IOSR Journal of Research & Method in Education (IOSR-JRME) e-ISSN: 2320–1959.p- ISSN: 2320–1940 Volume 9, Issue 2 Ser. III. (Mar. - Apr .2019), PP 49-63 www.iosrjournals.org DOI: 10.9790/1959-0902034963 www.iosrjournals.org 49 | Page Effectiveness of Teaching Vowel Sounds of English through the Exposition Strategy Lok Raj Sharma Associate Professor of English, Head of Faculty of Education, Makawanpur Multiple Campus, Hetauda, Nepal Corresponding Author: Lok Raj Sharma Abstract: The prime purpose of the research study is to scrutinize the effectiveness of teaching the vowel sounds of English through the exposition strategy. The researcher adopted a pre-experiment research method, especially one- group- pretest- posttest- design which encompassed a pretest measure followed by a treatment and a posttest for a single group. A set of hundred multiple choice question items were allotted to the mass of 38 students at Makawanpur Multiple Campus in Makawanpur District, Nepal in the Academic Year 2017-2018. The simple random sampling technique was employed to select 35 students out of 38 students who comprised the population for the study. The result revealed that there was a statistically significant difference between the Total Pretest Mean Score (M= 21.771, SD 6.526 and N 35) and the Total Posttest Mean Score (M= 47.742, SD= 7.369 and N= 35) of the students. The statistics of (df) 34, p. .05, the observed t-value 16.220 and the table t-value  2.032 at 0.05 significance level of the test evinced that teaching the vowel sounds through the exposition strategy was effective at this campus . This article is presumed to be helpful to those who are involved in teaching and learning vowel sounds of English. Keywords: Exposition, diphthongs, monophthongs, teaching, vowel. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date of Submission: 02-04-2019 Date of acceptance: 17-04-2019 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. Introduction Teaching speech sounds of foreign language to students is a tough task. English is a foreign language for Nepalese students who are taught to read and write, but they are hardly taught to speak or pronounce the words correctly. English stories, essays, poems, letters, dramas and grammar are taught to the students in general classes. But the speech sounds of English are taught to the students who study English as a major subject in the bachelor first year in the faculty of education at the colleges which are affiliated to Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal. The students are taught speech sounds of English under the chapter phonetics and phonology. It is a bitter reality that students find speech sounds difficult, strange and puzzling to learn. A few students remain in the classroom to listen to the teachers. It is very intricate for the teachers to convince and motivate their students to learn and apply their knowledge in their real life situation. There are several reasons for perceiving speech sounds as hard subject matters: Nepalese students are not exposed to speaking English language at home in their early stage; they are not exposed to correct pronunciation of English even at school with their teachers and friends; same spelling(s) may have multiple speech sounds; sound symbols are difficult to understand; students realize the inability of their mother tongue to support English language because of their dissimilar natures; students assume that language is a means of communication. If message is communicated anyway, there is no need to pronounce words correctly or speak in the way of the English native speakers; average students tend to study education; and the students are used to following the old habit of speaking and it is difficult for them to breach the old habit. The students should be taught speech sounds of English in their early stages, not only at the bachelor level. Connor (2000) remarks that “by the time we are grown up the habits of our own language are so strong that they are very difficult to break” (p.2). English is an eerie language. The same letter(s) may have multiple pronunciations. The “ea” is pronounced / e / in the word “head”, and / i: / in the word “pea”. The same sound / i: / is realized through different spellings such as ee, ea, ie, ei in the words bee, sea, field, receive. Such irregularities in pronunciation give birth to problems in the students for discerning correct pronunciation of the words. The researcher in this article has endeavored to provide the students of the bachelor level in the faculty of education with the basic vowel sounds of English, formation of vowel sounds with some spellings, classification of vowel sounds and four term description of vowel sounds. The researcher used the exposition strategy to teach 35 students for 30 periods. This article is supposed to be valuable to those who like to learn vowel sounds of English. The researcher as a teacher was curious to assess the effective of teaching general vowel sounds of English.