Martin Benedict Andrew, & Le Hong Tran, Using Weekly Group Political Presentations to…

USING WEEKLY GROUP POLITICAL PRESENTATIONS TO
ENHANCE THE PHONOLOGICAL LEARNING OF SECOND-YEAR
ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT A UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM
Martin Benedict Andrew
Capable New Zealand, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand
Email: benedictandrew@gmail.com
Le Hong Tran
Academy of International Studies, Vietnam
Email: tranhongle2287@gmail.com

Abstract
Studies about the learning value of group presentations in ESL and EFL have become increasingly
common, particularly in relation to spoken fluency. However, few studies have explored their impact
on students’ intelligible pronunciation. In a Vietnamese context, recent changes in teaching and learning
strategies set by the government have shifted attention to students’ ability to communicate effectively
in today’s increasingly globalized environment. This inevitably turns the spotlight on pronunciation, an
aspect of EFL long ignored in Vietnam. Qualitatively describing a case where group presentations were
a key mode of teaching, learning and assessment for 17 second-year students majoring in English for
Political Discipline at the Institute of International Studies in Hanoi over the course of one semester,
this study suggests that monitored and transcribed group presentations may be one rational answer. The
study investigates the impacts on participants’ pronunciation of sounds and word stress and considers
their attitude towards this method. The results reveal that students acknowledged the benefits of group
presentations and experienced improvements in pronunciation, confidence and range of political
vocabulary. These changes were diverse depending on each participant’s attitude. The article concludes
with reflective evaluations of the lessons and explores the pedagogical implications for future projects
on implementing research into presentations among Vietnamese students of foreign languages.
Keywords: language learning, presentations, phonology, speaking, Vietnam

INTRODUCTION
Acquiring
spoken
communicative
competency in English in Vietnam is an
important aspect of the nation’s social and
economic development (London, 2011).
Foreseeing the need for bilingual personnel,
Government Decision 1400 (2008) stated
that
‘by
2020
most
Vietnamese
students...will be able to use a foreign
language confidently in their daily
communication, their study and work in an
integrated, multi-cultural and multi-lingual
environment’. The ‘foreign language’ in this
legislation is, of course, understood to be
English.
However, the progress made in English
training and learning in Vietnam is behind
the shift in ideology. Obstacles such as
overcrowded classes and the ongoing

overuse of traditional grammar-translation
methods prohibit the country’s language
education from nearing its goal. Such
researchers within the ASEAN perimeter as
London (2011) have suggested that
Vietnamese language education, with
traditionally fewer opportunities for students
to participate in productive skills with fluent
speakers of English, is still marked by a need
for more emphasis on the comprehensible
spoken word.
In this research context, one of the first
author’s students’ greatest weaknesses is
intelligible speaking. They are government
officials working in international relations
fields where they need to express themselves
clearly and accurately. Our interest in
conducting this research is to examine
whether the continuing use of presentations

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can improve their pronunciation skills,
especially articulating sounds and tress.

pronunciation
can't
be
understood.
However, Vietnamese students are likely
to struggle with English pronunciation. This
is because the two sound systems share little
similarity. Although, few contrastive
analysis studies between English and
Vietnamese exist, the two most serious areas
of errors of Vietnamese pronunciation are
sounds and stress.
In terms of sounds, Vietnamese students
have problems with the pronunciation of
‘final /p/, /b/, /g/ sounds’. Noticeably, some
are unable to combine certain muscles and
mouth-parts ‘to articulate some sounds like
/θ/ as in think and /ð/ as in that’ (Center for
Applied Linguistics, 1977, p. 2). Santry
(1992) also added consonant clusters to the
elements that hinder English pronunciation.
Vietnamese speakers tend to omit or alter
some consonants in difficult clusters. Take
consonants with /p/ as an example; as with
/ps/ as in capsicum, where /p/ is omitted
before /s/; as for /pl/ like in please and
applaud, /p/ is replaced with /f/; /l/ is omitted
in medial position (p. 137). The same
problems of omitting, replacing and even
reversing sounds happen with /b/ clusters
(/bd/, ʒ/, /bz/, /bl/ and /br/) (p. 141), /t/
clusters /ts/, /t∫t/, /tl/, tr/ and /tw/) (p. 146), /k/
clusters (/kt∫/, /ks/, /kl/, /kr/ and /kw/) (p.
152), /g/ clusters like /gl/ or /gr/ (p.154). The
most serious error was /dʒd/ as in dodged or
trudged (p. 156).
In terms of stress and rhythm, while
‘Vietnamese…is a tone language: every
word has associated with it a particular tone
of voice’ (Center for Applied Linguistics,
1977, p. 3), English’s tones are associated
with whole sentences. Hence, it is difficult
for Vietnamese students to produce English
accurately. Moreover, Vietnamese generally
is a monosyllabic language (Thompson, 1965
cited in Hwa-Froelich, 2002) while English
can be either monosyllabic or polysyllabic.
Therefore, multisyllabic words pose
challenges to Vietnamese speakers. Firstly,
they struggle to learn the complex system of
stress. Secondly, articulating a combination
of multiple, long sounds and phonemes is

LITERATURE REVIEW
Benefits of Student Presentations
Student presentations have been valued
as a powerful language teaching tool by
researchers all over the world. For example,
presentations can enhance students’
communication skills (Girard, Pinar &
Trapp, 2011), narrow the gap between
classroom and real-life language, encourage
students’ team-work spirit and assertiveness
(King, 2002), increase students’ autonomy
and equip them with new vocabulary and
knowledge (Lee & Park, 2008). Additionally,
presentations in classroom context are also
associated with the improvement of level of
attention (Baranowski & Weir, 2011), selfefficacy and anxiety (Brown & Morrissey,
2004) and speaking rates and information
content (Hincks, 2010). Nevertheless, the
undoubted benefits of presentations in
literature still leave the question of whether
they
can
help
improve
students’
pronunciation. This, again, points to a gap in
the teaching and learning of pronunciation in
professional contexts in Vietnam.
The
Importance
of
Intelligible
Pronunciation
Cakir and Baytar (2014) claimed that
‘pronunciation is one of the most important
aspects of a language’, therefore ‘foreign
language learners should be exposed to the
target language not only in written but also
orally in order to acquire to sound systems
correctly’ (p. 106). There are few recent
studies of Vietnamese pronunciation of
English, so we rely here on two older studies.
When examining Vietnamese pronunciation
of English, the Center for Applied Linguistic
Study (1977) stated:
a sentence can be pretty badly
mangled grammatically and still
be understandable if it is
pronounced well enough, and,
conversely, the most flawlessly
constructed sentence won’t do its
speaker a bit of good if his
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Martin Benedict Andrew, & Le Hong Tran, Using Weekly Group Political Presentations to…

unfamiliar in light what they already know
from their mother tongue.

effectiveness of group presentations in the
context of politics, a topic relevant to the
curriculum of the target group. However,
there is no research on the use of
presentations as pedagogy for pronunciation
in a Southeast Asian context. Hence, in
addition to our broader evaluative enquiry,
we ask the question, ‘In what ways do weekly
group presentations on political topics
impact
on
second-year
students’
pronunciation of vowel and consonant
sounds and word stress?’

Using
Presentations
to
Enhance
Pronunciation
As noted earlier, the advantages of using
presentations in language classrooms are
exemplified in extant literature but there
remains a lack of research linking the effects
of presentations to pronunciation (Schenettle,
2013).
The most relevant work was ‘Integrating
pronunciation for fluency in presentation
skills’ (Hall, 1997). Hall illustrated the use of
presentations as meaningful context to
practice pronunciation with an analogy: the
process of hearing and imitating sounds is
like ‘learning to ride a bicycle on a road with
no traffic’ (1997, p. 4). Hence, there is a need
for contexts to which learners can transfer
pronunciation skills. Hill stated: ‘for many
ESL and EFL learners, skillful pronunciation
is linked with effective presentation in an
international
context
of
developing
globalization’ (p. 2). Even twenty years after
Hill, it remains clear that focusing feedback
on pronunciation in the context of
presentations is an innovative way to offer
feedback on phonetic features.
Further, Morley’s work (1991) shed light
on the researcher-teacher’s belief that group
presentations are pedagogically appropriate.
Using presentations to enhance phonological
learning satisfies Morley’s principles. To
name several principles, the use of
presentations does not isolate pronunciation
practice but sticks with the communicative
approach. Second, it also emphasizes speech
awareness and self-monitoring, and, thirdly,
it develops communication styles in real-life
situations.
The research reported here considers
sounds (including vowel, consonant sounds
and consonant clusters) and word stress.
These were fundamental elements in the
aforementioned studies. Supra-segmental
aspects such as intonation and pausing and
the sociocultural feature of accent should be
covered in future research. The present
research focuses broadly on the possible

METHODOLOGY
Research in similar fields uses
approaches utilizing the spectrum of
qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods.
However, the present research applies
qualitative methods following Andrew
(2006) and Lee and Park (2008). The
qualitative findings are accompanied by
descriptive statistics.
Participants and Procedures
The 17 participants, one intact class,
comprised 16 males and one female, aged
from 25 to 35. They were divided into three
mixed proficiency groups: high, medium and
low, each of which has a nominated leader.
The project was implemented over a course
of one semester with eight presentation
sessions. The participants were encouraged
to present on political topics of personal
interest.
In order to help students devote their
attention to pronunciation, they were allowed
to use web-based information as long as it
was referenced. The participants worked
together to decide presentation topics and
script, then uploaded their scripts onto a
forum on www.edmodo.com. After that, the
teacher-researcher proof-read each group’s
scripts and left comments about the accuracy
of word choice or grammar. Since the
students’were multi-level, they made
mistakes with grammar and lexis, so this step
assisted them in concentrating on
pronunciation.

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Data Collection Methods
In order to keep records of students’
performances, presentations were audiorecorded and transcribed. Recorded
pronunciation mistakes were scrutinized and
then categorized into sounds (vowel or
ending sounds, consonant clusters) and word
stress. In the last session, the participants
were asked to re-present their first
presentation so that a clear comparison could
be made. By way of feedback, profiles of the
strengths and weaknesses of participants
were created to demonstrate their
improvement.
Interviews were employed to investigate
students’ attitudes towards the effects of
group presentation on their pronunciation
and some student comments are included in
this paper. After presentation sessions, one to
three participants volunteered for one-to-one
interviews. To avoid any conflict of interest
possibly inherent in the teacher-researcher
relationship and to encourage more ideasharing, one of the first author’s colleagues
who had previous experience in conducting
educational research and had no teaching and
assessment interest in the participants was
chosen to be the interviewer. The interview
focused on the participants’ feelings towards
speaking aloud ideas and changes in the way
they present in English as well as their
pronunciation or any possible constraints.

The findings below focus on specific
aspects
of
vowel
and
consonant
pronunciation, the articulation of consonant
clusters, particularly word endings, and word
stress.
The Pronunciation of Vowel Sounds
The audio records of the presentations
revealed a variety of vowel difficulties. Some
were consistent and related to other mistakes;
others had strong links to word stress.
The most common mistake the students
made was inability to pronounce the
unstressed sound (schwa). This might be the
result of lack of awareness of word stress.
The majority of students pronounced words
like control  and protect
 as /kontrô/ and ô; the
English sound /o/ or // were replaced by
the Vietnamese sound ‘ô’ /ow/. The sound ‘ô’
/ow/ has several allophones which do not
resemble any English sound (Nguyen, 1970;
Le, 1973, cited in Santry, 1992, p. 92). When
this mistake was pointed out, some still faced
difficulty with self-correction. This type of
chronic mistake lies in the boundary of vowel
sounds and word stress and this makes it
more difficult to correct. Other examples
were
foreign
 perspective
 ultimately
 and
consensus
 which
turned
to
    
 respectively.
As
the
semester
progressed, there was a decrease in this
problem. Students paused before they
pronounced problematic words. Students
were able to ‘notice a gap between what they
want to say and what they can say’ (Swain,
1995 cited in Izumi & Bigelow, 2000, p.
244). They applied their meta-linguistic
knowledge to articulate the sound.
Another common feature was the
confusion when pronouncing the sound /.
Since / does not occur in Vietnamese, the
presenters, without careful preparation for
their speech easily switched it into
   They had problems pronouncing
words like sanction , demand

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Here we discuss existing problems and
noticeable impacts of group presentations,
drawing on comments from interviews to
support our observations. Most interview
data focused on the general value of
presentations as a tool for practicing spoken
English, as in Nam’s reflection:
Presenting in English creates a suitable
environment to train our speaking
skills. Some of us found it hard to
explain our points. Presenting is a way
we can organize our ideas in advance.
With careful preparation, we feel more
confident speaking English.

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Martin Benedict Andrew, & Le Hong Tran, Using Weekly Group Political Presentations to…

,
and
mainland
(China)
 Their words transformed into
   hat
is, the participants did not pronounce the final
consonants of the words. There are
observable tendencies to pronounce // either
towards an // or /e/ sound. However, the
participants’ articulation of this sound was
inconsistent. That is why it was more a
mistake than a conscious adaptation of a
British or American accent. This particular
problem seemed to be eradicated at the end.
Nam, one of the group leaders, mentioned
this:

Clearly, the pressure pushed him back to his
‘language of thought’ (Pavlenko 2011). He
had spoken and heard /e.u:/ (wrong) much
more frequently than the / (correct).
In addition to these noticeable mistakes, the
students encountered other problems with
vowel sounds. One of them was between long
and short vowels, for example, ‘seek’ and
‘cheap’ with long /i:/ was pronounced as
 or  The reason for this common
error is that ‘as opposed to English,
Vietnamese language does not have the
tense-lax contrasts of /i,    ’ (HwaFroelich et al., 2002, p. 267) Further, there
was confusion between /ie/ and / when a
presenter was supposed to say ‘railway’
, he said / (/l/ in the
middle was omitted and replaced by /r/).

… I could not pronounce sounds like
// in ‘bank’ or ‘cat’... I knew that I
had these weaknesses before. But
when participating in this project, I
have opportunity to practise speaking
so that I can fix my mistakes. (Nam,
interview)

The Pronunciation of Consonants and
Consonant Clusters
Looking from a contrastive view, the
differences in terms of consonants between
English and Vietnamese are quite
phenomenal. First of all, Hwa-Froelich
(2002, p. 271) stated that ‘most Vietnamese
syllables do not end in consonants’ and ‘the
Vietnamese language only allows voiceless
stop consonants and nasals in the code…it is
usually difficult for the Vietnamese speakers
to pronounce English final consonant’.
Besides, the distinction also lies in whether
the consonant sound is aspirated and
unaspirated. Hwa-Froelich (2002, p. 266)
established that English speakers produce
both aspirated and unaspirated stops, ‘for
example /p/ in ‘pan’ is aspirated, but /p/ in
span is not’ and that final consonants in
Vietnamese, in contrast, are all unaspirated or
implosive. Therefore, Vietnamese speakers
tend not to pronounce the final consonants
(Cheng, 1991; Center for Applied
Linguistics, 1977; Flipsen, 1992 cited in
Hwa-Froelich 2002, p. 266). The phonemes
/t/ and /k/ in Vietnamese are also unaspirated
in initial position while they are never so in
English. That makes listeners trained in
English phonology perceive them as /d/ or /f/.
The last important factor differing
Vietnamese from English is that ‘the

Also, the participants, even the strong
ones, confused the two sounds /e/ and /i/. For
example, the words like ‘response’

and
‘evaluate’
 would be pronounced as
 and  and vice
versa. Similarly, ‘threat’ / will be
pronounced as  One of the students
reported that:
Before I took part in the project, I
usually pronounced ‘interest’ as
/ɪntrest/, but it is /ɪntrɪst/, and
‘respect’ as /re’spekt/ instead of
/rɪ’spekt/ (Hung, interview)
The frequency of this mistake dropped
significantly throughout the project. Among
the final sessions, only mix-ups were evident.
Interestingly, Minh, the last presenter in the
final
presentation,
changed
‘EU’
 into /e.u:/. It is because ‘e’ sounds
/i:/ in English, yet it sounds /e/ in
Vietnamese. Similarly, while ‘i’ sounds /ai/
in English, it sound /i:/ in Vietnamese
(Cheng, 1991; Thompson, 1965; Thuy, 1975
cited in Hwa-Froelich et al., 2002, p. 267).
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Vietnamese language does not have
consonant clusters or blends’ (Cheng, 1991,
Thompson, 1965, cited in Hwa-Froelich,
2002, p. 265). All of the information plays a
crucial role as both foundation and
explanation for the findings about consonants
in this research.
Similar
to
the
aforementioned
descriptions, the participants in this project
tend to either delete the endings sounds or
devoice them. It was particularly noticed that
the final consonants were likely to be omitted
the most, including /s/, /t/, /d/, /l/, /v/, /b/, /g/,
/θ/, /ð/ and affricates sounds like
  //. For voiced sounds like /z/, /b,
/d/, the participants are inclined to either drop
them or devoiced them to /s/, /p/ or /t/. This
was explained by Speak English like a Native
(2015) that ‘In English, frequent shifts
between voiced and voiceless consonants are
required to distinguish between certain
words. Such mechanism does not exist and is
not required in Vietnamese, thus, constitutes
a complex problem.’ Last but not least, for –
ed morphological endings, students either
totally ignored the sounds or added the extra
syllable  no matter what sound was in
front of the –ed ending. To illustrate, students
would say sentences such as ‘Hong Kong has
strongly developed’ as /’
instead of /

Now, we turn to analyzing the
complexity of the /s/ sounds. Firstly, as to the
morphological -s- endings, whether they
comprise plural countable nouns, possessive
or third person singular verbs, most students
omitted them in their first presentations. For
those who were aware of the existence of -sendings, it was unlikely that they could
master three ways of pronouncing -s- endings
including /s/, /z/ and extra syllable for sibilant
sounds. The root problems can be tracked
back to the lack of understanding about
voiced and voiceless sounds in English. Also,
the participants failed in producing words
with ‘-s’, ‘-ce’ or ‘-se’ at the end; for example
always, peace, release, cause, grievance, the
United States or human rights. Additionally,
the medial production of /s/ sound also
challenged the participants. Those words
included, to name a few, risk, against, boost,
most, transaction or satisfaction. The above
finding that Vietnamese does not have
consonant clusters or blends explained to a
great extent why these participants could not
pronounce the words accurately. In terms of
communicative freight, the most severe kind
of mistake, however, was not the omission of
the /s/ sounds but the careless addition of the
sound. Three out of 17 participants
frequently added the /s/ sounds irresponsibly
at the end of all types of words. This
particular problem hindered understanding to
a great extent.

Below is a table that records the times students made mistakes with the /s/ sounds:
Table 1. Comparison of /s/ Sound Mistakes in 8 Sessions
Session Number
Student
S1
S2
S3
S4
S5
S6
S7
Group 1
Hung
3
4
6
6
2
1
0
Hieu
2
2
8
X
3
0
0
Lee
1
8
6
5
1
6
6
Phong
1
2
3
9
X
2
2
Group 2
Nam
8
7
2
5
2
2
0
N.Hoang
4
6
2
7
X
5
2
Binh
4
1
2
4
1
0
0
A.Hoang
6
7
4
6
4
6
2
B.Minh
5
2
5
X
2
1
1
120

S8
3
0
0
1
2
0
1
6
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Martin Benedict Andrew, & Le Hong Tran, Using Weekly Group Political Presentations to…

Dinh
Anh
D.Minh
Group 3
Long
Phong
Cuong
Hai
C.Minh

5
1
3

10
6
5

5
9
6

4
5
7

X
1
2

4
10
0

13
5
0

0
0
2

5
2
2
7
6

6
6
3
2
7

0
5
3
8
9

8
8
0
8
X

3
4
5
4
3

2
8
5
X
8

0
2
0
1
4

1
2
0
1
6

There was a downward trend in the
frequency of this particular mistake in the
second-half of the project. Reliable
comparison could be made between the first
and the last presentations because they were
linguistically identical. The majority of the
participants reduced the number of times they
repeated the mistakes. Among them, five
students did not make any mistakes in their
last presentation. This could reflect the
positive impact of practicing presenting in
English on pronouncing this consonant
sound.
Single final consonants were difficult,
not to mention consonants clusters. Clusters
like ‘most’, ‘resurrect’, ‘dealt’, ‘human
rights’ were hard. The participants found
clusters like ‘world’, ‘protests’, ‘risks’,
‘boosts’, ‘unrests’, ‘context’ or ‘biggest’
impossible to produce. It was especially hard
for the presenters when they faced clusters
composed of all voiced sounds like ‘hailed’,
‘cancelled’, ‘perspectives’ or ‘dissolve’. In
fact, ‘final cluster reduction also occurs
widely in English native speaker casual
speech…deleting the second consonant of a
sequence of three’ (Selkirk, 1972;
Temperley, 1983 cited in Osburne, 1996, p.
165). However, the participants in this
project tend to omit two last consonants or all
of three consonants. For clusters that
appeared at the middle of the words, such as
‘milestone’, ‘engagement’, ‘worldwide’, the
participants would turn them to something
totally different with the origins.
Despite student complaints about these
clusters, the numbers of mistakes with
consonants in general reduced greatly in the
last three sessions. The students who

improved underwent two phases. Minh
described the first phase as characterised by
some students focusing too much on every
word or sound so that listeners could not
understand the whole sentence. According to
Ellis, Basturkmen and Loewen (2001) and
Izumi and Bigelow (2000), the requirement
of output activity triggers students’ attention
to form incidentally. In this particular case,
the form that the participants attended is the
individual sound rather than other verbal or
non-verbal expression factors such as fluency
or confidence. Fortunately, there was also the
second phrase where the participants got used
to harmonize individual sounds with features
of a good speech. They noticed their own and
others’
improvements.
Hieu,
after
presentation session eight, shared:
When I first participated in this
project, I feel very nervous speaking
in front of people. But by practicing
every week, even my classmates can
see that after the fifth session, I have
showed to be more confident. I think
so too. I even use more body language
and eye-contact.
The two phases experienced by the
participants proved that the benefits of
conducting group presentations covered both
non-verbal and verbal aspects.
Word Stress
In the past, I didn’t focus on both
word stress and intonation. After
this project, I now pay more
attention to word stress. (Hieu)

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Findings about Vietnamese use of stress
must consider the nature of the language.
Hence, it is worthwhile mentioning its
distinguishing characteristics. As discussed
in the literature review, Vietnamese is a tone
language which means every word has
associated with it a particular tone of voice
(Center for Applied Linguistics, 1977). In
contrast, tone associates with English at the
sentence level to ‘change the meaning from a
directive, to a question, to a statement of fact,
and intonation can be used to show surprise,
anger, happiness, depression, or sadness.’
(Hwa-Froelich, 2002, p. 267). Furthermore,
the monosyllabic character of the
Vietnamese language challenges Vietnamese
learners of English to pronounce
multisyllabic words. According to Carr
(2012), learners of English are very different
from native speakers, who can judge what
syllable in a word receives primary stress,
secondary stress or otherwise. Thus, learners
of English have no choice but to store
vocabulary and their stress pattern rather than
rote learning.
One of the unique features of this
research is that the participants presented
about political topics. Vocabulary in political
themes normally contains a large amount of
multisyllabic
words
and
complex
terminology such as pragmatics, sovereignty,
humanitarian or prpper nouns like Angela
Merkel, François Hollande, Counternarcotic
Letter of Agreement. To pronounce these
words intelligibly and systematically given
the Germanic and French origins of the first
two, the students needed to understand the
systems of words stress as well as get used to
the ways these words are pronounced on the
media and remember them. However, this
was not the case:

unstressed sounds and tended to pronounce
vowels with their strong form. Pronouncing
this way did not allow any word stress
because stress only happens when one of the
syllables in a word is pronounced longer,
louder and higher in pitch (Beckman &
Edwards, 1994). Besides, the participants did
not shift stress when the word they spoke was
reduced in form. Students’ lack of
understanding about word stress derivation
was evidenced when they said strategy and
strategic. In the former word, the primary
stress
is
on
the
first
syllable
 but it is on the second
syllable in the later one  All
of the participants encountered the word
‘strategic’ for the first time in this project and
would pronounce it  hey
kept both the vowel sound and the placement
of stress on the first syllable intact while still
pronouncing the second syllable in its strong
form.
Below is a table recording participants’ word
stress mistakes in the first three sessions:
Table 2. Word Stress Mistakes in the First
Three Sessions
Mistakes
Correct stress
CONTROL
conTROL
ô

( was omitted)
BOOMErang (effect) BOOmerang (effect)
ê

ASYMMEtrically
AsymMEtrically


FOREIGN
FOreign


CONSIderable
considerable


ORTHOdox
ORthodox


(/k/ was omitted)
MANIpulate
maNIpulate


RepreSENTAtive
RepreSENtative
 


(/v/ was omitted)

Like many other friends of mine,
when I faced difficult and unfamiliar
words, I often spoke it unclearly or
smaller so that nobody would notice.
But in fact, no one understand us if we
do like that. (D.Binh, interview)
As analyzed above, in the beginning
stage, the participants did not recognize the
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TErriTOry

PERSPECtive

(/v/ was omitted)
SEPAratist

(/t/ was omitted)
ULtiMATEly

FORWARD

(/d/ was omitted and
changed to a sound
like a /k/)
EVAluate

(/t/ was omitted)
autoNOmous

eCONOmic

CONSENsus

(/t/ was omitted)
ReVOLUtionary
ô

(/o/ was changed to
/ô/)
deveLOPment
ô
(/ was changed to
/ô/)

TErritory

perSPECtive

SEparatist

ULtimately

FORward


eVAluate

auTOnomous

ecoNOmic

conSENsus

RevoLUtionary



deVElopment


Positive changes were made during the
process. In session six, there were a mixture
of wrong and correct pronunciations and
stress placements. To illustrate, Lee used
correct stress in words like territorial issues
or diplomatic policy but still placed wrong
stress on development and instability.
Phong also made the same mistake with
development
but
he
pronounced
economic and political cooperation
with correct stress. For words that they had
the habit of putting the stress in a wrong
position, it was much harder to change than
other words. It was also observed that the
participants
gradually
gained
their
confidence in word stress after the first three
sessions:
Word stress is relatively easier
because we can check it on the
dictionary. Recently, I also revise
some rules in word stress and I can
apply them. (Phong, interview)
Their confidence in word stress showed
in the last presentation sessions. Almost all
long complicated words were produced
clearly: infrastructure, peaceful negotiation,
evacuation,
humanitarian
crisis,
administration, multipolar world legitimate
interest, asymmetrically, phytosanitary
measures, referendum and annexation.
CONCLUSIONS
Overall Evaluation of the Project
Participants took advantage of theirs
group presentation project to practice and
improve
their
pronunciation
skills.
Evaluation of the presentation as a
pedagogical device was strong:

These above examples indicated that the
participants had serious problems with word
stress. They did not remember the stress
patterns and gave the wrong stress placement
in an unpredictable way. However, there
were still some common trends: firstly,
students put equal strength, length and pitch
on both syllables of bi-syllabic words;
secondly, for words having more than three
syllables, stress was likely to be placed at the
third one; lastly, as analyzed above, they
hardly pronounced the weak form of the
syllable. Consequently, it was impossible to
tell where the stress syllable was.

Vietnamese students often focus and
spend most of their time on grammar
or writing, but we do not spend
enough time practicing speaking. So,
when we talk to foreigners, we often
feel nervous and inconvenient about
ourselves. Presenting in English
gives us opportunity to practice
speaking. (D.Binh, interview)

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Students’ levels of improvement,
however, were highly diverse. The first group
of students, the high-competence group,
found that their pronunciation underwent
positive but not dramatic changes. They fixed
minor sound mistakes and strengthened their
correct placement of stress. The main
beneficiaries were in the mediumcompetence group. They learned a great deal
from exchanging ideas and peer editing with
other members as well as observing stronger
presenters. They notices their improvement
over time and consolidated their confidence
by receiving positive feedback from their
peers. The last group, the lower-competence
group, did not make much progress in
pronunciation. These students could not give
clear answers about their strengths and
weaknesses when interviewed. In general,
participants developed a sense of
responsibility to communicate effectively
and genuinely wanted their audience to
understand what they presented.
Although the intended purpose of this
project was to heighten the participants’
pronunciation, the wider data set confirmed
the other benefits of presentations mentioned
in the literature including substantial gain in
vocabulary, grammar structures and selfassurance. Some vocabulary, especially
political terminology and multisyllabic
words as well as complex grammar
structures, were accumulated through the
process of preparing for presentations. Selfconfidence, on the other hand, was boosted
through the procedure of frequently
performing in public. The students also
reported that they could build more
background knowledge about international
affairs and political disciplines.

articulating sounds and stress. We believe
that learners should be able to recognize their
mistakes so that they are able to narrow the
gap between their versions of English with
the target ones. As our research results
suggest, noticing why and how something is
wrong benefited participants’ phonological
learning.
The act of addressing the participants’
pronunciation errors explicitly was not the
only cause for their improvements; it was
also because of the constructive efforts of the
instructor. This project was conducted in
such a way that grammar and vocabulary
mistakes had been limited or eliminated in
advance so that the students could pay their
full attention to pronunciation. Some of the
significant ramifications were that the
students actually ‘learned a lot about
grammar’ (D. Binh, interview) and they
gained more insight into political
terminology. Secondly, each presentation
session was managed so that there was
enough room for pedagogical instructions.
Theory about sounds including minimal pair
sounds, voiced and unvoiced, sounds that are
not available in Vietnamese language and
stress patterns were reintroduced. Again, the
role of teachers or instructors in such a
project like this is of paramount importance.
Taking these above issues into
consideration, there are several suggestions
for future group presentation projects to
maximize benefits in language teaching in
general and in teaching speaking in
particular. Firstly, the students should be
grouped into mixed-ability group and led by
a strong and responsible leader. The idea was
suggested in the research of Truong and
Storch (2008) and is confirmed by our
research. The leaders were the role models
for their own group members although their
working styles were very different. Secondly,
teachers/ instructors should give detailed
feedback on each presentation. In our
experience, for a Vietnamese classroom,
teachers’ comments and feedback have been
always valued; nevertheless, teachers should
also be sensitive to individuals’ traits. Thus,
positive feedback should be raised in public

Reflections and Pedagogical Implications
Within the researchers’ observation,
pronunciation errors had been made mainly
because the participants had not been aware
of the problems in their spoken language.
Most of the participants in this project
yielded positive results in pronunciation
because they developed accurate awareness
about both their strengths and weaknesses in
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and negative feedback should be given in
person. Finally, students should be evaluated
by consistent benchmarks or criteria. These
criteria should be introduced in advance so
that students can use them as guidelines.

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Question 2: Do you think speaking ideas
aloud is an effective way to practice
pronunciation? Why or why not?
Question 3: What are your problems with
group presentations?
Question 4: Think of the pronunciation
issues you face when giving a group
presentation. What aspects of pronunciation
do you find easy?
Question 5: What aspects of pronunciation
do you find difficult/ challenging?
Question 6: Has your pronunciation
improved in the last 2/4/6/8 weeks?
-

-

(If the answer is “yes”,) how do you
think your pronunciation has
improved?
(If the answer is “no”,) why do you
think that is?

Question 7: In your own judgment, what
were the strengths of your pronunciation
before this program?
Question 8: What were the weaknesses of
your pronunciation before this program?
Question 9: What are the strengths of your
pronunciation now?
Question 10: What are the weaknesses of
your pronunciation now?
Other optional questions:
1. What do you think about your vocabulary
range after taking part in group presentations
in the last 2/4/6/8 weeks?
2. Are you more confident now than you
were before taking part in this project? (If
yes, in what ways?)

APPENDIX A:
3. How has taking part in this project
influenced your attitude towards delivering
group presentations?

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Question 1: Do you think presenting in
English is a good way to practice speaking?
Why or why not?

4. Is there any other way of practicing
pronunciation you prefer?

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Martin Benedict Andrew, & Le Hong Tran, Using Weekly Group Political Presentations to…

5. What sort of feedback would help you?
What form of feedback would you like to be

given? (For example, individual feedback
from teachers or peer feedback)

127