The use of English songs to improve the pronunciation of problematic English consonant sounds for Thai learners

Abstract

This study investigates (1) whether the use of English songs can improve students’ pronunciation of the ten problematic English consonant phonemes that do not exist in Thai, /ɡ/, /v/, /z/, /r/, /θ/, /ð/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /ʧ/, and /ʤ/, in comparison with the use of the direct-teaching method and (2) how much students improve their pronunciation of each phoneme with the two methods. Quasi-experimental research was conducted on 30 high-school students. Fifteen students were in the direct-teaching group (the control group) and the other 15 in the English-song group (the experimental group). Descriptive statistics, paired sample t-tests and independent sample t-tests were employed to measure the students’ pronunciation improvement after receiving instruction for 15 hours over five weeks. The results revealed two things. (1) Both methods could improve the students’ overall pronunciation of the problematic phonemes at a significant level of 0.05. However, the difference between the pre- and posttest scores of the direct-teaching group was a bit greater than the other group’s. (2) The use of English songs significantly improved student pronunciation of only six out of ten phonemes, while the direct-teaching method significantly improved eight phonemes. The most problematic phoneme for both groups was /ð/, and the least problematic one was /ʃ/. Thus, it can be seen that, although learning L2 pronunciation through songs alone can be effective, it is generally not as effective as the direct-teaching method, and it does not work for certain phonemes. Some important issues that could be involved are discussed.