EN15_Lịch sử phát triển Tiếng Anh EN15_Lịch sử phát triển Tiếng Anh EN15_Lịch sử phát triển Tiếng Anh EN15_Lịch sử phát triển Tiếng Anh
Trang 1TRƯỜNG … ĐỀ KIỂM TRA TỰ LUẬN
MÔN: Lịch sử phát triển Tiếng Anh
Mã môn: EN15
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Đề 1
Why is the English language so difficult to pronounce and spell?
Answers to the exercises
1 Why is the English language so difficult to pronounce ?
1.1 Learn English pronunciation – Intonation
If you pay attention to American sitcoms, you will see that the characters use both intonation and body language in communication The intonation is sometimes
up and down, sometimes low and sometimes high depending on the purpose (emphasis) Vietnamese is a tonal language with up to 6 tones, but Vietnamese people often make the mistake of speaking English without any rising or falling intonation Maybe the main reason is because Vietnamese people are still not familiar with the second language and only care about things to say, words, sentences, and grammar Or maybe the speaker just thinks that the other person can understand, and that's enough In fact, intonation in English also depends a lot on the subjectivity of the speaker, because it also carries emotional and attitudinal elements Try to imagine a person speaking Vietnamese without pauses, without emphasis, with no ups and downs, what would it feel like? Boring, dry, stiff, unimpressive? The same goes for English Because it is subjective, there is no standard intonation system for us to practice with But it still has the basic rules of
Trang 2everyday English speaking of native speakers Include:
– Go high at the end of the question (For example: What is this ?)
– High at the beginning of an exclamation (For example: What a beauty!)
– Or a sentence that is both a question and an exclamation will be raised in places like this: What the hell are you doing?
– Lower your voice in answers and statements
– Pronounce verbs strongly and clearly adverbs in sentences and gliding in auxiliary verbs and adverbs
– Emphasize what you want people to pay attention to
– Take breaks in the right place
1.2 Learn English pronunciation – Voiceless consonants
You can easily see that the most prominent feature of these sounds is the appearance of a stream of air that can move a piece of paper if placed in front of the mouth while pronouncing It seems simple, but this is one of the most difficult challenges when it comes to English pronunciation In Vietnamese, we almost have all the consonants "p", "t", "ch", "th", "k" but there is no such aspirated sound So most of us when speaking English will pronounce them with a "Vietnamese accent" if we don't practice carefully To practice pronouncing these voiceless consonants correctly, listening is obviously the first step because you have to know how it is pronounced to be able to imitate it While listening, practice pronunciation to imitate how native speakers speak Pay special attention when the wind sounds are at the end and play the role of "ending sounds"
1.3 Learning English pronunciation - Ending sounds
Missing ending sounds is the most common mistake of Vietnamese people learning English But what's more dangerous is that many people know they're missing the final sound but still don't know how to fix it In Vietnamese, a word
Trang 3only includes one consonant and one vowel, this is the biggest difference compared
to English, where a word can contain many consonants In Vietnamese, each vowel
is read clearly, but in English pronunciation, consonants play the dominant role while vowels are only pronounced clearly when stressed Just like that, we Vietnamese people are used to speaking without consonants, and especially the last consonant of words, that is, the "last sound"; while it plays an extremely important role in English Final sounds in English are very rich In fact, there are as many consonants in English as there are final sounds For convenience, I will divide the final sounds into the following 3 groups:
a Wind sounds (mentioned above):
This group is the easiest to pronounce compared to the other two groups, but helps you basically pronounce 60% correctly when speaking English The most effective way to practice final sounds is to review wind sounds and check your spelling of words with final sounds (eg: which, cheap, rest ) and try to make these sounds clearly when speaking The result will depend 80% on your perseverance and the remaining 20% is that you have to have someone who is good at pronunciation correct your mistakes
b Voiced consonants and other consonants:
After reaching the basic level of correct English pronunciation when mastering wind sounds, you need to pronounce these two groups correctly to temporarily be called "speaking good English"
For example, words belonging to these two groups are: “dad”, “bag”, “sum”,
“rung”, etc In the examples above, the sounds “d”, “g” and “ng” are easily confused with the corresponding Vietnamese sounds, and are only pronounced when they are in the ending sounds position, as in “dad” or “didn 't”
Note that the "d" sound in English is a completely new sound and is not at all like the "d" sound or the "d" sound of Vietnamese
Trang 4Therefore, one way for you to practice speaking English effectively is to practice basic words that contain difficult sounds well, without needing to practice too many words or words that are too rare
c Special cases:
– “H” is never pronounced (silent) as the last sound, even in some words like hour, heir even though the letter “h” is at the beginning, it still becomes silent –
“L” has its pronunciation changed when standing at the end of a word that is preceded by a long sound For example, the "L" in "leaf" is different from the "L"
in "school", because in "school" there is a schwa before ending in "L"
– “R” can be pronounced or silent when in the ending sounds position If “r” is the end of a single word like “car” or “four” it will not be pronounced, however if the next word begins with a vowel as in the sentence “my car is blue” then At this time, the sound "r" will be read connected with "is"
There are also some difficult ending sound combinations like in “world”,
“work” or “girl” that require a lot of practice to master
2 Why is the English language so difficult to spell?
2.1 A "word" can be read into many sounds
The most obvious difference is that one word can be read as many sounds For example, the letter “s” in the word “sign” has the /s/ sound, in the word “pleasure” the /ʒ/ sound, in “resign” the /z/ sound, and in “pressure” the /ʃ sound / Therefore,
if you simply look at the text to "argue", readers can easily make mistakes
2.2 One sound can be written in many ways
The second difference is that a sound can be written in many different ways, for example the sound /i/ in the words “sEE”, “sEA”, “scEne”, recEIve”, thIEf,
“amOEba” or “machIne”
2.3 A letter is a combination of sounds
Trang 5The third reason English is difficult to spell is that sometimes a letter represents
a combination of sounds, for example in “exit” (the “x” is pronounced /ks/) or use (the “u” is pronounced sound is /ju/) This phenomenon, especially with the letter
"x", often makes learners confused or confused in pronunciation
2.4 Some letters are not pronounced
Finally, some words in English are not pronounced at all, such as KnoW, douBt, thouGH, iSland, climB
Because of the above difficulties, when learning to read, American students often have to combine the "phonics" and "whole word" methods, which means using "spelling" to support, but still having to memorize the whole word
2.5 Accent
English has accents, Vietnamese does not And if you just look at the text, it is sometimes difficult to determine where the stress of a word is
The solution of most Vietnamese people is: ignore the accent and read the syllables "evenly" like Vietnamese (important = im-po-word, necessary = stroke review ) This is a double-edged sword On the one hand, it helps children feel more "comfortable" when reading English, but on the other hand, it makes them unable to communicate in English because of incorrect pronunciation