A Study on the Pronunciation Proficiency of the Students of Grade Five

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to find out the pronunciationproficiency of the students of grade five at segmental and lexical level.Similarly, the study was focused to compare their pronunciation ability interms of text, sex, linguistic background, medium of instruction, schooland to point out some pedagogical implications of the findings of thestudy. To accomplish this task, the researcher selected the most frequenthundred lexical items from the textbook of grade four published byJEMC. Then, he prepared two sets of test items. Set A consisted of thelist of selected hundred lexical items in isolation and set B consisted thesame words in sentential contexts. The sentences were also extractedform the same textbook. As the sample popultion, he selected 64 studentsof grade five from eight different schools (4 English medium and 4Nepali medium) of Kathmandu on the basis of stratified randomsampling method focussing on their sex and linguistic background. Afterthe selectionof sample population, he administered the test on it. Herecorded the students' pronunciation of both sets of test items andtranscribed them. He checked their pronunciation in terms of theReceived Pronunciation version extracted from the CD of OxfordAdvanced learner's Dictionary (7 th ed.) and scored the correct ones and calculated the scores as the data for the study. He used different statisticaltools like mean, standard deviation, t-test etc. to carry out analysis and interpretation in terms of the aforementioned variables. From the analysis, the researcher found that the students' overall pronunciation proficiency is 51.53%. Students have shown better performance in words in sentential context in comparison to words in isolation, however, the level of difference between them was found IX insignificant. Furthermore, TBNS in term of linguistic background,female students in terms of sex, English medium students in terms of medium of instruction were found to be more proficient than their opponent groups. However, except English-Nepali medium schools,TBNS-IANS, Male-female distinction was found insignificant. From the analysis in terms of word types, monosyllabic words were found easier to the students in comparison to others. English fricatives were found more difficult to the Nepali learners in comparison to others. This research work comprises four chapters. Chapter one consistsof general background, review of the related literature, objectives andsignificance of the study. Chapter two deals with the methodology adopted to carry out thisstudy. This chapter incorporates sources of data, population of the study,sample population, sampling procedure, tools for data collection and limitation of the study. Chapter three consists of analysis and interpretation of the data.Analysis of data has been carried out in terms of text, sex, linguistic-background and medium of instruction. For that different statistical tool slike mean, standard deviation, t-test, percentile etc have been used. Chapter four deals with the findings and recommendations of thestudy.