The Effects of Explicit English Pronunciation Instruction on Listening Comprehension among Thai EFL Students Majoring in Airline Business

Abstract

Many different ways have been applied and different techniques and strategies have been used to develop listening comprehension of Thai EFL students. Over the past decade, there has been some research evidence that explicit pronunciation instruction could be beneficial in improving learners' listening abilities. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the effect, if any, of explicit pronunciation instruction on listening comprehension skills of tertiary level English as a foreign language (EFL) students. The participants of the study were 138 fourth year students who were majoring in airline business and had enrolled for the TOEIC Preparation course at a private university in Bangkok, Thailand. The participants were randomly put into two groups, an experimental group and a control group. The TOEIC Listening Test was used in the study to achieve homogeneity between the two groups and as a pre-test. In the control group, the students received a normal routine instruction as they always did while in the experimental group, in each session for one and a half hour, the teacher focused on the pronunciation practice of all the vowel and consonant sounds of the language, as well as stress, rhythm, intonation, linking, and other features of connected speech.  After 10 weeks of treatment, which was 15 hours of input, the students in both groups were tested again by another version of the TOEIC Listening Test. According to the findings, the development that the experimental group has performed is significantly higher than the control group. Thus, the results suggest that explicit pronunciation instruction has an effect on the listening comprehension skills of Thai EFL students.