The research namely “A study on some common pronunciation mistakes of the firstyear English majored students of the Faculty of Foreign Languages in SIU”. As we know that pronunciation is very important in English.It is a key lead to success studying English especially in speaking English. The earlier you focus and master the basics of English pronunciation, the faster you’ll become fluent. Our ear is so important in this process and focusing on clearly hearing and then speaking the sounds of English leads to large gains in fluency later on.This study aimed to investigate some common mistakes in English pronunciation experienced by learners whose first language is Vietnamese and all of them are the firstyear Englishmajored students at SIU. In other words this research also found out the main reason causing these problems, and some techniques for students to improve their pronunciation. The subjects for the study were a hundred English majored students from The Sai Gon International University (SIU), and fiveuniversity teachers of English language from the same university. The instruments used for collecting the data were structured questionnaires. The data collected were analyzed both statistically and descriptively. The thesis includes three chapters: introduction, literature review, research design. In the first chapter, the writer will explain reasons why choosing this study, purposes and significance of study. The second chapter is one of the most important parts which provides the theoretical knowledge and framework of study. It includes (1) mother tongue interference (2) the importance of pronunciation,(3) difficulties in learning pronunciation, (4) methods of learning pronunciation, (5) methods of teaching pronunciation, (6) pronunciation mistakes.In the final chapter, the research methodology introduces participants who were attending SIU, the place where the writer did research.
Hochiminh City – 2017 …………………………………… THESIS PROPOSAL Major English Language Topic A study on some common pronunciation mistakes of the first – years English – majored students of the faculty of foreign languages(SIU) Instructor Nguyen Thi Kim Chung Student Phùng Bích Thúy Vi ID: 9C661501073 DECLARATION I am PHUNG BICH THUY VI here by declare that the work presented in this Graduation Thesis is uniquely prepared by me I also confirm that, the thesis paper is only prepared for my university requirements not for any other purpose It might not be used with interest of the opposite party of the corporation Student’s name: Phung Bich Thuy Vi ID’s student: 9C661501073 Class: 15CTA Course: Major: English Language The Saigon International University Date submitted: 15/7/2019 Sign:…………………………… ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all those who helped me overcome all difficulties, thus I can finish my thesis successfully.I would like to thank my classmates for accompanying me to the final years of school to look forward to this graduation thesis First of all, I would like to sincerely thank to my Supervisor Ms NguyenThi Kim Chung for her useful and constructive suggestions that helped me to finish my graduation thesis successfully She supported me from the beginning to the end with full of her enthusiastic and deep knowledge in English field Last but not least I would like to give a big hug and a great thankfulness from the bottom of my heart to The Sai Gon International University as a learning environment where I have chance to study many useful acknowledge and complete my personal awareness during my University life , I would like to give the appreciation from the bottom of my heart to The Saigon International University for providing me a professional learning environment and facilities, as well as all teachers in the English Language major for giving enthusiasm and sympathies to lift me to be the better one as I am today Student: PhùngBíchThúy Vi ADVISOR’S COMMENTS ………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………… Advisor:……………………… Signed:……………………… REVIEWER’S COMMENTS ………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………… Reviewer:………………… Signed:…………………… TABLE OF CONTENT CHAPTER I:INTRODUCTION 1.1.Rationale 1.2 Research goals 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Scope of the study CHAPTER II:LITERATURE REVIEW/ THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK 2.1 DEFINITION OF KEY TERM/CONCEPTS 2.1.1: Definition of pronunciation 2.1.2: Definition of mistake 2.1.3: Definition of stress 2.1.4: Definition of Intonation 2.1.5: Definition of consonant clusters 2.1.6: Definition of phonetic transcription 2.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 2.2.1: Mother Tongue Interference 2.2.2: The importance of pronunciation 2.2.3: Difficulties in learning pronunciation 2.2.4: Methods of learning pronunciation 2.2.5: Methods of teaching pronunciation 2.2.6: Pronunciation mistakes 10 CHAPTER III:RESEARCH DESIGN 12 3.1 RESEARCH SETTING 12 3.2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH METHODS 12 3.2.1: Methodology 12 3.2.2: Instruments 13 3.3 PARTICIPANTS 15 3.4 PROCEDURES 15 3.5 DATA ANALYSIS 16 CHAPTER IV: FINDING AND DISCUSSION 17 4.1 FINDING 17 4.1.1 Students’ responses to the Survey Questionnaire 17 4.1.2 teachers’ responses to the Survey Questionnaire 27 4.2 DISCSUSSION 30 CHAPTER V:CONCLUSION 32 5.1 CONCLUSION 32 5.2 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY 33 5.3 RECOMMENDATION 33 REFERENCES 36 APPENDICES 39 ABSTRACT The research namely “A study on some common pronunciation mistakes of the first-year English majored students of the Faculty of Foreign Languages in SIU” As we know that pronunciation is very important in English.It is a key lead to success studying English especially in speaking English The earlier you focus and master the basics of English pronunciation, the faster you’ll become fluent Our ear is so important in this process and focusing on clearly hearing and then speaking the sounds of English leads to large gains in fluency later on.This study aimed to investigate some common mistakes in English pronunciation experienced by learners whose first language is Vietnamese and all of them are the first-year English-majored students at SIU In other words this research also found out the main reason causing these problems, and some techniques for students to improve their pronunciation The subjects for the study were a hundred English - majored students from The Sai Gon International University (SIU), and fiveuniversity teachers of English language from the same university The instruments used for collecting the data were structured questionnaires The data collected were analyzed both statistically and descriptively The thesis includes three chapters: introduction, literature review, research design In the first chapter, the writer will explain reasons why choosing this study, purposes and significance of study The second chapter is one of the most important parts which provides the theoretical knowledge and framework of study It includes (1) mother tongue interference (2) the importance of pronunciation,(3) difficulties in learning pronunciation, (4) methods of learning pronunciation, (5) methods of teaching pronunciation, (6) pronunciation mistakes.In the final chapter, the research methodology introduces participants who were attending SIU, the place where the writer did research Nguyen Thi Kim Chung - MA Graduation Thesis CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE English has become the universal language of the world English is more and more popular, according to the British Council's research, there are approximately 750 million English as foreign language speakers (EFL) and 375 million English as Second Language speakers (ESL) The importance of English was immediately acknowledged by the Vietnamese government and as a result the English language programs were made compulsory beginning with the secondary schools and subsequently the high schools and finally university The number of English language center has been remarkable increasing in these years Furthermore, English is an urgent requirement for fresh graduates to get a good job with higher salary or maybe even lead us to many good opportunities but there is a fact that many of them find it difficult to speak English properly to meet this demand It can be seen that success in language learning is the ability to communicate with others The more the listeners understand what the speaker say, the more success in speaking English the learners get However, there are many students who have been studied English for many years cannot speak English confidently, correctly and fluently There are many problems in pronunciation among Vietnamese students especially freshmen It's no secret that Vietnamese students struggle with English and like many other countries, they faced with some pronunciation problems such us stress, vowels, consonants or final sounds Maybe many of them are focus only on grammar and vocabulary when they study English at the beginning or study in an unplanned way As a result, their English ability in these two aspects is good, but they are not good at pronunciation.If the speaker has a good pronunciation, the listener will understand more what the speaker says and his intended meaning, whereas, if the speaker pronounces the words incorrectly, the listener will get confused or misunderstand Thus, It is widely recognized that pronunciation plays a significant part in study English Pronunciation is one of the most important factors Nguyen Thi Kim Chung - MA Graduation Thesis affecting successful communication At the University level, it is very important to improve pronunciation skills for the Freshmen at the beginning to study deeply and completely English If the freshmen have a good pronunciation skills they will be more confident and more interested in studying English 1.2 RESEARCH GOALS This research was conducted with the aims of: finding out the typical mistakes in pronunciation of the English majored freshmen of Faculty of Foreign Languages in SIU investigating the main reasons causing these problems offering some solutions and suggestions for students to solve pronunciation problem 1.3 RESEARCH QUESTION With the hope of greeting more comprehensive and specific understanding of English pronunciation, finding out the main pronunciation mistakes faced by the first year students and investigate the main reasons causing these mistakes and giving some techniques to improve their English pronunciation skills my study focuses on: What are the freshmen’ commonpronunciation mistakes? What are the main reasons causing these problems? Whatare the solutions and suggestions for students to improve their pronunciation? 1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY In fact, there are a lot of various techniques to studyEnglish pronunciation, it requires much of time and effort However due to the limitation of time and knowledge of mine, this study only focused on the freshmen of faculty of foreign language at The Sai Gon International University in the second semester of 2018-2019 course Nguyen Thi Kim Chung - MA Graduation Thesis CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW/THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK 2.1 DEFINITION OF KEY TERM/CONCEPTS 2.1.1: Definition of pronunciation Richard(2002) states that pronunciation as the way certain sounds are produced Pronunciation emphasizes the way sounds are understood by the listeners They continued that pronunciation is a significant part of English because mispronunciations make it difficult for listeners to understand the meaning of sentences correctly Harmer (2001) defines pronunciation as the way the sounds of a language are made, the way how and where the word stress and sentence stress are placed, and the way how pitch and intonation are used to indicate our feeling and our meaning Pronunciation is defined as the method of producing the sounds for constructing meaning It consists of consonants and vowels of a language (segments), features of speech such as stress, timing, rhythm, intonation, phrasing (suprasegmental features), and voice quality All of the mentioned elements can work together when speakers speak so that difficulties in one element may affect another and this may make an individual’s pronunciation easy or difficult to understand (PourhoseinGilakjani, 2012; Yates & Zielinski, 2009) Macmillan (2019) defined “pronunciation” as the way in which a word or a language is spoken This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation"), or simply the way a particular individual speaks a word or language A word can be spoken in different ways by various individuals or groups, depending on many factors, such as: the duration of the cultural exposure of their Nguyen Thi Kim Chung - MA Graduation Thesis childhood, the location of their current residence, speech or voice disorders, their ethnic group, their social class, or their education PourhoseinGilakjani (2016) pronunciation is the production of sounds that is used for making meaning Pronunciation is the production of a sound system which doesn't interfere with communication either from the speakers’ or the listeners’ viewpoint (Paulston&Burder, 1976) Pronunciation is the way of uttering a word in an accepted manner (Otlowski, 1998) Furthermore, Richard and Schmidt (2002) defined pronunciation as the method of producing certain sounds 2.1.2: Definition of mistake According to Oxford dictionary (2019) the word “mistake” is defined that mistake is an error in action, calculation, opinion or judgment caused by poor reasoning, carelessness and insufficient knowledge It is also a misunderstanding or misconception Cambridge dictionary defines that mistake is an act or a judgement that is misguided or wrong If mistake is used as a verb, it will have a meaning as an action that One make Wrongly identify someone or something + The differences between mistake and error Mistake and error mean something that is done incorrectly or wrong Thus, they are synonyms But the difference between these two words is in the context that they are used in Mistakes are usually accidental You know it’s wrong In other words, mistakes are performance based, and can be self-corrected Mistake is less formal than error, and is usually used in daily speech Errors are usually made due to the lack of knowledge So, the action was wrong because it was different from the rules, model or specific code Error is a more formal word than mistake 2.1.3: Definition of stress Many teachers advocate starting with stress as the basic building block of pronunciation teaching Stress refers to the prominence given to certain syllables within words, and to certain syllables or words within utterances It is signalled by volume, force, pitch change and syllable length, and is often the place where we notice hand movements and other gestures when we are watching Nguyen Thi Kim Chung - MA Graduation Thesis someone pronunciation taking One noticeable feature of English is thereduced nature of unstressed syllables Thus, not only are stressed syllables longer, louder, more forceful and at a different pitch, but unstressed ones are often different in quality Stress is important at three different levels: • word level – multisyllabic words have one or more syllables that are stressed • sentence level – the most important words tend to be stressed • contrastive stress – the most important words carry greater stress 2.1.4: Definition of Intonation Intonation, or change of pitch, is crucial in signaling speaker meaning, particularly interpersonal attitudes As we saw in the previous section, pitch changes are crucially linked with stress Since intonation patterns are language-specific, learners will need to acquire new ones for English in order to avoid inappropriate transfer from their first language, and thus perhaps inadvertently causing offence There have been three major approaches to intonation theory: the grammatical approach (which relates intonation to grammatical functions), an approach that focuses on the link between intonation and attitude, and the discourse approach (which emphasises speakers and their intentions in longer stretches of discourse) The way in which intonation works is highly complex, and teachers will not have the time to explore the theory in depth with learners However, there are some simple patterns that can be identified and practiced even for beginner learners The major changes of pitch take place on stressed syllables, particularly on the tonic syllable Five major patterns of tones can be identified: fall, rise, fall-rise, rise-fall and level: • A falling pattern usually indicates that the speaker has finished, at least temporarily • A rising intonation signals a question or continuation This difference can signal meaning even in short exchanges • A fall-rise tone signals definiteness combined with some qualification; what Yallop (1995) calls a ‘No, but…’ interpretation Thus, if someone asks if I am busy, and I am suspicious that this is a prelude to asking me to a job, I may answer ‘No’ but with a fall-rise tone to indicate my mixed feelings Nguyen Thi Kim Chung - MA Graduation Thesis • A rise-fall is usually used to signal strong feelings of surprise or approval or disapproval In general, larger movements in pitch signal higher emotion and more interest 2.1.5: Definition of consonant clusters According to Collin English Dictionary(2019) states “consonant cluster” as a group of consonants without an intervening vowel Cambridge Dictionary defined tat A consonant cluster in a word is a group of consonants with no vowels between them The longest possible cluster in English is three consonant sounds at the start, such as 'splash', and four at the end, as in 'twelfths' 2.1.6: Definition of phonetic transcription One of the long-used and known to all teachers technique is phonetic transcription, which is a code consisting of phonetic symbols Each symbol describes a single sound, which is in fact different from a letter of the alphabet True as it is, in order to use phonetic transcription one must learn the code and it takes time and effort Although it is possible to learn the pronunciation without the code, many linguists believe it to be a valuable tool in learning the foreign sound system One obvious advantage of learning the code is the ability to find the pronunciation of unfamiliar words in a dictionary All good modern learners’ dictionaries use phonetic symbols to indicate pronunciation, and learners must therefore be familiar with them’ 2.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 2.2.1: Mother Tongue Interference All Vietnamese students study English as a foreign language, it’s hard to deny that Vietnamese was influenced by mother tongue on their pronunciation The most common reason causing many pronunciation mistakes among Vietnamese learners is transfer or interference from the mother tongue Generally, errors made in pronunciation are due to difference in the sound system and spelling symbols between the mother tongue and English In a research (Brown, 2000) found that all learner study English as a second language face with some difficulties, because his LI affects his L2 specially in their adulthood – the first time they approach to English, and this effect is a result of LI transfer; so it is a significant source of Nguyen Thi Kim Chung - MA Graduation Thesis making errors for second language learners Meisel (1987) showed that mother tongue has clear influence on learning L2 pronunciation Where LI and L2 rules are in conflict, errors are expected to be committed by foreign learners All that can be linked to what is known as the interference between LI and L2 So many learners use /p/ as /b/, others use /s/ for /θ/ and /z/ for /ð/ and /b/ for /v/ The mispronunciation of these sounds is the influence of the first language on English learners, a process of fossilization The vocal musculature of the adults is set to pronounce foreign sounds with an accent (Yule, 1996) said that the main problem of English pronunciation is to build a new set of sounds corresponding to the sounds of English, and to break down the arrangement of sounds which the habits and the systems of our LI have strongly built up And that means we use new ways of hearing and new ways of using our organs of speech As a result, it is too difficult to change such habits which a learner has obtained since their childhood or at least it needs very long years to be changed and after also very long time and regular practice, and all that is linked to a certain age of the learner So the points mentioned above altogether share the concept that the learners confuse such sounds and replace each of them with other sounds that are said to be the nearest ones to them (O’Connor, 1980) 2.2.2: The importance of pronunciation It’s hard to deny that pronunciation is one of the most important factors leads to success in English Pronunciation has a key role in successful communication both productively and receptively It has been a common concern among L2 learners with regard to their confidence in oral communication (Brown, 2001) Operating at a sub-conscious level, it is often not easily amendable, though it is not impossible for an L2 learner to achieve an impressive performance (Munro &Derwing, 2008) When a pronunciation feature impedes the intelligibility of a word, native listeners can use contextual cues to resolve ambiguity Bad pronunciation can result in a failure to convey the message and can cause troubles in communication when they are least expected and welcome even among native speakers 2.2.3: difficulties in learning pronunciation Many linguists and researchers on (SLA) concluded that the English pronunciation problems among speakers of other languages are the same but it is according to each language background Nguyen Thi Kim Chung - MA Graduation Thesis Vietnamese student is among them, so here we are going to see some of the factors that influence on learning second language (L2) in general and English pronunciation in particular and also try to identify the exact reasons behind such errors and finally try to find the suitable techniques and strategies that help the students improve their English pronunciation English pronunciation is one of the most difficult skills to acquire and learners should spend lots of time to improve their pronunciation (AliagaGarcía, 2007; Martínez-Flor et al 2006; PourhoseinGilakjani, 2016) Understandable pronunciation is one of the basic requirements of learners’ competence and it is also one of the most important features of language instruction Good pronunciation leads to learning while bad pronunciation promotes to great difficulties in language learning (PourhoseinGilakjani, 2012) Harmer (2001) expressed that the first thing that native speakers notice during a conversation is pronunciation Grammar and vocabulary are important elements of language and they can be useless if the speakers cannot pronounce those elements or words accurately Native speakers can understand people, despite their grammatical errors, if they use accurate pronunciation Communicative efficiency can be guaranteed by correct pronunciation Pronunciation is an essential part of communication and without correct pronunciation nobody can say that he/she knows the English language perfectly Morley (1994) said that when a speaker’s pronunciation is heavily accented it can affect the speaker’s understanding In level 3, people understand the speaker and the speaker’s English is acceptable to listen to Scovel (1988) called it comfortable intelligibility and it should be the aim of English pronunciation Therefore, the important question is this: what shapes acceptable pronunciation? A speaker has acceptable pronunciation when other people can understand him/her and the speaker’s English is of great value to listen to Since all second language learners belong to one or other group of language, their pronunciation of second language is very different of their origin The teaching of a foreign language always deals with changing of learner’s pronunciation as learners find it difficult to pronounce the diphthongs The pronunciation of one person depicts his geographical identity; hence a person’s pronunciation reveals his complete personality including origin and his social background The pitch of the voice, the speed and the utterance all indicate the background and the linguistic knowledge of that person It is an acknowledged fact that the speaker of the second language Nguyen Thi Kim Chung - MA Graduation Thesis utters the sounds through the basic knowledge that he has built up in his mother tongue It is through the pronunciation that we distinguish between American, British and Cambridge speakers Although all these use a Standard English accent yet they are different from one another in terms of their accent and pronunciation .2.4: Methods of learningpronunciation English pronunciation is one of the most difficult skills to acquire and learners should spend lots of time to improve their pronunciation (AliagaGarcía, 2007; Martínez-Flor et al 2006; PourhoseinGilakjani, 2016) Understandable pronunciation is one of the basic requirements of learners’ competence and it is also one of the most important features of language instruction Good pronunciation leads to learning while bad pronunciation promotes to great difficulties in language learning (PourhoseinGilakjani, 2012) Morley (1991) emphasized that learners should develop functional intelligibility, functional communicability, increased self-confidence, the speech monitoring abilities, and speech modification strategies In this paper, the researcher defines the term pronunciation, reviews the goal of English pronunciation instruction, and explains the significance of English pronunciation instruction.The goal of pronunciation instruction is not to ask learners to pronounce like native speakers Instead intelligible pronunciation should be the real purpose of oral communication If learners want to change the way of pronouncing English words, they have to change the way they think about the sounds of those words This is true both for individual sounds and the bigger parts of speech such as syllables, stress patterns, and rhythm Unfortunately, pronunciation instruction is sometimes ignored in English language teaching (PourhoseinGilakjani, 2011; PourhoseinGilakjani, 2016) 2.2.5: Methods of teaching pronunciation As A Brown (1992 ) notes, there is a common assumption among teachers that perceptual and productive language skills such as listening and speaking are taught through the same medium, namely speaking and listening As the result many of them use the traditional listen-and-repeat approach in spite of the present tendency for communicative language teaching Techniques based on this method are often production oriented and aim at improving students’ spoken English Many of such techniques employ minimal pairs, which are words that have different meaning and their pronunciation differs only in one sound Minimal pair drills were introduced during the Audio lingual era and have still been used both in isolation - at a word-level and in Nguyen Thi Kim Chung - MA Graduation Thesis context - at a sentence-level The technique is useful for making learners aware of troublesome sounds through listening and discrimination practice Learners often place more importance on learning pronunciation skills than second language educators (Culhane& Ito, 2003) There are numerous reasons for not teaching pronunciation skills explicitly in the ESL classroom: they may be seen to be counter-productive to developing communicative confidence; pronunciation skills develop gradually over prolonged interaction with more advanced L2 speakers, thus, they may be considered ill-suited to a learner only context; it may be felt to be wrong to impose an ‘accent norm’ on students, who should be allowed to express themselves in their natural accents; and finally, it may be simply due to a realization that learners are unlikely to reproduce nativespeaker like pronunciation (Fraser, 1999) According to (Culhane& Ito, 2003) educators may acknowledge teaching pronunciation skills as explicitly important, yet still not give them much attention in their methodologies They may be willing to teach pronunciation skills, but not realize the best methods for helping students achieve adequate pronunciation skills One reason for this may be a relative lack of training in teacher preparation courses and degree programs in instructional methods for teaching pronunciation (Culhane& Ito, 2003; Fraser, 1999) Educators could also be uncomfortable due to lack of training or awareness in specific areas of phonetics or phonology (Culhane& Ito, 2003) Irrespective of all of the possible reasons for not teaching pronunciation, if students can benefit from them, and feel they should be part of their instructional program, the question becomes rather, not whether to teach pronunciation but how to teach it (Fraser, 1999) 2.2.6: Pronunciation mistakes According to Dalton, et al (1994), language is a speech act Its code joins hands with other factors to make sense of communication In this study researcher has tried to explore the pronunciation of diphthongs mistake with special reference to the physical features of diphthongs that is of prominence to the English language learners According to James (2010) found out the important of pronunciation and the consequences of wrong pronunciation in teaching, studying and communicating English He found out that an acceptable pronunciation can be understood based on the following basic levels In level 1, what the speaker is saying is not understandable to people The speaker uses the wrong sounds when producing English words or uses the wrong prosodic features when producing English sentences 10 Nguyen Thi Kim Chung - MA Graduation Thesis Furthermore Hinofotis and Bailey (1980, as cited in Celce-Murcia & Goodwin, 1991), there is a beginning level for pronunciation If the pronunciation of a speaker falls below this level, he/she will be not be able to communicate without paying attention to his/her knowledge of grammar and vocabulary In level 2, what the speaker is saying can be understandable to people but the speaker’s pronunciation is not acceptable to listen to because he/she has a strange and heavy accent Furthermore, look back on some past works, (O’Connor, 1980) found out some pronunciation problems and the influence of LI So many sounds such as /s/ and /z /, / θ / and /ð/, /tʃ/ and /ʃ/ are confused e.g (thin/ thought), (question /action) For the (SSEs) /d/ and /th/ are usually used in the place of /ð/ and /θ/ which result from the interference of Vietnamese students /ð/ and /θ/ are not exist in the Vietnamese alphabet system so they are replaced by /d/ and /th/ 11 ... …………………………………… THESIS PROPOSAL Major English Language Topic A study on some common pronunciation mistakes of the first – years English – majored students of the faculty of foreign languages( SIU) Instructor... as a foreign language, it’s hard to deny that Vietnamese was influenced by mother tongue on their pronunciation The most common reason causing many pronunciation mistakes among Vietnamese learners... English pronunciation skills my study focuses on: What are the freshmen’ commonpronunciation mistakes? What are the main reasons causing these problems? Whatare the solutions and suggestions for students