In the last decades, the general goals of teaching have primed the effective use of the spoken
language to establish successful communication. That is why there hasbeen a steady growth
in the attention to the magnitude of speaking and pronunciation teaching. This fact has brought
about an emergent debate about models, goals and particularly, the methodology used for
speaking and pronunciation teaching.
A number of research studies have dealt with pronunciation teaching and problems students
face in English pronunciation. The research findings have revealed that pronunciation
frequently interferes with communication. As a matter of fact, communication may break
down when people pronounce incorrectly. Moreover, learners with good pronunciation are
usually more proficient speakers and more successful language learners than those with poor
pronunciation.
Since I started teaching at Hong Duc University, I have taught speaking and pronunciation to
first-year English majors many times. I have always been trying my best to help my students
pronounce better. However, I have had many frustrations because my students always have
many mistakes in their pronunciation. I have been investigating into the reasons for this, and I
have found that my students, most of whom are from rural areas in theprovince, only learned
grammar and never focused on pronunciation at secondary school. Moreover, they did not
have much access to native speakers’ pronunciation.
For non-English majors at other departments of Hong Duc University, they are required to
have intelligible pronunciation. English majors at Foreign Department, however, must go far
beyond the intelligibility to the point that they should sound like or nearlylike native speakers
because they will become teachers of English and their pronunciation will affect many
generations to come. That is the reason why first-year English majors’ weak pronunciation has
been a matter of serious concern among us.