A STUDY ON COMMON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES IN COMMUNICATION AND PRESENTATION OF THIRDYEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH – THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

A STUDY ON COMMON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES IN COMMUNICATION AND PRESENTATION OF THIRDYEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH – THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON COMMON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES IN COMMUNICATION AND PRESENTATION OF THIRDYEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH – THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON COMMON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES IN COMMUNICATION AND PRESENTATION OF THIRDYEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH – THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON COMMON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES IN COMMUNICATION AND PRESENTATION OF THIRDYEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH – THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON COMMON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES IN COMMUNICATION AND PRESENTATION OF THIRDYEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH – THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON COMMON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES IN COMMUNICATION AND PRESENTATION OF THIRDYEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH – THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON COMMON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES IN COMMUNICATION AND PRESENTATION OF THIRDYEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH – THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON COMMON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES IN COMMUNICATION AND PRESENTATION OF THIRDYEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH – THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON COMMON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES IN COMMUNICATION AND PRESENTATION OF THIRDYEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH – THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON COMMON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES IN COMMUNICATION AND PRESENTATION OF THIRDYEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH – THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON COMMON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES IN COMMUNICATION AND PRESENTATION OF THIRDYEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH – THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON COMMON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES IN COMMUNICATION AND PRESENTATION OF THIRDYEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH – THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY ENGLISH FACULTY GRADUATION PAPER TOPIC: A STUDY ON COMMON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES IN COMMUNICATION AND PRESENTATION OF THIRD-YEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH – THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS Supervisor : Mrs Duong Thi Hong Tham, M.A Student : Le Thi Huyen Class : K53N3 Student code :17D170134 Hanoi - 2021 Hanoi - 2019 ACKNOWLEDGMENT During the period of conducting my graduation paper, I have received a plenty of enthusiastic help and support which have guided and encouraged me to overcome all difficulties and finish this hard but meaningful time Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation to the teachers of English Faculty at Thuong Mai University, who have imparted golden knowledge to me From these supports, I can improve my English skills and have good background to achieve my dreams Secondly, I sincerely thank to Mrs Duong Thi Hong Tham, M.A, my supervisor who has given me useful guidance and advice that finishing my graduation paper successfully Mrs Tham, along with her sharing and feedbacks, has been my inspiration as well as motivation to overcome all the obstacles and difficulties during the process Thirdly, I am grateful to all of the third year English major students of Thuong Mai University who contributed and had a warm co-operation to help me during the period I carried out my survey Last but not least, I am also grateful to my friends from the Thuong Mai University, who helped and encouraged me a lot when I was conducting my research, but whom I cannot all mention here due to the inconvenience of space Millions of thanks go to my beloved family whose financial support and spiritual encouragement contribute a significant part to the completion of the research In short, I really thank to all people helping me to finish this graduation thesis Hanoi, April, 2021 Huyen Le Thi Huyen ABSTRACT This paper was written for the purpose in studying English Pronunciation As a student of the English language, the author wishes to learn more about the aspects that influence language learners when they learn how to speak English Learners of English often expect to be able to speak that language like a native speaker However, they encounter many difficulties to achieve their aims One of the common factors that they find difficult is the pronunciation of another sound system Therefore, the author would like to explore some common mistakes and problems that Vietnamese students encounter when they learn to pronounce the English sounds so that students can study communicate more effectively The paper covers a number of frequent pronunciation difficulties that cause problems for the third year English major students at Thuong Mai University These difficulties include vowels, consonant, endings, stress and tones and some individual problems related to English learners The author finds this paper a useful reference source for students, who want to improve their pronunciation of English TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENT .2 ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS LIST OF TABLES, CHARTS AND FIGURES CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Previous studies 10 1.3 Aims of the study 11 1.4 Research subjects 12 1.5 Scope of study 12 1.6 Research methodology 12 1.7 Organization of the study 13 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 14 2.1 Definitions of pronunciation .14 2.2 The importance of pronunciation 16 2.3 Factors that affect pronunciation learning .16 2.4 The common errors in English pronunciation 18 2.5 Ending sounds .18 2.5.1 Definition 18 2.5.2 The importance of ending sounds .19 2.5.3 Classification of ending sounds 20 2.6 Consonants 20 2.6.1 Definition 20 2.6.2 The characteristics of consonants: 20 2.7 Problems with ending sounds and consonants 21 2.8 Word stress 23 2.8.1 Definition 23 2.8.2 The importance of word stress 24 2.8.3 Word stress rules in English 25 2.8.4 Common word stress errors .27 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS 29 3.1 Procedure of data collection .29 3.2 Findings and discussions: 29 3.2.1 Profile of the students: .29 3.2.2 The difficult part in speaking English .30 3.2.3 The importance of pronunciation in speaking English 30 3.2.4 The students’ level in speaking English 31 3.2.5 The frequency of mistakes made by the students 32 3.2.6 The pronunciation errors that students tend to meet when studying and speaking English 32 3.2.7 The reality of students’ skill in pronunciation 34 3.2.8 The evaluation on the difficulties in some aspects when speaking English in pronunciation 35 3.2.9 The reason why students make mistakes with ending sounds 36 3.2.10 Some solutions to improve English pronunciation of the students and avoid mistakes .37 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 38 4.1 How to improve your pronunciation? .38 4.1.1 Goals 38 4.1.2 Practice 38 4.1.3 Feedback 39 4.2 Suggested solutions to avoid consonants and ending sounds mistakes 40 4.3 Suggested solution to avoid stress and sentence stress mistakes 43 4.4 Limitations of the study 47 4.5 Suggestions for further studies 47 CONCLUSION 48 REFERENCES 49 APPENDICES .50 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS No Word MA TMU Meaning in English Master of Arts Thuong Mai university Meaning in Vietnamese Thạc si Đại học Thương Mại LIST OF TABLES, CHARTS AND FIGURES Figure 2.1 The organs of speech posted by RasidRitonga Table 2.1 Four consonant sounds in a final cluster .11 Table 2.2 Stress differentiation of different words 16 Table 2.3 Stress makes the correctness for the vocabulary 16 Table 2.4 Rules of Stress on first syllable .17 Table 2.5 Rules of Stress on last syllable 17 Table 2.6 Rules of Stress on second from end syllable 18 Table 2.7 Rules of Stress on third from end syllable 18 Table 2.8 Rules of Stress on compound word .19 Chart 3.1 The years that students have been studying English .21 Table 3.1 The most difficult part in speaking English 22 Chart 3.2 The importance of pronunciation in speaking English 22 Chart 3.3 The students’ level in speaking English 23 Chart 3.4 The frequency of mistakes made by the students 24 Chart 3.5 The pronunciation errors that students tend to meet when they study and speak English 24 Chart 3.6 The results of the recording about students’ reading .25 Table 3.2 The evaluation of students about pronunciation skills 26 Table 3.3 The evaluation on the difficulties in some aspects when speaking English in pronunciation .27 Chart 3.7 The reasons why students make mistakes with ending sounds .28 Chart 3.8 Students’ solutions to improve English pronunciation and avoid mistakes 29 CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale In modern world, being able to speaking a foreign language a lot of benefits such as making connection with people and knowing more about beautiful countries, places and life styles In recent years, Vietnam is constantly developing and integrating internationally, and English – the language of international communication is used very popularly Because of the importance of English, it is approved as one of the main subjects in many schools in Vietnam In order to use English fluently in work as well as communication, four essential English skills listening, speaking, reading and writing need to be learned, practiced and improved regularly Nevertheless, most people seem to focus on reading and writing than listening and speaking Students in secondary and high schools spend a lot of time on learning grammar and vocabularies for their tests and examinations but they learn by heart and forget quickly Practicing speaking seems not to be interesting because they think speaking is not useful for their tests therefore they are afraid of speaking English This is one of the reasons why students get difficulties and feel so shy when communicating in English In fact, there are several difficulties which people face to when they speak English such as pronunciation, linking, context of vocabulary, rhythm, and affecting of mother tongue However, pronunciation is regarded the most difficulty and it is crucial when people begin learning English After long time of observing and investigation, third year English major students at Thuong Mai University have difficult in pronouncing ending sounds, consonants and word stress which are the most common pronunciation mistakes Therefore, in order to study this problem profoundly, I have conducted the research entitled: “A study on common pronunciation mistakes in communication and presentation of third-year students at Faculty of English – Thuong Mai University and suggested solutions” The researcher hopes that this study will help students understand more about issues that they have gotten before and recommend some solutions to solve the problems and help them improve their pronunciation 1.2 Previous studies There are many popular studies related to this issue in the world and in Vietnam as well Jaroslav Ondráček had a study with the title “Problems in communication caused by mistakes in the pronunciation of English by Czechs” (April 11, 2011) The study was aimed to find out the mistakes in English pronunciation of first year students in English Department of the Faculty of Education at Masaryk University The research based on an analysis of the recordings made by 88 first year students English major in Faculty of Education at Masaryk University The recordings were analyzed by three assessors, two educated native speakers – one American, one English – who are NOT phonetically trained, plus the Czech assessor, who is Two aims of the research were to discover the students’ awareness of mistakes, attitudes to pronunciation; and to identify the perceived mistakes in Czech English pronunciation from the point of view of the typical native speaker, and to identify those features which most inhibit “comfortable intelligibility” The main problems of the study identified by the two native speakers derived from wrong word stress, words pronounced as if they were Czech and a general lack of clarity in diction In 2009, Fachun Zhang in China had a study on the subject named “A study of pronunciation problems of English in China” In this study, the author mentioned a number of factors that affect the pronunciation of the Chinese: interference of Chinese to English, stress factor in the target language, intonation factor in the target language, learners’ age, learners’ attitude and psychological factors and prior pronunciation instruction The author has mentioned the factors that affect English pronunciation of the Chinese, which are elements of the objective aspect that affect the pronunciation learning process Mostly in terms of language, grammar, and the differences in English and Chinese, these factors make it difficult for the Chinese to learn English pronunciation The author has expanded his research topic on English pronunciation In 2007, Nguyen Thi Thu Thao had a study with the title: “Difficulties of Vietnamese when pronouncing English” The study was an attempt to identify difficulties of Vietnamese in pronouncing English final consonants like native speakers The participants consist of five informants of various Vietnamese accents and proficiency in English were recorded inside and outside Vietnam then sent to the researcher by e-mail Special thing was five informants coming from four different cities of Vietnam: Hue, Ho Chi Minh City (two informants), West Highland and Ha Noi After analyzing, the author delivered an evaluation chart given in appendix to six native speakers of English to evaluate the data The results of the study showed that there have three main problems of the students in English pronunciation The first problem is omitting the ending sounds that was too difficult for Vietnamese people, especially semi-vowels before final consonants The second problem is reducing and moving the final consonants and clusters towards their first language to single unaspirated or nasals or semi-vowels And the last problem is adding schwa in final clusters “Difficulties in learning pronunciation encountered by the first year students of English major at Hanam Teachers’ Training College” is a research paper of Dao Thu Phuong in 2011 The participants consist of 80 freshmen of English department at Hanam Teachers’ Training College The study concentrated on three aims: investigating the first year students’ perception on learning English pronunciation; finding out what difficulties the first year students at Hanam Teachers’ Training College meet when they study English pronunciation; and offering possible solutions to help students overcome their difficulties in learning English pronunciation Results of the study revealed that attitude’s students are very important to learn English speaking skills Students should spend their time improving their English pronunciation as much as possible to expose to English All the studies showed the reader a more multidimensional view and to recognize the mistakes when learning English pronunciation So learners will be able to take corrective measures and improve their pronunciation skills And this study, researcher hope to contribute to the research treasure, clarify the subject as well as extend the view to the students 1.3 Aims of the study This study is to help the third year English major students at Thuong Mai University find out problems of the common mistakes in English pronunciation and improve their speaking English skills This study has two aims: Many English learners think that speaking fluently means they need to speak fast This is wrong Speaking too fast reinforces bad habits and makes the speaker sound nervous and indecisive Speaking slowly will give you time to breathe properly and think about what you want to say next Because it gives you time to think while you are speaking, you will feel more relaxed and be able to concentrate on making your English sound fantastic Third tip: Picture it Close your eyes and think about how to make a sound before saying it Visualize the positioning of your mouth and face If you have studied with the phonemic chart, think about the sound you are making and how it relates to other English phonemes If you have used diagrams of the mouth and tongue, think about the shape you need to make inside your mouth if you want to make the sound correctly Fourth tip: Get physical! Pronunciation is a physical skill You are teaching your mouth a new way to move and using different muscles Focus on difficult sounds each day Fifth tip: Watch yourself Stand in front of a mirror to see the placement of your tongue, lips, and shape of your mouth when you make certain sounds Compare what you see with a video of a native-speaker saying the same thing Sixth tip: Copy the experts There is no replacement for learning pronunciation from the experts – nativespeakers So listen! Listen to English radio programs and watch television and movies in English Imitate what you are hearing even if you are not sure what they are saying yet Therefore, the students need to practice speaking English many time to get it right, and even then they may not get it right every time Many people find that their pronunciation varies from day to day; sometimes it even seems to get worse However, if the students accept that there is no quick and easy solution, then they are probably less likely to become frustrated or to give up trying 4.1.3 Feedback When communicating, it is very important to check if other people understand you There are ways to check: First of all is look for signs People who you talk to might appear confused be following, or squinting their eyes, or staring at you They might also respond inappropriately with a comment that is not related to what you are saying In some cases, they might suddenly end the conversation The second is ask the people you talk to Ask other people to tell you when you make a mistake Ask them if you are unsure what you have said is clear or pronounced correctly Ask them if they want you to repeat what you said For example: “Have I said that clearly?” “Would you like me to say that again?” “I’m sorry, English pronunciation is a bit difficult for me I said “abcd” Did I pronounce that correctly?” The last one is make your listener comfortable It is important to remember that some people who are not used to speaking to people who have English as a second language feel embarrassed or perhaps a bit threatened if they not understand what they are being told In these situations, you can make the listener feel more comfortable by showing them that you realize that your pronunciation might make it difficult for them to understand you By showing that you are not embarrassed to talk about your pronunciation, it is likely that the person you are talking to will also feel more comfortable This will probably result in them feeling happy to help you with words or sound that you have difficulty with In other words, you can encourage the people you speak to, to help you monitor and modify the way you speak 4.2 Suggested solutions to avoid consonants and ending sounds mistakes As mentioned above, many students are afraid at speaking English, even they spent many years for learning grammar at school They just learn for passing the regular tests and examinations while they cannot use English in reality That is problem of not only students at TMU but also many other Vietnamese students They are bad at speaking because they are afraid of making mistakes, especially with pronunciation or stress Therefore, in order to help students with this problem, some suggested tips would be provided for improving their pronunciation and speaking skill There are some sample lessons that can be used to practice consonants in class rooms Lesson 1: ‘Hangman’: Consonant and vowel sounds Lesson type: Practice The teacher demonstrates the game by doing an example on the board with the whole class The game is played just like the normal ‘Hangman game, where players try to guess a word by suggesting letters it might contain In this version, however, they nominate phonemes For each ‘wrong guess made a line is drawn on the board/ page and these lines make up the form of a gallows with a ‘stick-man’ hanging from it A correct guess is acknowledged by writing the phoneme in its correct place within the word Wrong guesses can also be noted, so that they are not repeated The game is slightly more complicated than traditional ‘Hangman, because when using letters, there are only 26 to choose from, whereas there are 44 phonemes After the game has been demonstrated to the whole class, students can play their own games in pair or small groups The game can be made competitive if you wish, through awarding points for each word successfully guessed Alternatively, the teacher can also suggest particular words, in order to direct the practice towards particular phonemes The name can be played between individuals, or in teams Lesson 2: Phonemic word search: Consonant and vowel sounds Lesson type: Practice Materials: Word search grid This activity is a familiar one, where students search a grid for ‘hidden words’, but with the words written phonemically Words may appear horizontally, vertically, diagonally and also in reverse Although they take some preparation, it is worth spending some time devising them It is useful to have a few larger ones for general practice, and smaller ones which can be tailored for particular classes, either to practice particular phonemes, or to work on recently covered vocabulary The ability can also be used to introduce new words, particularly if tied to a subject area; for example, if students know that they are looking for ‘vegetable’ but not know the word /ˈkæb.ɪdʒ/ ‘cabbage’, finding it in the grid can neatly prompt the word for further work and practice The following sample is a vegetable grid The teacher demonstrates the ability by showing students the grid and asks them to find a word When one student offers a suggestion, the teacher makes sure that all the students can see the word The teacher then tells the students that the words can be found going in all directions and sets a time limit for activity The students can work on their handouts singly or in pairs As a follow up activity they can be asked to devise their own grids; this can be a marvelous way of focusing attention on phonemes Students can this in small groups, and their grids can be given to other groups to solve Lesson 4: Advertising slogans: Particular consonant sounds Lesson type: Practice Materials: Advertisements from magazines or newspapers or video of television advert The teacher shows students some popular or unknown advertisements from newspapers or magazines, or videotaped from the television, which include a catchy slogan used to advertise the particular product The teacher then asks the students to think up a new slogan for one of the products, but using the phoneme which the products’ name begins with as many times as possible Students are given a short time to this, and suggestions are elicited from the class and written up on the board If the suggestions not particularly work, the teacher can offer one or two of her/ his own The teacher then tells the students that their task is to think up a product which might be advertised using a slogan; the slogan must aim to include the target phoneme as many times as possible Here, a particular sound may be worked on, or the teacher may set phoneme targets for particular students, depending on the variety of difficult sounds the teacher wishes to work on Slogans can be drawn on paper, and advertised on the way, or put up on the board A group of Japanese students, whose target phoneme was /r/, produced the following suggestion: - Robert Riley’s Recycled Radios A variation would be to use the activity to work on the contrast between two sounds which are causing difficulty Here, the sounds being worked on are /w/ and /v/, which can cause difficulties for German speakers: - Vera’s wonderful - Wedding videos To add to the difficulty of the activity, students might also be asked to give a short ‘sales talk’ about their product, again the idea being to include as many examples of the target phonemes as possible A similar exercise can be done with invented newspapers headlines 4.3 Suggested solution to avoid stress and sentence stress mistakes Along with understanding deeply about the rules of stress, the students can practice by some sample lessons below: Lesson 1: Find a partner: Stress patterns Lesson type: Practice Materials: Sentence and word cards The teacher gives half of the students a card each with a word on, and the other half a card with a sentence on Each word card has a sentence card match, the word and sentence both having the same stress pattern Students mingle, saying their words or sentences out loud, and through listening, trying to find their partner When they think they have found a partner, they check with the teacher, and if they are indeed a pair they can sit down Once all of the students are paired up, the pairs read out their word and sentence to the other students, who write down the stress pattern, using a small circle to represent unstressed syllables, and a large one to represent a stressed syllable, as in the following example: - Politician ooOo - It’s important ooOo It is simply an exercise to help students to notice the difference between stressed and unstressed syllables Sample cards using some job related words might be as follow: “Politician/ It’s important/ Police man/ He’s English/ Electrician/ Can I help you? / Photographer/ Your idiot! / Interior designer/ I want to go to London.” Lesson 2: Three little words: Contrastive stress Lesson type: Practice This short activity provides a simple way of demonstrating the effect that a shifting tonic syllable can have on the meaning of an utterance The teacher write “I love you” on the board, and asks the students which syllable is stresses, eliciting that it is the word ‘love’ The teacher draws a stress box over the word to show this or rewrites it in capitals The teacher then writes the same sentence up twice more The students then work in pairs to see if they can work out any other possible meanings, through stressing the other words in the sentence Suggested answers are as follows: Sentence (meaning): - I love you (…and I want you to know this.) - I love you (I don’t love her.) - I love you (He doesn’t.) Those ‘three little words’ which carry such weight, can also carry different, and very much context-related, meanings Of course you can use other sentences too, to get the same effect, but this provides a quick, easy and amusing way of introducing the subject of tonic stress Lesson 3: Misunderstanding dialogues: Contrastive stress Lesson type: Practice Materials: Scripted dialogues In this activity, a dialogue is used which involves a series of misunderstanding The dialogue itself may seem rather artificial, but the exercise helps underline the idea of contrastive stress, and how moving a tonic syllable can change the emphasis of what the speaker is saying The teacher gives student B some lines to say, and student A is given a line which they will need to say in various ways, depending on what the misunderstood point is The activity works better is there is no preparation, and students are put on the spot, they may not always get the point straight away, but it is worth persevering To make the task easier, the relevant stresses can be indicated on the students’ role cards A similar exercise is seen below: This kind of exercise can also be used to highlight strong and weak forms of function words, as we can see with was, in the example above Lesson 4: Listening and transcribing: Stress placement in short monologue Lesson type: Practice Materials: Agape recorded monologue, transcript of the monologue Listening exercises provide a useful opportunity for sentence stress recognition practice The teacher plays or reads out the monologue It is useful for students to hear the whole passage first, to get a feel for the content The students are then given a transcript of the monologue, and mark stressed on their transcript when it is played or read again The advantage of using a tape is that this ensures consistency when the monologue is played for a second time The teacher makes sure that the second reading or playing includes suitable pauses to give students time to mark the stresses Students then compare their transcripts and discuss them, before the teacher let them hear the whole passage again The class then goes through the transcript, with the teacher inviting students to mark the stresses on master’s version on the board or overhead projector discussing where they go and why, and comparing sentences discussed with the version on the tape A final hearing of the passage gives a chance for students to confirmed results of their discussions An interest variation of the activity is for students to record themselves talking; this can be either natural, unrehearsed and unscripted speech, or a more prepared piece, depending what you and your students have decided to focus on Students then can mark stresses for each other on transcripts of the tape Students can this in pairs or groups depending on the resources you have available, or the whole class can work on one transcript It is important, however, not to single one student out as an example of a speaker using inappropriate or inaccurate stress, the activity is the best done in the spirit of comparing and contrasting, particularly if the unusual stresses used, while different from those of a native speaker, not seriously affect intelligibility A student’s tape can also be contrasted with a version recorded by the teacher Recording does not necessarily need lots of out of class’ preparation time; it can very usefully be incorporated into a lesson, either as a one-off, or a regular activity This idea can of course be used for other aspects of pronunciation Taping can also be particularly useful for working on tonic syllables and aspects of intonation A transcript could have gaps where all the tonic syllables should be, for students to complete while they listen to the text Or students can mark where the tonic syllables occur on a complete transcript This type of activity can be graded according to the students’ level of proficiency, and it is possible to successfully use variations of it with students ranging from elementary to advanced levels 4.4 Limitations of the study Due to the lack of time, the study is limited with researching time In addition, the ability of the researcher is limited The data is only collected through one main instrument, with a questionnaire, supported by data from recording text Therefore, the result of this study may only reflect a part of situation of the reality of common pronunciation mistakes faced by the third year English major students in English Faculty at TMU There are many things that need considering and investigating thoroughly Mistakes and shortcomings are unavoidable, so any comments or extra contributions are welcome 4.5 Suggestions for further studies It is essential to consider the following suggestions for further research that is related to the thesis With the above limitations, there is one important suggestion is that the future research should enlarge the amount of research participants It is so important to spend time designing questionnaires The researcher would suggest that the future studies should spend longer time to apply pre-test for the better results CONCLUSION To summarize, this graduated paper has been conducted with the aim to investigate the English common pronunciation problems faced by the third year English major students in English Faculty at Thuong Mai University The rationale, the aim of the research, the scope of the study and the design of the paper are present in Part In Part 2, some related background such as definitions of English pronunciation, consonants, ending sound errors word stress… were presented Especially, in order to find out what common pronunciation mistakes of the third year students, the survey questionnaire was carried out There were common mistakes that students tend to make when speaking English in class The author analyzed the information and data from survey questionnaire for further understanding Besides, some suggestions to deal with problems were also provided in this part However, due to limitations of time, experience and knowledge, the research could not cover all problems Therefore, the author was glad to receive comments from readers Finally, the author hopes this study can be useful material for students and teacher in English Faculty at Thuong Mai University REFERENCES 1.“Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus” by Cambridge University Press “Collins English Dictionary” by HarperCollins Publishers 3.“How to teach pronunciation” by Gerald Kelly 4.“English Phonetics and Phonology” by Peter Roach 5.“Put English Phonetics into Practice compiled” (2004) by SzilágyiLászló “Teaching English Pronunciation” by Joanne Kenworthy 7.“Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary” by Oxford University Press 8.Avery, & Ehrlich (1992) Teaching American English pronunciation Oxford: University Press 9.Honey P J (1987) Vietnamese speakers In M Swan & B Smith, Learner English: A teacher's guide to interference and other problems (1st ed., pp 243-248) London: Cambridge University Press 10 Ngo, B N (2001) The Vietnamese language learning framework Part one: Linguistics 11 Ha Cam Tam, Common pronunciation problems of Vietnamese learners of English Websites: 1.https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ 2.https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/ 3.https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english 4.https://greenwatchbd.com/why-pronunciation-matters/ 5.https://www.academia.edu/3692182/The_importance_of_Pronunciation 6.https://www.richmondshare.com.br/teaching-pronunciation-is-worth-usingpronunciation-teaching-techniques-to-clarify-regular-ed-endings/ APPENDICES APPENDIX 1: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE Dear K54N students, This survey questionnaire is designed to help you raise awareness of pronunciation importance in English When speaking English in class or in everyday communication situations, we may encounter many mistakes Your answers will be collected and used for my research namely: "A study on common pronunciation mistakes in communication and presentation of the third-year students at Faculty of English - Thuong Mai University and suggested solutions." PART 1: INDIVIDUAL INFORMATION Name: …………………………………… Class: K54N…………… PART 2: SURVEY QUESTIONAIRE 1.How many years have you been studying English?  – years  – 10 years  More than 10 years 2.What you think is the most difficult part in speaking English?  Grammar  Pronunciation  Vocabulary  Others 3.How important in pronunciation in speaking English?  Not important  Less important  Normal  Important  Very important 4.How is your level in speaking English?  Not fluent  Normal  Fluent  Very Fluent 5.How often you make mistakes about pronunciation when speaking English?  Never  Seldom  Sometimes  Often  Usually  Always 6.Which pronunciation errors you tend to meet when you study and speak English?  Ending sounds  Word stress  Consonants  Vowels  Sentence stress  Intonation  Assimilation  Others: 7.How you feel about your own skills in these following parts? Bad Not good Neutral Good Very good Ending sounds 5 5 5 Word stress Consonants Vowels Sentence stress Intonation Assimilation 8.How you evaluate the following issues when speaking English? Ending Word sounds stress Consonants Vowels Sentence Intonation Assimilation stress Easy Less difficult Normal Difficult Very difficult 9.What are the reasons why you make mistakes with ending sounds?  Do not look up pronunciation of vocabularies carefully in dictionaries  Speak too fast  Do not consider the importance of ending sounds  Others: 10 Can you give some solutions to improve English pronunciation and avoid pronunciation mistakes?  Finding some pronunciation courses  Finding applications related to practicing speaking English  Making more conversations with foreigners  Making a group to help and practice together APPENDIX 2: RECORDING TEXT Honey is a sweet liquid made by bees It consists of water and sugars Bees may travel as far as seventy-five thousand kilometers and visit over two million flowers to produce just half a kilo of honey The color and flavor of honey depend on the type of flower visited In fact, there are more than three hundred varieties of honey The lighter-colored ones are generally milder in flavor than darker honey In ancient times, honey was the main sweet food, as sugar was very rare Honey was of great value to the ancient Egyptians, who used it as payment Today, honey is produced and eaten in every part of the world Research suggests that it prevents tiredness and improves athletic performance However, honey is not just food - it can be taken for sore throats and is used in many skin and hair-care involves products ... research namely: "A study on common pronunciation mistakes in communication and presentation of the third-year students at Faculty of English - Thuong Mai University and suggested solutions. " PART... I have conducted the research entitled: ? ?A study on common pronunciation mistakes in communication and presentation of third-year students at Faculty of English – Thuong Mai University and suggested. .. essential to understand what pronunciation is when people learn English pronunciation There are many sources of information related to definitions of pronunciation that students can use Proving