An action research project on using the ELSA software to improve first- year non- English

major students’ stress and intonation in speaking skill at a University in Hanoi.

Rationale of the study

In general, there are four language elements namely: structure, vocabulary, pronunciation,
and spelling in English language teaching, those elements are taught to improve the learners’
skill in language learning. Pronunciation is vital to proper communication because the
incorrect use of pronunciation certainly leads to the message being misunderstood by the
recipient. 
Many studies have demonstrated that pronunciation is the main aspect of speaking. In the
teaching-learning process, the learners may face some difficulties, one of them is difficulty in
pronouncing English words. As a result, making mistakes in pronouncing English English
pronunciation is common because they are not used to say it yet. They are unused to speaking
it.
My first- year non-English major students did not learn more in the past but now they are
studying accountant accountancy so they need to learn English as ESL, especially when they
succeed in communicating in English, they will get a better job in the future.
I have been exploring with the reasons for this, most of my students learn English grammar
from books. That’s why their sense of stress remains undeveloped. This It should be kept in
mind that English words are pronounced with one dominant syllable while the other syllables
tend to get squashed and reduced. Moreover, they did not have many chances to approach
listen to native speakers’ pronunciation. 
A common mistake made by my students studying English as a second language is not paying
adequate attention to English pronunciation. This underestimation of the importance of
pronunciation is mainly because students tend to think mistakenly that pronunciation is less
important compared to other aspects of the English language such as grammar, lexicology, and
vocabulary.
In my private Personally, I know that the proper use of English pronunciation is inclined
towards highlighting and adding value to an individual speaking English. Almost all of my
students’ grammar and vocabulary are quite good; they able to write in English, but will not be

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 An action research project on using the ELSA software to improve first- year non- English
major students’ stress and intonation in speaking skill at a University in Hanoi.

able to create a meaningful sentence when speaking and thus fail to communicate a message
because they lack knowledge awareness of correct pronunciation.

1. Purposes of the study  

The main purpose of this research is to enhance English word stress and intonation in speaking
for first-year non-English students at a University in Hanoi. Its has main resolutions as
follows: 
- To recognize the importance of stress and intonation in English and help my students have
more sensitive to intonation so that they have a better understanding of the English they hear
and greater confidence. 
- To identify stress patterns.
- To adventure understand the software program, namely ELSA as an intervention in
pronunciation lessons to improve students’ word stress. 
3. Research questions

Since I have found the importance of stress as well as intonation in English teaching, I have
made the conducted research to solve this statement, this study is organized to unravel the
problem: ‘what is the benefit of using software to improve the first-year non-English students’
word stress and intonation?’
1. To what extent did the students improve their stress and intonation performance after the
application of the Elsa software?     
2. What difficulties did the teacher encounter when using the Elsa software to improve the
students’ stress and intonation performance?    
3. What were the students' attitudes toward using the software to improve their stress and
intonation performance?  
4. Scope of the study 
The study concentrates on a group of first-year non-English majors who are learning
accountant at the Vietnam National University of Agriculture by using the pronunciation
software named ELSA. 
5. Methods of the study

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 An action research project on using the ELSA software to improve first- year non- English
major students’ stress and intonation in speaking skill at a University in Hanoi.

A combination of different implements such as the speaking test, interview, and audio-
recording is used. The data collected from the interview will be analyzed by the qualitative
method, and the data collected through the tape scripts will be analyzed by a quantitative
method. 
6. Significance of the study
 Although There are a lot of studies on pronunciation teaching and the use of software in
pronunciation teaching has been already conducted. However, there is not much in-depth
discussions of stress and intonation. This study provides an insight into the effectiveness of
applying pronunciation software in teaching and improving stress for first-year non- English
students. Therefore, the study’s results will value benefit both teachers and students who are
considering and caring concerned with about the use of software programs to improve their
English pronunciation.
7. Structure of the thesis 
The study consists of three main parts. The first part deals with rationale, purposes, research
questions, scope, methods, and design of the study. The second part contains three chapters, in
which chapter 1 reviews the literature focusing on the theoretical basis related to teaching
word stress and using programs ELSA in language learning and teaching, chapter 2 presents a
detailed description of the research methodology and chapter 3 discusses the findings of the
study. The final part summarizes all the main ideas expressed throughout the research,
provides pedagogical …??
CHAPTER II. DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ??

Chapter I. Literature review

1.1. What is Stress

According to Avery & Ehrlic (1992), stress is an important dimension of English

pronunciation, it involves making vowels longer and louder. In many other languages, stress
involves simply making vowels louder or saying them at a higher pitch. Stress is an important
feature of English pronunciation and to become a powerful communicator of English one
needs proficiency while using different stress patterns in his communication. In the field of

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 An action research project on using the ELSA software to improve first- year non- English
major students’ stress and intonation in speaking skill at a University in Hanoi.

trade and commerce, travel and tourism, banking, administration, aviation and above all
education, English has become necessary for everyday affairs of the modern world…

……………….

1.2. The aspect of stress teaching

1.2.1. Word stress
Word stress refers to syllables which would be marked as stress if stress were marked in a
lexicon or dictionary and which therefore have a potential for accent. 
Word stress heavily effects to the sounds of the vowels in a word. Different word stress can
make a word sound completely different. Native speakers rely on word stress to identify
words. Thus, incorrect word stress patterns can lead to miscommunication between non-native
speakers and native speakers. That is a reason why Kelly (2000) states that it would be
practical to base our teaching principle on a two-level division (stressed or unstressed).
Cruttenden Alan (1986) stated that many languages have word stress commonly in a position
on almost all words, Finnish and Czech have the stress on the first syllable, welsh and Spanish
on next to last syllable and French and Turkish on the final syllable.  
1.2.2. Sentence stress,

Placement of stress in sentence

Avery and Ehrlich expressed that English words can be divided into two groups, there are
content words and function words. Contents words are those words that indicate self-
regulating meaning and function words are those words that have a little or no meaning in
themselves, as is shown here:

Content words Function words

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 An action research project on using the ELSA software to improve first- year non- English
major students’ stress and intonation in speaking skill at a University in Hanoi.

Noun Articles (a, an, the)

Main verbs Preposition (at, to, in)
Adverbs (late, hard, well) Auxiliaries (will, have and form of the verb be)
Adjectives (nice, kind, fine) Pronouns (him, her, them, it)
Question words (what, where, why) Conjunction (and, or, that, as)
Demonstrative (this, that, these, those) Relative pronouns (that, which, who)

1.2.3. Importance of Intonation in English 

1.2.4. Role of word stress in language learning

Intonation plays a very important role in high communication (Setter,

Stojanovik, Van Ewijk & Moreland, 2007); however, Halliday (1970) points out, intonation is
both

a matter of making oneself understood and having excellent pronunciation, and a way of
expressing

different meanings. In social interaction, the use of intonation signals turn-taking, i.e., giving
the

floor to another person (Brazil, 1994). It also functions to mark grammar, emphasis, and, as

an attitudinal marker, it can reveal the speakers’ emotions, such as happiness, surprise, anger,

and so on (Clennell, 1997). Jenkins (2000) emphasizes that suitable placement of the

nuclear syllable to draw the listener’s attention to salient items in the stream of speech greatly

influences a speaker’s success (or intelligibility) in conversations, and includes this aspect as

one of the very few suprasegmental features in the Lingua Franca Core.

1.2.5. Stress rules in English

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 An action research project on using the ELSA software to improve first- year non- English
major students’ stress and intonation in speaking skill at a University in Hanoi.

Stress rules in English are of vital importance since it is not always the same syllable of any
given word which is stressed. There are two different

basic approaches that have emerged in the research field to deal with stress rules in

English: Chomsky and Halle (1968), who offer complex phonologically-based rules, and

Garde (1968), who presents stress rules with respect to affixation. Garde‟s work was

embraced by, among others, Guierre (1979, 1984, 1985), Fudge (1984), and Fournier

(2007). Chomsky and Halle (1968) outline phonological rules that rely mainly on

syllable weight and the notion of lax vs. tense vowels. Chomsky and Halle‟s main stress

the rule is summed up in this formula (Chomsky and Halle, 1968, p. 109):

Although this phonological rule may represent extremely valuable information

regarding the understanding of stress rules in English phonologically, its complexity

renders it difficult to memorize and ever more difficult for second language learners to

apply when they speak.

3.1. Context of the study

The research was conducted at Vietnamese agricultural academy. This is a multi-disciplinary

university, in which English is one of the training majors. Students are not primarily
specialized in English, school year 2009-2010. During the first semester, speaking is not
designed into a separate subject but is integrated into all four skills taught within 15 weeks
with 3 periods / week. The study book used is “Let's talk 1” by Leo Jones, Cambridge
University Press 2002. My observations at the beginning of the week and the second week of
the semester show many errors in pronunciation and stress due to students from different
regions of the country. You Participants speak English like as if reading it, and lack the
spontaneity of the language. So I decided to give them a training contract using software
packages vividly enough to change their long-standing flaws.

3.2. Argument for the use of an action research

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 An action research project on using the ELSA software to improve first- year non- English
major students’ stress and intonation in speaking skill at a University in Hanoi.

3.3. Description of the software program

ELSA is the application that I want to recommend.

This program is available for iOS and Android with free cost free of charge, whilst and ELSA
Pro subscriptions are available for $2.50/month.

Some informations about it are can be found below:

Before you start speaking English, you’ve got to focus on your pronunciation. ELSA—which
stands for English Language Speech Assistant—is an interactive speaking app that helps you
speak English better by fine tuning your pronunciation.

When you begin learning, ELSA asks your native language to sense how your English
pronunciation might be. Then, it presents you with a few common phrases and words, and
listens to your own pronunciation of them.

Once that’s done, ELSA starts teaching you specific syllables and sounds that you’re having
trouble with.

ELSA’s program was designed by experts in communication and speech coaching and this app
is free to download.

3.4. Participants

3.5. Instruments

I used all of my eight lessons to observe and collect data on the progress of my students during
the intervention. Three different methods were used, where classroom observations and
informal interviews with students were carried out during the application of software to
speaking skills and the recording method was used at the time. start as a pre-test and end as a
post-test. ?? My observations fall into focus on the following aspects: - Students' word and
sentence stress. - Students' intonation. My observations were recorded in my teaching diary
after each lesson. Close Following the formal interviews, with students During the time of
doing that research, I conducted a number of informal interviews with my students during

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 An action research project on using the ELSA software to improve first- year non- English
major students’ stress and intonation in speaking skill at a University in Hanoi.

class breaks. I am interested in his their attitude about towards the application of the software
and its effectiveness. I subsequently used use the information obtained from my students to
include in my teaching journals. Recording Audio recording is the main tool that I used in this
research. The purpose of the first recording is to find errors in accent and intonation in
speaking. The second audio recording aims to investigate the effectiveness of using CALL
software in teaching pronunciation.

3.6. Procedure

This study was conducted during the first semester of the 2020-2021 school year. Students
were given a test to determine their current stress and intonation situation. After that, Elsa
software was applied. In audio and speaking classes, teachers have used a software package
called Elsa Speak to provide instructors with clear learning on how to pronounce different
sounds, how to stress important sounds in words or in sentences, say speak in the the correct
rhythm and tone in English. Then, students work with the help of software to achieve a
standard pronunciation like a native. After eight lessons, a test is administered to these learners
to discover whether these measures are discoverable observable and have a positive effect on
their pronunciation. In order to capture identify the initial situation of each student, right at the
beginning of the software application, the teacher used the recording method to record the
situation of each student during that process. Often short interviews are recorded during
breaks. By relying on interviews as well as taking notes through each lesson. The evaluation of
the effectiveness of software to teach stress and intonation has been completed.
CHAPTER 4. DATA ANALYSIS, FINDING AND DISCUSION

4.1. The improvement

4.1.1. Finding pre- test

The speaking test is formed based on the non-English majors of A2 level students. Taking
place in the second week of the first semester of the first year, two students were allowed to
participate in an interview with different questions. The content of the test was to interview

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 An action research project on using the ELSA software to improve first- year non- English
major students’ stress and intonation in speaking skill at a University in Hanoi.

students directly with questions related to themselves, hobbies and talked about their friends or
family. The simple questions were designed to be suitable for students' levels.

4.2. The difficulties

4.3. The student’s attitude

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION

1. Summary
Up to now, this study has answered three research questions about the most common student
problems related to stress and intonation such as to what extent did the students improve their
stress and intonation performance after the application. of the Elsa software, what difficulties
did the teacher encounter when using the Elsa software to improve the students' stress and
intonation performance, what were the students' attitudes towards using the software to
improve their stress and intonation performance. An action research project was carried out in
the 1st semester speaking and pronunciation course for 18 first-year non-majors of the
agricultural university's department of agriculture. The project involved exploiting employing
Elsa speak software to provide students with clear instructions on English sounds, word stress,
sentence stress, and rhythm and intonation. Tools used to collect data include the best-looking
test at the beginning and end of the semester, classroom observations, and informal interviews
with students. Initial investigations showed that stress, rhythm, and intonation were the
students' weak points. The intervention process took place from week 2 to week 10 of the first
semester. Although Despite some limitations such as observing non-English major students,
who did not learn much English since high school, however, students still made improvements
in their academics. Aspects of stress and intonation as well as problem presentation in
speaking skills.

2. Pedagogical implication

The findings of the study implicate that

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 An action research project on using the ELSA software to improve first- year non- English
major students’ stress and intonation in speaking skill at a University in Hanoi.

- CALL software packages should be integrated in teaching and learning English

pronunciation in order to increase the quality of EFL education as well as to keep along remain
current with the present teaching trend in the world.

- Technical investment for English teaching and learning should be paid more attention. For
the time being, there is only a single LAB room which is fully equipped with computers at
Hong Duc university. More classrooms like this one should be installed so that all the English
majors of Foreign Language Department have opportunity to learn English in a new learning
environment.

- During the first lessons with the application of CALL software packages, the students
could may face some difficulties with the computers. The teacher should take this into
consideration before using the software and be ready to give the needy students timely support
to students in need of it.

- This study can be used as a reference source for teachers, learners and those interested in
using software programs in teaching and learning English pronunciation.

3. Limitations of the study

Although the study has some beneficial contributions to the pronunciation teaching and
learning, it still has some limitations as follows.

First, as an action research with its typical characteristic defined as ‘situational’, this study is
prone to lack generalization. The intervention has worked quite successfully in the researcher’s
class but may not be applied to other classes in other contexts. This research, therefore, has
unavoidable limited application.

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 An action research project on using the ELSA software to improve first- year non- English
major students’ stress and intonation in speaking skill at a University in Hanoi.

Furthermore, since the researcher could not control all the variables and constructs during the
research project, the question whether software can improve students’ pronunciation is still not
absolutely entirely answered. Students’ improvement may result from other factors such as
their high motivation, time devotion, learning from other classes or self-learning, ect…

Last but not least, the size of the study is rather small with only 30 first-year English major
students. This number is not enough to have a full understanding of pronunciation difficulties
that first-year English majors encounter.

4. Suggestions for further research

Through this research, I have formed some directions for future research development (1)
After studying English majors in the first year for non-majors of Agricultural University, it is
necessary to continue studying non-English majors at some other universities. Then the
effectiveness of using Elsa software in teaching English accent and intonation will be
evaluated more accurately. (2) Besides Elsa software, there are other software used to practice
English pronunciation in general and intonation in particular. The effectiveness of these
packages needs to be tested so that they can be widely used in EFL teaching and learning. It is
hoped that this study and subsequent studies will make it easier for students to learn English
by themselves and improve their speaking skills with stress and intonation

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