DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING, CAN THO CITY LY TU TRONG HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE GIFTED

PHONETICS

GROUP OF STUDENTS: 1. T NH T ANH 2. PHAN QU C C NG 3. NGUY N H NG C 4. NGUY N MINH QUN 5. V NG C TU N CLASS: 11C2 Can Tho, November 24th, 2011

DECLARATION The thesis entitled Phonetics was conducted under the supervision of Huynh Thi Hong Suong, Ly TuTrong High School. We declare that the information reported in this study is the result of our own work, except where due reference is made. The thesis has not been accepted for any degree and is not concurrently submitted to any candidature for any other degree. `

Group of students November, 2011

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We are very much grateful to all those who contributed to this thesis with their academic expertise, substantive help or emotional support in the long journey of painstaking research till the present thesis came successfully into existence. First and foremost, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to my beloved supervisor, Huynh Thi Hong Suong, for her continued guidance, help, support and timely encouragement throughout the course of this study. We are in debt of her invaluable time in reading, correcting and giving us her feedback on the drafts of sections and chapters in our thesis. Specifically, we really appreciate the way she put questions about our study. These questions could help us become more critical in our thinking and enable us to revise our thesis. She also shared with us many valuable multimedia computer based materials. This thesis would not have reached completion without het constructive advice, constant stimulation and support. We would also like to express our special thanks to Mrs. Huynh Dang Bao Trinh and Mrs. Nguyen Pham Thu, the two external instructors. They spent their valuable time reading and giving us useful advice on our study in order to make it more fruitful. We would proudly express our sincere acknowledgements to all the lecturers for their helpful instructions during this post graduate program: classmates and class 10C2. We enjoyed the good time being in their sessions and will remember the wonderful moments and nice social talks they have had with us. We thank them all for their enthusiastic encouragement and mental support. Our deep thanks go to Mrs. Ngo Minh Chau, Mrs. Nguyen Thi Yen Hong, Mrs. LuongThi Mai Hien, who gave us the opportunity to attend the Scientific Research in this school. We would also like to send our hearty thanks to Tran ThiThienNgan, Duong BaoDuyen Thy, Pham Bich Ngoc, TraHoa Ngoc, Le Nguyen Xuan Phuong, our classmates, who shared with us many valuable materials. We are very thankful for their support and kindness to us. We have made the best out of this opportunity, leading to this final study report. We are thankful to all close friends, who shared with us good and bad times. Finally, our deepest gratitude goes to our family, especially, Mrs. Ngo Thi Van Thanh Nguyen Hong Ducs mother, who hasalways been supportive and
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loving to us. They have always been by our side, shared with us all joys, gave us the accommodation and sorrows and endured our bad tempers during the time working on this thesis. We owe a great debt of gratitude to them, a big source of mental support to me. We thank them so much for being the ones who are to us.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration Page Acknowledgements . Table of contents . List of tables ... List of figures . Tm l c

Abstract .. CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Introduction... 1.2 Rationale and significance of the study ... 1.2.1 Rationale .

1.2.2 Significance of the study 1.3 Organization of the thesis . CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW . 2.1 Theoretical background of Phonetics .. 2.1.1 Definition of Phonetics and Diphthongs 2.1.2 History of Phonetics and Diphthongs . 2.2 Research Model .. CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHOD 3.1 Research aims 3.2 Research questions and hypotheses ... 3.1.1 Research questions .. 3.1.2 Hypotheses .. 3.3 Research design 3.4 Setting and Participants
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3.4.1 Setting . 3.4.2 Participants .. 3.5 Materials ... 3.5.1 Books 3.5.2 Internet ..... 3.6 Research instruments . 3.6.1 The pre - tests .. 3.6.2 The post - tests . 3.7 Procedures . CHAPTER 4: RESULTS 4.1 Participants knowledge from the pre tests 4.2 Participants knowledge form the post test with our data .. 4.3 Difference of participants before and after the study CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS: ... 5.1 Discussions 5.1.1 Theoretical framework used in the study . 5.1.2 Summary the results. 5.1.3 Discussions .. 5.2 Conclusions 5.3 Limitations of the study . 5.4 Directions for further research .. References Appendices Appendix 1: Questionnaire on participants attitudes towards the difficulties diphthongs . Appendix 2: Pre tests on Diphthongs .. Appendix 3: Post test on Diphthongs . Appendix 4: Raw calculation
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LISTS OF TABLES Table ..: Procedures of the research . Table: Results of Descriptive Statistics Tests of participants knowledge in Diphthongs before and after the study (Class 11C2) .. Table : Result of Descriptive Statistic Tests of participants knowledge in Diphthongs before and after the study (Class 10C2) Table : Summary of the results .

LISTS OF FIGURES Figure : Participants level about Diphthongs (Class 11C2) Figure : Participants level about Diphthongs (Class 10C2) Figure : Theoretical framework used in the study

TM L

ABSTRACT

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter describes the rationale, the aims and significance of the study which was conducted towards the completion of this thesis. The chapter ends with the organization of the thesis. 1.1 Introduction It is common knowledge that anyone who studies a different language as a foreign or second language always has difficulties. One such difficulty is Pronunciation and, more precisely, Diphthongs and Phonetics. Yet these two aspects still have not earned enough attention from learners and teachers of the language, in our case English. So we decided to put up this research to help them, and ourselves, find a suitable way to limit possible mistakes in future practice. 1.2 Rationale and significance of the study 1.2.1 Rationale In other words, we choose this topic for our subject with two subdivided reasons: In English (and some other Germanic languages), some letters have more than one sound and some others, when joined together in a word, actually create a new sound of their own. The outcome of this merging is usually the creation of a Diphthong, which is a part of Phonetics. So if you neglect to study them properly, you will be likely to make mistakes.

1.2.2 Significance of the study As mentioned before, teachers and learners do not give much attention to these two fields of Speaking and those who wish to study them have many difficulties due to the lack of helpful materials as well as research
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instruments. So we intend to provide assistance to those learners and hopefully change the current situation. To sum up, we choose this topic because it is very helpful for us. In doing the research of this project, we can gain valuable knowledge and help our fellow English learners perform better in future examination. 1.3 Organization of the thesis This thesis consists of five chapters: Introduction, Literature Review, Research Method, Results and Discussions and Conclusions. Chapter 1 presents the rationale of the study. Background information on the problem and the reasons to conduct the research are presented. This chapter also introduces the significance of the study. Chapter 2 reviews relevant literature relating to the views of Phonetics and the impact of Diphthongs. The chapter introduces the theoretical backgrounds of Diphthongs. At the end of the chapter, a brief summary of the studies, their implications for the use of Diphthongs research questions under investigation are presented. Chapter 3 focuses on the research method which describes the research design, the participants and the materials used in the study. A detailed description of the instruments for the data collection is followed by an explanation of how the data are analyzed. Chapter 4 presents the results of the study. Results of participants level are presented and completed to see whether participants have positive attitudes toward the use of Diphthongs. Chapter 5 summarizes and interprets the main of the study. The chapter then discussed the results gained from the study, using theoretical framework presented in chapter 2. Practical implications of these findings related to learning Pronunciation in this chapter. Limitations of the research and recommendations for further research are mentioned.

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CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter reviews relevant literature relating to the views of Phonetics and the impact of Diphthongs. The chapter introduces the theoretical backgrounds of Diphthongs. At the end of the chapter, a brief summary of the studies, their implications for the use of Diphthongs research questions under investigation are presented. 2.1 Theoretical background of Phonetics 2.1.1 Definition of Phonetics and Diphthongs What is a diphthong? The problem is that we cant define it properly without knowing where it comes from. Diphthong hailed from a branch of Pronunciation called Phonetics, which is the study of speech sounds and how they are produced. It includes three basic areas: Articulatory phonetics, Acoustic phonetics and Auditory Phonetics. Diphthong belongs to the first area and is technically a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel.(Wikipedia). To make it easier to understand, a diphthong is a union of two vowels, eg the sound /a / in the word pipe (pronounced /pa p/) . 2.1.2 History of Phonetics and Diphthongs So far, the only known researches are ones that were conducted in a very small scale and were only referred to briefly in special documents. In fact, the first book to mention them was Ship or Sheep(written by and published in) but it only included some general background knowledge (which were not very useful). Some other documents such as Phonetics and Phonology by Claire-A.Forel&GenovevaPusks from the University of Geneva and a book with the same name by Peter Roach from Cambridge University (1988) have somewhat more developed information than the former but they were still primitive. And that leads to our goal that is showed in chapter 3.

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2.2 Research Model

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CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHOD Chapter 2 reviews relevant literature relating to the views of Phonetics and the impact of Diphthongs. In this chapter, the researchers focus on the research method which describes the research design, the participants and the materials used in the study. A detailed description of the instruments for the data collection is followed by an explanation of how the data are analyzed. The chapter ends with the sections on research instruments and the procedure of the study. 3.1 Research aims In general knowledge, Phonetics is one of the most diversity aspects in English. Especially, Diphthongs, a branch of Phonetics, most of people do not concentrate on it so much. Therefore, our goal is to help everyone recognize the importance of Diphthongs as well as help students have a significant look about Diphthongs. From this, everyone can pronounce correctly and fluently as a native speaker. We plan to change our theory of Diphthongs into the practical training. For example, we might give you some essential tips about Diphthongs that you can easily use in many tests and examinations. Using these, you might be able to get an absolute or maximum mark in part A. Phonetics in every test. In this study, we hope to clarify all your problems about Diphthongs. 3.2 Research questions and Hypotheses 3.2.1 Research questions 1. 2. 3. 4. Does Phonetics have the alphabet like the normal alphabet? What is Diphthongs in Phonetics? How many kinds of sounds Diphthongs has? Which letters in normal alphabet stand for the sounds in Diphthongs?

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3.2.2 Hypotheses 1. Yes, it does. It calls IPA (International Phonetics Alphabet). It contains some kinds of symbols that stand for a group of letters in the normal alphabet. 2. Diphthongs in Phonetics are a mixture of two vowels that together pronounced differently. Diphthongs is also a branch of Phonetics and it gives the English learners a lot of trouble while their studying. 3. There are 8 sounds of Diphthongs in English 4. The following table is some letters which stand for the symbols in Diphthongs Sounds Letters

eir, ere, ear, eer e a eir, ere, ear, aer, air, are, a-e, ai ow, ou, our, ough oy, oi u, oo a a e o, o-e, oe, ow, ou, ough i, y, ie, i-e, igh, y-e, ire a, a-e, ate, ay, ai, ea, ei, ey

3.3 Research Deign This research is a descriptive qualitative study. In this study, the letter of the word and the symbol of sound are the target of being investigated. The two-group pre-test and post-test design was employed to test the participants knowledge of 8 sounds in Diphthongs and 26 letters in the Alphabet. The content of this study will be researched from a lot study books of many authors in some different nations. During 8 weeks researching, learning, and typing into many categories were instructed by the teacher.
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The main difference between the sound and the letter is that sound has more letters than the word /ei/, /ai/, .while the word does not have it. 3.4 Setting and Participants 3.4.1 Setting The setting of this study was a specialized high school in Can Tho which is responsible for training specialized students at high level. We only research in two English classes the first class is 11C2 and the second class 10C2. They are studying English 270 minutes per a week (6 periods/a week) of the advanced program to improve their knowledge. 3.4.2 Participants a. Teachers: The teachers are as well as the instructors for us. Teachers who help us to choose the test and instruct us are also the researchers. They also helped us to check the accuracy and the degree of reliability of the pre-test before we used as materials for researching. b. Classmates and class 10C2 The participants in the study were fifty learners in English classes. There are two reasons we choose these learners: the first reason is they are in high level of studying language. The second reason is we want to test and know what they had studied or experienced about Diphthongs. From this, they can improve their knowledge about pronouncing word correctly. If this improvement works effectively for the participants, they might get the perfect outcome and study better at higher levels. 3.5 Materials 3.5.1Books Books used in our research were from the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary editionn7, 8, the Phonetics and Phonology (By Peter Rouch) and the textbook Tieng Anh 11(Hoang, Nguyen, Hoang, Do 2010). Most of the questions from our tests and some of the knowledge were taken from these books. 3.5.2 Internet
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To get more information for our research, we have visited many pages such as www.englishmedialab.com, www.bbc.co.uk and www.wikipedia.org which gave us a lot of questions for the tests and helped us to build a more precise literature review.

3.6 Research Instruments 3.6.1 The pre tests 3.6.2 The post tests 3.7 Procedure The procedure of the research is shown below: Time 19/9 2/10 7/10 24/10 10/11 1/10 6/10 23/10 9/11 15/11 Research activities Group name and topic selected Reply main ideas to supervisor Begin the assistance project under teachers

Give the pretest to students in class 10C2 and 11C2 Carry on the research

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