AN ACTION RESEARCH ON USING LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES IN PRONUNCIATION TRAINING FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

The purpose of this action research is to improve student’s pronunciation performance, especially in terms of English vowel sounds, through a pronunciation training program. There were 20 non-English majored students from Hanoi University of Sciences, VNU participating in this program. During 10 weeks, students were provided with explanations on English vowel production as well as the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese vowel systems before practicing these sounds with the support of Dickerson’s Covert Rehearsal Model. The data were collected from questionnaires and the pre-test and post-test. The analysis of collected data proved that after the training program, students gained certain improvements in their pronunciation performance. The number of errors in pronouncing vowels decreased; nevertheless, some sounds remained problematic with learners. By studying the mistakes, the researcher found that the relationship between the mother tongue and the foreign language exists and the mother tongue language influenced negatively on the foreign pronunciation acquisition of students in this study. Besides, the use of various pronunciation learning strategies was shown to be useful for students’ learning of pronunciation, especially the social strategy group.