INVESTIGATING PRONUNCIATION DIFFICULTIES AND PREFERENCE FOR PRONUNCIATION INSTRUCTION

Authors

  • Thach Son Le English Department, School of Foreign Languages, Tra Vinh University, Vietnam

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46827/ejfl.v6i2.4353

Keywords:

motivation, motivational activities, communicative competence, EFL intermediate students, EFL teachers

Abstract

Pronunciation can take an important role in communication as unintelligible sounds can make listeners unable to understand the intended meaning of the speaker, so obtaining an intelligible accent or pronunciation is crucial. With this importance, the current study attempted to investigate what can cause learners difficulties when learning pronunciation. Then, it also attempted to discover learners’ ideas on how they would like pronunciation to be taught. In order to have the data for the investigation, the study applied the quantitative method by using a five-point Likert scale to measure the students’ degree of agreement in these two mentioned domains of investigation. A group of 40 first–year Vietnamese EFL students were employed. They are studying English as a foreign language and their major is English education. The first result showed that the students agreed learning pronunciation is difficult and they did not agree with only two items displayed in this set of questions. The second result uncovered that the students strongly agreed with the ideas exhibited in the questionnaire on how pronunciation should be instructed. These results are used as recommendations for learning pronunciation and some limitations of the study were also included.

 

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Author Biography

  • Thach Son Le, English Department, School of Foreign Languages, Tra Vinh University, Vietnam
    Thach Son Le is a lecturer of English at the School of Foreign Languages, Tra Vinh University, Vietnam. He earned his Master’s Degree in TESOL at Hawai’i Pacific University, Hawai’i State, USA. He has taught English to Vietnamese students since 2003. His interests include teaching pronunciation, translation and discourse analysis.

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Published

2022-06-28

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 2 (2022)

Section

Articles

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