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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

NGUYỄN THANH VÂN

IMPROVING FRESHMEN’S ENGLISH INTONATION

THROUGH ENGLISH POP SONGS:

AN ACTION RESEARCH AT ULIS-VNU

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR

THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS (TEFL)

Hanoi, May 2010

Hanoi, May 2010

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

NGUYỄN THANH VÂN

IMPROVING FRESHMEN’S ENGLISH INTONATION

THROUGH ENGLISH POP SONGS:

AN ACTION RESEARCH AT ULIS-VNU

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR

THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS (TEFL)

SUPERVISOR: PHẠM MINH TÂM, M.Ed.

Hanoi, May 2010

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ACCCEPTANCE

I hereby state that I: Nguyễn Thanh Vân, 061E3, being a candidate for the

degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the College

relating to the retention and use of Bachelor‟s Graduation Paper deposited

in the library.

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in

the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in

accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the

care, loan or reproduction of the paper.

Signature

May, 2010

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

On completing this graduation paper, I would like to send my deepest and

most sincere gratitude to many people for their invaluable help during the

conduct of the research.

First and foremost, I would like to send my heartfelt gratitude towards

my supervisor Mrs. Phạm Minh Tâm, M.Ed for her constructive and timely

feedbacks as well as her constant and unfailing support which were decisive

factors to the completion of the study.

Additionally, I would like to show my deepest gratitude towards Mrs.

Lương Quỳnh Trang, M.Ed and Mrs. Nguyễn Thị Anh Thư, PhD. for their

valuable advice and guide in the methodology of the research.

Furthermore, I would love to thank all the teachers who have taught me

pronunciation and research methodology. I would also like to say the sincerest

thanks to Mr. Andrew Larson, English teacher at the University of FPT

Greenwich and those first- year students ULIS mainstream English majors who

have enthusiastically participated in the study. Their participation has been

crucial to the completion of the research.

I would also love to thank Mr. Lục Hoàng Long, staff of FPT Software

Center for his crucial help with Information Technology and his spiritual

support throughout the research process.

On a personal note, I express my truly gratitude to my family and friends

who emotionally and spiritually comforted me through the challenging time of

conducting the research. The study could not have been completed without

their continual encouragement.

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ABSTRACT

In the context of globalization and English becomes the dominant

language all around the world, the number of students learning English as their

second or foreign language has witnessed a rapid increase. Despite the increase

in number of learners and the development of teaching and learning condition,

it seems that teachers and learners of English have not paid enough attention to

supra-segmental aspects of English language. The process of teaching those

aspects is mainly sole lecturing or explaining from teachers. This is such a pity

because these aspects, with their natural links to speaking and listening, play a

more decisive role in successful communication than any segmental aspects of

language. Intonation, a basic factor among these aspects, is no exception. With

a great interest in English songs and an inspiration to introduce a fresh and

relaxing way of teaching intonation, the researcher has decided to conduct the

study in order to find out the most effective techniques and songs for intonation

teaching from students‟ perspectives as well as possible improvement in

students‟ intonation when learning in this way. In form of an action research,

the study is a continuous process of techniques applying, effect verifying and

lesson improving to explore and discover the most effective techniques and

essential features of songs to use.

The results from the study are fairly positive with a considerable progress in

students‟ intonation (30%) accompanied by many interesting and constructive

ideas on how to choose songs and employ them to teach intonation. The

findings from the study are hopefully of benefit not only for learners interested

in intonation area but also for teachers by provoking a desire for more positive

teaching methods and providing them with some fundamental ideas to develop

new techniques of teaching intonation.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLES OF CONTENTS PAGE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………i

ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………………………………………iii

LISTS OF TABLES, FIGURES AND ABBREVIATIONS………………..vii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .................................................................... 1

1.1. Rationale for the study and research problem statement ......................... 1

1.2. Research aims and research questions .................................................... 3

1.3. Significance of the study ........................................................................ 3

1.4. Scope of the study .................................................................................. 4

1.5. Methodology .......................................................................................... 4

1.5.1. Research Design .............................................................................. 4

1.5.2. Sampling .......................................................................................... 4

1.5.3. Methods of Data Collection ............................................................. 5

1.5.4. Methods of Data Analysis ................................................................ 5

1.6. Organization .......................................................................................... 5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................... 7

2.1. Intonation ............................................................................................... 7

2.1.1 Definitions ........................................................................................ 7

2.1.2. Elements of English intonation ........................................................ 8

2.1.3 Importance of intonation in English .................................................. 9

2.2. English intonation teaching ...................................................................11

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2.2.1 Features of intonation teaching process ............................................11

2.2.2 Approaches to intonation teaching ...................................................12

2.2.3 Techniques in teaching intonation ....................................................14

2.3. English pop songs .................................................................................18

2.3.1. Definitions ......................................................................................18

2.3.2. Features of English pop songs .........................................................19

2.3.3. The use of English pop songs in ELT ..............................................20

2.4. Conclusion ............................................................................................21

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ...................................................................22

3.1. Introduction ........................................................................................22

3.2. Research questions .............................................................................22

3.3. Selection of Methodology ...................................................................22

3.4. Selection of subjects .............................................................................24

3.4.1. Population .......................................................................................24

3.4.2. Sampling .........................................................................................24

3.4.3. Participants .....................................................................................25

3.5. Research instruments ............................................................................25

3.5.1. Pre-test and post test .......................................................................26

3.5.2. Intonation courses ...........................................................................27

3.5.3. Interviews .......................................................................................29

3.6. Procedure of data collection ..................................................................30

3.6.1 Cycle 1 .............................................................................................30

3.6.1.1. Preparation ................................................................................30

3.6.1.2. Pre-test ......................................................................................31

3.6.1.3. Interviews .................................................................................31

3.6.1.4. Post- test ...................................................................................32

3.6.2. Cycle 2 ............................................................................................32

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3.6.2.1. Preparation ................................................................................32

3.6.2.2. Pre-test, Post test and Interviews ...............................................32

3.7. Procedure of data analysis .....................................................................32

3.7.1 Data from pre-test and post test ........................................................33

3.7.2 Data from the interviews ..................................................................36

3.8. Conclusion ............................................................................................38

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ...............................................39

4.1. Findings ................................................................................................39

4.1.1. Research question 1 ........................................................................39

4.1.1.1. Results ......................................................................................39

4.1.1.2 Discussion ..................................................................................43

4.1.2. Research question 2: .......................................................................44

4.1.2.1. The Recommended lessons for intonation teaching ...................44

4.1.2.2. Features of a favorable lesson ...................................................45

4.1.2.3 Effective techniques for intonation teaching ..............................46

4.1.2.4. Conclusion ................................................................................49

4.1.3. Research question 3 ........................................................................50

4.1.3.1. Features of song melody ...........................................................51

4.1.3.2. Features of song lyric ................................................................53

4.1.3.3. Conclusion ................................................................................54

4.2. Implications ..........................................................................................55

4.3. Application ...........................................................................................55

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION ........................................................................56

5.1. Summary of findings .............................................................................56

5.2. Limitations ............................................................................................57

5.3. Suggestions for further studies ..............................................................57

REFERENCES………………………………………………………………..59

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APPENDIXES………………………………………………………………...65

Appendix 1: Test of intonation…………………..……………………….65

Appendix 2: Interview scheme used in intonation course-Cycle 1……....67

Appendix 3: Interview scheme used in intonation course-Cycle 2………68

Appendix 4-10: Songs and lesson plans used for intonation courses…….69

Appendix 11: Summary of students‟ answers in the interviews- Lesson..101

Appendix 12: Summary of students‟ answers in the interviews- Song…104

Appendix 13-16: Samples of interview transcription………………..….106

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LIST OF TABLES

TABLES PAGE

Table 1: Grammar and intonation (Kelly, 2000, p.89)…………..…………13

Table 2: Intonation choices in discourse approach………………………...14

Table 3: Syllabus of intonation courses………………….……………….. 27

Table 4: Model comparison of two ToBI transcriptions………………..…35

Table 5: Average percentage of improvement_Dung………….…………..36

Table 6: Improvement in Dung‟s intonation…………..…………………...39

Table 7: Improvement in Hanh‟s intonation…….…………………………40

Table 8: Improvement in Thanh‟s intonation………………………………40

Table 9: Improvement in Mai‟s intonation……...…………………….…... 40

Table 10: Improvement in Thiet‟s intonation……………………….……...41

Table 11: Improvement in Tu Anh‟s intonation………………..………......41

Table 12: Improvement in Trang‟s intonation…………………………......42

Table 13: Improvement in Binh‟s intonation…………………………........42

Table 14: Participants‟ attitude towards lessons in cycle 1…………...…...44

Table 15: Participants‟ attitude towards lessons in cycle 2……………… ..44

Table 16: Students‟ interest in songs……… . ……………………………..50

Table 17: Marks given by students to the songs……….……………..……51

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LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURES PAGE

Figure 1: Circle of difficulties in intonation teaching…………………...…12

Figure 2: Procedure of lesson plan conduction………………………...…..28

Figure 3: Structure of interviews…………………………………………...30

Figure 4: Pitch contours-Pretest-Dung-Utterance 1………………………..33

Figure 5: Pitch contours with ToBI transcription-Pretest-Dung-

-Utterance 1……………………………………..34

Figure 6: Pitch contours with ToBI transcription- Native speaker-

-Utterance 1…………………………………...35

Figure 7: Percentage of improvement……………..………………….……43

Figure 8: Effectiveness of teaching techniques perceived by students….....47

Figure 9: Students‟ most favorite activities in lessons……………………..48

ABBREVIATIONS

ULIS, VNU: University of Languages and International Studies

Vietnam National University, Hanoi

ELT : English Language Teaching

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1. Rationale for the study and research problem statement

In the context of educational development when more and more positive

teaching and studying methods are in demand, the necessity of exploring

new methods with relaxing as well as effective sources of teaching materials

has become a matter of course to educators.

The use of music in developing linguistic skills has become a trend since

it was stated in Maess and Koelsch‟s study in 2001. After a wide range of

complicated experiments and studies, neurologists have come to the

conclusion that musical and language processing occur in the same area of

the brain and there are probably parallels in how musical and linguistic

syntax are processed (Maess and Koelsch, 2001, as cited in Kristen, 2001).

Many others linguistic educators and teachers have also conducted various

studies and reached the conclusion that music is one of the best sources for

language learning and teaching. Among various genres of music, pop songs-

with normal rhythm and similarity to speech- are the best for teaching

language. This point has been emphasized by Kisito (2005), an experienced

teacher of English as well as the webmaster of est-galaxy.com, a well-known

website in teaching English for Japanese, and Murphey (1992), to name but

a few.

In terms of linguistic skills, many Vietnamese students share their

difficulties when studying abroad in some forums like vietphd.org, a forum

for Vietnamese people who are studying PhD abroad to share their ideas and

experiences. One strange situation is that although their English

pronunciation can be considered better than Indian students, they are often

misunderstood or asked to repeat their utterances by their professors and

classmates while it is not the case for those from India. After a certain

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period of time, they realize that Indian students‟ superiority to them is

certainly not word pronunciation but word stress and sentence intonation,

which results in their effect to professors and classmates‟ understanding

(translated, Ericsson and Klmn (2008) in the discussion “Teaching Assistant

with Limited English Speaking”). Although these are just some cases

through personal experience, they deserve more consideration from teachers

and learners of English. Cook (2000), in his preface for the book American

Accent Training, has also stated that “If you speak fairly quickly and with

strong intonation, you will be understood more easily”. This is based on the

fact that English is an intonation language, the language which uses pitch to

convey ideas or concepts.

Through my own experience of studying English intonation in Phonetics

and Speaking classes, it can be said that students at the University of

Languages and International Studies- Vietnam National University (ULIS,

VNU) are not really aware of the importance of intonation in English

communication. Additionally, their intonation practicing is somehow

“cosmetic” and not sufficient enough for them to have a good command of

English intonation. To be more specific, the first- year students at ULIS,

VNU only have a maximum of two periods in Speaking lesson to intonation

for the whole semester, which is just a very quick introduction on English

intonation compared to its complexity and importance.

All these aforementioned factors, together with the article “Listen to

Songs and Film Dialogues to Improve Your Intonation Skills” written by the

authors in qwetrystudios.com, have provoked a desire for the researcher to

conduct a study on the effective ways in exploiting English pop songs to

improve English intonation for the first -year students at ULIS-VNU.

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It is obvious that such a study cannot be successful without explicit data

on participants‟ intonation skill and a suitable condition for them to study

and develop the skill. The lack of setting for learning and teaching intonation

at ULIS-VNU, as mentioned above, makes it reasonable and essential for the

study to be conducted in form of an action research.

In sum, with strong interest in the topic and belief in methodology from,

the researcher has been attracted to the conduction of the study “Improving

freshmen’s intonation through English pop songs: An action research at

ULIS, VNU”

1.2. Research aims and research questions

The particular aims of this study are to reach the specific data on the

improvement in participants‟ intonation, to analyze the effectiveness of

some techniques used in the research process and supply some criteria to

choose relevant songs for this purpose.

In sum, the research seeks answers to the following questions:

1. To what extent does the use of English pop songs in intonation

teaching process improve ULIS freshmen‟s intonation?

2. What techniques are the most effective to teach intonation with

English pop songs to the freshmen at ULIS, VNU as perceived by

these freshmen?

3. What are the essential features of English pop songs that can help to

improve ULIS freshmen‟s intonation as perceived by the participants?

1.3. Significance of the study

The first contribution the study aims at is an overview of fundamental

knowledge of intonation and intonation teaching process, especially the

exploitation of English pop songs in the teaching process.

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It is also expected that this study may provide a source of reference for

teachers and researchers in linguistic and pedagogical areas.

1.4. Scope of the study

Due to a small scale as well as time limit, this research will only focus on

a limited target population and a certain aspect of intonation. In terms of

intonation aspects, the study only put a focus on pitch variation, the key

factor of intonation. The small scale of the study also creates the necessity

for participants in the study to be restricted to the number of 5 first- year

students at ULIS, VNU for each cycle. From now to the end of this paper,

these first-year students at ULIS, VNU are simply referred as “the students”

or “the participants”.

1.5. Methodology

1.5.1. Research Design

The study is conducted in the form of an action research to answer the

first main question. The action research will be implemented with two

cycles, and each cycle is a course on English intonation. Each course

consists of 7 classes, 60 minutes each, with the lesson plans designed by the

researcher. Intonations tests are taken by the participants at the beginning

and at the end of the course to see the differences.

Deep- end interviews will also be used at the end of each class to get the

demands and the feedback of the participants towards certain aspects of the

teaching procedure.

1.5.2. Sampling

As the subject of the study is the freshmen‟s intonation and their

perceptions of this skill through a period of time with the addition of English

pop songs, the participants will be chosen from first- year students at ULIS,

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VNU. Due to the time limit and big work-load for the researcher, it is

necessary that the study will be conducted with convenient sampling.

1.5.3. Methods of Data Collection

To answer the first question, data will be collected with the use of

PRAAT, an effective computer program for linguistics uses. First, the

participant‟s speech will be recorded with an MP4 player. All the speech,

then, will be opened in PRAAT program, transformed and stored in the form

of speech diagrams.

One semi-structure interview schedule will also be used to get the answer

of the other two research questions.

1.5.4. Methods of Data Analysis

The first method of data analysis is quantitative method to get descriptive

statistics about participants‟ intonation changes with the use of PRAAT,

which helps to answer the first research question.

The second method of data analysis will be theme analysis method,

applied on the answers of participants in the deep- end interviews with the

researcher. The data helps to answer the other two research questions.

1.6. Organization

The study totally consists of five chapters, namely Introduction,

Literature Review, Methodology, Results and discussions and Conclusion

with the major contents as follows:

Chapter 2 provides the background on the study, including the

definitions and the features of some determinant terms such as intonation,

intonation teaching process and English pop songs. Besides, this chapter

gives a brief review of some major approaches and techniques for teaching

intonation as well as using English songs in English Language Teaching

(ELT).

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Chapter 3 demonstrates the research methods applied in the study with

details on how and why these methods were implemented in the research.

Chapter 4 presents the data collected from careful interviews as well as

the pre-test and post-test throughout the research. In order to ensure the

clarity and conciseness of the paper, the raw data are filtered and

demonstrated briefly in forms of tables and charts. It also demonstrates the

results and discussion of the study, which answer the three research

questions, and then suggests the application of these results in reality.

Chapter 5 summarizes the main issues covered in the paper, presents the

limitations of the study and some suggestions for further studies in the

research area. Following this chapter are the References and Appendixes for

the whole research.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

To begin with the study, it is essential to know clearly about the key

concepts of the study as well as the research site. In this chapter, three main

concepts “intonation”, “intonation teaching” and “English pop songs”

will be presented in an overview of their definitions and uses in ELT.

2.1. Intonation

Intonation is one important aspect of every language. Therefore,

defining the term “intonation” in general, “English intonation” in particular

and its elements has always been a controversial matter for linguists all over

the world. In this paper, the term “intonation” would be used to refer to

“English intonation” only.

2.1.1 Definitions

First and foremost, it is worth defining the fundamental aspect of the

research- intonation.

Generally defined, Al-Sibai (2004) considered intonation as “it is not

what you said, it is how you said it” (p.1) at the very beginning of the study

Intonation: A Suprasegmental Aspect of the English Language. This idea

was repeated in Sabbadini (2006) in her article “Intonation” on the website

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/

Another general definition of intonation is “intonation is the music

language”. This idea was emphasized by Baker and Goldstein (2008, p.14),

in their book Pronunciation Pairs: An Introduction to the Sounds of English,

and by many other linguists in the forum

http://linguisticsinc.org/intonation.htm.

Other linguists and researchers offered more specific definitions of

intonation. O‟Connor & Arnold (1961), in their book Intonation of

Colloquial English, gave the definition “when we talk about English

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intonation, we mean the pitch patterns of spoken English, the pitch tunes of

melodies, the musical features of English”. Despite the differences in word

choice, Bradford (1992), Cruttenden (1986), Kelly (2000), Tench (1981)

and many other linguists also defined intonation as the changes of pitch

pattern in utterances.

In sum, it was widely recognized among linguists that intonation dealt

with pitch variations in utterances.

2.1.2. Elements of English intonation

Due to the differences in definitions, linguists and researches offered

different elements of English intonation. Nguyen H.N. (2003), in her

graduation paper English Tunes in Communication, stated that dealing with

intonation meant dealing with three main elements: stress, rhythm and tone

groups. However, this idea was not supported by other studies as these

elements were of intonation teaching rather than of intonation itself.

Cruttenden (1986, p.35) assumed that intonation had three main

elements at three layers: intonation units (parts of a stream of speech), tonic

status (a stressed syllable of an important word) and tones of intonation

units (the pitch chosen for a certain intonation unit). These elements, more

or less, corresponded to tone units, tonic syllable and tunes mentioned in

O‟Connor and Arnold (1961).

Differently, Pierrehumbert (1980) emphasized the importance of pitch

movement in perceiving intonation and considered three elements of pitch

accents , (i.e. tones at main words and getting stressed, marked with *),

phrasal tones (i.e. tones linking the main phrase and the boundary, marked

with -) and boundary tones (i.e. tones at the end of the phrase, marked with

%). The accents or tones were restricted to only 2 basic ones: high (H) or

low (L). Her idea was then developed by Beckman, Hirschberg and

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Shattuck-Hufnagel (2005), adding pauses as an important element of

intonation, to form a system of intonation transcription named Tones and

Break Indices (ToBI).

Among all of these ideas about the elements of intonation, the

researcher of this study was really convinced by Pierrehumbert‟s because it

had been recognized and developed into a world-wide system of

transcription by other linguists. That was the reason why ToBI was chosen

to be one standard for data analysis procedure in this study.

2.1.3 Importance of intonation in English

The importance of intonation in English communication has been

emphasized over and over in many studies. It was stated by Cook (2000) in

his preface of the book American Accent Training that the speech with high

speed but strong intonation was easily understood. Gilbert (1993) also

claimed that “…time spent helping students concentrate on rhythm and the

major intonational road signs is more important than any other efforts to

improve their pronunciation” (p.43).

The important role of English intonation has also been observed by a

number of other linguists. Roach (1983) demonstrated four important

functions of intonation in English as follows:

- Attitudinal function: helps speakers express their attitude and adds

special kind of meaning to spoken language.

- Accentual function: helps to produce sense of emphasis or

prominence to the important word or syllable in speaker‟s intention.

- Grammatical function: helps listeners recognize the grammatical and

syntactic structure of the utterance.

- Discourse function: signals to the listeners what is considered new or

shared or what kind of answer is expected.

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Vaissiere (2004) made the point clearer by introducing 7 ranges of

intonational functions: Syntactic, Informational, Interactive, Modal,

Attitudinal, Emotional and Other (speaker‟s identity, sex, age, and so on).

Actually, the Attitudinal (attitude towards the speech and listener) and

Emotional (speaker‟s arousal) in Vaissiere‟s study could be combined to

make the Attitudinal function in Roach‟s idea. The Informational function in

Vaissiere‟s corresponded to the Discourse function in Roach‟s and

Vaissiere‟s Syntactic function was included in Roach‟s Grammatical

function.

In agreement with those ideas, the author(s) of the article “Teaching

Intonation and Stress Pattern” at http://www.btinternet.com/ added one

more function of English intonation in communication: turn-taking. It was

stated in the article that rising and falling could be used as a signal to keep

the floor or give the floor to another person to talk: “Remain at a high pitch

if you want to continue talking. A fall shows completion” (The Importance

of Intonation in Social Interaction section, para.1)

The importance of intonation lies not only in the benefits of suitable

intonation to the communication but also in the bad effects it brings when

used inappropriately. Because intonation is perceived unconsciously (Kelly,

2000, p.86 and Al-Sibai, 2004, p.2), native speakers are often unable to

recognize this kind of mistake in non-native speakers‟ utterances and

consider the novice speakers‟ inappropriate intonation as deliberate

(O‟Connor, 1998, p. 108 and Al-Sibai, 2004, p.2). This will certainly lead to

misunderstanding and communication break-down. This point was stressed

again when in Hewings (1995, p. 251) clarified in his review “Tone Choice

in the English Intonation of Non-Native Speakers” with the contention that:

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We often react more violently to . . . intonational meanings than to . . .

lexical ones; if a man's tone of voice belies his words, we immediately assume

that the intonation more faithfully reflects his true linguistic intentions.

In conclusion, intonation is such an important and sensitive aspect of

English language that the appropriate or inappropriate choice of it may

determine the success or failure of communication.

2.2. English intonation teaching

2.2.1 Features of intonation teaching process

The intonation teaching process can be characterized by complexity

and difficulty.

The complexity of the teaching process originated from the

unconscious perception of native speakers about intonation. Kelly (2000)

described the teaching of intonation as “examine the nature of these

unconscious processes (perceive, understand and use intonation), bring them

to the surface and show how we believe they work” (p.86, notes in

parentheses added by the myself). In other words, the teaching of intonation

consisted of three main phases: careful examination and study on the nature

of intonation acquisition, transformation of the nature into clear and

understandable pieces of information and presentation of the information to

students. Each of the phase itself has contained many problems. As stated in

Vaissiere (2004), it was difficult to study intonation due to the lack of clear

definitions, unified approaches and standardized methods. In addition, the

values that linguistics and teachers often use for intonation such as pitch

level/ movement or prominence (loudness or stress) are just relative: one

speaker‟s „mid‟ pitch could be another‟s „low‟ pitch. This example was

demonstrated in Ranalli (2002) to state that values do vary from speaker to

speaker and from one situation to another. Moreover, there were problems

12

with the transformation and presentation of the information as these

processes consisted of "lengthy explanatory input for very little

performance output on the part of the student" (Currie & Yule, 1991, p.271).

The difficulty in intonation teaching process is an indispensible

consequence of its complexity. Roach (1991, p.11) claimed that "the

complexity of the total set of sequential and prosodic components of

intonation ... makes it a very difficult thing to teach". The difficulty of this

part has made teachers less confident to teach it in classrooms (Sabbadini,

2006) and hence, led to a vicious circle:

Figure 1 : Circle of difficulties in intonation teaching

2.2.2 Approaches to intonation teaching

Different ideas in the perception and functions of intonation are the

determinants that create different approaches in teaching intonation.

Traditionally, researchers dealt with intonation, first and foremost, in

grammatical or attitudinal approaches. Researchers with grammatical

approach tended to show connections between intonation patterns and a

particular type of grammatical structure. It can be seen from Kelly (2000)

No confidence

Ignorance in classrooms

Less skills+ Students'

unawareness

Dificulties

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and Littlejohn and Hicks (1998) that in grammatical approach, intonation

teaching process put a focus on presenting and explaining the intonation in

isolated sentences of a certain type of sentences. Here are the clear examples

of grammatical approach in Kelly (2000):

Grammatical structure Intonation pattern

1 Information questions (asked for the first time) Falling

2 Questions (expecting a yes/no answer) Rising

3 Statements Falling

4 Imperatives Falling

5 Question tags (expecting confirmation) Falling

6 Question tags (show less certainty) Rising

7 Lists of items Rising, rising and finally falling

Table 1: Grammar and intonation (Kelly, 2000:89)

This approach has been criticized by Bradford (1998) and McCarthy (1991)

as there is no one-to-one relationship between sentence-type and tone of

intonation.

Another tradition approach to teaching intonation was attitudinal

approach. This approach considered how intonation changed in accordance

with speaker‟s attitude (Kelly, 2000, p. 95). However, this approach got

criticism from many researchers like Kelly (2000) or McCarthy (1991)

because there were too many things to be conveyed. Kelly (2000, p.96)

pointed out that the same intonation pattern could be used to express

different attitude (falling tone for a matter of fact or sense of relief).

McCarthy (1991, p.107) gave another argument that almost any emotion can

be expressed by any tone contour as displaying a particular attitude or

emotion. However, both of these researchers agreed that the links between

attitudes and intonation should be applied in teaching and practicing a

particular set of utterances.

14

Recently, linguistics have been more interested in an approach

developed by Brazil (1995) named interactive approach or discourse

approach. In this approach, speech was viewed as a target status of shared

understanding that both speaker and listener manage to reach; intonation was

considered not only used by speaker but also by listener (Cauldwell and

Allen, 1997). This approach could be summarized as in the following table:

System Choices

Prominence prominent／non-prominent syllables

Tone rise-fall, fall, level, rise, fall-rise

Key high, mid, low

Termination high, mid, low

Table 2: Intonation choices in discourse approach

(Brazil, 1995 cited in Higuchi, 2000)

With the three approaches above, researchers and teachers have

developed different methods and techniques in teaching intonation, which

would be presented in the next part of this paper.

2.2.3 Techniques in teaching intonation

It is necessary to re-emphasize that teaching intonation is not an easy

task for teachers of English language. For those who are native speakers of

English, as mentioned above, they often perceive intonation subconsciously

and are unaware of intonation difficulties of non-native speakers. Thus, it is

difficult for these native speakers to teach intonation. Consequently, without

the help from native teachers, non-native teachers will find it more difficult

to teach intonation as the theoretical basis for their teaching process is

limited. Perhaps, due the difficulties of intonation teaching process, there

have been few official researches on this area. However, a number of

teachers all around the world have paid more and more attention to this area

and shared their ideas for techniques in teaching intonation. This part aims at

demonstrating some of the main techniques mentioned.

15

Sabbadini (2006), a teacher in British Council- Cameroon, shared

some of her techniques in teaching intonation as follow:

- Modeling: teachers provide models for the learners and it is noticeable

that teachers should “exaggerate” their intonation for students to acquire

easily.

- Imitating: after giving models, teachers may ask students to imitate their

intonation by humming only.

- Comparing two examples of the same phrase: this can be done by two

ways. In a receptive way, teachers may let students listen to the two

examples recorded or spoken by teachers themselves. In a productive way,

teachers may ask students to practice two sentences in pairs, two minutes

as the robots without intonation and another two minutes with their

normal speaking.

With reference to Kelly (2000), Sabbadini (2006) also suggested some

particular activities to teach intonation from different approaches.

- From grammatical approaches, Sabbadini (2006) offered an activity of

using falling/rising tunes to convey their certainty about classmates‟ jobs

(the jobs were assigned to each student by the teacher). This activity was

similar to the one in Kelly (2000) in which each student received a piece

of paper with his/her nationality and the level of certainty about some

other mates‟ nationalities. Their task is to use falling/rising intonation to

ask the other about their nationalities. With this approach, Scrivener, in

his article “Skill: Teaching English Intonation” suggested that the teacher

model the intonation of every sample sentence when teaching a grammar

point.

- From attitudinal approach, Sabbadini (2006) provided a sample lesson. In

recognition stage, the teacher and students brain-stormed some attitude

16

such as “interested, uninterested, enthusiastic, surprised”. Then, the

teacher spoke a certain word, “banana” for example, with different

intonation and asked students to guess the attitude conveyed. In

production stage, the teacher assigned students with particular attitude as

“Miss Happy, Mr. Grumpsy or Miss Frightened” to speak some given

words or phrases.

A similar activity was introduced by Counihan (1998) when he asked

his students to present different ways of saying “Hello” to a lovely six-

month-old baby, to a strict teacher, to a long lost friend. This activity

could be repeated with other structures, other situations and attitudes.

Greeting and thanking to a particular person with different attitudes

was also a technique for students‟ drill in Kelly (2000). In his lesson,

Kelly provided students with a selection of role cards stating their

previous relations with Mr. Johnson and asked them to say “Good

morning, Mr. Johnson” in their proper ways.

For students at higher level, Scrivener let his students work in groups

of three with some situation like “Two people think the third one is a

thief” or “Today is one person‟s birthday”. Each student would only speak

the words/phrases written in their paper and simultaneously express their

attitude to others.

- From discourse approach, Sabbadini (2006) let students look at a scripted

dialogue between a waiter and two customers in a restaurant and focus on

the waiter‟s intonation in new or shared information. This approach was

also used to form the lesson in Kelly (2000) when he provided students

with different example intonation of the same phrase and explain the

discourses.

17

Beside techniques particularly related to an approach as above,

Scrivener also offered some other integrated activities for intonation

teaching. The first integrated activity he mentioned was marking text- letting

students look at a script, listen to the dialogue, mark the stressed syllables

and draw arrows to intonation patterns.

The idea of using arrows and visual markers for intonation has been

shared by almost every teacher and researcher in this area. This idea has

been emphasized in Al-Sibai (2004), Kelly (2000), O‟Connor and Arnold

(1961), Sabbadini (2006), Stibbard (1996), to name but a few.

Another technique emphasized by all teachers and researchers in this

area was practice. According to Kelly (2000) and Sabbadini (2006), for

students‟ benefits, practice rather than theory must be the focus in

classrooms. Authors of the article “Listen to Songs and Film Dialogues to

Improve Your Intonation Skills” at http://www.qwertystudios.com also put a

stress on practice when stating that “ While teaching intonation it's necessary

to remember that the best way to achieve quick result is constant practicing”.

An interesting and innovative technique in teaching intonation is the

use of jazz chant. This is a course developed by Carolyn Graham with the

use of jazz music‟s melody and rhythm to teach American rhythm and

intonation. The written document of this technique, Graham‟s book Jazz

Chant published in 1978 was described as an amusing way of teaching and

learning English.

All of the techniques above were helpful and crucial for teachers of

English intonation to develop a range of interesting and effective lessons.

18

2.3. English pop songs

2.3.1. Definitions

According to Cambridge Advanced Learner Dictionary, song is “a

usually short piece of music with words which are sung”. It can also be

defined as “ a short musical composition with words” from the website of

Princeton University, USA http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Pop song, or the song of pop music, is defined by Hatch and Millward

(1987) in their book From Blues to Rock: An Analytical History of Pop

Music as “a piece of music that have popular appeal”. A similar definition

of pop song is also given by Oxford Dictionary of Music as “concerts

appealing to a wide audience”.

However, it is essential to understand more deeply about pop music in

order to understand the term „pop song‟. As defined at the website

http://en.wikipedia.org, Pop music is a piece of music usually recorded for

commercial purpose, oriented towards a youth market, usually consisting of

relatively short and simple love songs and utilizing technological

innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.

It is also crucial to distinguish between pop music and popular music:

pop music is a specific genre of music related to alternative rock „n roll

while popular music is a term used for all kind of music appealing to popular

tastes (Allen, 2004).

In general, pop music is a genre of music popular to the youth but also

appealing to most of the audiences. This clear understanding of English pop

songs will help deduct the important features of this genre.

19

2.3.2. Features of English pop songs

It is possible to say that the most important feature of English pop

songs is the pleasure to audiences. Lamb (2010) emphasized that “the

audience pleasure in listening to the song is the primary goal”. This feature

leads to a decisive advantage of English pop songs: as the majority of

listeners enjoy the songs, the exploitation of these songs for other purposes,

like teaching or learning, will more likely receive motivation and support

and achieve good results.

English pop songs are also described in Shuker (2001, p.8-10) and

Warner (2003, p.3) with many features as follows:

- The lyrics focus on simple themes like love and romantic relationships

- The songs are short, usually about two and a half minutes to three and

a half minutes.

- The songs consist of verse and repeated chorus

- The beat of the song is simple and strong, which is relatively easy to

perceive.

Murphey (1992) , after conducting an analysis of a number of pop songs,

has found many features beneficial to language learners:

- They contain common and short words, including many personal

pronouns. According to his estimation, 94% of the songs had a first

person, I, referent and are written at about a fifth-grade level

- The language is similar to normal conversations with 25% of

imperatives and questions

- Time and place are usually imprecise (except for some folk ballads);

- The lyrics are often sung at a slower rate than usual and are there are

more pauses between utterances

20

With all of these important characteristics as mentioned above,

English pop songs seem to be beneficial and suitable materials for teaching

English language.

2.3.3. The use of English pop songs in ELT

As stated in the previous part of this paper, English pop songs seems

to be a useful material for English language learning and teaching process.

In the effort to employ an effective but interesting and joyful material in

teaching process, many teachers of English have tried using songs in their

classrooms. Those include Kristen Lems from the USA, Futonge Kisito from

Japan, Larry Lynch from Colombia, to name but a few.

Lems (1996) exploited songs in most of her classroom activities for

adult learners: listening for the song lyrics, recognize the song stress, rhythm

and intonation, practice singing to improve pronunciation, teaching

vocabulary and introducing cultural aspects.

Kisito (2005) put his high interest in using English songs to teach

listening. He suggested some activities for listening lesson such as fill in the

blanks, identify two words with the same rhyme. He also had similar ideas to

Lems (2001) that English pop songs can be used to teach grammar,

vocabulary or distinguish singers‟ accent (especially between American and

British accent).

Songs were also said to be a “wonderful material to teach rhythm and

intonation” by Cakir (1999). In his journal “Musical Activities for Young

Learners of ESL”, Cakir provided a wide range of interesting ELT activities

based on some given songs.

All of the above studies are persuasive evidences that English pop

songs can be an effective material for teaching English language in general

and English intonation in particular.

21

2.4. Conclusion

From the literature review above, it is remarkable that intonation is a

difficult but provoking and interesting area to study. To enthusiastic teachers

of English, the importance of intonation in the language requires a deeper

and more careful study to solve the contemporary problems.

Despite the significance of intonation and the benefits English pop

songs may bring to the intonation classrooms, there have been no official

studies on using English pop songs to teach intonation yet. This situation

remains a gap in the development of ELT methodology.

In conclusion, with the basis of theory and methodology on intonation

teaching process and the use of English pop songs for English-as-Foreign-

Language classrooms, it is promising that this study will filing the existing

gap in the research area.

22

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

3.1. Introduction

In the previous chapter, the background and the focus of the study

have been justified through a brief review of the literature. This succeeding

chapter will demonstrate the methodology applied in the study by discussing

in detail the participants, the instruments and the procedure of data

collection which all aimed at achieving the major targets of the present

study. It should also be noted that the discussion of data analysis procedure

will be delayed until the next chapter.

3.2. Research questions

The targets of this study are the specific data on the improvement in

participants‟ intonation and the suggestions to choose the effective

techniques and relevant songs for intonation teaching. These targets can be

summarized into the answers to three major questions:

1. To what extent does the use of English pop songs in intonation

teaching process improve ULIS freshmen‟s intonation?

2. What techniques are the most effective to teach intonation with

English pop songs to the freshmen at ULIS, VNU as perceived by

these freshmen?

3. What are the essential features of English pop songs that can help to

improve ULIS freshmen‟s intonation?

3.3. Selection of Methodology

Before dealing with the specific steps in the research procedure, it is

necessary to explain the selection of the methodology because good

understanding of action research is indispensible for a deep understanding

and analysis of the research.

23

Action research, as defined in Cohen and Manion (1994, p.186) is

“small- scale intervention in the functioning of the real world and a close

examination of the effects of such an intervention”. In other words, Hopkins

(1985, p. 32) and Ebbutt (1985, p.156) defined it as the combination of

action and research in which a person attempted to understand, improve and

reform practice. Carr and Kemmis (1986, p.162) presented a different point

when regarding action research as a form of “self-reflective inquiry”.

From these definitions, researchers suggested some main features of

an action research as follows:

- Combination of action and research

- Intervention to solve real problems in the real word

- Close and careful examination of the effect of the intervention

- Self- reflection of the participants on their changes, or in another

words, the researcher is also a participant

Some other characteristics of action research were also stated by Hult

and Lennung (1980) and McKernan (1991) as:

- Aiming at improving the quality of human actions

- Being on an on-going cycle process, i.e. the feedback from data

collected can be used to improve the next steps in the research.

- Being formative, i.e. the research may witness the alteration in

definition, aims and methodology

- Contributing to a science of education

- Being collaborative, i.e. the research involves all contribution to

improve the understanding and action

These features were reflected in this study. First, the aim of the study

was to improve the current situation of English intonation teaching. Second,

the study would contribute to the science of language education. Third, the

24

study included the researcher‟s intervention on other participants‟ intonation

competence. Forth, the study was formed with several uncertainties and

suspicions, thus, it needed the alteration and improvement from within the

research process. Finally, the answer to the research question needed

answering as participants reflected on their own improvement, interest and

emotion during the research.

In conclusion, action research is a good choice for this study on

account of the suitability in target, design and characteristics of the study.

3.4. Selection of subjects

3.4.1. Population

The target population of this research was the first-year students at

ULIS, VNU. These students have spent at least seven years of their high

school studying English, passed the entrance exam to become mainstream

English majors at ULIS,VNU- a well-known university for English

Language Education- and been taught by teachers at ULIS,VNU for half a

year. These experiences were strong evidences for their solid background on

English vocabulary and structures, which helped the process of learning

intonation and giving feedback on ELT matters easier and more reliable.

3.4.2. Sampling

Firstly, as the subject of the study was the freshmen‟s intonation and

their perceptions of this skill through a period of time with the addition of

English pop songs, the participants were be chosen from first- year students

at ULIS, VNU. Because of time limit and big work-load for the researcher at

B.A. graduation paper, it was necessary that the study be conducted with

convenient sampling. At the beginning of the first cycle, the researcher made

contact with Thuong from class 091E3, a student being tutored privately by

the researcher. An appointment was made for the researcher to have some

25

talks with students from class 091E8 at ULIS, VNU to choose 10

participants, explain the process of the research and ask for their permission

to use their real names, private information and sayings for the study. All

participants and the researcher had come to the unity that written agreements

would not be necessary. Afterwards, the two cycles were implemented

gradually with five students in each cycle.

Secondly, it was worth stating that all the tests and interviews taken

by participants were used for the study. Thus, if any participant could not

attend the intonation course regularly, the information from him/her would

not be used for the discussion of the study because it could not ensure the

reliability of the study. This regulation, unfortunately, decreased the number

of participants in the first cycle down to 4.

3.4.3. Participants

It was a coincidence that all the participants of the research were

female students at ULIS, VNU. These young girls were active and

enthusiastic students who had strong inspiration on learning communicative

English, especially improving their pronunciation and intonation. They also

had similar results in English language for the first semester at the

university.

Moreover, they had the common interests of young female students:

funny activities for studying and popular songs for entertainment.

3.5. Research instruments

As a main feature of action research, the study was implemented with

two cycles. Within each cycle, the main research instruments used were

intonation test, intonation course and interviews. These instruments were

fully employed and simultaneously to ensure the most valid and reliable

data.

26

3.5.1. Pre-test and post test

To answer the first research question about ULIS freshmen‟s

improvement in intonation and to analyze results of an action research, it

was essential to find the criteria for evaluation. The participants‟ competence

of English intonation would be examined at the beginning and at the end of

the course through an intonation test (see Appendix 1). This test consisted of

six popular sentences of different grammatical structures and in different

situations. The participants‟ task was speaking out loud the utterances with

their most natural intonation. Their speeches were recorded with an MP3

player for further analysis.

It was important to state that the content of pre-test and post-test were

absolutely the same. The test was constructed by the researcher with

reference to reliable sources such as the book How to Teach Pronunciation

by Gerald Kelly (2000) or the research ESL Pronunciation Practice for

Question Intonation by Eric (2007). It was then sent for comments from

experts in intonation like Mrs. Nguyen Thi Anh Thu, PhD on Phonetics from

Queensland University, Australia, the co-author of several articles in

Elsevier Journal of Phonetics. After all, the intonation test was formed and

consistently used along the whole research.

The criteria for the evaluation of the test result underwent a range of

complicated steps. With the consideration that the best criteria for intonation

evaluation was native speakers‟ one, the researcher had chosen the audio

files of the utterances spoken by a native speaker, Mr. Andrew Larson,

teachers of English in FPT Greenwich University. In order to ensure the

validity of the intonation pattern, the recordings were compared to those in

the CDs of the books above and achieve the same result. The accuracy of

students‟ intonation would be assessed by the similarities between their

27

utterances and those of the native speaker in form of pitch contours and

ToBI transcription. The assessment (transcription and comparison) were all

done by the researcher.

3.5.2. Intonation courses

The most emphasized feature of action researches, which was

mentioned in the section “Selection of Methodology”, was the process of the

researcher‟s intervention. With the objectives of this study, the intervention

process should be designed to raise participants‟ awareness, improve their

English intonation and create a favorable condition for them to reflect on the

effective songs and teaching techniques for intonation. The intonation

courses, consequently, were established to meet the above demands.

Due to a small scale of a Bachelor -of -Art research with limits on

time and experience, the course in each cycle just consisted of 7 classes with

the researcher as the teacher and other participants as students. The syllabus

of the each course could be briefly demonstrated as in the following table:

Week Time Lesson Song Content(s) of lesson

1 Monday 1 Hello(Lionel Richie) Rising tone in greetings and Y/N

questions

Thursday 2 You can get it if you

really want (Jimmy

Cliff)

- Falling tone in statements

- Intonation in a lists

2 Monday 3 Donna, Donna (Julie

Roger)

Rising and falling tones in WH-

questions

Thursday 4 The day you went

away (M2M)

- Interchange of falling and rising

tones in WH-questions

3 Monday 5 Eyes on me (Faye

Wong)

- Rise-fall tone in exclamations

- Intonation in alternative questions

Thursday 6 A little time (The

Beautiful South)

Falling and rising tones in tag

questions

4 Monday 7 Do you know where

you going to (Janice)

+ Do you know what

you want (M2M)

Intonation patterns in combined

questions

Table 3: Syllabus of intonation courses

28

The total of 7 lesson plans (see Appendix 4-10) were prepared by the

researcher before the courses with reference from the intonation practice

books and articles together with advices from teachers and experts on

pronunciation and intonation teaching. The contents of the lessons in the

courses were based on eight model lessons suggested in chapter Intonation

of the book How to Teach Pronunciation by Gerald Kelly (2000).

Here are the normal steps in the construction of the lesson plan:

Figure 2: Procedure of lesson plan construction

- Firstly, a range of English pop songs were chosen based on the suggestions

from Lems (1996, 18), teachers in http://www.eslhq.com/forums/esl-

forums/teaching-esl/ and researcher‟s own assumptions and interest. These

songs were carefully burned into the CDs for cassette use later on.

- Secondly, the intonation patterns taught in each lesson were chosen with

grammatical approach, i.e. linked one intonation pattern with a certain type

of sentence.

- Thirdly, the lyrics of all the songs were scanned by the researcher to find

out those with the needed grammar structures.

Collecting songs from suggestions

Selecting teaching points

Selecting relevant lyrics

Checking melodies+ selecting songs

Preparing activities+ explanation

29

- Fourthly, the melody of the songs chosen from the previous step was

checked to see whether the intonation in the grammar structure was

suitable with the content of the lesson. Only the most suitable song(s)

would be selected for the lesson.

- Fifthly, the research decided how to introduce the intonation patterns with

the song(s), prepared explanations for any questions about intonation

which might popped up at the class (normally related to attitudes or

discourses) and formed the practice activities based on the techniques

mentioned in the section “Techniques in teaching intonation” above.

The data collected after the first cycle were used to developed better

lesson plans for the second cycle (see Appendix 4-10).

3.5.3. Interviews

So as to answer the second and third research question, semi-structure

interviews were exploited right after each lesson for two main reasons. The

first reason was the effectiveness in data supplementation of this instrument.

Interactions in an interview, as claimed in Nunan (1992) could be

“incredibly rich” and the data could be “extraordinary evidence about life”

that might not be gained in a questionnaire. Moreover, since the interviews

were all semi-structured, they “are particularly useful for getting the story

behind a participant‟s experiences. The interviewer can pursue in-depth

information around the topic” (McNamara, 1999). In this case, the

participants would have the chance to express their ideas freely according to

their experience and feeling about the lessons; therefore, data collected were

valid and constructive, which helped the researchers fully address the two

research questions.

In the study, the interview schedule (see Appendix 2) offered six

questions. The first three questions were about participants‟ feeling and

30

comments about the overall lesson. The other three questions explored their

attitudes and emotions towards the songs used in each lesson. Through the

experiences in cycle 1, the interview scheme was re-constructed to offer

easier and deeper reflection on the techniques. (see Appendix 3)

In short, the structure of the interviews could be demonstrated with the

graph below:

Figure 3: Structure of interviews

To sum up, the data collection instruments – intonation pretest and post

test, intonation course and in-depth interviews - were used to serve the aims

of the research. Such combination was expected to collect valid and reliable

data, which created strong support and basis for the findings and discussion

section.

3.6. Procedure of data collection

3.6.1 Cycle 1

3.6.1.1. Preparation

The first phase was the preparation for the data collection instruments,

which consisted of constructing intonation test, writing lesson plans and

designing interview schedule.

The second phase was the researcher‟s contact with participants in the

study. The contact was implemented with persuading participants about the

benefits of the study, explaining their main tasks, arranging a suitable

Techniques DescribeGive

marksEffective activities

Most effective & interesting

SongsDesribe melody

Describe lyric

Effective or not

Give marks

31

schedule for all participants and asking for their permission to publish some

of their basic information in the research paper. After careful consideration,

all participants and the researcher agreed that there would be no need for a

written agreement on these private matters.

Besides, pilot interviews were also conducted with two voluntary

respondents, the result of which was taken into great consideration to

produce the final drafts.

Moreover, a record of model utterances spoken by a native speaker ,

Mr. Andrew Larson, had been prepared. These model utterances, as

mentioned in the previous section, would serve as the standard to evaluate

participants‟ intonation

3.6.1.2. Pre-test

The pre-test of cycle 1 was conducted on February 22nd

, 2010 at room

103, A2 building, ULIS-VNU. Four participants had 10 minutes to explore

the situation. After that, each participant read aloud the utterances which

were recorded by the researcher‟s MP3 player.

3.6.1.3. Interviews

During the intonation courses, the frequent interviews were conducted

between the researcher and participants. Right after each class, each

participant spent 15 minutes responding interviews with the researcher. The

contents of the interview were noted at the same time by the researcher. In

order to assure the validity of students‟ evaluation across the whole course,

starting from the second class, the interview also asked for any changes in

participants‟ ideas when comparing the recent lesson with the previous ones.

32

3.6.1.4. Post- test

The post test of cycle 1 was conducted on March 22nd

, 2010 at room

103, A2 building, ULIS-VNU. The same procedure as in the pretest was

implemented.

3.6.2. Cycle 2

3.6.2.1. Preparation

With the data collected from the first cycle, the researcher decided to

make some changes in the lesson plans and interview scheme. Specifically,

explanations of song lyrics were added to lesson 3 and the clarification of

the fast rhythm (related to the stressed-time feature of English) was added to

lesson 6.

The interview scheme was also changed in that the third question about

effective activities in each lesson was no longer an open-ended question. It

was reformed into a list of activities and students‟ comment on the

effectiveness of each activity. This reformation was made to assure that no

activities or ideas about the songs were missed in the interview.

3.6.2.2. Pre-test, Post test and Interviews

The same procedure of pre-test, post test and interviews as those in the

first cycle were used. The pretest was on March 25th

and the post test was

on April 25th

.

3.7. Procedure of data analysis

Initially, the raw data were classified according to the three research

questions. Specifically, the data from pre-test and post test were used to

answer the first research questions. The answer for the second question of

the research paper was found through the analysis of data from question 1, 2

and 3 in the interviews. Finally, the responses to the last three questions of

33

the interviews were processed to find out the key to the third research

question.

3.7.1 Data from pre-test and post test

To begin with the demonstration data analysis procedure, it is worth

re-stating that the study put the only focus on the main element of

intonation- pitch variation. Thus, all the analysis of data below was merely

based on pitch variations and pitch contours only. The data collected from

the pre-test and post-test were treated in a pretty long and complicated

process.

Firstly, all the recordings from the test were converted from audio file

(*.WAV) into pieces of audio file (*.MP3) with the use of the program Easy

Audio Cutter.exe.

Secondly, each utterance was opened in the program PRAAT.exe.

PRAAT was a specialized program for linguistic use, developed by Paul

Boersma and David Weenink from the Institute of Phonetic Sciences

(University of Amsterdam). This program helped transfer the audio files into

pitch contours as an example below:

Figure 4: Pitch contour - Pretest- Dung- Utterance 1

34

Thirdly, with a view to restoring and analyzing these intonation

contours with the most effective and reliable form of information, the

combination of audio files and pitch contours were transcribed into ToBI

system- an intonation transcription system developed by Pierrehumbert

(1980) and Mary Beckham- as mentioned in the section 2.1.2 “Elements of

intonation” . This system of transcription consists of three main sets of

symbol: H (high) and L (low) for tones; * (stressed), % (boundary) and –

(linking) for tones; range of 0-4 indices for gradually perceptual strength of

breaks (0 for clitic boundary and 4 for strong perceptual breaks). The

transcription in this study was processed with the application of ToBI

TextGrid into PRAAT program and the manual transcription on PRAAT

afterwards. Within this study, the researcher only explored the pitch ranges;

hence, only tones were treated in the analysis. One example of process

above was the following image:

Figure 5: Pitch contour and ToBI transcription

- Pretest- Dung- Utterance 1

35

The same process was also implemented to the native speaker‟s utterances to

get an example result as follows:

Figure 6: Pitch contour and ToBI transcription

- Native Speaker- Utterance 1

Fourthly, each ToBI transcription of participant‟s utterance was

compared to that of the native speaker‟s to analyze the similarity between

them. The similarity was illustrated by a fraction: the number of matching

tones between the two transcriptions divided by the total number of tones in

the native speaker‟s. Figure 8 below would illustrate this process clearly:

You need a pen, a pencil and some paper

Native

Speaker L* L+ H* H-H% L* H-H% !H* H* !H* L-L%

Total:

9

Simila-

rity:

𝟐

𝟗 Dung L* H* H* L-L% L !H* H* L-L%

Match:

2

Table 4: Model comparison of two ToBI transcriptions

Fifthly, the two results of each speaker‟s utterances in pretest test and

post test were compared to see how much their intonation had improved.

36

The comparison was between the fraction in post test and the fraction in

pretest, as in the formula below:

Improvement (fraction) = Post test (fraction) – Pretest (fraction)

For example, the similarity between Dung‟s intonation and the native

speaker‟s was 2

9 in the pretest and

6

9 in the post test. Then, her

improvement would be 6

9 - 2

9 =

4

9

In order to provide a unified type of statistic for all utterances while assuring

the accuracy of statistic, the fractions of improvement would be changed

into percentage statistics (omitting the decimal parts). In the example in

Table 5, index for Dung‟s improvement would be 4

9 × 100% = 44%

Finally, the improvement of each participant was illustrated by the

average percentage of improvement in all utterances. Thus, Dung‟s general

improvement could be illustrated as in the figure follow:

Utterance Pretest Post test Improvement in fraction

(post test- pretest)

Improvement

percentage

1 2/9 6/9 4/9 44%

2 4/6 5/6 1/6 17%

3 2/5 4/5 2/5 40%

4 3/6 4/6 1/6 17%

5 1/3 1/3 0/3 0%

6 1/4 2/4 1/4 25%

Average percentage of improvement = 𝟒𝟒%+𝟏𝟕%+𝟒𝟎%+𝟏𝟕%+𝟎%+𝟐𝟓%

𝟔 24%

Table 5: Average percentage of improvement_ Dung

3.7.2 Data from the interviews

To make the data analysis process more efficient and easy to follow,

data were summarized into tables and charts to facilitate the synthesis,

comparison and generalization of data. Column charts and graphs were

37

principally used to analyze and compare numeric figures, while tables were

preferably applied for further details in interviews. Finally, most typical

quotations from the interviews are frequently cited when necessary to

illustrate the analysis of data. The various types of data collected from the

interviews created a necessity for the researcher to implement different

methods in the analysis process.

Firstly, participants‟ responses to the questions of “like or dislike”

were treated with qualitative analysis and used to classify lessons and songs

into two main categories: Recommended and Ignored. With high

expectation on the lessons the songs, the researcher found out two important

points:

- When a student replied “So so” when asked “Do you like it?”, the

answer should be treated as “No”.

- A song or lesson would not be recommended if it could not get the

interest from 70% of the students‟ answers in class. Therefore, any

song or lesson getting the “like” percentage less than 70% should not

be further used to answer the researcher questions.

However, it was essential to notice that the ignored lessons and songs in

cycle 1 received improvements in teaching techniques in cycle 2. Thus, the

status of “Recommended” or “Ignored” could be different between two

cycles. In this case, the songs would be recommended in combination with

the techniques.

Secondly, the adjectives mentioned about songs and lessons in the

“Recommended” list would be analyzed with theme analysis method to get

the codes or main themes for the answers of the last two research questions.

A noticeable point in this process was that the songs would be used despite

38

low appreciation from students‟, as long as the lessons were considered

successful.

Finally, the marks given to each song and lesson by participants were

averaged so that the features and techniques could be demonstrated in the

sequence of effectiveness to students.

3.8. Conclusion

All in all, the chapter has justified the methodology applied in this paper

by clarifying these following aspects:

(1) The two groups of participants involved in the process of data collection,

namely the Vietnamese and American white-collar workers.

(2) The three instruments “intonation test”, “intonation course and

“interviews” employed to collect necessary data

(3) The process of data collection depicted in three major phases

(4) The two different processes of data analysis applied to seek answer for

the three research questions

After all the matters of methodology have been demonstrated, the next

chapter would present the results of the research and discuss the findings in

the following chapter.

39

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1. Findings

4.1.1. Research question 1: To what extent does the use of English pop

songs in teaching improve ULIS freshmen’s intonation?

4.1.1.1. Results

As stated in the previous chapter of Methodology, the ULIS freshmen‟s

improvement in intonation was studied carefully to produce the most reliable

statistics.

In the first cycle, the improvements in students‟ intonation were pretty

positive.

Utterance Pretest Post test Improvement in fraction

(post test- pretest)

Improvement

percentage

1 2/9 6/9 4/9 44%

2 4/6 5/6 1/6 17%

3 2/5 4/5 2/5 40%

4 3/6 4/6 1/6 17%

5 1/3 1/3 0/3 0%

6 1/4 2/4 1/4 25%

Average percentage of improvement 24%

Table 6: Improvement in Dung’s intonation

As demonstrated in the table, Dung‟s intonation had the average

improvement percentage of 24%, with the remarkable increase in accuracy

for utterance 1 and utterance 3.

There was a similarity in the utterances with rapid improvement

between the participants. The table below about Hanh‟s intonation

improvement also showed a sharp increase in her accuracy for utterance 1

and 3. Moreover, both of the two students had little improvements in

utterance 2 and utterance 5.

40

Utterance Pretest Post test Improvement in fraction

(post test- pretest)

Improvement

percentage

1 3/9 6/9 3/9 33%

2 3/6 3/6 0/6 0%

3 2/5 4/5 2/5 40%

4 3/6 4/6 1/6 17%

5 1/3 1/3 0/3 0%

6 2/4 3/4 1/4 25%

Average percentage of improvement 19%

Table 7 : Improvement in Hanh’s intonation

The similar progress could also be seen in Thanh‟s intonation, as

illustrated in the following table:

Utterance Pretest Post test Improvement in fraction

(post test- pretest)

Improvement

percentage

1 2/9 7/9 5/9 56%

2 3/6 5/6 2/6 33%

3 2/5 4/5 2/5 40%

4 3/6 3/6 0/6 0%

5 1/3 1/3 0/3 0%

6 0/4 1/4 1/4 25%

Average percentage of improvement 26%

Table 8: Improvement in Thanh’s intonation

The only student with different improvement from the others was

Mai. Although her average improvement percentage was similar (25%), her

progress in utterance 3 and utterance 5 was in converse:

Utterance Pretest Post test Improvement in fraction

(post test- pretest)

Improvement

percentage

1 3/9 6/9 3/9 33%

2 3/6 3/6 0/6 0%

3 2/5 3/5 1/5 20%

4 3/6 3/6 0/6 0%

5 0/3 2/3 2/3 67%

6 0/4 2/4 2/4 50%

Average percentage of improvement 25%

Table 9 : Improvement in Mai’s intonation

41

In average, the first cycle witnessed an increase of 23% in students‟

accuracy on intonation.

In the second cycle the results were more and more positive. The

highest progress percentage was up to 40%, found in Thiet‟s intonation:

Utterance Pretest Post test Improvement in fraction

(post test- pretest)

Improvement

percentage

1 2/9 6/9 4/9 44%

2 2/6 4/6 2/6 33%

3 1/5 4/5 3/5 60%

4 4/6 5/6 1/6 17%

5 1/3 2/3 1/3 33%

6 2/4 4/4 2/4 50%

Average percentage of improvement 40%

Table 10 : Improvement in Thiet’s intonation

Another record-breaker together with Thiet was Thuong. It was not

difficult to recognize a great similarity in their improvements with the sharp

increases in utterance 1, 3 and 6.

The improvement in intonation accuracy for utterance 6, in contrary to

the first cycle, was really popular among students since other two students,

Trang and Tu Anh, also had good improvements on it. Tu Anh had the best

improvements in utterance 6, with 75%

Utterance Pretest Post test Improvement in fraction

(post test- pretest)

Improvement

percentage

1 1/9 6/9 5/9 56%

2 2/6 4/6 2/6 33%

3 3/5 4/5 1/5 20%

4 4/6 5/6 1/6 17%

5 1/3 2/3 1/3 33%

6 0/4 3/4 3/4 75%

Average percentage of improvement 39%

Table 11 : Improvement in Tu Anh’s intonation

42

Despite the lower improvement percentage, Trang still had the similar

progress in utterance 6 to Tu Anh:

Utterance Pretest Post test Improvement in fraction

(post test- pretest)

Improvement

percentage

1 1/9 3/9 2/9 22%

2 2/6 3/6 1/6 17%

3 1/5 3/5 2/5 40%

4 2/6 2/6 0/6 0%

5 1/3 1/3 0/3 0%

6 0/4 3/4 3/4 75%

Average percentage of improvement 26%

Table 12: Improvement in Trang’s intonation

The last student, Binh, seemed to develop in a different trend from

other peers in the same cycle, with high improvements in utterance 2, 3 and

4 but no progress in utterance 6:

Utterance Pretest Post test Improvement in fraction

(post test- pretest)

Improvement

percentage

1 2/9 4/9 2/9 22%

2 2/6 4/6 3/6 50%

3 1/5 4/5 3/5 60%

4 1/6 3/6 2/6 33%

5 0/3 1/3 1/3 33%

6 1/4 1/4 0/4 0%

Average percentage of improvement 33%

Table 13: Improvement in Binh’s intonation

In average, the second cycle witnessed a 26%- improvement in

students‟ intonation.

For both of the cycles, the average improvement in participant‟s

intonation could be identified easily from the chart below:

43

Figure 7: Percentage of improvement

As demonstrated from in the chart, participants in cycle 1 improved

more than 20% in the accuracy of intonation. The second cycle even

witnessed a better improvement in participants‟ intonation with the highest

percentage of 40% and the lowest of 26%. From the two cycles, the average

percentage of participants‟ improvement was 30%, which could be

considered a success for the scale and the length of the course.

4.1.1.2 Discussion

It was clear from the data above that the use of English pop songs in

teaching has brought certain improvement to ULIS freshmen‟s intonation. It

was also noticeable that the participants‟ intonation has improved much

better in cycle 2 than in cycle 1 (in average, 23% for cycle 1 and 36% for

cycle 2). The difference between the two cycle, perhaps, thank to the

improvements made for the lesson plans in cycle 2 as well as the

researcher‟s experience and confidence.

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

Dung Hạnh Mai Thanh Bình Thiết Thương Trang Tú Anh

Cycle 1 Cycle 2

Percentage of improvement

Percentage of improvement

44

4.1.2. Research question 2: What techniques are the most effective to teach

intonation with English pop songs to the freshmen at ULIS, VNU as

perceived by these freshmen?

The answers to this question lied in the reflection on highly

appreciated lessons and the techniques suggested in these lessons. In order

the get the most effective and correct answers, it was important that the data

were process step by step as follows:

4.1.2.1. The Recommended lessons for intonation teaching

It could be seen from the chart below that participants in the first

cycle were not interested in the lesson 5 as none of them liked this lesson.

Lesson Dung Hạnh Mai Thanh Percentage of

appreciation

1 Yes Yes Yes Yes 100%

2 So so Yes Yes Yes 75%

3 Yes Yes Yes Yes 100%

4 Yes Yes, very Yes Yes 100%

5 No So so So so So so 0%

6 Yes Yes Yes Yes, very 100%

7 Yes Yes Yes Yes 100%

Table 14: Participant’s attitude towards lessons in cycle 1

However, lesson 5 got the appreciation from all students in the second

cycle. Lesson 2, in contrast, got a lower mark in the second cycle.

Lesson Bình Thương Thiết Trang Tú Anh Percentage of

appreciation

1 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 100%

2 Yes So so So so Yes So so 40%

3 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 100%

4 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 100%

5 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 100%

6 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 100%

7 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 100%

Table 15: Participant’s attitude towards lessons in cycle 2

When taken into consideration across both of the cycle, lesson 5 and

lesson 2 got the same average mark of 55% , which was lower than the

45

required mark stated in the previous chapter (70%). Thus, these two lessons

would not be used for later analysis. This result was reinforced when the

researcher studied the marks given by students to each lesson, which showed

that lesson 2 and lesson 5 only got the average mark of 7.9 while all other

lessons got more than 8.6.

In sum, the Recommended list for further study would include lesson

1, 3, 4, 6 and 7.

4.1.2.2. Features of a favorable lesson

The basic desire of this research was to explore a joyful way of

learning and teaching intonation; thus, whether or not learners were

interested in the lesson was the major concern of the research. As the

previous section has identified the favorable lessons from learners‟

perspectives, this section would continue with the main features of these

lessons.

A careful study of all participants‟ description about the lessons above

has brought about some key features for a lesson to be favorable. From the

adjectives used by participants, their answers could be coded into three main

categories of freshness, joyfulness and effectiveness

Joyfulness: this term was used to refer to any positive or high emotions

experienced by students during the lesson. When being asked to describe

the lessons, the majority of answers, accounting for 88% of participants‟

responses, contained at least an adjective to describe the joyfulness of the

lesson. The most frequent expressions used by these students were

“interesting” and “exciting”. Some students expressed higher emotional

level towards the lessons with adjectives like “attractive”, “great”, or

“wonderful”. The adjective “funny” was sometimes used by participants

as an expression for their joy with the lesson.

46

Effectiveness: in the scope of this study, effectiveness referred to any

positive impressions and effects on participants‟ authentic communication

in English. This characteristic also received considerable concerns from

students as 68% of their responses contained the words “effective” or

“useful”. Other expressions like “impressive” or “practical” were also

mentioned in the descriptions of lessons.

Freshness: the general meaning of this term, as used in this paper,

referred to the fact that students found the information and activities in

lessons new. This success determinant of lessons lied in 39% of students‟

answers in the form of the words “new”, “surprising” and even

„strange”.

These key factors in participants‟ perceptions of good lessons would

work as the guide-channel for the researcher to analyze the useful techniques

to teach intonation, as discussed in the next section.

4.1.2.3 Effective techniques for intonation teaching

After collecting all the lessons which were recommended by students

as effective and interesting for their intonation learning in the previous steps,

the researcher made further investigation into each lesson plan, each

teaching technique used in the lesson and students‟ reflection on each

technique. The chart below summarized students‟ ideas about the

effectiveness of the main techniques:

47

Figure 8: Effectiveness of teaching techniques perceived by students

As shown in the chart, the techniques of eliciting knowledge from

students and their discussion, displaying intonation patterns visually on the

board and explaining the theoretical contents achieved a stably and

continuously good effect as they were mentioned in 100% of students‟

answers. The activities of listening to the song (techniques used for ice-

breaking and introductory purposes) and practicing were also appreciated in

most of the answers (98%). The final major activities for reinforcing

students‟ knowledge and practicing intonation- singing along- got the most

criticism and suspicion for their effectiveness with only 83% of approval.

However, the effectiveness of each technique did not correspond to

students‟ interest in it. When being asked to combine the effectiveness and

joyfulness of each activity and select their most favorite activity for each

lesson, students provided the votes as totalized in the chart below:

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

120%

Song listening Eliciting+ disussion

Practice Visual display Explanation Singing

Percentage of effectiveness

Percentage of effectiveness

48

Figure 9: Students’ most favorite activities in lessons

Specifically, although practice did not get the absolute value for

effectiveness, this kind of activity was considered the most favorite with

55% of the responses. “Although the song is not interesting and the

information is not new, I still liked the lesson very much because we have

chances to practice” was the frequent comment for lesson 6 and lesson 7. A

deeper look into students‟ perception of practice activities showed that they

felt more involved and interested in tasks which contained less control from

the teachers. Further interviews about lesson 6 and lesson 7 reached a

common comment of “ I feel more excited and involved when the practice

tasks give me a chance to express our intonation in our own words. It is

more challenging but interesting”.

Similarly, the activity of singing along the songs received a high rate

of votes (18%) despite their position for the most criticized and suspected

technique in effectiveness.

Song listening2%

Eliciting+ disussion

22%

Practice55%

Explanation3%

Singing18%

Frequency of student's votes

49

Conversely, activities with high appreciation for their effectiveness

such as song listening (98%), theory explaining (100%) and visual

intonation displaying (100%) were hardly voted as the most effective and

interesting activity of the lesson. The percentages of votes for all these three

activities were all less than 3%. The only technique to have correlative

results in effectiveness and students‟ interest was eliciting students‟

knowledge and discussion, with the value of 100% for effectiveness and

22% of votes to be the most favorite activities.

4.1.2.4. Conclusion

With all the data demonstrated and interpreted above, the effective

techniques and activities to teach intonation with English pop songs have

been found as follows:

- Using songs as the main material for ice-breaking , lesson introduction

and students‟ discussion

- Eliciting students‟ knowledge by drawing their attention to sentences

and melodies of the songs, letting them interpreting the intonation, the

situation and reasons for the choices of the intonation and discussing

the answers with other mates.

- Presenting the theory by summarizing students queries or conflicts,

explaining the origin of their difficulties and giving correction

- Demonstrating the key contents of the intonation lesson on the board

with simple visual tools like arrows

- Using songs as a source for students to practice their intonation:

encourage them to sing along the flow of the songs

- Delivering practice tasks

50

4.1.3. Research question 3: What are the essential features of English pop

songs that can help to improve ULIS freshmen’s intonation as perceived

by these freshmen?

First and foremost, it was worth re-stating that the Recommended list

of lessons did not include lesson 2 and lesson 5; hence, the songs in these

two lessons would not be used to answer the third research question.

However, songs in other lessons would still be used even when they received

low marks from students. The only changes in the process of these songs

would be the connection between the unfavorable features of the songs and

the techniques used to minimize these disadvantages.

Then, in order the explore the most essential features of songs used

for intonation teaching, it was crucial to analyze the songs in the sequences

of appreciation. With reference from the table below, it was clearly that the

features of songs in lesson 1 and lesson 4 be studied first because they were

really successful from students‟ perspectives (on average for both cycles,

100% students liked the song in lesson 1 and 90% liked that in lesson 4).

Other songs in lessons 3, 6 and 7 would be used as a means to check and

reinforce these features.

Table 16: Students’ interest in songs

Cycle 1 Cycle 2

Songs Dung Hạnh Mai Thanh Aver-age

Bình Thương Thiết Trang Tú Anh

Aver-age

1 Yes Yes Yes Yes 100% Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 100%

3 A bit Yes Yes So so 50% Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 100%

4 So so Yes, very

Yes Yes 75% Yes, very

Yes Yes Yes Yes 100%

6 No So so So so Yes 25% Yes A bit So so So so Yes 60%

7 Yes So so Yes Yes 75% Yes So so Yes Yes Yes 80%

51

From the table above, it was also necessary to study more about the

techniques used in lesson 3 and lesson 6 as the changes in teaching

techniques had brought considerably increase in students‟ interest: from 50%

to 100% in lesson 3 and from 25% to 50% in lesson 6.

In order to check the relative statistic above, another step on absolute

marks given to lessons was implemented:

Table 17: Marks given by students to the songs

With the data on marks, the importance and success of lesson 1 and

lesson 4 were reinforced. Simultaneously, the innovation in lesson 3 and

lesson 6 was proved. In other words, it was reasonable that the process of

song analysis would be implemented in the sequences mentioned above.

It was also worth noticing that, the features of English pop songs used

for intonation teaching would be interpreted in two main aspects: melody

and lyric, as defined clearly in the interview schemes.

4.1.3.1. Features of song melody

The interpretation of comments about the songs “Hello” in lesson 1

and “The day you went away” in lesson 4 has brought about some main

features of these songs: speed, gentleness and impression.

Speed: Although the two songs had different speed, Hello was rather

slow while “The day you went away” was a bit fast, they could be both

Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Average

Songs Dung Hạnh Mai Thanh Bình Thương Thiết Trang Tú

Anh

1 9 9 9 9.5 9.5 9.5 10 9 9.5 9.3

3 8 8.5 8.75 8.5 8.5 9 9 8 9 8.6

4 8 9.5 9.5 8.5 9.5 9.5 9 9 9.5 9.1

6 7 7 8 9 8 8 7 7.5 8 7.7

7 8.5 7.75 8.75 9 8.5 8 8 8.5 8.5 8.4

52

considered to have a medium speed. When a song have a fast speed, like

the song “A little time” in lesson 6, it was likely to receive negative

feedback from students. “ When the song is too fast, I cannot catch the

words and cannot sing along. It is very discouraged”, a student said.

Additionally, the high speed of the melody often prevented students from

paying attention to the lyrics. This point was proved as 8 out of 9

participants said they did not care about the lyric of the song “A little

time”. A song with too slow melody would also be discouraged, as

stated in participants‟ comments on the song “Eyes on me” in lesson 5.

However, the problem with the fast speed of songs was not unsolvable. In

lesson 6 of the second cycle, students‟ discouragement with the fast

melody of “A little time” had been eliminated by explaining that the

speed was similar to normal speaking speed in English and that they

would only catch some main words in a native speaker‟ utterance, by

guiding students to pay only attention to the main intonation pattern of

the lesson and spending more time for practice. When applying these

techniques, the difficulties with high speed would become a challenge

and motivation for students to try, as said by a student “After the

explanation, I feel like I can deal with this difficult song. This makes me

motivated and happy.”

Gentleness: an important feature that most of the appreciated songs had

in common was the gentle melody. The adjectives like “gentle”,

“relaxing”, “sweet” or “peaceful” were repeated again and again in

participants‟ answers during the interviews.

Impression: Participants‟ answers about song melody also offered

another important feature: their strong impression on the melody.

Although students‟ tastes of music might differ, they often have positive

53

feeling to the melody that brought impression of “familiar” or “easy to

listen”

The combination of the features above would make an English pop

song suitable and effective in teaching intonation.

4.1.3.2. Features of song lyric

It appeared in the participants‟ responses that song lyrics played a

secondary role in determining students‟ interest in a song, after song melody.

This fact was firstly shown in the statistic that only 32% of the answers were

“ I don‟t care about the song lyric” or “ When I listen to a song, I only pay

attention to the melody”. Some participants clarified that “Only when I

really like the song melody do I pay attention to the lyric”.

However, the exploration of students‟ comments on song lyrics still

offered some important features for a song to be relevant and effective to

teach them. The first code for features of song lyric was meaningfulness.

This was the term mentioned in 37% of the answers about song lyrics. In this

study, the meaningfulness of a song lyric was understood as the positive

effects on people‟s behaviors. It could be the educational and valuable

lesson “No pain, no gain” in the song “Donna, Donna” (Lesson 3), some

philosophical sentences in the song “The day you went away” often lesson 4

(for example, “Why do we never know what we‟ve got till it‟s gone?”) or

simply the noble love expressed in the song “Hello” (Lesson 1). The

meaningfulness of a song lyric, as stated by most students, would make them

“want to listen more”, “want to understand more”, “want to practice more

to sing like this” and “become more interested in the whole lesson”.

The second feature of song lyrics which could be coded from the

interviews were romance. This was the feature that accounted for 44% of

the answers about song lyrics. It should be noted that the 2 most appreciated

54

songs, “Hello” and “The day you went away”, were about the romance (or in

another word, love). This situation, perhaps, originated from that two

important facts in the subjects of this study: firstly, the pop songs were

mainly about love or romantic relationships and secondly, all participants in

this study were first-year students of ULIS-VNU who were all young and in

favor of romance.

The last feature of song lyrics to be mentioned in the interviews was

new vocabulary. This feature was rather contradictory in terms of

effectiveness to the lessons. On the one hand, a range of new vocabulary

appearing in one song might discourage learners as they could not

understand the song well. In a learner‟s words, “I think this is over my level.

I can‟t learn anything about the use of intonation in this song because I just

don‟t understand!”. This kind of discouragement and prejudice may bring

negative effects to the process of teaching and learning intonation. On the

other hand, the new vocabulary might motivate students in that they could

learn more. The adding of lyric explanation in lesson 3 proved to be really

necessary and effective. One student expressed their feeling as “afraid” at

the beginning and then “excited” as “It‟s like I can deal with such difficult

vocabulary”.

4.1.3.3. Conclusion

The essential features of an English pop song, which are to teach

intonation to freshmen at ULIS-VNU, can be summarized as follows:

- The song melody should have a medium speed and be gentle, easy to

listen and sing along as well as familiar to the students

- The song lyrics should be meaningful with educational lesson about

life or romance. It should also contain a certain amount of new

vocabulary.

55

Although these features are essential, it is possible for some chosen

songs to violate one of these features. The disadvantages of the missing

feature can be minimized with suitable techniques to encourage students and

shift the focus of the lesson to another activity.

4.2. Implications

This study has been conducted with a strong desire of the researcher

that it would attract more concerns from linguists, pedagogues, especially

teachers and learners of English to intonation and the use of English songs in

classrooms. Hopefully, this would help to raise Vietnamese teachers‟ and

learners‟ awareness on the importance of intonation in English language and

open up a new trend of teaching and learning in Vietnam: a trend of more

concentration on intonation as well as exploitation of relaxing materials for

learning process.

4.3. Application

All the findings of this study together with the research instruments

(including data, intonation test, lesson plans on intonation courses) can be

used as the materials for intonation teaching process or as a source of

reference for further studies in the future.

Specifically, the lessons plans and the songs used in the research can

be merely employed in teaching intonation to students at ULIS,VNU. This

can also be used for any other groups of population with small changes in

process and tasks to meet the demand of those learners.

Furthermore, the information in this study can be used as data or

suggestions for later studies on intonation, intonation teaching or application

of English pop songs in ELT.

56

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION

This section is the last part of the research. It is going to give a brief

summary of the research findings and cite the limitations of the research.

Besides, suggestions for future research and further implications are also

included.

5.1. Summary of findings

The present study explores a new way of teaching English intonation

with the use of English pop songs. Moreover, in the form of an action

research using both qualitative and quantitative methods, the study comes up

with the answers to the three research questions.

First, it is shown according to the data collected that this way of

intonation teaching has brought certain improvements to ULIS freshmen‟s

intonation.

Second, there are some effective techniques that should be used to teach

intonation through English pop songs. Specifically, they are:

- Using songs as the main material for ice-breaking , lesson introduction

and students‟ discussion

- Eliciting students‟ knowledge by letting them concentrate on analyzing

the intonation of some certain phrases in the song, guessing the

situation and reasons for the choices of the intonation and discussing

the answers.

- Presenting the theory by summarizing students queries or conflicts,

explaining the origin of their difficulties and giving correction

- Using simple visual tools like arrows to demonstrate the key contents of

the intonation lesson on the board

- Using songs as a source for students to practice their intonation:

encourage them to sing along the flow of the songs

57

- Providing abundant practice tasks with a large amount of autonomy for

students

Finally, the selection of English pop songs for the purpose of teaching

intonation should be processed with consideration about speed, gentleness

and familiar impression of the melody as well as the meaningfulness,

romance and amount of new vocabulary in the lyric.

5.2. Limitations

Due to time limit, shortage of standardized materials and methods to

evaluate intonation, the researcher‟s little experience in conducting a

research and unexpected objective problems, it is inevitable that the study

has revealed several limitations as follows:

In terms of methodology, the pre-test and post test used to analyze the

results of the action research was only self-designed and self-processed

without any official recognition, which made the results not absolutely

reliable.

In terms of theory, the intonation tests and intonations course just put

a sole concentration on pitch variations; thus, the result can not represent the

intonation improvement in the broadest sense.

Besides, some interviews were conducted in a short time, which may

have brought about possible affective factors on the attitude and perception

differences among the participants. Also, due to the scope of the research,

this study could only be conducted with a small population of participants,

thus, the result might not be representative enough, which should be

improved in further research.

5.3. Suggestions for further studies

Due to the various constraints of the project, there are still many

undiscovered sub-areas which provide a ground for further studies.

58

Firstly, the study is in form of an action research, which cannot

control effects from other factors on participants‟ improvement. With a view

to getting more valid data, another study in form of an experimental research

should be of interest.

Moreover, the study merely focuses on pitch variable which may

leave an option for other researchers to investigate other elements of

intonation.

Later, when all elements have been investigated, there would be a

need for an exploitation of new the methods and techniques to teach

intonation with all the essential aspects.

Lastly, doing research on a larger number of participants or other

groups of participants with different characteristics is highly suggested as it

will help to find out more reliable and interesting data.

59

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York: Oxford University Press.

Bradford, B. (1992). Intonation in context. Cambridge: Cambridge University

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Bradford, B. (1998). Intonation in context: Teacher‟s book. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Brazil, D. (1995). The communicative value of intonation in English.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cakir, A. (1999). Musical activities for young learners of EFL. The Internet

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Carr, W. & Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming critical: Education, knowledge and

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Cauldwell, R & Allen, M. (1997). Phonology. Birmingham: University of

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Cruttenden, A. (1986). Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Ebbutt, D. (1985) Educational action research: some general concerns and

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Eric, K. (2007). ESL pronunciation practice for question intonation. Retrieved

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Digital Revolution. Retrieved January 15th

from the World Wide Web

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Pop_Music

65

APPENDIX 1

TEST OF INTONATION

(PRE-TEST AND POST- TEST)

You are going to deal with some situations in which the sayings have been prepared for you.

Imagine you are in these situations and speak the utterances with your natural intonation.

1. You are a teacher at Language Link and your students are from 5 to 8 eight years old. Today,

you are going to play a small game. Before playing the game, you instruct them to prepare the

necessary objects: “You need a pen, a pencil and some paper.”

2. You are at the train station to see off your close friend. You don‟t remember the departure

time, so you ask him/her: “Your train leaves at six, doesn’t it?”

3. Your younger sister borrowed your walkman for 2 weeks and now she comes into our room to

return it. You are busy with the assignment, so you say to her without turning around: “Put it on

the table”

4. This is your first time to London. You need to deposit some money but you don‟t know how to

get to the bank. You catch a man on the street and ask him: “Do you know where the bank is,

please?”

5. You don‟t have a watch or a clock around. In order to know the time, you ask your roommate:

“What time is it?”

6. You are a teacher at a high school. You are teaching the lesson when a student opens the door

and asks for permission to come in the class. He is 30 minutes late. You ask him: “What time is

it?”

66

References for the test

Utterance 1: Gerald Kelly (2000). Intonation. How to teach Pronunciation (pp.101). Longman

Publisher.

Utterance 2: Gerald Kelly (2000). Intonation. How to teach Pronunciation (pp.89). Longman

Publisher.

Utterance 3: Gerald Kelly (2000). Intonation. How to teach Pronunciation (pp.89). Longman

Publisher.

Utterance 4: Gerald Kelly (2000). Intonation. How to teach Pronunciation (pp.105). Longman

Publisher.

Utterance 5+6: Eric (2007). ESL Pronunciation Practice for Question Intonation. Retrieved

January 9th, 2010 from the World Wide Web

http://teachers-call.com/2007/08/esl-pronunciation-practice-for-questions.html

67

APENDIX 2: Cycle 1

INTERVIEW SCHEME- Lesson

1. So, we have just finish the lesson today. Do you like it?

Can you use some specific adjectives to describe it?

2. In comparison to the previous lesson, which one do you prefer? If you can give a mark from 1

to 10 for this lesson, which mark will you give?

3. Now, let‟s talk about the activities in this lesson. Which activities in this lesson do you

consider interesting and effective?

Specifically, which activity do you think is the most effective and interesting?

4. Do you like the song?

Can you use some adjectives or phrases to describe the melody of the song?

Do you think the melody of the song is effective for the lesson?

Can you use some adjectives or phrases to describe the lyric of the song?

Do you think the lyric of the song is effective for the lesson?

5. If you can give a mark from 1 to 10 for this song, which mark will you give?

6. Is there any idea about this interview or the previous interview that you want to change?

68

APPENDIX 3: Cycle 2

INTERVIEW SCHEME- Lesson

1. So, we have just finish the lesson today. Do you like it?

Can you use some specific adjectives to describe it?

2. In comparison to the previous lesson, which one do you prefer? If you can give a mark from 1

to 10 for this lesson, which mark will you give?

3. Now, let‟s talk about the activities in this lesson.

The first activity of the lesson today is…………….. Do you think it is effective?

The second activity of the lesson today is…………….. Do you think it is effective?

The second activity of the lesson today is…………….. Do you think it is effective?

Specifically, which activity do you think is the most effective and interesting?

4. Do you like the song?

Can you use some adjectives or phrases to describe the melody of the song?

Do you think the melody of the song is effective for the lesson?

Can you use some adjectives or phrases to describe the lyric of the song?

Do you think the lyric of the song is effective for the lesson?

5. If you can give a mark from 1 to 10 for this song, which mark will you give?

6. Is there any idea about this interview or the previous interview that you want to change?

69

APPENDIX 4_A: Song for lesson 1

Hello

Lionel Richie

I've been alone with you, inside my mind.

And in my dreams I've kissed your lips, a thousand times.

I sometimes see you pass outside my door.

Hello!

Is it me you're looking for?

I can see it in your eyes, i can see it in your smile.

You're all I've ever wanted and my arms are open wide.

cause you know just what to say and you know just what to do

And I want to tell you so much....

I love you.

I long to see the sunlight in your hair

And tell you time and time again, how much I care.

Sometimes I feel my heart will overflow.

Hello!

I've just got to let you know

Cause I wonder where you are, and I wonder what you do

Are you somewhere feeling lonely, or is someone loving you!?.

Tell me how to win your heart, for I haven't got a clue.

But let me start by saying...

I love you.

70

APPENDIX 4- B: Lesson plan 1 The song “Hello” and the rising tunes

1. Class description: 5 first-year students, Faculty of English Language Teacher

Education, ULIS-VNU

2. Time: 60 mins

3. Objectives: After the lesson, Ss will be able to

+ Understand the pitch range in rising tunes

+ Understand the use of rising tunes in greeting

4. Assumed knowledge: Ss have already got knowledge about intonation and

known some vocabulary items in the songs

5. Anticipated problems: It may be time, so teacher should prepare the way to

shorten down practice part

Ss may not have enough vocabulary about song lyric or intonation pattern => T

should prepare explanation or use Vietnamese to explain to difficult terms

6. Teaching aids: CDs, cassette, handouts

7. Procedure:

Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Teaching techniques

1. Warm-up

*Aims: make Ss familiar with the

song and raise their interest for

the lesson

- Let Ss listen to the song for the

first time.

- Ask them whether they have

heard the song before, what the

title of the song is and who the

singer is => the song “Hello” by

Lionel Richie.

2. Main-activities

- Deliver the handouts containing

the lyric of the song

- Let Ss look at the lyric and listen

to the song again

2.1 Intonation in greeting

- Let Ss pay attention to the word

“Hello”

- Ask 3 of them to sing the word

again

- Play the CD around the piece of

song containing the word “Hello”

- Ask Ss:

+ Which tune is used in this

utterance?

+ How do you often say this

utterance of greeting?

+ Is it different in this song?

1. Warm-up

*Aims: make Ss familiar with the

song and raise their interest for

the lesson

- Let Ss listen to the song for the

first time.

- Ask them whether they have

heard the song before, what the

title of the song is and who the

singer is => the song “Hello” by

Lionel Richie.

2. Main-activities

- Deliver the handouts containing

the lyric of the song

- Let Ss look at the lyric and listen

to the song again

2.1 Intonation in greeting

- Let Ss pay attention to the word

“Hello”

- Ask 3 of them to sing the word

again

- Play the CD around the piece of

song containing the word “Hello”

- Ask Ss:

+ Which tune is used in this

utterance?

+ How do you often say this

utterance of greeting?

+ Is it different in this song?

- Ice-breaking

with songs

- Using songs as

the material to

learn

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Eliciting class

discussion

71

+ Can you imagine in which

situation the rising tune

is used like this?

- Explain the different intonation

patterns of greeting used with

different purposes

+ Normally, the glide-up is

used for greeting and goodbye

+ The take-off is used when the

speaker is not sure about the

existence of the other people or

want to draw attention

2.2. Intonation in interrogative

questions

- Let Ss pay attention to the

Yes/No questions in the lyric

+ Is this me you’re looking for?

+ Are you somewhere feeling

lonely or is someone loving you?

- Let Ss listen to the song again to

identify the intonation of these

sentences

- Write the two sentences on the

board

- Ask Ss about the intonation of

the sentences and draw the tune

shapes on the board, under each

sentence

Is this me you’re looking for?

Are you somewhere feeling

lonely or is someone loving you?

- Explain the use of rising tunes in

Yes/No questions

- Let Ss listen to the song again

and sing along

2.3. Practice

- Write 2 sentences on the board:

+ Are you American?

+ Is this your first time to

Vietnam?

+ Can you imagine in which

situation the rising tune

is used like this?

- Explain the different intonation

patterns of greeting used with

different purposes

+ Normally, the glide-up is used

for greeting and goodbye

+ The take-off is used when the

speaker is not sure about the

existence of the other people or

want to draw attention

2.2. Intonation in interrogative

questions

- Let Ss pay attention to the

Yes/No questions in the lyric

+ Is this me you’re looking for?

+ Are you somewhere feeling

lonely or is someone loving you?

- Let Ss listen to the song again to

identify the intonation of these

sentences

- Write the two sentences on the

board

- Ask Ss about the intonation of

the sentences and draw the tune

shapes on the board, under each

sentence

Is this me you’re looking for?

Are you somewhere feeling lonely

or is someone loving you?

- Explain the use of rising tunes in

Yes/No questions

- Let Ss listen to the song again

and sing along

2.3. Practice

- Write 2 sentences on the board:

+ Are you American?

+ Is this your first time to

Vietnam?

- Explanation of

lesson points

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Eliciting class

discussion

- Visual display

- Explanation of

lesson points

- Using songs as a

material to

practice

- Practice with

authentic

utterances

72

- Ask Ss which intonation pattern

they will use

- Let Ss practice individually in 1

minute and practice in pairs for 2

mins

- Call each S to stand up and

speak the utterances out loud

- Ask other Ss to give comment

on their peers‟ intonation

- Consolidate Ss‟ feedback and

give T‟s feedback

- Ask Ss which intonation pattern

they will use

- Let Ss practice individually in 1

minute and practice in pairs for 2

mins

- Call each S to stand up and speak

the utterances out loud

- Ask other Ss to give comment on

their peers‟ intonation

- Consolidate Ss‟ feedback and

give T‟s feedback

- Giving feedback

73

APPENDIX 5_A: Song for lesson 2

You Can Get It If You Really Want

Jimmy Cliff

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

But you must try, try and try

Try and try, you'll succeed at last

Rome was not built in a day

Opposition will come your way

But the hotter the battle you see

It's the sweeter the victory, now

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

But you must try, try and try

Try and try, you'll succeed at last

Persecution you must bear

Win or lose you've got to get your share

Got your mind set on a dream You can get it, though harder them seem now

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

But you must try, try and try

Try and try, you'll succeed at last

You can get it if you really want - I know it

You can get it if you really want - though I show it

You can get it if you really want

- so don't give up now

74

APPENDIX 5-B: Lesson plan 2 The song “You can get it if you really want” and the falling tune

1. Class description: 5 first-year students, Faculty of English Language Teacher

Education, ULIS-VNU

2. Time: 60 mins

3. Objectives: After the lesson, Ss will be able to

+ Reinforce knowledge about rising tune

+ Understand the pitch range in falling tunes

+ Understand the combination of rising tunes and falling tunes

4. Assumed knowledge: Ss have already got knowledge about intonation and

known some vocabulary items in the songs

5. Anticipated problems: It may be lack of time, so teacher should prepare the way

to shorten down practice part

Ss may not have enough vocabulary about song lyric or intonation pattern => T

should prepare explanation or use Vietnamese to explain to difficult terms

6. Teaching aids: CDs, cassette, handouts

7. Procedure:

Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Teaching

Techniques

1. Warm-up

*Aims: make Ss familiar with the

song and raise their interest or

curiosity for the lesson

- Deliver the handouts containing

the lyric of the song “You can get

it if you really want”

- Let Ss look through the song

lyrics and ask them whether they

know the song or not.

If anybody knows, encourage

him/her to sing for the whole the

class

If nobody knows, let Ss draw the

purpose of the song based on the

content and guess how the melody

of the song will be like (quick or

slow, high or low tone, etc.)

T can help Ss with some questions

like:

+ What is the purpose of this

song? Which kind of response does

the composer want from the

hearers?

+ With this kind of purpose, which

tone do you often choose to speak

or sing? Is it high or low? Is it fast

1. Warm-up

*Aims: make Ss familiar with the

song and raise their interest or

curiosity for the lesson

- Deliver the handouts containing

the lyric of the song “You can get

it if you really want”

- Let Ss look through the song

lyrics and ask them whether they

know the song or not.

If anybody knows, encourage

him/her to sing for the whole the

class

If nobody knows, let Ss draw the

purpose of the song based on the

content and guess how the melody

of the song will be like (quick or

slow, high or low tone, etc.)

T can help Ss with some questions

like:

+ What is the purpose of this

song? Which kind of response does

the composer want from the

hearers?

+ With this kind of purpose, which

tone do you often choose to speak

or sing? Is it high or low? Is it fast

- Ice-breaking

with songs

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge:

links between

melody and

purpose

75

or slow?

- Play the CD once for Ss to see if

their mate‟s singing/ their guess is

correct

2. Main-activities

- Let Ss look at the song lyric and

listen to the song again.

T encourage them to sing along

2.1.The falling tune in statements

- Write the main and repeated

sentence on the board

You can get it if you really want

- Ask Ss to recall their memories

and tell what the intonation in this

sentence is like

T can help Ss by asking them step

by step

+ What are the important words in

this sentence?

+ How is the intonation in each

word? Is it high or low? Is it on

the rise or on the fall?

- Underline the key words as Ss

say and draw the tune shape of the

sentence on the board

You can get it if you really want

- Let Ss listen to the piece of song

again and check the intonation in

the sentence above

- Ask Ss to give the

- Explain the intonation patterns

used in a list

The intonation pattern used in a

normal statement usually falling.

2.2. Intonation in a list

- Write the a list on the board

But you must try, try and try, try

and try

- Ask Ss to recall their memories

and tell what the intonation in this

sentence is like

T can help Ss by asking them step

by step

+ What are the important words in

or slow?

- Play the CD once for Ss to see if

their mate‟s singing/ their guess is

correct

2. Main-activities

- Let Ss look at the song lyric and

listen to the song again.

T encourage them to sing along

2.1.The falling tune in statements

- Write the main and repeated

sentence on the board

You can get it if you really want

- Ask Ss to recall their memories

and tell what the intonation in this

sentence is like

T can help Ss by asking them step

by step

+ What are the important words in

this sentence?

+ How is the intonation in each

word? Is it high or low? Is it on

the rise or on the fall?

- Underline the key words as Ss

say and draw the tune shape of the

sentence on the board

You can get it if you really want

- Let Ss listen to the piece of song

again and check the intonation in

the sentence above

- Ask Ss to give the

- Explain the intonation patterns

used in a list

The intonation pattern used in a

normal statement usually falling.

2.2. Intonation in a list

- Write the a list on the board

But you must try, try and try, try

and try

- Ask Ss to recall their memories

and tell what the intonation in this

sentence is like

T can help Ss by asking them step

by step

+ What are the important words in

- Using songs as

the material to

learn

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Visual display

- Eliciting class

discussion

- Explanation of

lesson points

- Visual display

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

76

this sentence?

+ How is the intonation in each

word? Is it high or low? Is it on

the rise or on the fall?

- Underline the key words as Ss

say and draw the tune shape of the

sentence on the board

But you must try, try and try, try

and try

- Let Ss listen to the piece of song

again and check the intonation in

the sentence above

- Ask Ss to discuss and suggest the

intonation pattern for a list

- Explain the intonation patterns

used in a list

+ For the initial items in a list

,the rising tone is used

+ For the last item of a list, the

falling tone is used

Then , normally, the intonation

pattern in a list is rising, rising

and finally falling

- Let Ss listen to the song again

and sing along

2.3. Practice

- Ask each student to think of 2

sentences: one normal statement

and one sentence containing a list

in 3 minutes

- Let Ss choose the appropriate

intonation pattern for their

sentences and practice individually

in 2 minute

- Call each S to stand up and

speak the utterances out loud

- Ask other Ss to give comment on

their peers‟ intonation

- Consolidate Ss‟ feedback and

give T‟s feedback

this sentence?

+ How is the intonation in each

word? Is it high or low? Is it on

the rise or on the fall?

- Underline the key words as Ss

say and draw the tune shape of the

sentence on the board

But you must try, try and try, try

and try

- Let Ss listen to the piece of song

again and check the intonation in

the sentence above

- Ask Ss to discuss and suggest the

intonation pattern for a list

- Explain the intonation patterns

used in a list

+ For the initial items in a list

,the rising tone is used

+ For the last item of a list, the

falling tone is used

Then , normally, the intonation

pattern in a list is rising, rising

and finally falling

- Let Ss listen to the song again

and sing along

2.3. Practice

- Ask each student to think of 2

sentences: one normal statement

and one sentence containing a list

in 3 minutes

- Let Ss choose the appropriate

intonation pattern for their

sentences and practice individually

in 2 minute

- Call each S to stand up and

speak the utterances out loud

- Ask other Ss to give comment on

their peers‟ intonation

- Consolidate Ss‟ feedback and

give T‟s feedback

- Visual display

- Eliciting class

discussion

- Explanation of

lesson points

- Using songs as

a material to

practice

- Practice with

authentic

utterances

- Giving

feedback

77

APPENDIX 6_A: Song for lesson 3

Donna Donna

Julie Roger

On a waggon bound for market

there`s a calf with a mournful eye.

High above him there`s a swallow,

winging swiftly through the sky.

How the winds are laughing,

they laugh with all their might.

Laugh and laugh the whole day through,

and half the summer`s night.

Chorus:

Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna; Donna, Donna, Donna, Don.

Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna; Donna, Donna, Donna, Don.

"Stop complaining!? said the farmer,

Who told you a calf to be ?

Why don`t you have wings to fly with,

like the swallow so proud and free??

*Chorus*

Calves are easily bound and slaughtered,

never knowing the reason why.

But whoever treasures freedom,

like the swallow has learned to fly.

*Chorus*

78

APPENDIX 6-B: Lesson plan 3 The song “Donna, Donna” with the interchange of falling & rising tone

1. Class description: 5 first-year students, Faculty of English Language Teacher

Education, ULIS-VNU

2. Time: 60 mins

3. Objectives: After the lesson, Ss will be able to

+ Reinforce knowledge about falling tone in statement

+ Understand the interchange of rising and falling tones in WH-questions

4. Assumed knowledge: Ss have already got knowledge about intonation and

known some vocabulary items in the songs

5. Anticipated problems: It may be lack of time, so teacher should prepare the way

to shorten down practice part

Ss may not have enough vocabulary about song lyric or intonation pattern => T

should prepare explanation or use Vietnamese to explain to difficult terms

6. Teaching aids: CDs, cassette, handouts

7. Procedure:

Teacher Teaching

Techniques

1. Warm-up

*Aims: make Ss familiar with the

song and raise their interest or

curiosity for the lesson

- Deliver the handouts containing the

lyric of the song “Donna, Donna”

- Let Ss look through the song lyrics

and ask them whether they know the

song or not.

If anybody knows, encourage

him/her to sing for the whole the class

If nobody knows, play the CD once

and let Ss guess the genre of the song

T can help Ss with some questions

like:

+ How is the melody of the song like?

+What is your feeling when you

listening to this song?

+ Normally, which kind of music

brings you this feeling?

1. Warm-up

*Aims: make Ss familiar with the

song and raise their interest or

curiosity for the lesson

- Deliver the handouts containing

the lyric of the song “Donna,

Donna”

- Let Ss look through the song lyrics

and ask them whether they know the

song or not.

If anybody knows, encourage

him/her to sing for the whole the

class

If nobody knows, play the CD once

and let Ss guess the genre of the

song

T can help Ss with some questions

like:

+ How is the melody of the song

like?

+What is your feeling when you

listening to this song?

+ Normally, which kind of music

brings you this feeling?

- Explain the main content and the

lesson implied in this song: “No

pain, no gain”

- Ice-breaking

with songs

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge:

links between

melody and

purpose

79

2. Main-activities

- Let Ss look through the song lyric

and find out all types of sentences.

- Ask Ss to recall their memories about

the previous lesson and suggest the

general use of intonation pattern in the

learnt type of sentences

- Let Ss look at the song lyric and

listen to the song again.

T encourage them to sing along

2.1.The falling tune in WH-

questions

- Write the important sentence on the

board

+Who told you a calf to be?

+Why don’t you have wings to fly

with like the swallow so proud and

free?

- Ask Ss to recall their memories and

tell what the intonation in this sentence

is like

T can help Ss by asking them step by

step

+ What are the important words in

this sentence?

+ How is the intonation in each word?

Is it high or low? Is it on the rise or on

the fall?

- Underline the key words as Ss say

and draw the tune shape of the

sentence on the board according to Ss‟

suggestion

+Who told you a calf to be?

+Why don’t you have wings to fly

with like the swallow so proud and

free?

- Let Ss listen to the piece of song

again and check the intonation in the

sentence above

- Together with Ss, correct the

2. Main-activities

- Let Ss look through the song lyric

and find out all types of sentences.

- Ask Ss to recall their memories

about the previous lesson and

suggest the general use of intonation

pattern in the learnt type of

sentences

- Let Ss look at the song lyric and

listen to the song again.

T encourage them to sing along

2.1.The falling tune in WH-

questions

- Write the important sentence on

the board

+Who told you a calf to be?

+Why don’t you have wings to fly

with like the swallow so proud and

free?

- Ask Ss to recall their memories

and tell what the intonation in this

sentence is like

T can help Ss by asking them step

by step

+ What are the important words in

this sentence?

+ How is the intonation in each

word? Is it high or low? Is it on the

rise or on the fall?

- Underline the key words as Ss say

and draw the tune shape of the

sentence on the board according to

Ss‟ suggestion

+Who told you a calf to be?

+Why don’t you have wings to fly

with like the swallow so proud and

free?

- Let Ss listen to the piece of song

again and check the intonation in the

sentence above

- Together with Ss, correct the

- Revision

- Using songs as

the material to

learn

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Visual display

- Eliciting class

discussion

80

intonation on the board

- Explain the intonation patterns used

in a list

In WH-questions, the most common

tone is falling.

Depending on the purpose of the

questions, the stress may be put on the

WH words or not

+ If the questions aim at information,

the WH words are stressed and falling

tones are used

+ If the questions do not aim at

information, WH words are unstressed

and other tones would be used.

2.2. Intonation in imperative

sentences

- Write the an imperative sentence on

the board

Stop complaining

- Ask Ss to recall their memories and

tell what the intonation in this sentence

is like

T can help Ss by asking them step by

step

+How many syllables are there in the

sentence? What are they?

+What are the differences in the pitch

of these syllable words? Which is the

highest? Which is the lowest?

- Underline the key words as Ss say

and draw the tune shape of the

sentence on the board

Stop complaining

- Ask Ss to analyze the common tones

used in imperative sentences =>

falling tones

- Let Ss listen again to the whole song

and sing along

intonation on the board

- Explain the intonation patterns

used in a list

In WH-questions, the most

common tone is falling.

Depending on the purpose of the

questions, the stress may be put on

the WH words or not

+ If the questions aim at

information, the WH words are

stressed and falling tones are used

+ If the questions do not aim at

information, WH words are

unstressed and other tones would be

used.

2.2. Intonation in imperative

sentences

- Write the an imperative sentence

on the board

Stop complaining

- Ask Ss to recall their memories

and tell what the intonation in this

sentence is like

T can help Ss by asking them step

by step

+How many syllables are there in

the sentence? What are they?

+What are the differences in the

pitch of these syllable words? Which

is the highest? Which is the lowest?

- Underline the key words as Ss say

and draw the tune shape of the

sentence on the board

Stop complaining

- Ask Ss to analyze the common

tones used in imperative sentences

=> falling tones

- Let Ss listen again to the whole

song and sing along

- Explanation of

lesson points

- Visual display

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Visual display

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Using songs as

a material to

practice

81

2.3. Practice

- Write 4 sentences on the board:

+ What did you do last night?

+ Don’t ever do it again.

+ Sit down, please.

+ Who told you to do this?

- Ask Ss to imagine the situations in

which they would use these utterances

and choose an appropriate intonation

patterns

- Let Ss practice individually in 5

minutes

- Call each S to stand up and speak the

utterances out loud with explanation

about their situations

- Ask other Ss to give comment on

their peers‟ intonation

- Consolidate Ss‟ feedback and give

T‟s feedback

2.3. Practice

- Write 4 sentences on the board:

+ What did you do last night?

+ Don’t ever do it again.

+ Sit down, please.

+ Who told you to do this?

- Ask Ss to imagine the situations in

which they would use these

utterances and choose an appropriate

intonation patterns

- Let Ss practice individually in 5

minutes

- Call each S to stand up and speak

the utterances out loud with

explanation about their situations

- Ask other Ss to give comment on

their peers‟ intonation

- Consolidate Ss‟ feedback and give

T‟s feedback

- Practice with

authentic

utterances

- Giving feedback

82

APPENDIX 7_A: Song for lesson 4 The Day You Went Away

M2M Well I wonder could it be

When I was dreaming 'bout you baby

You were dreaming of me

Call me crazy, call me blind

To still be suffering stupidly after all of this time

Did I lose my love to someone better?

And does she love you like I do?

I do, you know I really really do

*Chorus*

Well hey, so much I need to say

Been lonely since the day

The day you went away

So sad but true

For me there's only you

Been crying since the day

The day you went away

I remember date and time

September twenty second

Sunday twenty five after nine

In the doorway with your case

No longer shouting at each other

There were tears on our faces

And we were letting go of something special

Something we'll never have again

I know, I guess I really really know

(Chorus)

Did I lose my love to someone better?

And does she love you like I do?

I do, you know I really really do

(Chorus)

Why do we never know what we've got 'til it's gone?

How could I carry on

The day you went away?

Cause I've been missing you so much I have to say

Been crying since the day

The day you went away

83

APPENDIX 7-B: Lesson plan 4 The song “The day you went away” with the interchange of falling & rising tones

1. Class description: 5 first-year students, Faculty of English Language Teacher

Education, ULIS-VNU

2. Time: 60 mins

3. Objectives: After the lesson, Ss will be able to

+ Reinforce knowledge about intonation pattern in all kinds of sentences that they

have learnt

+ Understand more situation which create the interchange of rising and falling

tones in WH-questions

4. Assumed knowledge: Ss have already got knowledge about intonation and

known some vocabulary items in the songs

5. Anticipated problems: It may be lack of time, so teacher should prepare the way

to shorten down practice part

Ss may not have enough vocabulary about song lyric or intonation pattern => T

should prepare explanation or use Vietnamese to explain to difficult terms

6. Teaching aids: CDs, cassette, handouts

Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Teaching

techniques

1. Warm-up

*Aims: make Ss familiar with the

song and raise their interest for the

lesson

- Play the intro part of the song

- Ask Ss whether they have heard the

song before, what the title of the

song is and who the singer is => the

song “The day you went away” by

M2M.

2. Main-activities

- Deliver the handouts containing the

lyric of the song

- Let Ss look through the song lyric

and find out all types of sentences.

Statement: I do, you know I really

really do. Imperative: Call me crazy, call me

blind Y/N question: Did I lose my love to

someone better? - Ask Ss to recall their memories

about the previous lesson and

suggest the general use of intonation

pattern in the learnt type of

sentences

1. Warm-up

*Aims: make Ss familiar with the

song and raise their interest for the

lesson

- Play the intro part of the song

- Ask Ss whether they have heard

the song before, what the title of the

song is and who the singer is => the

song “The day you went away” by

M2M.

2. Main-activities

- Deliver the handouts containing

the lyric of the song

- Let Ss look through the song lyric

and find out all types of sentences.

Statement: I do, you know I really

really do. Imperative: Call me crazy, call me

blind Y/N question: Did I lose my love to

someone better? - Ask Ss to recall their memories

about the previous lesson and

suggest the general use of intonation

pattern in the learnt type of

sentences

- Ice-breaking

with songs

- Using songs

as the

material to

learn

- Revision

84

2.1Falling tone in Yes/No questions

- Let Ss pay attention to the

sentences

And does she love you like I do?

- Ask Ss to analyze the intonation in

the sentence

+ What is the common tone

used in this kind of sentence?

+Which tune is used in this

sentence?

+ What is the difference

between them?

+ Can you imagine in which

situation the falling tune

is used like this?

- Explain the different intonation

patterns of greeting used with

different purposes

+ Normally, the rising tone is

used for Yes/No questions to get the

answer of Yes or No

+ The falling tone would be used

for Yes/No questions if they do not

aim at any answer. The questions

are used as a statement of

confirmation

2.2. Rising tone in WH-questions

- Write the sentence on the board

and let Ss pay attention to the

questions in the lyric:

How could I carry on, the day you

went away?

- Let Ss listen to the song again to

identify the intonation of the

sentence

- Ask Ss about the intonation of the

sentence and draw the arrow of pitch

change on the board

How could I carry on, the day you

went away?

- Ask Ss:

+ What is the normal tone for WH

2.1Falling tone in Yes/No questions

- Let Ss pay attention to the

sentences

And does she love you like I do?

- Ask Ss to analyze the intonation in

the sentence

+ What is the common tone

used in this kind of sentence?

+Which tune is used in this

sentence?

+ What is the difference

between them?

+ Can you imagine in which

situation the falling tune

is used like this?

- Explain the different intonation

patterns of greeting used with

different purposes

+ Normally, the rising tone is

used for Yes/No questions to get the

answer of Yes or No

+ The falling tone would be used

for Yes/No questions if they do not

aim at any answer. The questions

are used as a statement of

confirmation

2.2. Rising tone in WH-questions

- Write the sentence on the board

and let Ss pay attention to the

questions in the lyric:

How could I carry on, the day you

went away?

- Let Ss listen to the song again to

identify the intonation of the

sentence

- Ask Ss about the intonation of the

sentence and draw the arrow of pitch

change on the board

How could I carry on, the day you

went away?

- Ask Ss:

+ What is the normal tone for WH

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Eliciting

class

discussion

- Explanation

of lesson

points

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- liciting class

discussion

- Visual

display

85

questions?

+ When is the rising tone used?

+ Does this question aim at an

answer? If yes, why does it have

rising tone?

-Explain the point: Intonation can be

affected by speaker‟s attitude and

emotion. The extreme emotion can

often be shown by rising tone

- Let Ss listen to the song again and

sing along

2.3. Practice

- Write 3 sentences on the board:

+ Did I tell you about that?

+ Did he inform you about the test?

+ What will you do in this

situation?

- Ask Ss to imagine the situations in

which they would use these

utterances and choose an appropriate

intonation patterns

- Let Ss practice individually in 5

minutes

- Call each S to stand up and speak

the utterances out loud with

explanation about their situations

- Ask other Ss to give comment on

their peers‟ intonation

- Consolidate Ss‟ feedback and give

T‟s feedback

questions?

+ When is the rising tone used?

+ Does this question aim at an

answer? If yes, why does it have

rising tone?

-Explain the point: Intonation can be

affected by speaker‟s attitude and

emotion. The extreme emotion can

often be shown by rising tone

- Let Ss listen to the song again and

sing along

2.3. Practice

- Write 3 sentences on the board:

+ Did I tell you about that?

+ Did he inform you about the test?

+ What will you do in this

situation?

- Ask Ss to imagine the situations in

which they would use these

utterances and choose an appropriate

intonation patterns

- Let Ss practice individually in 5

minutes

- Call each S to stand up and speak

the utterances out loud with

explanation about their situations

- Ask other Ss to give comment on

their peers‟ intonation

- Consolidate Ss‟ feedback and give

T‟s feedback

- Explanation

of lesson

points

- Using songs

as a material

to practice

- Practice

with

authentic

utterances

- Giving

feedback

86

APPENDIX 8-A: Song for lesson 5

Eyes On Me Faye Wong

Games: Final Fantasy VIII

Whenever sang my songs on the stage on my own

Whenever said my words wishing they would be heard

I saw you smiling at me, was it real or just my fantasy?

You'd always be there in the corner of this tiny little bar

My last night here for you same old songs just once more

My last night here with you, maybe yes, maybe no

I kind of liked it your way how you shyly placed your eyes on me

Oh did you ever know that I had mine on me?

Darling so there you are with that look on your face

As if you're never hurt, as if you're never down

Shall I be the one for you who pinches of you softly but sure?

If frown is shown then I will know that you are no dreamer

So let me come to you close as I wanna be

Close enough for me to feel your heart beating fast

And stay there as I whisper: "how I loved your peaceful eyes on me

Did you ever know that I had mine on me?

And darling so share with me, your love if you have enough

Your tears if you're holding back, or pain if that's what it is

How can I let you know I'm more than the dress and the voice?

Just reach me out, then you will know that you are not dreaming

And darling so there you are with that look on your face

As if you're never hurt, as if you are never down

Shall I be the one for you a pinches of you softly but sure?

If frown is shown then I will know that you are no dreamer

87

APPENDIX 8-B: Lesson plan 5 The song “Eyes on me” with the rise-fall tone

1. Class description: 5 first-year students, Faculty of English Language Teacher

Education, ULIS-VNU

2. Time: 60 mins

3. Objectives: After the lesson, Ss will be able to

+ Reinforce knowledge about intonation pattern in all kinds of sentences that they

have learnt

+ Understand more about the use of intonation is WH questions

+ Understand the intonation pattern used in exclamations and alternative

questions

4. Assumed knowledge: Ss have already got knowledge about intonation and

known some vocabulary items in the songs

5. Anticipated problems: It may be lack of time, so teacher should prepare the way

to shorten down practice part

6. Teaching aids: CDs, cassette, handouts

Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Teaching

techniques

1. Warm-up

*Aims: make Ss familiar with the

song and raise their interest for the

lesson

- Let Ss listen to the song for the first

time.

- Ask them whether they have heard

the song before, what the title of the

song is and who the singer is => the

song “Eyes on me” by Faye Wong in

the game Final Fantasy VIII.

2. Main-activities

- Deliver the handouts containing the

lyric of the song

- Let Ss look through the song lyric

and find out all types of sentences.

Statement: You’d always be there in

the corner of this tiny

little bar

Imperative: So let me come to you

close as I wanna be

1. Warm-up

*Aims: make Ss familiar with the

song and raise their interest for the

lesson

- Deliver the lyrics of the song “Eyes

on me” by Faye Wong in the game

Final Fantasy VIII.

- Ask them whether they have heard

the song before, what the title of the

song is and who the singer is

- Let Ss listen for the first time and

find out the mistakes in the song

lyric.

- Ask Ss to point out the mistakes

and correction

- Let Ss listen again and check

2. Main-activities

- Deliver the handouts containing the

lyric of the song

- Let Ss look through the song lyric

and find out all types of sentences.

Statement: You’d always be there in

the corner of this tiny

little bar

Imperative: So let me come to you

close as I wanna be

- Ice-breaking

with songs

- Using songs

as the material

to learn

88

- Ask Ss to recall their memories

about the previous lesson and suggest

the general use of intonation pattern

in the learnt type of sentences

2.1Rise-fall tone in Yes/No questions

- Let Ss pay attention to the sentences

Did you ever know that I had mine

on you?

- Ask Ss to analyze the intonation in

the sentence

+Which tune is used in this

sentence?

+ What is the difference between

the intonation in this sentence and the

normal intonation in this type of

sentence ?

+ Do you see anything special in

the structure of this sentence?

- Draw the arrow of pitch change on

the board in accordance to Ss‟

suggestion. After that, correct the

tone:

Did you ever know that I had mine

on you?

- Explain the different intonation

patterns of greeting used with

different purposes

+ When Y/N questions consist of

subordinate clauses, the tone may

rise in the main clause and fall in the

subordinate clause

2.2. Rising and falling tones in

alternatives questions

- Write the sentence on the board and

let Ss pay attention to the questions

in the lyric:

Was it real or just my fantasy?

- Let Ss listen to the song again to

identify the intonation of the sentence

- Ask Ss about the intonation of the

sentence and draw the arrow of pitch

change on the board

- Ask Ss to recall their memories

about the previous lesson and suggest

the general use of intonation pattern

in the learnt type of sentences

2.1Rise-fall tone in Yes/No questions

- Let Ss pay attention to the sentences

Did you ever know that I had mine

on you?

- Ask Ss to analyze the intonation in

the sentence

+Which tune is used in this

sentence?

+ What is the difference

between the intonation in this

sentence and the normal intonation in

this type of sentence ?

+ Do you see anything special in

the structure of this sentence?

- Draw the arrow of pitch change on

the board in accordance to Ss‟

suggestion. After that, correct the

tone:

Did you ever know that I had mine

on you?

- Explain the different intonation

patterns of greeting used with

different purposes

+ When Y/N questions consist of

subordinate clauses, the tone may

rise in the main clause and fall in the

subordinate clause

2.2. Rising and falling tones in

alternatives questions

- Write the sentence on the board and

let Ss pay attention to the questions

in the lyric:

Was it real or just my fantasy?

- Let Ss listen to the song again to

identify the intonation of the sentence

- Ask Ss about the intonation of the

sentence and draw the arrow of pitch

change on the board

- Revision

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Eliciting class

discussion

- Visual display

- Explanation of

lesson points

- Visual display

89

Was it real or just my fantasy?

- Ask Ss:

+Which tune is used in this

sentence?

+ What is the difference between

the intonation in this sentence and the

normal intonation in this type of

sentence ?

+ Do you see anything special in

the structure of this sentence?

-Explain the point: When Y/N

questions consist “OR”, they are call

alternative questions and the list of

options is treated similarly to other

kinds of lists; i.e. rising, rising and

finally falling.

2.3. Rise-fall tone in WH- question

- Write the sentence on the board and

let Ss pay attention to the questions

in the lyric:

How can I let you know I’m more

than the dress and the voice?

- Let Ss listen to the song again to

identify the intonation of the sentence

- Ask Ss about the intonation of the

sentence and draw the arrow of pitch

change on the board

How can I let you know I’m more

than the dress and the voice?

- Ask Ss:

+Which tune is used in this

sentence?

+ What is the difference between

the intonation in this sentence and the

normal intonation in this type of

sentences?

+ Do you see anything special in

the structure of this sentence?

-Explain the point: The rise-fall tone

can be used in WH questions to

Was it real or just my fantasy?

- Ask Ss:

+Which tune is used in this

sentence?

+ What is the difference

between the intonation in this

sentence and the normal intonation in

this type of sentence ?

+ Do you see anything special in

the structure of this sentence?

-Explain the point: When Y/N

questions consist “OR”, they are call

alternative questions and the list of

options is treated similarly to other

kinds of lists; i.e. rising, rising and

finally falling.

2.3. Rise-fall tone in WH- question

- Write the sentence on the board and

let Ss pay attention to the questions

in the lyric:

How can I let you know I’m more

than the dress and the voice?

- Let Ss listen to the song again to

identify the intonation of the sentence

- Ask Ss about the intonation of the

sentence and draw the arrow of pitch

change on the board

How can I let you know I’m more

than the dress and the voice?

- Ask Ss:

+Which tune is used in this

sentence?

+ What is the difference

between the intonation in this

sentence and the normal intonation in

this type of sentences?

+ Do you see anything special in

the structure of this sentence?

-Explain the point: The rise-fall tone

can be used in WH questions to

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Eliciting class

discussion

- Explanation of

lesson points

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Visual display

- Eliciting class

discussion

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Explanation of

lesson points

90

convey strong agreement and

statement, requiring confirmation

rather than answer.

2.4 Rise-fall tone in exclamations

- Write the sentence on the board and

let Ss pay attention to the questions

in the lyric:

How I loved you peaceful eyes on

me!

- Let Ss listen to the song again to

identify the intonation of the sentence

- Ask Ss about the intonation of the

sentence and draw the arrow of pitch

change on the board

How I loved you peaceful eyes on

me!

- Ask Ss:

+Which tune is used in this

sentence?

+ What kind of sentence is it?

-Explain the point: The rise-fall tone

is often used in exclamations, with

peak of voice at adjectives, adverbs

or verbs that show emotions.

- Let Ss listen to the song again

and sing along

2.5. Practice

- Write 3 sentences on the board:

+ How beautiful she is!

+ You want beef, chicken or pork?

+ What an awful day!

+ You will need a dress, a hat and a

pair of shoes.

- Ask Ss to imagine the situations in

which they would use these

utterances and choose an appropriate

intonation patterns

- Let Ss practice individually in 5

minutes

convey strong agreement and

statement, requiring confirmation

rather than answer.

2.4 Rise-fall tone in exclamations

- Write the sentence on the board and

let Ss pay attention to the questions

in the lyric:

How I loved you peaceful eyes on

me!

- Let Ss listen to the song again to

identify the intonation of the sentence

- Ask Ss about the intonation of the

sentence and draw the arrow of pitch

change on the board

How I loved you peaceful eyes on

me!

- Ask Ss:

+Which tune is used in this

sentence?

+ What kind of sentence is it?

-Explain the point: The rise-fall tone

is often used in exclamations, with

peak of voice at adjectives, adverbs

or verbs that show emotions.

- Let Ss listen to the song again

and sing along

2.5. Practice

- Write 3 sentences on the board:

+ How beautiful she is!

+ You want beef, chicken or pork?

+ What an awful day!

+ You will need a dress, a hat and a

pair of shoes.

- Ask Ss to imagine the situations in

which they would use these

utterances and choose an appropriate

intonation patterns

- Let Ss practice individually in 5

minutes

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Visual display

- Eliciting class

discussion

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Explanation of

lesson points

- Using songs

as a practice

material

- Practice

with

authentic

utterances

- Giving

feedback

91

- Call each S to stand up and speak

the utterances out loud with

explanation about their situations

- Ask other Ss to give comment on

their peers‟ intonation

- Consolidate Ss‟ feedback and give

T‟s feedback

- Call each S to stand up and speak

the utterances out loud with

explanation about their situations

- Ask other Ss to give comment on

their peers‟ intonation

- Consolidate Ss‟ feedback and give

T‟s feedback

92

APPENDIX 9_A: Song for lesson 6

A little time The Beautiful South

I need a little time to think it over

I need a little space just on my own

I need a little time to find my freedom

I need a little...

Funny how quick the milk turns sour

Isn't it, isn't it?

Your face has been looking like that for hours

Hasn't it, hasn't it?

Promises, promises turn to dust

Wedding bells just turn to rust

Trust into mistrust

I need a little room to find myself

I need a little space to work it out

I need a little room all alone

I need a little...

You need a little room for your big head

Don't you, don't you?

You need a little space for a thousand beds

Won't you, won't you?

Lips that promise - fear the worst

Tongue so sharp - the bubble burst

Just into unjust

I've had a little time to find the truth

Now I've had a little room to check what's wrong

I've had a little time and I still love you

I've had a little...

You had a little time and you had a little fun

Didn't you, didn't you?

While you had yours do you think I had none

Do you, do you?

The Freedom that you wanted bad is yours for good

I hope you're glad

Sad into unsad

I had a little time to think it over

Had a little room to work it out

I found a little courage to call it off

93

APPENDIX 9-B: Lesson plan 6 The song “A little time” with intonation in question tags

1. Class description: 5 first-year students, Faculty of English Language Teacher

Education, ULIS-VNU

2. Time: 60 mins

3. Objectives: After the lesson, Ss will be able to

+ Reinforce knowledge about intonation in other types of sentences

+ Understand the different use of rising and falling tones in question tags

4. Assumed knowledge: Ss have already got knowledge about intonation and

known some vocabulary items in the songs

5. Anticipated problems: It may be lack of time, so teacher should prepare the way

to shorten down practice part

Ss may not have enough vocabulary about song lyric or intonation pattern => T

should prepare explanation or use Vietnamese to explain to difficult terms

6. Teaching aids: CDs, cassette, handouts

7. Procedure:

Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Teaching

Techniques

1. Warm-up

*Aims: make Ss familiar with the

song and raise their interest or

curiosity for the lesson

- Deliver the handouts containing the

lyric of the song “A little time” by the

band The Beautiful South.

- Let Ss look through the song lyrics

and ask them whether they know the

song or not.

If anybody knows, encourage

him/her to sing for the whole the class

If nobody knows, play the CD once

for them to get familiar with the

melody of the song

T can make Ss feel more relaxing with

some questions like:

+ How is the melody of the song like?

+What is your feeling when you

listening to this song?

2. Main-activities

1. Warm-up

*Aims: make Ss familiar with the

song and raise their interest or

curiosity for the lesson

- Deliver the handouts containing the

lyric of the song “A little time” by the

band The Beautiful South.

- Let Ss look through the song lyrics

and ask them whether they know the

song or not.

If anybody knows, encourage

him/her to sing for the whole the class

If nobody knows, play the CD once

for them to get familiar with the

melody of the song

T can make Ss feel more relaxing with

some questions like:

+ How is the melody of the song like?

+What is your feeling when you

listening to this song?

2. Main-activities

- Give explanation about the speed

of the song: this speed is normal in

English speaking world=> hearers

only catch some main words =>

focus on the intonation and the

- Ice-breaking

with songs

94

- Let Ss look through the song lyric

and guess the content of the lesson

today

=> tag questions

- Let Ss look at the song lyric and

listen to the song again.

2.1. Intonation in tag questions- main

clause

- Write the important sentence on the

board

Funny how quick the milk turn

sour, isn’t it, isn’t it

Your face has been looking like that

for hours, hasn’t it, hasn’t it?

- Tell Ss to pay attention to the main

clause of the questions.

+ What kind of sentence are they?

+ What is the normal intonation for

this type of sentence?

The intonation in main

clauses of tag questions are

treated the same as normal

statements, i.e. falling

2.2.Intonation in tag questions- tag

- Let Ss pay attention to the tags

Isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Hasn’t it? Hasn’t it?

- Ask Ss to recall their memories and

tell what the intonation in this phrase

is like

T can help Ss by asking them step by

step

+ How is the intonation in each word?

Is it high or low?

+ Which one is higher/ lower?

- Underline the key words as Ss say

and draw the tune shape of the

sentence on the board according to Ss‟

suggestion

stressed words

- Let Ss look through the song lyric

and guess the content of the lesson

today

=> tag questions

- Let Ss look at the song lyric and

listen to the song again to catch the

words.

2.1. Intonation in tag questions- main

clause

- Write the important sentence on the

board

Funny how quick the milk turn

sour, isn’t it, isn’t it

Your face has been looking like that

for hours, hasn’t it, hasn’t it?

- Tell Ss to pay attention to the main

clause of the questions.

+ What kind of sentence are they?

+ What is the normal intonation for

this type of sentence?

The intonation in main

clauses of tag questions are

treated the same as normal

statements, i.e. falling

2.2.Intonation in tag questions- tag

- Let Ss pay attention to the tags

Isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Hasn’t it? Hasn’t it?

- Ask Ss to recall their memories and

tell what the intonation in this phrase

is like

T can help Ss by asking them step by

step

+ How is the intonation in each word?

Is it high or low?

+ Which one is higher/ lower?

- Underline the key words as Ss say

and draw the tune shape of the

sentence on the board according to Ss‟

suggestion

- Using songs

as the material

to learn

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Explanation

- Using songs

as the material

to learn

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Eliciting class

95

- Let Ss listen to the piece of song

again and check the intonation in the

sentence above

- Together with Ss, correct the

intonation on the board

Isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Hasn’t it? Hasn’t it?

- Explain : There are different tones

chosen for the question tags.

+ If the questions aim at an answer of

Yes or No(speaker don‟t know the

answer), rising tone should be used

+ If the questions do not aim at

information but confirmation and

agreement, falling tone would be used.

2.3. Practice

- Write 3 questions on the board:

+ What is your favorite food?

+ What is your favorite drink?

+ What is your favorite book?

- Let Ss act as journalists to collect

information about students‟ hobbies.

Their task is to ask the other students

about their hobbies and record the

information in their mind WITHOUT

NOTE-TAKING. Ss should also pay

attention to their intonation in

questions and answers during their

interviews.

- After 15 minutes, each S will have to

stand in front of class and ask their

classmates about their hobbies, based

on his/her memories

- From the presenter‟s intonation,

other Ss in class have to identify

whether the presenter is sure about the

information or not.

- Ss give feedback on other peers and

their own intonation.

- Consolidate Ss‟ feedback and give

T‟s feedback

- Let Ss listen to the piece of song

again and check the intonation in the

sentence above

- Together with Ss, correct the

intonation on the board

Isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Hasn’t it? Hasn’t it?

- Explain : There are different tones

chosen for the question tags.

+ If the questions aim at an answer of

Yes or No(speaker don‟t know the

answer), rising tone should be used

+ If the questions do not aim at

information but confirmation and

agreement, falling tone would be used.

2.3. Practice

- Write 3 questions on the board:

+ What is your favorite food?

+ What is your favorite drink?

+ What is your favorite book?

- Let Ss act as journalists to collect

information about students‟ hobbies.

Their task is to ask the other students

about their hobbies and record the

information in their mind WITHOUT

NOTE-TAKING. Ss should also pay

attention to their intonation in

questions and answers during their

interviews.

- After 15 minutes, each S will have to

stand in front of class and ask their

classmates about their hobbies, based

on his/her memories

- From the presenter‟s intonation,

other Ss in class have to identify

whether the presenter is sure about the

information or not.

- Ss give feedback on other peers and

their own intonation.

- Consolidate Ss‟ feedback and give

T‟s feedback

discussion

- Visual display

- Explanation of

lesson points

- Practice with

authentic tasks

- Information

gap

- Reivision

- Giving

feedback

96

APPENDIX 10_A: Songs for lesson 7

Do You Know Where You're Going To

Janice Do you know where you're going to?

Do you like the things that life is showing you?

Where are you going to? Do you know?

Do you get what you're hoping for

When you look behind you there's no open door?

What are you hoping for? Do you know?

Once we were standing still in time

Chasing the fantasies that filled our minds

You know how I loved you

But my spirit was free

Laughin' at the questions that you once asked of me

Do you know where you're going to?

Do you like the things that life is showing you?

Where are you going to? Do you know?

Now looking back at all we've planned

We let so many dreams just slip through our hands

Why must we wait so long

Before we'll see

How sad the answers to those questions can be

Do you know where you're going to?

Do you like the things that life is showing you?

Where are you going to? Do you know?

Do you get what you're hoping for

When you look behind you there's no open door?

What are you hoping for? Do you know?

Do You Know What You Want

M2M Someone Who Treats You Right

Stay With You Day And Night

I Can Tell That's What You Need

I Know Just What To Do

I'll Take Good Care Of You

Baby You Can Get That From Me

#I Can Tell She's Not Treating You Right

Every Time You Look At Me

So Which One Will You Choose?

You Look So Confused

Tell Me The Truth

Do You Know What You Want?#

Chorus

Do You Know What You Want?

Do You Know What You Want?

Love's So Hard To Find

So Make Up Your Mind

Do You Know What You Want?

Oh Baby Can't You See

One Minute You're With Me

Next One You Are All Over Her

She Talks Behind Your Back

You Know I'll Stay On Track

Something She Wouldn't For Sure

How Can I Help You To Make Up Your Mind?

Boy You're Running Out Of Time

So Which One Will You Choose?

You Look So Confused

Tell Me The Truth

Do You Know What You Want?

*Chorus*

$ Please Call Me And Say

I Am The One You Need In Your Life

The Game That You Play Ain't No Fun

Please Answer Me Now

Gotta Know What You Want $

97

APPENDIX 10-B: Lesson plan 7 The songs “Do you know where you’re going to” and “Do you know what you want”

with intonation in combined questions

1. Class description: 5 first-year students, Faculty of English Language Teacher

Education, ULIS-VNU

2. Time: 60 mins

3. Objectives: After the lesson, Ss will be able to

+ Reinforce knowledge about intonation in other types of sentences

+ Understand the variations of pitch in combined questions

4. Assumed knowledge: Ss have already got knowledge about intonation and

known some vocabulary items in the songs

5. Anticipated problems: It may be time left, so teacher should prepare more on the

practice part

6. Teaching aids: CDs, cassette, handouts

7. Procedure:

Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Teaching

Techniques

1. Warm-up

*Aims: make Ss familiar with the

song and raise their interest or

curiosity for the lesson

- Deliver the handouts containing the

lyric of the two songs “Do you know

where you‟re going to” by Janice and

“Do you know what you want” by

M2M.

- Let Ss look through the song lyrics

and ask them whether they know the

song or not.

If anybody knows, encourage

him/her to sing for the whole the class

If nobody knows, play the CD once

for them to get familiar with the

melody of the song

2. Main-activities

2.1. Revision on intonation in

questions- Song “Do you know

where you‟re going to”

- Write 2 important sentences on the

board

Where are you going to?

Do you know?

- Tell Ss to pay attention to the two

1. Warm-up

*Aims: make Ss familiar with the

song and raise their interest or

curiosity for the lesson

- Deliver the handouts containing the

lyric of the two songs “Do you know

where you‟re going to” by Janice and

“Do you know what you want” by

M2M.

- Let Ss look through the song lyrics

and ask them whether they know the

song or not.

If anybody knows, encourage

him/her to sing for the whole the class

If nobody knows, play the CD once

for them to get familiar with the

melody of the song

2. Main-activities

2.1. Revision on intonation in

questions- Song “Do you know where

you‟re going to”

- Write 2 important sentences on the

board

Where are you going to?

Do you know?

- Tell Ss to pay attention to the two

- Ice-breaking

with songs

- Using songs

as the

material to

learn

98

questions.

+ What kind of questions are they?

+ What is the normal intonation for

each type of question?

-Let Ss listen again to check whether

the intonation of these two questions

match their ideas.

=> Falling tone is often used for WH

questions while rising tone is often

used for Yes/No questions.

2.2.Intonation in combined questions

- Let Ss pay attention to the questions

in the song “Do you know where

you‟re going to”

Do you know where you’re going to?

- Ask Ss to recall their memories and

tell what the intonation in this

question is like

T can help Ss by asking them step by

step

+Which tone is used in this

question?

+ What is the special feature of

this question?

- Underline the key words as Ss say

and draw the tune shape of the

sentence on the board according to

Ss‟ suggestion

- Let Ss listen to the piece of song

again and check the intonation in the

sentence above

- Together with Ss, correct the

intonation on the board

Do you know where you’re going to?

- Let Ss listen to the song “Do you

know what you want” and pay

attention to the questions

Do you know what you want?

- Ask Ss to identify the tone use in

this question

- Underline the key words as Ss say

questions.

+ What kind of questions are they?

+ What is the normal intonation for

each type of question?

-Let Ss listen again to check whether

the intonation of these two questions

match their ideas.

=> Falling tone is often used for WH

questions while rising tone is often

used for Yes/No questions.

2.2.Intonation in combined questions

- Let Ss pay attention to the questions

in the song “Do you know where

you‟re going to”

Do you know where you’re going to?

- Ask Ss to recall their memories and

tell what the intonation in this

question is like

T can help Ss by asking them step by

step

+Which tone is used in this

question?

+ What is the special feature of

this question?

- Underline the key words as Ss say

and draw the tune shape of the

sentence on the board according to Ss‟

suggestion

- Let Ss listen to the piece of song

again and check the intonation in the

sentence above

- Together with Ss, correct the

intonation on the board

Do you know where you’re going to?

- Let Ss listen to the song “Do you

know what you want” and pay

attention to the questions

Do you know what you want?

- Ask Ss to identify the tone use in this

question

- Underline the key words as Ss say

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

and recall

their

memories

- Explanation

- Using songs

as the

material to

learn

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Visual

display

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

99

and draw the tune shape of the

sentence on the board according to

Ss‟ suggestion

- Let Ss listen to the piece of song

again and check the intonation in the

sentence above

- Together with Ss, correct the

intonation on the board

Do you know where you’re going to?

- Ask Ss to compare the two

patterns of intonation in these

questions and guess what

creates the differences.

- Explain the intonation patterns

used in combined questions.

+ If the questions aim at an answer of

Yes or No, rising tone should be used

+ If the questions aim at information

for WH- question, falling tone would

be used

- Introduce one more case of

combined question in reality:

Could you show me the way to

the post office please?

- Let Ss choose intonation

pattern and speak aloud the

utterance.

Draw Ss‟ attention to the rise

at “please”

2.3. Practice

- Provide a situation for Ss: This is

your first time to London and you

have lost the city map. So, you have

to ask a pass-over on the street to

show you the way.

- Write 6 places on the board:

Library Museum

Hospital US Embassy

Bank Nearest bus-stop

and draw the tune shape of the

sentence on the board according to Ss‟

suggestion

- Let Ss listen to the piece of song

again and check the intonation in the

sentence above

- Together with Ss, correct the

intonation on the board

Do you know where you’re going to?

- Ask Ss to compare the two

patterns of intonation in these

questions and guess what

creates the differences.

- Explain the intonation patterns

used in combined questions.

+ If the questions aim at an answer of

Yes or No, rising tone should be used

+ If the questions aim at information

for WH- question, falling tone would

be used

- Ask student to think about

some combined questions that

they may use in the real life

=>Introduce combined

question with politeness:

Could you show me the way to

the post office please?

- Let Ss choose intonation pattern

and speak aloud the utterance.

Draw Ss‟ attention to the rise

at “please”

2.3. Practice

- Provide a situation for Ss: This is

your first time to London and you have

lost the city map. So, you have to ask a

pass-over on the street to show you the

way.

- Write 6 places on the board:

Library Museum

Hospital US Embassy

Bank Nearest bus-stop

- Visual

display

- Eliciting

class

discussion

- Explanation

of lesson

points

- Eliciting Ss‟

knowledge

- Practice

with

authentic

tasks

100

- Each Ss have 3 minutes to prepare

the questions to ask for the way to

these places above.

- After 3 minute, T calls a student to

stand up and make questions with

those places, tap at a word on the

board and the student‟s duty is to

utter the questions to know the way to

that place.

- Other Ss give feedback on other

peers‟ intonation.

- Consolidate Ss‟ feedback and give

T‟s feedback

- Each Shave 3 minutes to prepare the

questions to ask for the way to these

places above.

- After 3 minute, T would call a

representative to come to the board,

choose another student, tap at a

word on the board and the student’s

duty is to utter the questions to

know the way to that place.

- Other Ss give feedback on other

peers‟ intonation.

- Consolidate Ss‟ feedback and give

T‟s

- Giving

feedback

101

APPENDIX 11

Summary of students’ responses in interviews

Q2+3. Adjectives to describe the lessons. Which activities do you

like best?

Lesson Name Answers Codes Techniques

1 Thiet Interesting, funny motivation Sing

1 Thuong Impressive,

attentive, enjoyable

Motivation, impression Practice

1 Hanh Interesting,

informative,

effective

motivation, effectiveness,

information abundance

Elicit

1 Dung Surprising,

interesting

Freshness, motivation Practice

1 Trang Interesting,

new,exciting

Freshness, motivation Elicit

1 Binh Great, interesting,

funny

Motivation Practice

1 Mai Useful, interesting Effectiveness, motivation Elicit & discuss

1 Thanh New, very

interesting, good

Freshness, motivation Listen and sing

1 Tu Anh Relevant,

interesting, smooth

Unity, motivation Practice

3 Thiet interesting, useful motivation, effectiveness Sing

3 Thuong Useful, attentive motivation, effectiveness listen

3 Hanh interesting, useful motivation, effectiveness Revision

3 Dung Interesting, effective motivation, effectiveness Practice

3 Trang Useful, interesting Motivation, effectiveness Elicit

3 Mai Useful, relevant Effectiveness, unity Elicit & discuss

3 Tu Anh Attractive, useful,

interesting

Effectiveness, motivation Practice

4 Thiet interesting, useful motivation, effectiveness Listen and sing

102

along

4 Thuong interesting, effective motivation, effectiveness Listen and sing

along

4 Hanh Surprising,

interesting,

attractive, effective,

informative,

Freshness, motivation,

effectiveness, information

abundance

Sing along, practice

4 Dung Informative,

practical

information abundance,

practicality

Practice

4 Trang Useful, interesting,

exciting

Motivation, effectiveness Explanation

4 Binh Interesting, exciting,

surprising

Freshness, motivation Elicit & discussion

4 Mai Good, motivating,

useful

Effectiveness, motivation Practice

4 Thanh useful Effectiveness Practice

4 Tu Anh Wonderful, very

interesting, useful

Effectiveness, motivation Listen and sing

along

6 Thiet Useful, funny motivation, effectiveness practice

6 Hanh New, useful Freshness, effectiveness Practice

6 Dung Exciting, useful,

eager,

motivation, effectiveness Practice

6 Trang Useful, practical,

interesting

Effectiveness, practicality,

motivation

Practice

6 Binh Effective, new Effectiveness, freshness Practice

6 Mai Interesting, useful Motivation, effectiveness Practice

6 Thanh Surprising, strange Freshness Practice

7 Thiet New, interesting,

useful

Freshness, motivation,

effectiveness

Practice

7 Thuong New, interesting,

effective

Freshness, motivation,

effectiveness

Elicit & discussion

7 Hanh Interesting, new Freshness, motivation Practice

7 Dung Interesting, useful,

informative

Freshness, motivation,

effectiveness

Practice, change the

sequence of

listening and

103

finding Qs

7 Trang New, useful,

exciting

Freshness, motivation,

effectiveness

Elicit& discuss

7 Mai New, interesting,

useful

Freshness, motivation,

effectiveness

Practice

7 Binh Good, interesting,

motivating, happy, a

bit difficult

motivation Practice

7 Thanh Interesting, new,

good, a bit difficult

Freshness, motivation, Practice

7 Tu Anh Useful, exciting,

new

Freshness, motivation,

effectiveness

Elicit, compare and

discussion

104

APPENDIX 12

Summary of students’ responses in interviews

Q4+5. Adjectives to describe the song

Lesson Name Melody Lyric

1 Thiet Slow, emotional, romantic Romantic, similar to own state of mind

1 Thuong Attractive, deep, sweet, gentle, easy to

catch, lyrical

Meaningful, noble love, relevant for

lesson

1 Hanh Gentle, interesting, slow, relaxing meaningful

1 Dung Lyrical, emotional, gentle Don‟t‟ care

1 Trang Gentle, romantic romantic

1 Binh Gentle, interesting Meaningful=>love

1 Mai Gentle, romantic romantic

1 Thanh Slow, gentle, deep emotion Meaningful, romantic

1 Tu Anh Slow, easy to listen Beautiful wording, romantic

3 Thiet Smooth, peaceful, a bit sleepy Meaningful, may new words=>

provoking

3 Thuong Smooth, relaxing, slow Meaningful, may new words

3 Hanh Slow, gentle, sweet, sleepy meaningful

3 Dung Sad, meaningful, interesting Meaningful, many new words

3 Trang Gentle, easy to listen, relaxing Meaningful, educational=, curiosity

3 Mai Gentle, soft, sweet, relaxing meaningful

3 Tu Anh Slow, gentle, soft meaningful

4 THiet Lively, fast, romantic Moving, romantic

4 Thuong Lively, alerted Moving, romantic

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4 Hanh Rather fast, easy to listen suitable

4 Dung Interesting, relaxing Don‟t care

4 Trang Fast, good, easy to sing Easy to understand

4 Binh Funny, a bit fast=> eager Meaningful, good

4 Mai Fast, lively, good Emotional, good

4 Thanh Fast, gentle, transparent Romantic, boring if listen too much

4 Tu Anh Fast, funny, romantic

6 Thiet Too fast Don‟t care

6 Hanh Too fast, difficult=>eager Don‟t care

6 Dung Too fast Don‟t care

6 Trang Too fast Don‟t care

6 Binh Good, lively, very fast Don‟t care

6 Mai Too fast=> discouraged Don‟t care

6 Thanh Too fast, lively, exciting Meaningful, same emotion

7 Thiet 1 Slow, 2 fast not impressive Don‟t care

7 Thuong 1: slow, smooth, transparent

2: too fast

Don‟t care

7 Hanh Interesting, easy to compare, new Don‟t care

7 Dung Memorable, effective Don‟t‟ care

7 Trang 1: slow, gentle.

2: fast

Easy to compare

Romantic, emotional

7 Mai 1: romantic, gentle

2: romantic, lively

Easy to compare

Romantic, excited

7 Binh 1: relaxing, 2:fast=> easy to compare Meaningful, about love

7 Thanh 1: gentle; 1: fast

difficult

Meaningful, romantic, emotional

7 Tu Anh Funny, fast, contradict romantic

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APPENDIX 13: Cycle 1

INTERVIEW Lesson 1- Hanh

1. -So, we have just finish the lesson today. Do you like it?

-Yes, I really enjoy it

2. -Can you use some specific adjectives to describe it?

-It‟s interesting, informative and effective

3. -If you can give a mark from 1 to 10 for this lesson, which mark will you give?

-I think I‟ll give it 8.5

4. -Now, let‟s talk about the activities in this lesson. Which activities in this lesson do you

consider interesting and effective?

-I like all the activities. T hey‟re all interesting

-Specifically, which activity do you think is the most effective and interesting?

-Uhm, like the way you let us pay attention to the structures, catch the intonation and

imagine the situation we often use the sentences and the intonation

5. - Do you like the song?

-Yes, I have always like this song, it‟s so sweet.

-So, you have known this song before?

-Yes

-Can you use some adjectives or phrases to describe the melody of the song?

- It‟s gentle, slow, relaxing and very interesting

- Do you think the melody of the song is effective for the lesson?

- Yes, of course. It makes me excited, want to listen more and know more about the

intonation

- Can you use some adjectives or phrases to describe the lyric of the song?

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- It‟s meaningful

- Meaningful? What do you find meaningful in the song lyrics?

- The noble love of the man to the woman.

- Do you think the lyrics of the song are effective for the lesson?

- Yes, it‟s really suitable for the lesson.

6. -If you can give a mark from 1 to 10 for this song, which mark will you give?

- I‟ll give it 9

7. Is there any idea about this interview or the previous interview that you want to change?

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APENDIX 14: Cycle 1

INTERVIEW – Lesson 3- Mai

1. -So, we have just finish the lesson today. Do you like it?

-Not really

2. -Can you use some specific adjectives to describe it?

-It‟s informative and interesting

3. -If you can give a mark from 1 to 10 for this lesson, which mark will you give?

-I think I‟ll give it 9

4. -Now, let‟s talk about the activities in this lesson. Which activities in this lesson do you

consider interesting and effective?

-I like all the activities.

-Specifically, which activity do you think is the most effective and interesting?

-Uhm, like the way you let us pay attention to the structures, catch the intonation and

imagine the situation we often use the sentences and the intonation

5. - Do you like the song?

-Yes, it‟s so sweet.

-So, you have known this song before?

-No

-Can you use some adjectives or phrases to describe the melody of the song?

- It‟s gentle, slow, relaxing, makes me feel peaceful

- Do you think the melody of the song is effective for the lesson?

- Yes, of course. It makes me relaxed, so I feel easier to study

- Can you use some adjectives or phrases to describe the lyric of the song?

- It‟s too difficult with many new words

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- Difficult? Do the new words affect you studying?

- Yes, I feel rather nervous

- Do you think the lyrics of the song are effective for the lesson?

- Yes, it‟s really suitable for the lesson.

6. -If you can give a mark from 1 to 10 for this song, which mark will you give?

- I‟ll give it 8.5

7. Is there any idea about this interview or the previous interview that you want to change?

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APENDIX 15: Cycle 1

INTERVIEW – Lesson 6- Thanh

1. -So, we have just finish the lesson today. Do you like it?

-Yes

2. -Can you use some specific adjectives to describe it?

-It‟s new and useful

3. -If you can give a mark from 1 to 10 for this lesson, which mark will you give?

-I think I‟ll give it 7.5

4. -Now, let‟s talk about the activities in this lesson. Which activities in this lesson do you

consider interesting and effective?

-I like all the activities. They‟re all effective

- Specifically, which activity do you think is the most effective and interesting?

-Uhm, I like practice the most

5. - Do you like the song?

-So so. It‟s too fast and too difficult for me

-Can you use some adjectives or phrases to describe the melody of the song?

- It‟s too fast, too difficult, as I‟ve mentioned

- Do you think the melody of the song is effective for the lesson?

- Yes, of course. It makes me excited, want to listen more and know more about the

intonation

- Can you use some adjectives or phrases to describe the lyrics of the song?

- Sorry, I don‟t pay attention to the lyrics

- Why don‟t you pay attention to the the lyrics of the song?

- I‟m too busy with catching the melody.

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6. -If you can give a mark from 1 to 10 for this song, which mark will you give?

- I‟ll give it 7

7. -Is there any idea about this interview or the previous interview that you want to change?

-No

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APENDIX 16: Cycle 2

INTERVIEW SCHEME- Lesson 3- Trang

1. -So, we have just finish the lesson today. Do you like it?

-Yes, I really enjoy it

2. -Can you use some specific adjectives to describe it?

-It‟s interesting and useful

3. -If you can give a mark from 1 to 10 for this lesson, which mark will you give?

-I think I‟ll give it 8

4. -Now, let‟s talk about the activities in this lesson.

-The first activity of the lesson today is the discussion about the meaning of the song. Do

you think it is effective?

- Yes, it helps me understand the song more and feel less nervous. At first I was shocked

to see so many new words

- The second activity of the lesson today is revision. Do you think it is effective?

- Of course. It helps me recall all the things I‟ve learnt

- The third activity of the lesson today is my questions and your discussion on the intonation

and the sentences in the songs. Do you think it is effective?

- Yes. I think all the activities in this lesson are effective.

- Specifically, which activity do you think is the most effective and interesting?

-Uhm, like the way you elicit our knowledge from the song

5. - Do you like the song?

-Yes, I have always like this song, it‟s so sweet.

-So, you have known this song before?

-Yes

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-Can you use some adjectives or phrases to describe the melody of the song?

- It‟s gentle, slow, relaxing and peaceful

- Do you think the melody of the song is effective for the lesson?

- Yes, of course. It makes me excited, want to listen more and know more about the

intonation

- Can you use some adjectives or phrases to describe the lyric of the song?

- It‟s meaningful, educational

- Meaningful? What do you find meaningful in the song lyrics?

- The lessons about our life

- Do you think the lyrics of the song are effective for the lesson?

- Yes, it‟s really suitable for the lesson.

6. -If you can give a mark from 1 to 10 for this song, which mark will you give?

- I‟ll give it 9

7. Is there any idea about this interview or the previous interview that you want to change?

I want to give mark 8.5 for the lesson.