Common errors in English pronunciation of firstyear English –majored students at Thuong Mai university

Common errors in English pronunciation of firstyear English –majored students at Thuong Mai university Common errors in English pronunciation of firstyear English –majored students at Thuong Mai university Common errors in English pronunciation of firstyear English –majored students at Thuong Mai university Common errors in English pronunciation of firstyear English –majored students at Thuong Mai university Common errors in English pronunciation of firstyear English –majored students at Thuong Mai university Common errors in English pronunciation of firstyear English –majored students at Thuong Mai university Common errors in English pronunciation of firstyear English –majored students at Thuong Mai university Common errors in English pronunciation of firstyear English –majored students at Thuong Mai university Common errors in English pronunciation of firstyear English –majored students at Thuong Mai university Common errors in English pronunciation of firstyear English –majored students at Thuong Mai university Common errors in English pronunciation of firstyear English –majored students at Thuong Mai university

ABSTRACT Today, English plays an important role in all areas of life, especially in international integration All skills in English are very important But one of the most important skills is pronunciation In fact, there are still a lot of English learners' pronunciation mistakes, creating language barriers that prevent them from integrating into the outside world A large number of students majoring in English at the Thuong Mai University are also facing these problems This greatly affects the students' learning of other subjects such as listening, speaking, reading, translating, etc, as well as creating many limitations in speaking with native speakers Because pronunciation is a very important factor in listening and speaking English In this study, the author studied the typical pronunciation errors of first-year Englishmajored students at TMU, then suggested English department students in general and first-year English students in particular number of ways to improve their pronunciation as much as possible Questionnaire data were collected from 50 students of K56N Findings indicate that first - year English majored students are more likely to make pronunciation mistakes with vowels and consonants, endinh sound and stress However, they still not have a really effective method to improve their pronunciation errors So, as a 4th year student, the author hopes that this research will partly help students learn better 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This Graduation Paper would not have been accomplished without the guidance and help of some people, who in one way or another, contributed and extended their valuable assistance in the preparation and completion of this study In the process of completing this graduation paper, I have faced up with many problems However, with the great help, assistance and encouragement from this people who are teachers, family and friends; I have overcome these difficulties and completed this graduation paper successfully First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Ms.Ha Thi Vu Ha, one of the lecturers at the Faculty of Business English in Thuong Mai university, whose supervision and encouragement help me a lot with managing this Graduation Paper She has not only given me many invaluable suggestions and comments but also provided me with valuable materials Through Ms.Ha sharing and feedbacks, I was inspired and motivated to overcome all the difficulties during the process Secondly, I would like to thank all teachers of English Faculty at Thuong Mai University for their precious and useful lessons during my four-year study which have been then the foundation of this study In addition, my sincere thanks are delivered to my parents and friends for their encouragement and assistance in this time, without whose help I could not to have finished this Graduation Paper.And The last thank I would like to spend for all of you who are interested in this topic I hope that it will bring some of usefulness to you Because of limited time, knowledge and practical experience, this Graduation Paper certainly contains numerous mistakes.Therefore, I honestly look forward to receiving comments and suggestions All of the feedbacks and recommendations from readers are warmly welcome and this will make the Graduation Paper be more perfect Ha Noi, April 16 th, 2021 Hoàng Thị Tâm 2 TABLE OF CONTENT LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS TMU Q&A Thương Mai University Question and Answer 3 LIST OF TABLE AND CHART 4 LIST OF FIGURE 5 CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rational We all know that English is not only a language but also an important weapon in today's daily life The English language is growing strongly all over the world Everyone is rushing to learn English, English centers are mushrooming, the number of students choosing English as their major is also increasing Therefore, we can say that the importance of this language has never declined but only increased English has become a means of communication in everyday life As we all know, if you want to develop the English language, the development of English pronunciation is indispensable, it is also a very important factor to create a good and solid foundation of English for all learners It directly affects learning basic English to grasp a foreign language, especially listening and speaking Thus, it can be said that improving pronunciation is an extremely practical, necessary, and meaningful thing for all English learners, helping English learners progress every day However, the current status of teaching and learning this skill has been ignored and received little attention for a long time Besides, the majority of learners not really pay attention to correct pronunciation and improve their pronunciation Some students not even realize their problem with pronunciation of English words In fact, Vietnamese students in general, and first-year students majoring in English from Vietnam University of Commerce in particular still have many difficulties in English pronunciation, there are many pronunciation errors that freshman students Department of Business English, like word and sentence stress intonation, length of vowel sounds, ending sounds, etc To help students pronounce better each day, this study will identify the mistakes, the causes of them, as well as the barriers and difficulties in English pronunciation of freshmen , who are directly learning and using English in the practical working environment later Also, studying these English pronunciation errors will help students become well aware of their pronunciation problems to which they might not have paid any attention before On that basis, the study will propose a number of solutions to improve the pronunciation ability of this student object From the reasons mentioned above, to 6 improve student pronunciation, the researcher has decided to carry out the study entitled “Common errors in English pronunciation of first-year English –majored students at Thuong Mai university” 1.2 Previous study 1.2.1 Studies abroad Study “Pronunciation Errors of Turkish Learners of English: Conceptualization Theory as a Teaching Method” of Savaş Geylanioğlu, Kenan Dikilitaş Research data was collected with the participation of 30 students, the study highlighted the role of cognitive aspects and emphasized that most difficult pronunciation is related to cognitive causes rather than physical causes or joint More specifically, the cause of pronunciation problems is that teachers not encourage conceptualization of pronunciation Formulating these concepts requires being able to know how to distinguish, organize a person, and manipulate English sounds clearly During concept formation, learners are taught a combination of theoretical and practical sound knowledge This is supposed to improve learners' ability to manipulate them more easily The study also found that pronunciation teaching is ignored in learning English Research suggests that teachers must consider the conceptual properties of sounds in order for learners to learn conceptual models of the target's language sound In addition, the learner needs to understand detailed knowledge of how these sounds can be pronounced Besides, the study has considered the factors affecting pronunciation learning and identified the needs of learners and proposed solutions The author concludes that teachers should highlight and teach sound elements such as syllables, stress and intonation to help learners understand important and essential features of the sound system in the target language Research also shows that learners not consider English pronunciation an important factor, they neglect and not practice good pronunciation At the same time, the teacher did not pay much attention to pronunciation practice (In order for learners to gain a good level of pronunciation andunderstand speech, therefore, we should teach sounds within sentential level using larger chunks ofcontextualized texts By only repeating the words, as in “AAM method” the learners may require a longer period to gain the true 7 pronunciation of that word, however once the conceptualizationphenomenon comes in the way, we may find that it might be easier to pronounce it correctly in ashorter period of time Studies show that there are fossilized habits of pronunciation of English sounds due to factors ranging from poor awareness of the importance of pronunciation in learning English Make the rules of the stress patterns if the learner doesn't really understand what stress is and what intonation is Make sure they distinguish between consonants and vowels of the language Learners will only understand the truth about pronunciation when they are fully able to separate the forms of sound systems precisely giving them the amount of time and good practice The second study abroad related to pronunciation which i refer is that "Teaching English intonation to ESL / EFL students", Mehmet Celik (2001) gave an English intonation framework as a second language for speakers English is not a native speaker The English intonation framework should include the four main intonation features such as intonation unit, stress, tone and pitch range Therefore, intonation phenomena in English need a part of pronunciation, intonation unit, as a basis for studying types of transitions and characteristics of voice Furthermore, intonation units often have one of the tones such as low-rise, high-rise, fall and fallrise Tones assigned to intonation units must be spoken at one of the three levels, high, mid, and low While this framework may be approved to be useful and understandable to those practicing pronunciation, it seems quite general and theoretical For perfect pronunciation, English learners need to focus on many different aspects such as intonation, stress, vowels, consonants, ending sounds Besides, it is also very important that the pronunciation of the vowels and consonants are presented because they seem to be the basics in the pronunciation learning process 1.2.2 Studies in Vietnam The study “pronunciation errors made by four year students of English at Vinh university and suggest solutions” of Nguyen Thi Hong Anh Research to find the pronunciation errors of 4th year students of Vinh University The results of the pronunciation mistakes students often make are the errors related to vowels and 8 errors related to consonants The research writer described these sounds and analyzed them clearly The study also cited the reasons for this mispronouncement that is making myths about who can teach students, students are not aware of the importance of English pronunciation, in addition to students' pronunciation Negative pronunciation is also partly due to the lack of attention from teachers and it is also important that students' mispronouncements are influenced by their native language The study also recommends a number of solutions for individuals and groups that help them improve their pronunciation better The second study is the topic "Survey of English pronunciation errors of first year students of the Thuong Mai University " by Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen, Research to find out the pronunciation errors of first year students of the University, the cause of these errors and propose some solutions to improve the pronunciation accuracy of this student, while contributing to improve the quality of teaching English modules in school Through learning the basic concepts related to pronunciation such as: pronunciation concept, syllable, stress, magic language, magic, characteristics of the English sound system, the author has conducted integrating the two sound systems of English and Vietnamese as a scientific basis to identify students' pronunciation errors more accurately Research is conducted with first-year students K52 and first-year students of International Education, and a number of teachers in the Faculty The survey results show that English Faculty students often make the following pronunciation mistakes: unable to distinguish short vowels, long vowels and difficult vowels that are not in Vietnamese, errors of mispronouncing the sub the sound is not in Vietnamese, and the final consonant is not read, incorrect way to read the final consonant of the post-ancestral form -s, -ed, error stress (word and sentence), intonation error The cause of these errors is that students lack pronunciation practice, lack of equipment and facilities when learning phonetics in particular and English subjects in general, old pronunciation habits, affecting of the dialect and so on The study also proposes a number of solutions to help students pronounce better 9 1.3 Aim of the study The research is carried out for the following purposes: First of all, Research shows the importance of English pronunciation in learning and communicating in English so that learners can pay more attention to pronunciation Second, the study finds the factors that affect pronunciation learning, as well as find out the causes affecting the pronunciation of first-year business English faculty On that basis, research proposes and gives reasonable solutions to help students' pronunciation better, improve more clearly, more effectively and help freshmen confidently communicate in english Finally, this study can be very valuable for the first year English majored students of the of Thuong Mai University in perfecting English communication skills for a strong foundation that complements the next semester 1.4 Research subjects In my research, the subject of study is the common pronunciation mistakes that commercial freshman college students make Obviously , good English pronunciation will help us have good English communication and helps learners to speak English like a native It is essential in English as well as in all other languages Common English pronunciation errors are not only present in students of other faculties, but also in students of English Major They also often make very basic English pronunciation mistakes Therefore, with the research subjects, I will focus on researching and finding out the mistakes that the first year students of the Business English Department often make when they pronounce and communicate in English From there, proposing appropriate solutions to learn to improve their pronunciation, helping to study and work after graduation 1.5 Scope of the study There are many different resources, which require a lot of time and effort while limited personal experience Therefore, this study cannot go into all aspects of English pronunciation, it can only focus on studying some common pronunciation mistakes freshman English -majored students of Thuong mai University , then identifying The reasons to propose solutions to improve English pronunciation This study conducted an internet questionnaire survey with the participation of freshmen 10 10 10 listen to it as a way to improve their English pronunciation skills There are 17 students equivalent to 34% of students have never used this method and only 12% of children often apply this method with the aim of making English pronunciation more fluent and effective and better There are 14% students who always use this method to improve their English pronunciation Last method is self-practicing pronunciation through some channels such as youtube, radio, dictionary, etc and 20 are two numbers that reflect the number of students who always or often use channels such as youtube, radio, dictionary to practice English pronunciation skill The number of students who sometimes use this method is 13, accounting for 26% of the participants There are students have never used these channels as a means to learn English pronunciation Question 13: How you assess of your pronunciation skill improving methods? Chart Assessment of the pronounciation skill improving methods The number of students who felt that the methods they applied to improve their pronunciation were the least effective with 25 students, accounting for 50% The percentage of students who believe that the above methods have made them extremely effective in pronunciation is the lowest with 10% 14% of students feel ineffective when using the above methods and 26% of participants felt they were more confident with their pronunciation skills when they learned these methods because they felt it was effective 3.3 Possible causes: 3.3.1 Lacking of awareness of the importance of pronunciation From the results of the survey above, we can see that many students feel that their pronunciation is not decisive in their English learning Up to 60% of students think that pronunciation is not as important as listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills And only 10% of students feel that pronunciation is very important As such, general students and first-year students majoring in English at TMU lack awareness of the importance of pronunciation skills Pronunciation is an integral 41 41 41 part of language learning Pronunciation also makes more sense when we understand the relationship between pronunciation and other aspects of language use Lack of awareness of the importance of pronunciation is that we have overlooked an important part of helping us improve other English skills Students always try to learn their English well, but always only spend time on other skills but rarely spend time improving their pronunciation skills They always think that just learning skills like listening, speaking, reading, writing can be good at English, but they forget that pronunciation plays an extremely important role in not only learning the language but also communicating using that language So any learner who has the goal of learning English for the purpose of communication needs to learn English pronunciation 3.3.2 Teacher’s neglect of pronunciation One of the most interesting issues leading to pronunciation errors of students in general and TMU students in particular is neglect of their teachers about their students' pronunciation Not all English teachers are enthusiastic about correcting pronunciation errors for students in class For example, during the lecture hours or speaking tests, there are many teachers who not give comments or suggestions to students about their pronunciation skills, about their mistakes or how they need to be corrected The teacher always focuses on the content of the presentation but forgets to point out the students' pronunciation errors even though this does not take too much time of the lesson If teachers regularly comment on students' pronunciation, they will help them recognize their pronunciation errors and improve their English pronunciation skills better Thus, one of the reasons students not pronounce well is the neglect of teachers about pronunciation 3.3.3 Lack of knowledge of pronunciation rules One of the factors that helps learners pronounce well is to know and understand knowledge of pronunciation rules But most of the learners in general and the first-year English majored at TMU in particular cannot grasp all of this knowledge They forget or not know the location and pronunciation way, so they often confuse one sound with another Besides, they could not distinguish between 42 42 42 voiced and voiceless consonants Therefore, most people have wrong pronunciation, poor pronunciation skills This status can come from their time studying English in high school Students all find pronunciation difficult and boring, not feel interested in learning pronunciation, so paying attention and paying attention to learning about pronunciation ‘s rules also leads to very little that leads to not good pronunciation 3.3.4 Mother tongue interference The influence of the mother tongue is also one of the reasons why learners pronounce incorrectly or their pronunciation skills are not good First, English has many sounds that not appear in Vietnamese Second, English not only has many non-existent sounds in Vietnamese, but also ending sound while Vietnamese does not Vietnamese does not have any ending consonant sounds (for example, / r /, / l /, / v / ) This causes many difficulties for learners, English listeners, especially to distinguish words like "little" and "litter" Finally, English is a polyphonic language and has stress while Vietnamese is monosyllabic And according to the results of the survey, students also found that their native language has a huge effect on their pronunciation 3.3.5 Others There are also some other reasons such as students not spend much time on pronunciation practice, lack of motivation to learn pronunciation Motivation is one of the most important factors in doing something In learning English, without motivation, learners will never get good results Students feel that pronunciation is not important, feel that pronunciation is not necessary to serve learning English, as well as English pronunciation is too boring to make students have no motivation to learn Without motivation, you will not be able to improve your pronunciation skills to the best 3.4 Summary This study was conducted in the present with the participation of a small group of 50 first-year English- majored students at TMU Through 13 questions of the questionnaire survey, the author has an overview of the pronunciation skill of students There are a number of notable results and issues First of all, it is to 43 43 43 evaluate pronunciation skills and learn about common pronunciation mistakes of first year students majoring in business English at TMU and the real situation of English pronunciation in student learning In general, most students not have proper awareness of the importance of English pronunciation skills, with only 10% of students saying that English pronunciation is extremely important and up to 60% of students say that pronunciation is not as important as other skills After consulting students about pronunciation learning, the researcher began to exploit information about the students' learning situation Most people responded that they spent less than 30 minutes a day learning pronunciation This may be explained by the fact that more students spend time on other skills The findings of the survey questionnaire provide us with useful information about the real situation of students learning pronunciation During the learning process, students cannot avoid pronunciation difficulties, there are many difficult sounds to distinguish The survey results also revealed factors that influence learning English pronunciation of students Seven factors were identified in the questionnaire survey According to students' assessment, most of the factors affect learning English pronunciation.The factors that are very influential and influential are the influence of mother tongue, lacking of interaction with natives, the insufficient exposure to English in terms of time and quality, the priority of the other skills over pronunciation, the attitude towards English pronunciation skill This result tells the author that Students' English pronunciation learning is influenced by many different factors That proves why the majority of student pronunciation is average In the survey questionnaire, eight learning methods were listed by the researcher and students were asked to rate the effectiveness of those methods The results show that most people often use self- practicing pronunciation through some channels such as youtube, radio, dictionary and a few other methods, but it is not really effective However, given the methods in the survey, there are many students who never apply it to practice Therefore, it is not yet to accurately evaluate the effectiveness of those methods In the next chapter, the researcher will provide some recommendations and recommendations for TMU's students and teachers to help students improve their pronunciation 44 44 44 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 4.1 Limitations of the study The researcher has great efforts in choosing research methods,, and analyzing data to achieve the best results However, the study still has got several shortcomings First, I just chose fifty random students of K56N at TMU Therefore, it would be difficult to determine whether the results are the same when there is a larger number of samples The second, due to limitations in time and reference materials, the result of the study might be less convincing and it could not cover all types of errors in English pronunciation by first-year English - majored students Despite the above limitations, the researcher hopes that this research will contribute to the improvement of knowledge and English pronunciation skill for freshman of the business English major at TMU as well as all English learners 4.2 Suggestion for futher studies Based on the limitations of the research, it is essential to modify these limitations for further studies First, the study should expand to many universities to exact evaluations Further studies should be conducted with a larger number of students Second, further studies should interview or record the English pronunciation of some students to affirm correct research findings as the result make the study more persuasive Third, further studies should be conducted in a longer period and set up specific plans for conducting To sum up, the author hopes that there are other opportunities to continue the study on other aspects of this skill to help people improve their pronunciation best 4.3 Recommendations and suggestions for students 45 45 45 There are many suggested ways that students can easily find out in the phonetics course books to practice pronunciation What we attempt to present here are some suggested solutions that we find effective in our own experiences in practicing and learning pronunciation 4.3.1.Raising students’ awareness of the importance of English pronunciation skill Many students not have proper awareness of the importance of English pronunciation skill It is necessary to give examples to demonstrate the importance of this skill In addition, teachers should motivate students to learn English with some activities in class such as giving topics to students and speaking together, playing some mini games related to English pronunciation to Students can improve their pronunciation Teachers should also take the opportunity to praise students for doing the right thing, doing something well, working hard, and showing a positive attitude in learning Teachers can promptly correct the wrong pronunciation Furthermore, teachers can suggest some useful websites, some fun and interesting methods for students to enjoy learning pronunciation, and teachers should share the importance of English pronunciation for students so that they can have a better understanding of the importance of pronunciation in learning English 4.3.2 Practice pronunciation regularly a Doing pronunciation exercises After learning basic sounds of English, students can self- practice by doing the phonetics exercise These exercise will help students to recall and review the sounds they are taught and especially, to know the differences between the pair of sounds Students can find pronunciation exercises in the practice books such as matching words to suit sounds, counting sounds , distinguishing sounds, guess sounds exercises b Recording your own voice and listening again When we are busy focusing on how to pronounce correctly, it is difficult to know what mistakes we still need to fix So, please record and listen again for selfassessment This way makes it easier to identify which vocabulary or sound we need to pay more attention to practice 46 46 46 In addition, we can write up a script by ourselves to practice speaking Play the role of a salesman in the supermarket or imagine you chatting with your friends on the phone In those cases, what would you say? This not only helps you get used to the use of sentence patterns, but also allows you to create solutions when you encounter similar situations in real life, while also making you feel excised to speak and pronounce sounds Also, it helps us more assiduous to learn pronunciation Reading out loud is also a good method to enhance our pronunciation ability.Try recording yourself reading an online newspaper in The New York Times, for example Or read an excerpt from some interesting J.K Rowling story like Fantastic Beasts 4.3.3 Talking , listening to native speakers and trying to imitate their voice Students need to learn how to listen to native speaker's pronunciation and their own pronunciation to compare each other It will help students see the differences between the sounds of English and native language We may also be able to imitate the pronunciation and other qualities of speech more easily.Therefore, when listening to native speakers (talking to them , watching TV, watching a movie, listening to an audio book, listening to songs etc.), always pay attention to the sounds they pronounce and try to imitate them 4.4 Recommendation and suggestion for teacher and university Teachers and university play an important role in motivating learning English ability of students There are some below solutions that teachers and university can refer: Teachers should spend a lot of time giving advice and instruction to students During the speaking lessons or the presentation period, teachers should comment on students' pronunciation to students can improve well English pronunciation skill These connect with student goals It tells them how much progress they've made to achieve their goal and what else they need to to get there Besides, in order to help learners improve their English pronunciation skill, TMU should improve English training programs at the school Some strategies include renewing class competencies, upgrading and improving curriculum content 47 47 47 Ngoài ra,TMU should mở số lớp thực hành phát âm cho sinh viên Hopefully, that recommendation can be useful for TMU to educate the next high quality generation employees for the countries 48 48 48 CONCLUSION The importance of English is undeniable in modern society The fact is those who are good at English certainly have more opportunities to develop in their career than those with poor English Therefore, people should pay more attention to this international language, especially to English pronunciation skills Improving English pronunciation is an essential thing for everyone However, for most Vietnamese people in general and first-year English majored students in particular mastering this skill is not easy This research was conducted successfully with the cooperation of 50 K56N students The purpose of this study is to find out errors of English pronunciation made by freshmen English - majored students, to giving some recommendations to handle those problems From the results obtained in this study, it can be seen that many students make pronunciation mistakes related to vowels and consonants, stress, ending sounds All of these issues can be caused by lacking of awareness of the importance of pronunciation, teacher's neglect of pronunciation, lack of knowledge of pronunciation rules, mother tongue interference Thus, to overcome these problems, it is essential to raise students' awareness of the importance of communication reflex in learning English, practice pronunciation regularly, talk, listen to native speakers and trying to imitate their voice It is the best way to improve English pronunciation skill Due to the limitation of knowledge, experience, and reference materials, the researcher could not cover all of the errors in English pronunciation Also, this research could not generalize all of the Vietnamese students since the restriction of time and scope as well.Therefore, this graduation paper could have inevitable shortcomings Hopefully, this small thesis will be useful for Vietnamese students helping them enhance English pronunciation 49 49 49 REFERENCES James Carey 1992 - Communication as CultureISBN-13: 978-0415989763 Abbas, P.G (2011), Why is Pronunciation So Difficult to Learn? from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1080742.pdf Abercrombie, D (1991), Teaching pronunciation Avery,& Ehrlich (1992) Teaching American English pronunciation Oxford: University Press AMEP research centre (2002), Fact sheet - What is pronunciation? Celce-Murcia, M (1996), Teaching Pronunciation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Celik, M (2001), Teaching English Intonation to EFL/ESL Students From http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Celik-Intonation.html Morley, J (1991), Intelligible pronunciation is an essential component of communicative competence From https://www.academia.edu Mohammad S.H (2011), Barriers of Teaching Pronunciation, From https://tuhin.academia.edu 10 Nguyen, T.D (2015), Some common pronunciation problems facing Vietnamese learners English, Journal of Science and Training, 47- 50 Nunan, D (2003), Pratical English Language Teaching, McGraw- Hill: London 11 Paul, J.L (2008),Questionnaire 12 Nguyễn T.T.H ( 2017) Survey of English pronunciation errors of freshmen at Thuong Mai university 13 Kelly,G(2000) How to teach pronunciation London: Longman 14 Hughes,J.(2005,July) Listening skills and pronunciation , English teaching professional, 25-25, 39 15 Mehmet Celik (2001),"Teaching English intonation to ESL / EFL students" 15 Textbook "phonetics and phonology" page 6-21 16 https://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/word-stress https://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/sentence-stress APPENDIX Topic: A study on common errors in English pronunciation of first-year Business English -majored students at Thuong Mai University Hi everyone My name is Tam I am an undergraduate of English Faculty of Thuong Mai University I am dong a study on above topic for the graduation paper I would like to ask for your help with this questionnaire, which serves as the major source of data for my paper Therefore, please answer the questions as sincerely as possible Thank you for your cooperation! Part A: Background information about your English pronunciation skil Question What is your gender? A Female B Male Question What is your opinion about the importance of English pronunciation skill ? A Very important B Important C Quite important D Unimportant Question 3: Do you think English pronunciation is as important as skills like listening, speaking , reading and writing ? A yes B No Question 4.How you find pronouncing English? A Extremely difficult B Difficult C Normal D Easy Question How you evaluate your pronunciation skill? A Excellent B Good C Average D Bad Question How much time you spend practicing pronouncing English? A B C D I don’t practice at all Less than 30 minutes 30 minutes More than 30 minutes Part B: Student’s difficulties in English pronunciation learning Question The below table contains some factors affecting your English pronunciation skill Please show level of influence of each one on your English pronunciation skill Extremely influential 2.Very influential Relatively influential A little influential Uninfluential Factor The influence of mother tongue Lack of interaction with natives The insufficient exposure to English in terms of time and quality Insufficient technical support The priority of the other skills over pronunciation Lack of motivation The attitude towards English pronunciation skill Question 8: The below table consists of some aspects of pronunciation that cause difficulties for you Please show level of frequency of each one [1 Always; 2.Often; 3.Sometimes; Never] Aspects Always often sometimes never Vowel Consonant Word stress Sentence stress Ending sounds others Question Do you often make mistake when pronouncing these specific following sounds? Option Yes No Sound /i:/ /ɪ/ /ʊ/ /u:/ /æ/ /e/ /s/ /z/ /ð/ /θ/ /p/ /f/ /b/ /l/ /n/ Question 10 Among following pairs of sounds , please put a tick next to the pair(s) of sounds you find difficult to distinguish? ( you can choose more than one answer) e- æ ɒ- ʌ ə- ɜː ʊ- u: i- i: a: - ɔː s- z s- ʃ m-n g-w z- ð b-p Question 11 What teachers often comment on your English pronunciation during lectures or speaking tests? Part C: What are strategies you use when you practice English pronunciation? Question 12 The below table contains some methods to improve pronunciation skill Please show the level of frequency of each one that you apply (1 Always; 2.Often; 3.Sometimes; Never) Strategy Imitating native speakers Practicing with your friends Attending an English course Recording and listening your voice Self – practicing your pronunciation through some channels such as: Youtube, radio, dictionary, etc Question 13 How you assess of your pronunciation skill improving methods? A B C D Extremely effective Effective A bit effective Ineffective ... thinks that this factor does not affect their English pronunciation skills The lack of pronunciation motivation occurs in many students when learning English They often think that pronunciation. .. features, particularly stress and intonation ” 2.1.3 Definition of pronunciation error English pronunciation error is the wrong pronunciation of a word or sentence In addition, pronunciation errors. .. priority of the other skills over pronunciation F The attitude towards English pronunciation skill Chart Level of influence of factors on learning English pronunciation skill Learning English pronunciation