SKKN Applying Shadowing techniques to improve English pronunciation for ethnic students

PART I: INTRODUCTION 

I.Reason for choosing the topic 

1.1. Theoretical background: 

As we all know, English is an compulsory subject for high school students, and it is also an official subject like other subjects. Therefore, it is extremely necessary to initially form the habit of pronouncing and reading correct words and sentences for students. Therefore, English has been included in the high school curriculum and is also a main subject in the GCSE examination with the goal of helping students practice four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. achieve the ability to read and understand English in the general curriculum, create favorable conditions for Vietnamese self-study, explore modern science and technology and the rich cultural treasures of the world. 

By the end of grades 8, 9, they were familiar with some simple words and sentence patterns. In 10th grade they continue with more words and longer sentence patterns and more complex pronunciation and intonation . Therefore, the correct pronunciation helps students to be more confident while speaking, as well as in group activities, and if they speak correctly, they will write correctly and knowledge is easier to inculcate and that is also the foundation. a solid foundation for them to move to the next grade with a higher amount of knowledge. Starting from the object of the teaching process are high school students in mountainous areas, learning English is completely new and their sense of learning is not high. , affecting the quality of teaching and learning. During the teaching process, I noticed that the students still had many difficulties in pronunciation. Pronunciation plays a very important role in learning foreign languages in general and English in particular knowledge. 

The method of teaching good pronunciation in high school English by the Shadowing method in particular. Pronunciation is the foundation for both speaking and listening skills of learners. With good pronunciation, learners will be more confident when speaking and listening better. Pronunciation is considered the first important thing, and being able to pronounce and speak is the basis of communication. If you are used to mispronouncing, or don’t remember how to pronounce it, especially difficult words or words with many syllables. This has caused many children to lack confidence when speaking, leading to less fluent English and poorer listening. Because they can’t read that word, they have a heavy mentality that they don’t want to read. As a subject teacher, I encourage and create a comfortable atmosphere, and especially I use pictures, visual aids or funny images to create words or sentences that make students enjoy learning and prefer reading. So how do students pronounce English better? This is a question that requires English teachers in general and myself in particular to answer with many different methods to help students pronounce and practice better pronunciation Pronunciation is one of the most basic and important language skills for English learners, good pronunciation creates confidence in communication. People who use English with correct pronunciation can make the other person understand what they are saying, and at the same time understand the other person more easily and accurately. Language skills are always closely related, and one skill supports another. Correct pronunciation is therefore not only good for speaking skills, but also for better listening comprehension. However, pronunciation is also a difficult skill. Without regular, active guidance and practice, progress will be virtually impossible. 

Vietnam is gradually developing and integrating into the world, so English is an important and official language after Vietnamese. Nowadays people are trying to improve their English to improve their understanding students learn to develop themselves. Therefore, they have to master basic knowledge when studying in class and at the same time, they must read texts or communicate at a basic level. Especially Vietnamese people’s pronunciation is not standard, especially ethnic students. In the process of teaching English in Quy Hop district, I found that the students’ pronunciation was slower than that of students in urban areas. That’s why I chose the topic: “Applying Shadowing techniques to improve English pronunciation for ethnic students at Quy Hop High School, Quy Hop district, Nghe An province”I find it practical and practical with the conditions of teaching and learning with students in the basic classes of a suitable Quy Hop high school, especially in the current situation, the covid 19 epidemic. 

1.2. Rationale 

Students from Quy Hop High School in Nghe An province are mainly from the Thai-Thanh Tho ethnic groups who have little contact with English, so their learning to speak and pronounce English is worse than in urban areas. Besides, the situation is still poor, so the acquisition is slow, so I focus on teaching them this method, I find it suitable for them and for the basic classes of the school from the 10th graders. 

The students are still poor in pronunciation, especially the stress in English words, they have not mastered the stress of words and the stress of sentences, and when reading, they can’t emphasize the intonation in the sentence, they don’t know how to determine the rules. pronunciation when adding a prefix or suffix .especially the change in intonation when speaking such as raising or lowering the voice when speaking and when reading. When learning English, mountainous ethnic students often think that they just need to pronounce words correctly without paying attention to rhythm, phonetics, and intonation. In fact, correct pronunciation of words is only a necessary but not sufficient condition. In English sayings, there is a different phenomenon, but still “stressed” appearing almost equally spaced in the flow of sound, between them is still speaking quickly and passing – without emphasis, giving listeners feel that the British speak faster than the Vietnamese. In a normal English sentence, the words that have meaning, have the main expression content are often “stressed”. Different types of sentences use different intonations. The reading accuracy is not high, and the intonation is not correct. Because they have not grasped the background knowledge, the practice is not really effective, causing difficulties. with teachers. According to the curriculum distribution, teachers not only teach one skill but have to smoothly and effectively coordinate many skills in one lesson. 

Shadowing has been widely utilized in English language teaching classes, especially in interpretation training courses for decades and has become a topic of avid interest to various researchers such as Lambert (1992), Murphey (1995, 2001), Shiota (2012), and Hamada (2014). However, there has been no research conducted on the effect of implementing shadowing on fluency improvement in English interpretation in Vietnam. 

1.3. Practical basis and solutions: 

Through several years of teaching English in high school, I have realized the fact that most of the most popular students are mountainous students who are afraid to study English, they often feel stressed. During school hours, after graduation, it is impossible to communicate with the foreign language that they have learned. Often when starting a new school level (University, College) or when necessary, they must start again. Moreover,the communication environment is  limited, when the situation happens (for example, meeting a foreigner or an English speaker), they cannot communicate, many of them say that they are afraid to speak English. Particularly for “ grade 10  students of the school year 2021 – 2022”  in my teaching lessons ,most of the students were afraid of pronunciation and thought this was too difficult for them. Through pronuciation lessons, I also know that in the lower secondary classes, they are rarely listen to cassette tapes or watch video on Youtube and  pronuciation lessons have not been focused their pronuciation  and  exercises are weak. 

From the reasons are mentioned above with what I learned after a teaching process, I would like to give some experiences to organize teaching English to grade 10- the program is more reasonable and effective and promoting the best knowledge and capacity of students. 

Because of the local characteristics of the western mountainous district of Nghe