General Linguistics

2010
University of Languages and International studies
Vietnam National University of Hanoi.

FULL NAME : PHẠM THỊ MINH TÂM

CLASS : ANH K19D

ARTICLE CRITIQUE NUMBER 2

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Chen, Hsuan-Yu & Gowsami, Jaya S (2008) The Impact of Phonetic and
Morphological Instruction on the Oral Proficiency of Spanish-speaking ESL Learners.
Asian EFL Journal, Special Edition, The First Asian Cebu Conference, August
2009 (PP 111-123) Asian Journal EFL Press.
The study was carried out to investigate the effect of phonetic and phonological
instruction on subjects' overall oral proficiency of the target phonemes as well as their
articulation of individual target phonemes. It was designed as a " Pre-post test" for 25
students at a private high school in South Texas. The results showed statistically
significant improvement in the oral proficiency of target phonemes of ESL learners
after the implementation of phonetic and phonologiacal instruction. Moreover, the
researchers worked out some pedagogical implications which may help Spanish-
speaking ESL students in the area of English oral proficiency.
Concerning the form of a research, this writing is pretty good. The writers
started with a clear abstract then an introduction. To guide readers toward the purposes
of the study, the researchers stated the need for phonological awareness and statement
of the problem, which was clever. The next strategies were arranged logically. The
"Pedagigical implications of the study" part was really necessary with such a "quasi-
experiment".
To dicusss the study in details, we should start with the third part " The need for
phonological awareness". The writers proved that phonological awareness is a
predictor of later reading success basing on the study of Badian, Jenkin & O'cConnor
and Scott. It is reasonable to mention this aspect. Readers will see the necessity for
conducting phonological instruction. However, the first intention of the researchers
was to investigate the impact of Phonetic and Phonology instruction on oral
proficiency. The questions are that why they did not mention the need of phonetic
awarness and why there was not the role of the instruction with speaking skill.
In the following strategy, the writers introduced the target sounds. They were
all consonants which were grouped in three categories, based on the sounds in Spanish
as it is spoken in Mexico and Texas. They were Sounds which differ in phonetic
feature, Sounds which differ in phonological behaviour and Sounds which are absent
in Spanish. Such arrangement sounds resionable but there is still something
unbalanced. Maybe discussion on vowels is also needed.
Let's take a look into the selection of subjects of this study. The subjects were
25 students chosen conveniently from a private high school in South Texas.This
number of participants was acceptable with such study. Nevertheless, the way
participants were selected may cause some wonder about equality in the level of
proficiency. The writers relied totally on the school's placement and scheduling
policies. A Secondary Level Proficiency Test should have been conducted before the
study.
The students received phonetic and phonologiacal instruction for ninety
minutes during each class session, five day a week and in a time of six weeks. This
time is long enough for reseachers to get reliable results. What's more, they applied a
variable instruction consisting of verbal instruction, handouts and power point
presentations. The instructor is qualified and the materials were used rationally.
The researchers collected the data basing on a quasi-experiment pre-post test.
They gave subjects pre-test and post-test which were identical in content and format.
The students' pronounciation in both tests were evaluated by an evaluator. As the
researchers were initially realized, this method of data collection would not offer a one
hundred scale. Besides, the tests were organized in word level and sentence level.
Sixty words containing the target sounds and seven meaningful sentences with words
having the target sounds in initial, middle and final positions were used in both pre and
post test. These steps were carried out carefully by the researchers in order to get the
most reliable results. Finally, the data was analized in SPSS Version 13 with a paired-
samples t-test and the writers were succsessful to persuade readers about their choice.
After analizing the data, the researchers were able to answer the reseach
questions and coming to a conclusion that phonetic and phonological instruction led to
statistically improvement in the students. Moreover, they introduced pedagogical
implementions of the study which offered particular points that should be noticed
when applying phonetic and phonological instruction for Spanish-speaking ESL
learners. That was a really helpful part.In general, this study is a good reference for
Spanish-speaking ESL learners.