Students listen and the whole class repeat again, then in groups and individuals
- 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 come together 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/, but the mouth is more rounded, the lips are forward, then back of the tongue i