APPLYING ENGLISH SONG ACTIVITIES TO DEVELOP CONNECTED SPEECH IN ENGLISH OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDENTS, PHRANAKORN RAJABHAT UNIVERSITY

Abstract

This study aimed to 1) develop the ability in pronouncing connected speech in English of English students who were taught by using English song activities and 2) examine students’ satisfaction towards teaching and learning English Phonetics Course using English song activities. The participants were 60, first year students who enrolled in the English Phonetics Course at PNRU in the second semester of the 2018 academic year. Thirty students were obtained by means of purposive sampling. The experiment period was 6 weeks. The research instruments consisted of 1) a course outline 2) a pre-test and a post-test on pronunciation of connected speech in English 3) English song activities and 4) a questionnaire for gaining feedback on students’ satisfaction towards the English song activities used to promote connected speech in English pronunciation through English song activities. The statistics used for analyzing data were Means and Standard Deviation (SD). A t-test for dependent samples was employed to compare the students’ pre-test and post-test achievement score of connected speech in English through English song activities. During the first week of the experiment, the pre-test was administered to the students. During the second week, they learnt a unit of connected speech and did the exercises. During the third week and until the fifth week, they listened to and studied the connected speech from the song. In week 6 the students took the post-test and completed the questionnaire.

The findings were that the students’ post-test score was higher than the pre-test, at the 0.05 level of significance.Also, the overall satisfaction towards applying English song activities to develop connected speech in English was in the highest level.