Acknowledgement The Importance Of English In Students’ Opinon

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
TOPIC: THE IMPORTANCE OF
ENGLISH IN STUDENTS’ OPINON
TPHCM - 2023

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

1.1/ Rationale
Celce-Murcia states in his book that, “Pronunciation is becoming increasingly
recognized as a crucial area for language learners” (Celce-Murcia, 1996; Rossiter,
2010). Many non-native speakers who have studied English for years share that, no
matter how good their English-grammar skill are, they could not speak English
fluently, and their accents are not native-liked speakers. In fact, comprehensibility
from speakers to listeners has a specific influence to the speaker’s confidence and
others’ perception of them. Leah Tweedy indicates that the people who had a
shortage of intelligibility in their speech have a huge adversity in their
professional, social, and educational lives (Leah Tweedy, 2012). Many cases of
misunderstanding in communication caused by the mispronouncing of words,
intonation or stress. According to the Adult Migrant English Program (AMPE), the
people who have great pronunciation in English, even if they make mistakes in
other spaces, their speech are more likely understood. Nonetheless, the people with
the difficulty in pronunciation will not be understood, although their grammars are
blameless. Many adult learners find that pronunciation is one of the most difficult
aspects of English to acquire. They need explicit help from the teacher (Morley
1994).
1.2/ Scope of the study
Intonation is very important for English learners who want to speak English in a
natural way. Even with perfect vocabulary and grammar skills, incorrect intonation
still leads to misunderstanding about the intended meaning of the utterance. This
study will briefly compares the difference between Vietnamese intonation and
English intonation as well as indicating some problems that Vietnamese students
meet on the way of becoming a skillful non-native speaker.

CHAPTER 2
LITTERATURE REVIEW

2.1/ What is intonation?
One writer of Elserver magazine proposes that “intonation can be described using a
sequence of rise, fall, and connection elements. Pitch accents and boundary rises
are described using the rise and fall elements and connection elements are used to
describe everything else” (Elsevier journal vol 15). Another perspective, Daniel
Hirst believes that the description of the intonation system of a particular language
or dialect is a “difficult task” because intonation itself is paradoxical (Daniel 1998,
2). He also declares that intonation is “universal first of all” since every language
in the world possess intonation. Those ideas were the early descriptions of
intonation in years of the 90s. Marta J. Sabbadini informes that intonation is not
about the things a person says, but it is about the way he says them (Marta, 2006).
She also believes that “without intonation, it's impossible to understand the
expressions and thoughts that go with the words, when you listened to somebody,
the “melody” in their voice is intonation” (Marta, 2006). Marta also discribes the
feature of intonation as following ground:
 “It's divided into phrases, also known as 'tone-units'.
 The pitch moves up and down, within a 'pitch range'. Everybody has their own
pitch range. Languages, too, differ in pitch range. English has particularly wide
pitch range.
 In each tone unit, the pitch movement (a rise or fall in tone, or a combination of the
two) takes place on the most important syllable known as the 'tonic-syllable'. The
tonic-syllable is usually a high-content word, near the end of the unit.
 These patterns of pitch variation are essential to a phrase's meaning. Changing the
intonation can completely change the meaning.
Example:
o Say: 'It's raining'.

o Now say it again using the same words, but giving it different meaning. You could
say it to mean 'What a surprise!', or 'How annoying!',or 'That's great!'. There are
many possibilities” (Marta, 2006).
Those opinions are the glance of different descriptions by the writers in different
time period about the universal intonation. For now we will take a quick look about
the intonation in Vietnamese.
2.2/ Vietnamese tone and intonation
2.2.1/ Vietnamese tone
According to Ms Luu Thi Kim Nhung, “Vietnamese is a tonal language, in which
changes of the pitch level and/or contour signal a change meaning” (Le, 2010).
Even though, there are some different perspectives on this topic. Base on an
opinion collected online, Vietnamese tones are considered different from other
languages in the world. The author says that, “Unlike many Native American,
African, and Chinese languages, Vietnamese tones do not rely solely on pitch
contour. Vietnamese often uses instead a register complex (which is a combination
of phonation type, pitch, length, vowel quality, etc.) (Wikipedia, 2008). In other
words, Vietnamese is a register language and not a "pure" tonal language”
(Wikipedia. 2008). In short, Vietnamese tone is still a controversial topic.
However, many linguists have a special concern on its prosodic and consider tone
as a crucial part of a word as its consonant and its vowel.
To illustrate that follows, the words with different tone changes the whole meaning
of them, and such words are likely to have unrelated meaning.
“ma” means ghost
“mả” means tomb
“má” means mother or cheek
“mà” means (adversative conjunction) but, nevertheless, yet, however or then, in
order to...

“mạ” means seed or to plate (silver, gold...)
The Northern dialect of Vietnamese has six tone: mid-level, low-falling, high
rising, low-falling- rising, high-rising broken and low-falling broken. Except for
the middle level, all the other tones are distincted by the diacritic over or under one
of the vowels in the syllable. Each tone has its own speech. We can present the
range of the variation of pitches with a short vertical divided into five points,
which represent five degrees as below chart.
5 the high pitch
4 the mid-high pitc
3 the middle pitch
2 the mid-low pitc
1 the low pitch
Chart 1. The pitch levels of the Vietnamese tones.
The pitch levels of the six tones can be presented on such a five-degree chart (see
Appendix 1).
Luu.T.K.Nhung has once indicates how the various tonal designations are used in
the Northern dialect of Vietnamese and parallel discriptions with English
intonation (Appendix 2).
2.2.2/ Vietnamese intonation
In fact, Vietnamese is not only a “word-pitch system (tone) but also a “phrase-
pitch system” (intonation) (Luu, 2010). Beside the syllabic pitch, there are the rises
and falls of pitches which form intonation contour in the utterance as well.

Do (2009) indicates five main components of Vietnamese intonations, as follow:
Components Distinctive features
Pitch / register
Intensity / loudness
Duration / Length
Tempo
Contour
high vs. low
strong vs. weak
long vs. short
pause vs. continuous
level vs. unlevel
Table 2. Five main components of Vietnamese intonation
Kieu-Phuong Ha and Martine Grice claim that there is an interaction between
syllabic tone and intonation (Ha, 52). According to Alan Cruttenden, there is not
any difference between Vietnamese intonation and one of other languages. To him,
the difference tones are somehow “attracted” by the intonation movement
(Cruttenden, 1986). As Nhung says, “Register tones are levelled, low tones widen
their range, high tones are more strongly marked in interrogatives” (Luu, 2005).
Although, intonation contour is seemed to be “heedfully used” in Vietnam than in
other languages: In question, for example, there is nothing noticeable until the
proximity of the sentence final question mark, where the rise appears; In
declarative sentences, the tone is seemed to be higher and stronger.
In terms of the functions of Vietnamese intonation, Đỗ states, “intonation is one
of the conditions of a sentence/utterance to exist and function communicatively”
(Đỗ 2009). In communication, the Vietnamese intonation has such functions as
grammatical, attitudinal, implicational/logic, pragmatic” (Đỗ 2009).
2.3/ English tone and intonation
Although English employs tonal variation, the English intonation has the different
usages from tones used in Vietnam. In English, intonation contour mainly reflect
the intention of utterance. However, no matter how up or down the tones are, they
can not change the meaning of whole sentence.

L.T.K.Nhung, in her journal finds out some different perspectives on English
intonation. According to her research, Crystal (1969) and Ladefoged (1982)
identify four basic tone, Brazil et al. (1980) and Roach (1983) assent five tones
(fall, rise, rise-fall, fall-rise, and level). Whereas Cruttenden (1986) [16] even
recognizes seven different tones of English. This research will focus on the opinion
of Ronald Carter (...) expressed in their book, they endorsed that there are three
main patterns of intonation in English are: falling intonation, rising intonation and
fall-rise intonation. Cambridge Dictionary has displayed their idea as follow:
(Ronald et al. 2011).
2.3.1/ Falling intonation
 Falling intonation describes how the voice falls on the final stressed syllable of a
phrase or a group of words. A falling intonation is very common in wh-questions.
Ex:
- Where’s the nearest post-office?
- What time does the film finish?
 People tend to use falling intonation when they say something definitely, or when
they want to be very clear about something:
Ex:
- I think we are completely lost.
- OK, here’s the magazine you wanted.
2.3.2/ Rising intonation

 Rising intonation describes how the voice rises at the end of a sentence. Rising
intonation is common in yes-no questions:
Ex:
- I hear the Health Centre is expanding. So, is that the new doctor?
- Are you thirsty?
2.3.3/ Fall-Rise intonation
 Fall-rise intonation describes how the voice falls and then rises. We use fall-rise
intonation at the end of statements when we want to say that we are not sure, or
when we may have more to add:
Ex:
- I don’t support any football team at the moment. (but I may change my mind in
future
- It rained every day in the first week. (but things improved after that).
 Speakers use fall-rise intonation with questions, especially when they request
information or invite somebody to do or to have something. The intonation pattern
makes the questions sound more polite:
Ex:
- Is this your camera?
- Would you like another coffee?
Intonation does not exist in isolation so that it will make sense more clearly if we
approach it with other factors. According to Nhung, “there are four function
namely attitudinal, grammatical, accentual and discourse.” (Nhung. 2010).

2.4/ A brief comparison of Vietnamese intonation and English
intonation
In comparing Vietnamese intonation and English intonation, a big difference
between them can be easily found. First, Vietnamese two kind of pitch contour: the
syllabic pitch for single syllable and intonational pitch for the whole sentence;
whereas, English only hold the pitch level for the meaning of the utterance. To
clarify, English intonation simply can not change the “dictionary maning” of the
sentence. No matter how we change the pitch, the sentence will not be changed. In
Vietnamese, syllabic pitch can alter the whole meaning of your speech. For
example:
“Ông ấy đi tu” (He has become a priest/a monk)
Versus
“Ông ấy đi tù” (He has been going to jail)
Obviously, wa can say that the syllabic pitch decides the meaning of the sentence.
Secondly, in English, we can base on the intonation to identify the types of the
sentence.
For example:
- He’s coming! (the assertive sentence)
- He’s coming? (interrogative sentence)
In Vietnamese, intonation is rarely used as a way to form the sentence. If it is an
assertive sentence ending with thanh sắc (high-rising tone), the speakers have to
raise the voice at the end of the sentence, for example, “Em đói bụng lắm!” (I am
so hungry!). Whereas, if an interrogative sentence ends with thanh huyền (low-
falling tone), the voice should be lower at the end of the sentence, for example,
“Em đói bụng à?” (Are you hungry?).

Chapter 3
Survey

3.1/ Survey questionnaires
3.1.1/ Participants
All the related data that used to analyze for this research were collected from 10
students coming from some universities in Ho Chi Minh City, including Pham
Ngoc Thach Medical University, Saigon International University, Hoa Sen
University and Saigon University. They will be asked 5 questions. Because this is
the research of the attitude of Vietnamese students against the English intonation
so that researcher chooses these students for several reasons. First, they are all in
the final year of universities, they are about to go into working environment so that
they some-how understand the importance of English. Secondly, those students are
either in English major or not, thus it is correct and can be applied for the whole
community. Last, they come from different universities and many different areas of
Vietnam so that none of the dialect is dominant here.
3.1.2/ Purpose of the survey
This survey is conducted for three main purposes. Two first questions are to find
the important role of English in social life. The next question is about responsors‘
opinions of pronunciation in communication. The last ones is purposed to figure
out their attitudes toward intonation and their own thoughts about the reason why
pronunciation is difficult to non-native English speaker.
3.1.3/ Data collection instrument
To collect data, some indirect observation is created right from the start. Besides
that, survey questionnaires, interview and tape-recording were also used.
Survey questionnaire and interview are the most necessary methods instrument to
collect information. The survey is conducted in English because the responsors’

pronunciation throughout the interview would be noticed and become a part of the
database. The questions are easy to undertand and answer. During the survey, the
participants are encouraged to feel free to express their thinking and knowledge.
After collecting answers from the students, in order to get more persuasive data, a
number of students were asked to pronounce. All the interview was recorded to
avoid data loss.
3.2/ Data analysis
3.2.1/ The importance of English in students’ opinon
The result of students’ opinion in the survey questionnaires show a positive point.
The collected data will be presented in the chart below
Chart 2. Student’s opinion about the importance of English
70%
20%
10%
ENGLISH'S IMPORTANT
Very important
Important
Not very
important

From the collected data, students agreed that English is important in social life
nowadays. They claim that English is very popular and is used in many majors and
situations. For example, not only the students who are in English major have
worked with English. In fact, the students who are in other majors such as medical
branch and economics have to use English everyday. In order to catch up with the
world, many of their coursebooks are in English. Thus, they are forced to use
English almost everyday even if they like it or not. Therefore, we can see in Chart
2, just one out of ten students believe that English is not important for our future.
3.2.2/ Student’s opinion about pronunciation
The two next questions (question 2 and 3) is about students’ opinion against
pronunciation in general. When being asked about their frequency of using English
to communicate, the answers are displayed in the below chart
Chart 3. Student’s opinion about frequency of communication in English
30%
40%
30%
Frequency of communication in English
Usually
Often
Seldom

In chart 3, we can realize a decrease of English dominant, particularly in
pronunciation part. Although English is expanding its influence, students do not
use English usually in their communication. According to their reasons, they
expose that the time they use English to talk in a week are very rare. They just
need to talk English in the speaking classes, and a class are just long for about 45
or 50 minutes. Outside of the class, they seldom use English to talk to each other.
They explain that there are too much information that they need to tell each other,
and with their English level, it must be take them forever to finish their speech.
This may takes more time than using Vietnamese mother-tongue language. The
survey also shows that many students do not have any awareness of the importance
of English communication. Moreover, they do not know the way how to practice
speaking English outside the class.
The next question (qudestion 4) shows students’ attitude about the native-liked
speaking. And the result is express in chart 4.
Chart 4. Students’ attitude about the native-liked speaking
10%
30%
60%
Student's attitude about native-liked
speaking
Very Important
Important
Not very
important

Most of the students in the survey think that they only need to speak English
fluently. Their accents or the sound of their voices is not necessary to be noticed.
These students claim that claim that their speakings make sense to native people is
more sufficient. However, as mentioned above, the intelligibility is very essential
to make a conversation go smoothly. The factor to create it is pronunciation skills.
The native speakers will love to talk to people whom they can understand. Students
need to pay more attention on their pronunciation skills, so that they can build their
confidence and profession.
3.2.3/ Students’ attitude toward intonation
Two last questions are about what partipants think about intonation. The first one
is their point of view about the important of intonation comparing with other
factors of speaking. Table 4 can show us the answers
Factors Very important Important Not really important
Sound   
Gramma   
Intonation  
Table 4. Students’ attitude toward intonation when comparing with other factor of
speaking
The table 4 show that intonation is not highly evaluated when participants speak
English. Most of them proposed that we just need to keep our mind on the sounds.
Someone states that when speaking, it is not really important to notice on grammar,
the native still understand what is expressed. In the result, nearly 100% of students
do not find intonation is one of the essential factors in the speaking process. In fact,

the proficiency in intonation will help the speaker’s intention to be revealed much
more clearly. Many people do not know that incorrect intonation may make other
people misunderstanding what the speakers say.
The last question is about the reason that interfere their ability to use intonation
correctly. The below are the most common answers:
 Differrent from Vietnamese tone
 No habit of practicing intonation
 Too difficult to toake notice on intonation
 Shyness in making mistake when practicing (overdo)
 Interference of around people’s pronunciation.
We can see that most of the reason is about practicing. Students do not have the
habit of paying attention to intonation whenever they use English to communicate.
Actually, when doing research, I found out there are many students do not have
perception of intonation in English.

Chapter 4
Discussion

The result of the survey display a reality of intonation unawareness in Vietnam.
Because Vietnamese is a tone language, speakers may have the tendency of being
sensitive with the changes of pitch in speed, but over a single syllable, rather than a
phrase or a long sentence. Teachers should give more concern of intonation in
class, introduce students the patterns of intonation and guide them how to practice
it in communication. To do that, based on Nhung , here some reccommendation for
ESL teachers to follow:
 Be aware of teacher’s own pronunciation. Students usually tend to imitate
the voice or accent of their teacher. They will take for granted that their
teacher’s pronunciation is always right.
 Direct students’ attention to English basic intonation pattern. Especially
give them specific examples in specific situation of the social life. They
may find intonation interesting and practical
 Alert students to similarities and differences in intonation between
Vietnamese and English. This will help students build up the foundation of
distinguish points of two languages, so that they will not feel strange and
shy when they practice English intonation in communication.
 Letting students to listen to the tape of native speakers using intonation in
some specific intonation. They will have the first step of intonation
perception in their mind.
 Letting students to listen to the recording of themselves. This can be a
valuable awareness rising strategy. They may well hear and recognize their
mistakes in using intonation, the factor they may overlook when actually
speaking. As a result, they may take notice on weak points conciously.
 Create class room exercise and an environment in which students feel free
to practice and use intonation without shaming. Moreover, they can correct
both themselves and their peers. (Nhung. 2010) [5].

Conclusion
Intonation is not about what we say, it is about how we say it. Because of the
difference between tone of Vietnamese and English one, students feel difficult to
consolidate intonation in speaking English daily. Moreover, the limitation of
practicing intonation in class has led to the shortage of students’ awareness of it.
From that point, we can conscious the important role of teachers in bringing the
basic definition of intonation into class. Teacher ought to open students mind and
show them that proficiency in intonation is a requirement for a better
communication with native-speaker of English.

Referrence
Crutt enden, Alan, Intonat ion (Cambri dge textbooks in linguistics), Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Cruttenden, Alan, Intonation (Cambridge textbooks in linguistics), Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press ,1986.
Cù Đình Tú, Hoàng Văn Thung, Nguy ễn Nguyên Trứ, Ngữ âm học tiếng Việt hiện
đại, NXB Giáodục,1978.
Daniel Hirst in Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages (1998)
Đỗ Tiến Thắng, Ngữ điệu tiếng Việt, NXB Đại học Quốc gia HàNội, 2009.
Elserver.1994. “Speech Communication” . Elsevier journal 15: 1-187.
Kieu-Phuong Ha and Martine Grice.(…). Modellingthe Interaction of Intonation
and Lexical Tone in Vietnamese IfL Phonetik, University of Cologne, Germany .
Leah Tweedy. 2012. “Discovering factors that influence English pronunciation of
native Vietnamese speaker”. MA diss., Hamline University.
Luu Thi Kim Nhung. 2010. VNU Journal of Science, Foreign Languages 26
(2010) 171-180
M. Celce-Murcia, D.M. Brinton, J. M. Goodwi n, “Teaching pronunciation”,
Cambridge University press , 1996.
Marta J. Sabbadini. 2006. “Intonation”. Brtitish council.
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/intonation
Morley, J. 1994. “Pronunciation pedagogy and theory”. Scientific Rresearch.
P. Ladefoged, A Course in phonetics, 2nd edition, Harcour t, Brace, Jovanovich,
1982.

P. Roach, English phonetics and phonology, Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Ronald Carter, Michael McCarthy, Geraldine Mark, and Anne O’Keeffe English
Grammar Today (2011)
Tiee, Henry Hung- Yeh, An Approach f or teaching English to Chinese speakers
based on a contrastive syllabic and prosodic analysis, Ph.D. Dissertation.
University of Texas,1967.
Wikipedia. 2008. “Vietnamese phonology”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_phonology#Tone

APPENDIX

APPENDIX 1

APPENDIX 2
(Nhung. 2010)
Table 1. Vietnamese tonal designations and parallel descriptions in English
intonation

APPENDIX 3
(Do, 2009:194)
Table 3. Describes the operation of intonation in Vietnamese reduced sentences

APPENDIX 4
SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE
1. What is your opinion about the importance of English for your social life?
important
2. Do you usually use English to communicate? When/ what situations do you
use it?
Using situations:.......................................................................................
3. Do you think that pronouncing like native speaker is necessary?
4. Please range the importance of three factors of communication in English as
below table:
Factors Very important Important Not really important
Sound
Gramma
Intonation
5. Please list some reasons that make you get difficulty in studying intonation
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION!

Acknowledgement The Importance Of English In Students’ Opinon

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Acknowledgement The Importance Of English In Students’ Opinon