Nghiên cứu những lỗi phát âm thường gặp khi phát âm các phụ âm tiếng anh của học viên tại trung tâm anh ngữ worldlink

Nghiên cứu được tiến hành nhằm tìm ra những lỗi phát âm thường gặp khi phát âm phụ âm tiếng Anh của người học tại trung tâm Anh ngữ Worldlink. Kết quả cho thấy học sinh thường mắc các lỗi thay thế âm, bỏ âm và thêm âm vào các âm tiết đầu, giữa và cuối của một từ. Lỗi thường gặp nhất là lỗi thay thế âm xảy ra với các âm tắc xát, âm xát và âm bên: ʃ, ʒ and l. Lỗi thương gặp tiếp theo là lỗi bỏ âm, xảy ra thường xuyên với các âm tiết cuối: p, s, tʃ. Lỗi thường gặp cuối cùng là lỗi thêm âm, khi người học thêm âm s vào âm cuối của các từ. Dựa trên kết quả, tác giả đưa ra một số gợi ý nhằm cải thiện khả năng phát âm của người học tại trung tâm Worldlink.

I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Ha Cam Tam forher great guidance, precious comments and continuous encouragement from thebeginning and throughout the study process Without her help, I could not finish mygraduation paper

My sincere thanks go to all of my teachers of Post-Graduate StudiesDepartment in University of Languages and International Studies who have brought

me the world of knowledge during my course and helped me complete thisimportant document

I also would like to send my appreciation to all of my students studying atWorldlink English centre for their cooperation and enthusiastic help in recording thetasks I am indebted to my colleagues there who always supported and stayed by mysides when I was in the most stuck

Last but not least, I wish to send the deepest gratitude to my family for theirendless love and support throughout my life Without the encouragement of mygrandmother, parents and brothers, I could not have got this far

I am grateful to all of those who contributed to the completion of this studyand it is an honor for me to receive any comments from the readers

The research was conducted to examine the most problematic Englishconsonants facing the students at Worldlink English Centre Consonantal phonemepronunciation error data was collected from the recording using two types of tasks,namely reading out loud single words and reading out loud a story and analyzedusing narrow IPA phonetic transcription

The findings indicate that learners at the centre have a tendency tosubstitution, deletion and insertion of sounds in syllable-initial, middle and finalpositions of the words Specifically, it was found that the most common error wassound substitution which most often happened to the affricate, fricative and lateralsounds: /ʃ/, /ʒ/ and /l/ The second most popular error is called sound deletion,which frequently occurred to three ending sounds: /p/, /s/, /tʃ/ Last but not leastmost frequent error named sound insertion appeared when the participants added thesound /s/ at the end of many words in the study The errors were identified in terms

of both the interference of the mother tongue and inadequate knowledge of thearticulation of the sounds From the results, some pedagogical suggestions wereoffered to improve the English pronunciation of students at Worldlink EnglishCentre

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 1

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Method of the study 2

5 Design of the study 2

PART II: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 English Pronunciation 4

1.2 The English Consonants 5

1.2.1 General description of consonants 5

1.2.2 Classification of English consonants 6

1.3 The Vietnamese Consonants 11

1.4 A comparison of English consonant and Vietnamese consonant 12

1.5 The interference of the mother tongue to students' English pronunciation 15

1.6 Intelligibility and Intelligibility problems in pronunciation 17

1.7 Preview of Previous studies 18

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY 21

2.1 Selection of Informants 21

2.2 Data collection instruments 22

2.3 Data collection procedure 24

2.4 Data analysis procedure 24

CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 27

3.1 Sound deletion errors 28

3.2 Sound substitutions 31

3.3 Sound insertion 34

PART III CONCLUSION 35

1 Conclusion 35

2 Implications 37

3 Limitations and suggestions for further study 38

REFERENCES 40 APPENDIX 1: SINGLE WORDS AND STORY NARROW TRANSCRIPTION I APPENDIX 2: EXERCISES FOR TAPE RECORDING IV

LIST OF TABLE, FIGURES AND ABBREVIATION LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Features of pronunciation

Figure 2: The manner of articulation

Figure 3: The manner of articulation

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: English Consonant Phonemes

Table 2: Vietnamese initial consonants

Table 3: Vietnamese final consonants

Table 4: The initial consonants of the Hanoian variety

Table 5: Similarities between English and Vietnamese

Table 6: Overview of the consonant errors found in the data

Table 7: Types of consonant errors found in the data

Table 8: Sound deletion errors

Table 9: Sound substitution errors

Table 10: Sound insertion errors

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

English has become the international language, which is popular all over theworld In Vietnam, there is high demand for the language because more and morerequirements about English are established such as University English OutcomesStandard or English Certificate to graduate or apply for a job That is the reasonwhy learners go to English centers with the hope that they can gain knowledge andget the best grades in the tests; as a result, English centers are getting popular in thebig cities in Vietnam However, it is the fact that the serious problem of VietnameseEnglish learners is their pronunciation Not only does this restrict learners in realcommunication but also reduce their grades in important speaking and listeningtests For such reasons, basic pronunciation courses are provided to studentslearning at English centers Over several years of teaching English, especially basicpronunciation courses to Vietnamese learners at some English centers, theresearcher of this paper has realized that many Vietnamese learners of English madeerrors in pronouncing English consonants, which leads them to the failure incomprehension or misunderstanding in communication The causes of thosepronunciation errors are various; however, the influence of mother tongue is ofgreat concern to the researcher In attempt to find out common errors by students inpronouncing English consonants and figure out whether or not the native languageaffects students' pronunciation of the second language, the researcher carries outthis study

2 Aims of the study

The aim of the study is mainly to figure out common errors in pronouncingEnglish consonants by the learners taking part in English basic pronunciationcourses at Worldlink English Centre Basing on the identified errors, the causes,especially, the influence of mother tongue on learners' pronunciation will bediscussed and some pedagogical suggestions will be provided to improve teachingand learning English pronunciation courses at the centre

The study, therefore, answers the following question: What common errors

do students at Worldlink English Centre have in pronouncing English consonants?

3 Scope of the study

The main focus of this study is on investigating common errors made bystudents in pronouncing twenty four English consonants Basing on the results, thequestion of whether or not Vietnamese language influence the Englishpronunciation of the students at Worldlink English Centre is also discussedand answered

Participants are 20 non-English major students who are learning basicpronunciation courses at Worldlink English centre Textbook for teaching thecourse is English Pronunciation in Use – Elementary by Jonathan Marks

4 Methodology of the study

The data was collected by employing the tool of recording the participants'pronunciation of single words and story reading All the data collected are presented

in the form of narrow transcription and then compared to the standard version tofind out the errors Details of methodology applied in the study are discussed in PartIII - Methodology

5 Design of the study

To achieve the aims of the study, this paper is divided into five chapters

Part I: Introduction: An introduction consists of the rationale, aims of the

study, scope of the study, method and organization of the study

Part II: Development

Chapter I: Literature Review: This chapter provides the relevant bodies of

knowledge and gives a brief overview of the literature on the research topic Thisincludes key concepts of English pronunciation, intelligibility in pronunciation,English consonants, Vietnamese and English consonant comparison and contrast,English pronunciation errors and related key terms Besides, the viewpoints on theinterference of the first language to the second language pronunciation are alsogiven The last part is the review of previous related studies

Chapter II: Methodology: This part describes all the steps used to complete

the research including in-depth information of participant selection, applying datacollection instrument, procedure of data collection and data analysis

Chapter III: Results and discussion: All the results regarding

pronunciation errors made by students in pronouncing English consonants arepresented To what extends the native language causing student's difficulty inpronouncing English consonants is also discussed in this part

Part III: Conclusion provides a summary of the significant findings in the

paper The benefits as well as limitations of the study are discussed to draw outprecious lessons and suggestions for further studies Bibliography and Appendicesare included after this chapter

In this chapter, the rationale, aims, significant, scope and method of the studyare stated The next chapter will be the literature review on topic related issues

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the relevant bodies of knowledge andgive a brief overview of the literature on the research topic Firstly, key concepts ofEnglish pronunciation, intelligibility in pronunciation, English consonants,Vietnamese and English consonant comparison and contrast, English pronunciationerrors and related key terms will be explained critically Secondly, the interference

of mother tongue in English pronunciation acquisition will be discussed to indicatethe impacts on learners’ pronunciation learning and sound producing Finally, anoverview of studies related to common errors made by learners in pronouncingEnglish consonants will be given Throughout the review, gaps in the currentknowledge will be filled

1.1 English Pronunciation

In order to have an insight into the study, it is necessary to understand themain features of pronunciation Pronunciation refers to the production of soundsthat human use to make meaning Generally, it includes segmental andsuprasegmental aspects Segmental features are the particular sounds of a language(segments) while suprasegmental features are aspects of speech beyond the level ofthe individual sound, such as intonation, phrasing, stress, timing, rhythm These aredifferent aspects of pronunciation but all work in combination when we speak.Regarding the combination of segmental and suprasegmental features inpronunciation, Jenkins and Setter (2005, p.1) provide a clearer definition ofpronunciation:

“Pronunciation involves the production and perception of segmental(sounds), both alone and in the stream of speech, where they undergo number ofmodifications and interact with suprasegmental (prosodic) features, particularlystress and intonation”

More particularly, Kelly (2000) presented the main features of Englishpronunciation in the figure below:

Figure 1: Features of pronunciation

(Adapted from Kelly, 2000)

1.2 The English Consonants

1.2.1 General description of consonants

Among features of pronunciation, the current study concerns with onlysounds ( or phonemes), particularly the consonants It is necessary to understandwhat the term "consonant" exactly means

Roach(1983) gives an example in his book English Phonetics and Phonology

to define consonant “If we make a sound like s or d, it can be clearly felt that weare making it difficult or impossible for the air to pass through the mouth” (p.10).Unlike vowel, consonants are the sounds in which there is obstruction to the flow ofair as it passes from the larynx to the lips

Sharing the same idea with Roach (1983), Kelly (2000) supposes that

“Consonant sounds are formed when the airflow is interrupted, restricted or diverted

in variety of ways” (p.10) The formation of consonants is mentioned in thisdefinition

As cited in the book named The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English

Language written by Crystal (2003), ‘from a phonetic point of view, consonants are

articulated in one of two ways: either there is a closing movement of one of thevocal organs, forming such a narrow constriction that it is possible to hear the sound

of the air passing through; or the closing movement is complete, giving a totalblockage The closing movement may involve lips, tongue, or throat, but in each

case the overall effect is very different from the relatively open and unimpededarticulation found in vowels”(p.242)

In short, the “obstruction”, “interruption”, “blockage”, “restriction” of theairflow is the key words to define consonant Specifically, consonants are thesounds in the production of which one articulator moves towards another or twoarticulators come together, obstructing the air-stream and the air-stream can’t getout freely

1.2.2 Classification of English consonants

There are 24 consonant sounds in most English accents, conveyed by 21letters of the regular English alphabet “To differentiate the 24 consonants formeach other, phoneticians use a classification based on the place and manner ofarticulation, in addition to the criteria of whether they are voiced or voiceless”( Crystal, 2003,p.243) To be more specific, there are three ways of describing theconsonant sound, namely the manner of articulation (the interaction between thevarious articulators and the airstream), the place of articulation (the description formore detailed information about what the various articulators actually do) and theforce of articulation (the strong or fortis and weak or lenis form of the consonants).Kelly (2000) provides the detailed description of the manner of articulation, theplace of articulation and voicing, as below:

1.2.2.1 The manner of articulation

The manner of articulation refers to how the sound is made, at the variouslocations in the vocal tract

Figure 2: The manner of articulationManner of articulation

Plosive A complete closure is made somewhere in the vocal

tract, and the soft palate is also raised Air pressureincreases behind the closure, and is then released

‘explosively”

Affricate A complete closure is made somewhere in the

mouth, and the soft palate is raised Air pressureincreases behind the closure, and is then releasedmore slowly than in plosive

Fricative When two vocal organs come close enough together

for the movement of air between them to be heard Nasal A closure is made by the lips, or be the tongue

against the palate, the soft palate is lowered, and airescapes through the nose

Lateral A partial closure is made by the blade of the tongue

against the alveolar ridge Air is able to flow aroundthe sides of the tongue

Approximant Vocal organs come near to each other, but not so

close as to cause audible friction

1.2.2.2 The place of articulation

The place of articulation identifies where in the vocal tract the sound ismade, and which vocal organs are involved

Figure 3: The manner of articulationPlace of articulation

Bilabial Using closing movement of both lips

Labio-dental Using the lower lip and the upper teeth

Dental The tongue tip is used either between the teeth or close to

the upper teethAlveolar The blade of the tongue is used close to the alveolar ridgePalato-alveolar The blade(or tip) of the tongue is used just behind the

alveolar ridgePalatal The front of the tongue is raised close to the palate

Velar The back of the tongue is used against the soft palate

Glottal The gap between the vocal cords is used to make audible

friction

1.2.2.3 Voiced and Unvoiced

Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate.Voiced consonants are produced when the vocal cords are vibrating while voicelessconsonants are produced when the vocal cords are not Many consonant sounds

come in pairs They are produced in the same place in the mouth with the tongue inthe same position but the only difference between them is that one is an unvoicedsound (no vibration of the vocal cords) while the other is a voiced sound (vocalcords vibrate)

Voicing, manner and place of articulation are together summarized in the following table:

Table 1: English Consonant Phonemes

Manner of

Articulation

Place of Articulation Bilabial Labio-

dental

Dent al

Alveolar

Palato-alveola r

Palata l

connected speech Phonological rules can be divided into four types: assimilation,

elision and linking Roach (1983) clearly discussed and demonstrated those types inhis book named English phonetics and Phonology Firstly, assimilation happenswhen a sound changes and one of its features will be more similar to an adjacentsound In other words, when two words come together, the sound of one word cancause changes in sounds belonging to neighboring words Roach (1983) emphasizedthat assimilation "is more likely to be found in rapid, casual speech and less likely

in slow, careful speech".(p.124) The final consonant /t/ in the word that, for example, will become /p/ before a bilabial consonant, as in: that person /ðæp pɜːsən/ Secondly, in speaking, there are a number of phonemes which are not

actually pronounced and this is called elision For instance, in words like potato,tomato, today, the vowel in the first syllable may disappear; the aspiration of theinitial plosive takes up the whole of the middle portion of the syllable resulting in

these pronunciations /p h teɪ.təʊ/, /t h mɑː.təʊ/, /t h deɪ/ Thirdly, in real connected

speech, words would not be separate units placed next to each other in sequence,

but they are linked together For example, the linking sound r is found in many cases when the final sound r is before a word beginning with a vowel such as here

are, /hɪər ə/, four eggs /fɔːr eɡz/.

The following section indicates the rules for English consonant allophoneswhich are variants of a phoneme The list of allophonic rules which is based on

Ladefoged's A course in phonetics, page 271, makes clear how to write a consistent

narrow transcription

1 Consonants are longer when at the end of a phrase

2 Voiceless stops (i.e., /p, t, k/) are aspirated when they are syllable initial, as inwords such as pip, test, kick [ pʰɪp, tʰest, kʰɪk ]

3 Obstruent -stop and fricatives classified as voiced ( that is, /b, d, g, v, ð, z/) arevoiced through only a small part of the articulation when they occur at the end of an

utterance or before a voiceless sound ( /v/ in try to improve and /d/ in add two)

4 So-called voiced stops and affricates / b, d, g, dʒ/ are voiceless when syllableinitial, except when immediately preceded by a voiced sound ( as in a day comparedwith this day)

5 Voiceless stops / p, t, k / are unaspirated after /s / in words such as spew, stew, skew6.Voiceless obstruents / p, t, k, ʧ, f, θ, s, ʃ/ are longer than their correspondingvoiced obstruents / b, d, g, ʤ, v, ð, z, ʒ/ when at the end of a syllable

7.The approximants / w, r, j, l / are at least partially voiceless when they occur after initial / p, t, k /, as in play, twin, cue[ pleɪ, twɪn, kju ]

8.The gestures for consecutive stops overlap, so that stops are unexploded when occur before another stop in words such as apt[æt ] and rubbed[rʌbd ]

9.In many accents of English, syllable final / p, t, k / are accompanied by a glottal stop, as in pronunciations of tip, pit[tɪ?p, pɪ?t,] (This is another case where

transcription cannot fully describe what is going on.)

10.In many accents of English, / t / is replaced by a glottal stop when it occurs before an alveolar nasal in the same word, as in beaten['bi?n]

11.Nasals are syllabic at the end of a word when immediately after an obstruent as

in leaden, chasm ['lɛdn,'kæzm]

12.The lateral / l / is syllabic at the end of a word when immediately after a

15 Alveolar stops are reduced or omitted when between two consonants

16.A homorganic voiceless stop may occur (i.e., be inserted) after a nasal before avoiceless fricative followed by an unstressed vowel in the same word

17 A consonant is shortened when it is before an identical consonant

18 Velar stops become more front before more front vowels

19 The lateral / l / is velarized when after a vowel or before a consonant at the end

of a word

1.3 The Vietnamese Consonants

According to Doan Thien Thuat (1980), there are twenty two initial consonants ( atinitial position of syllable) in Vietnamese consonants Dr Duong Thi Nu (2009) alsostates that Vietnamese include twenty two initial consonants and six finalconsonants according to the positions of them in a word Regarding the finalconsonants, Pham (2009) mentions in her study of "consonants in English andVietnamese" that there are 8 ending consonants including 6 consonants and twosemi-consonants (end by changing timbre at the last phoneme due to closing of thearticulators) Those consonants are classified based on the following features:

Table 2: Vietnamese initial consonants

Place of articulation Labial Alveolar Alveo- Palatal Velar Glottal

Manner of articulation palatal

Table 4: The initial consonants of the Hanoian variety

(Adapted from Duong, 2009)

1.4 A comparison of English consonant and Vietnamese consonant

In order to find the background to answer the question of whether or notVietnamese language influences the English pronunciation of the students, acomparison between English and Vietnamese consonants system was carried out.According to Ivy (2011), it is significant to compare the structure of one’s native

language with the structure of the target language because the influence of nativelanguage in the learners’ target language can be positive and negative.

Basing on the two English consonant and Vietnamese consonant tables, theresearcher found the following similarities and differences:

Generally, most Vietnamese sounds are not much different from English interms of pronunciation There are some initial consonants in English similar toVietnamese ones

Table 5: Similarities between English and Vietnamese

"ta" (we) which is pronounced like / ta/ and English word "differentiate" which ispronounced like /dɪf.əren.ʃi.eɪt/

There are some sounds that exist in English but not in Vietnamese, and viceversa For example, Vietnamese consonant phonemes, especially Hanoian varieties

do not include any affricates or dentals; therefore, the English consonant sounds /dʒ/, /θ/, /ð/, /tʃ/ are considered as clearly different consonants in comparison withVietnamese consonants This may be the reason why learners are not familiar withthose sounds and tend to make errors pronouncing them

English consonants can be at initial position, medial position and finalposition while in Vietnamese, there are only eight consonants exist in word-finalposition( table 3) and twenty-two items are initial consonants

Regarding initial-syllable consonants, Vietnamese and English share thefollowing consonant sounds: /p, k, b, d, m, n, f, v, s, z, h, l/ (Tang 2007,p.6).However, the differences between the two sound systems can be found in thesimilar sounds themselves

First, the sounds /p, k/ in English may be aspirated relying on context(Harris 1994) while /p, k/ are unaspirated in Vietnamese (Đoàn 2006) These twosounds may sound like “b” and “g” to an English speaker (Nguyen, 2009)

Second, the voiceless sound “s” as in sáng “morning” (in the southerndialect) is similar to the English “sh” However, this sound in the northern dialect istotally different, which sounds like /s/ in sea with the blade of the tongue is usedclose to the alveolar ridge

Third, the sound /t/ in Vietnamese-specific consonants, according to Nguyen(2009), consists the dental “t” as in to “big” and the dental aspirated “t” as in

“rabbit,” which is similar to the English “t” but produced between the teeth Binh N.Ngo made a contrast between Vietnamese and English sound /t/ The author statesthat in English the unaspirated /t/ and the aspirated /ť/ are the allophones of thephoneme /t/ The aspirated /ť/ occurs at the beginning of a stressed syllable, the

unaspirated /t/ in the other positions For example, in the word taskmaster, the first

consonant t is aspirated /ť/, the second one is unaspirated /t/ Unlike /t/ in English,the unaspirated /t/ and aspirated /ť/ are different phonemes in Vietnamese thatdistinguish the meanings of words: ta (we) ≠ tha (to forgive), tơ (silk) ≠ thơ(poetry), tư (private) ≠ thư (letter) This may be the reason why learners tend to

confuse Vietnamese aspirated consonant /ť/, which is indicated by the combination

of the two characters th with the English consonants /θ/ and /ð/

Apart from those similar sounds, there are some different sounds that alsocause difficulty to learners in English pronunciation The palatal consonant /c/, forexample, is another specific consonant in Vietnamese, which needs to distinguishwith affricate sound /t∫/ in English Nguyen (2009) indicates that in the production

of this Vietnamese consonant the tongue tip is down near the back of the lower teethand contact is made by the tongue blade against the hard palate The combination ofthe characters ch represents the Vietnamese consonant /c/ This sound should not bemixed up with the English voiceless palato-alveolar consonant /t∫/, e.g Vietnamesecha, chú, cho versus English char, choose, chop

It is possible to see that in the initial position, the sounds that do not exist inVietnamese may be the most dominant consonant sounds causing difficulty forsecond language learners They include the sound /tʃ/ in chair, /dʒ/ in judge, /ʃ/ inshoe and its rare voiced counterpart /ʒ/ in measure, /θ/ as in thing and /ð/ as in this,and the aspirated sound /t/ in toy (Nguyen, 2009)

Concerning final-syllable consonants, Vietnamese does exist ending sounds;however, "they are never pronounced or heard" (Duong, 2009) Vietnamese andEnglish share the following consonant sounds: /p, t, k, m, n, ŋ/ Among them, Tang(2007) points out that in Vietnamese, syllable-final /p, t, k/ are unreleased or “heldin,” whereas these sounds may be released in English The sounds that only exist inEnglish syllable-final words are /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /ʃ/, /l/ which may be strange toVietnamese students when pronouncing ending sounds

There are so many differences between Vietnamese and English that thelearners have to overcome These differences will harm Vietnamese learners ofEnglish, since they might not familiar with all of the English sound systems

1.5 The interference of the mother tongue to students' English pronunciation.

The role of the native language influences in the target language has been acontroversial topic The opponents of this issue suppose that the mother tongue doesnot prevent learners from pronouncing language correctly However, most

researchers agree that the learner’s native language has certain impact on thepronunciation of the target language.

Ivy (2011) believes that the similarities of the two languages will facilitatelearning whereas the differences will increase the learners’ difficulty to learn Thisshows a both sides of positive and negative impact of the first language on thesecond language learning

Sharing the same opinion with Ivy but Leah (2012) gives a clearer viewpointwhich points out that learner's first language can have significant influence on thelevel of accent and intelligibility of the new language Interference which isnegative transfer means that the features of the first language are carried into thesecond language With differences between the two languages, negative transfer canlead to erroneous production of aspiration, rhythm, and intonation in the newlanguage (Cunningham Florez 1998)

Regarding the interference of the Vietnamese to students' Englishpronunciation, there are many studies confirming this issue Cunningham (2009)supposes that the pronunciation of English presents severe challenges to Vietnamese-speaking learners “Not only is the sound system of Vietnamese very different fromthat of English, but there are also extremely limited opportunities for hearing andspeaking English in Vietnam.” She claims that one of the most striking features ofVietnamese-accented English is “the elision of consonants, in particular in thesyllable coda” (Cunningham 2009) The reason might be related to the phonotacticconstraints operational in Vietnamese, which is an isolating language (that is, one inwhich the words are invariable, and syntactic relationships are shown by word order),and traditionally, Vietnamese was regarded as monosyllabic because mostVietnamese words consist of single syllables (Taffalo, 2001) It is clearly a problemfor Vietnamese learners when pronouncing English which places a ‘heavy semanticload’ on the coda in verb forms and other suffixes (Cunningham 2009) Thedifference of the sound system, in particular in the consonants, between Vietnameseand English may create errors and result in difficulties in speaking English forVietnamese learners as well as for the intelligibility of Vietnamese-accented English.For example, single final consonants are often absent or substituted with another

consonant which is allowed in the coda in Vietnamese such as the substitution of /p/for the /f/ at the end of the first syllable in the word if or often, as voiceless stops arepermissible in coda position in Vietnamese while fricatives are not Moreover, there

is an elision of /z/ in the word is or /d/ in the cluster nds of the word friends thatVietnamese learners might face (Cunningham 2009)

In this study, the question of whether or not Vietnamese language causesobstacles to students' pronunciation of English consonants will be answered basing

on the errors they made

1.6 Intelligibility and Intelligibility problems in pronunciation

The term intelligibility is regularly mentioned in studies about pronunciation

“ Intelligibility is being understood by a listener at a given time in a givensituation”(Kenworthy, 1987, p.13) In other words, intelligibility is

“understandability” In pronunciation learning, intelligible speakers are those whocan master their pronunciation to communicate effectively It may not really native-like pronunciation but the ability to make others understand the speech However,many learners encounter intelligibility problems in pronunciation Kenworthy(1987) pointed out some learner pronunciation strategies which can lead tointelligibility problems They are: sound substitutions, sound deletions, soundinsertion, links between words, the use of stress, the use of rhythm, the use ofintonation Among them, the researcher pays much attention to three kinds ofproblems which are sound substitutions, sound deletions and sound insertion

a Sound substitutions

If a speaker substitutes one sound for another, this may cause difficulties forthe listener For example, many speakers whose native languages do not have “th”sound as in “thick” will substitute the sound /s/ as in sick for it Therefore, thelistener will have to decide whether the speaker said “ My friend is sick” or “Myfriend is thick” (i.e stupid)

b Sound deletions

Another set of problems might be given the cover term “deletion”, where thespeaker leaves out a sound In the case of consonants, a single consonant at thebeginning, middle, or end of the word may be deleted, or one or two of the

consonants in a group or cluster may be deleted An example would be the word

“hold” pronounced without the final ‘d’ – it would sound like ‘hole’

c Sound insertion

Non-native speakers may add sounds For example, many learners whenpronouncing words like ‘speak’, ‘spoon’ or ‘Spain’ add a short vowel sound at thebeginning of these words So ‘speak’ may sound like ‘a-speak’, a two-syllable word

1.6 1 English pronunciation errors

When English is spoken worldwide and the term World English is gettingpopular, it is necessary to understand what pronunciation error is Pronunciationerrors are “variants of pronunciation which prevent one communicator fromunderstanding the propositional content of the other’s utterances” (Jenkins, 2006, p.36) Therefore, the mispronounced sounds are those produced by learners sodifferently from how they are by the native speakers that they may affect listeners’understanding

1.7 Preview of Previous Studies

There have been great deals of notable works about English pronunciationissues; however, the researcher pays much attention to the following studies

In the study entitled “Correcting English consonants commonlymispronounced by second-year non English majors at ULIS-VNUH”, Vu Doan ThiPhuong Thao indicated some English consonants which were often mispronounced

by her non-English major students Accordingly, the sounds /ʒ/,/ʃ/,/tʃ/, weredifficult to students They often mistook /ʒ/,/ʃ/ for /z/ and /s/ and the sound /tʃ/ wasreplaced with /c/, spelled with c-h, in Vietnamese

The article entitled “Common pronunciation problems of Vietnameselearners of English” was written by Dr Ha Cam Tam to answer the question “whatare the most common pronunciation problems of the students in the Englishdepartment” The data was collected through an oral final examination whichrequired the fourth-year- students to talk about a particular topic in approximately

five minutes The findings of this study show three common errors of students inpronouncing English consonants including sound omission, sound redundancy andsound confusion Particularly, it is difficult for learners to pronounce the sounds /ʒ,

ʤ, ʧ /, especially these sounds are often replaced by /s/ when they occur at the end

of words

Unlike the two studies above, which research the wide issues ofpronunciation problem, Dao Thi My Hanh(2007) only focuses on the six certainconsonants: θ/, /ð/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/ in her study named “A study on pronunciation

of some English consonants by Vietnamese learners” In order to find out problems

of the learners at HPMU in pronouncing the six studied consonants, the authordesigned two exercises which required students to read out loud and then recordedtheir pronunciation With the support of two foreign teachers of English andanalyzing the data in the light of articulatory phonetics, the author figured out that /dʒ/ was the difficult consonant that students encountered, particularly in the finalposition of a word and /θ/ was the most common mistake that all of the subjectsmade in every position of a word

To sum up, all the studies above are meaningful to this study Especially, thestudy of Dao Thi My Hanh(2007) is a valuable reference for the researcher to carryout this study

In terms of causes to the problems, a variety of factors have beeninvestigated and identified in studies about pronunciation mistakes and difficulties.First, in attempt to correct English consonants commonly mispronounced by secondyear non-English majors at ULIS-VNUH, Vu Doan Thi Phuong Thao (2011)showed reasons that accounted for students’ mispronunciation including inadequateexposure to English language, inadequate understanding of English sounds,influence of mother tongue, influence of first foreign language, i.e major, influence

of hometown dialects, hesitation to express oneself and some other reasons such aslack of time or pronunciation habit

Second, in the study named Mistake or Vietnamese English, Dr Duong Thi

Nu (2009) pointed out that learners’ pronunciation mistakes are because of

“inadequate knowledge of the articulation of the sounds and, more importantly, the

interference of the mother tongue” Specifically, she identified four main reasonsthat explain for learners’ failure in pronouncing English consonant correctly: (1)failure in distinguish the difference, (2) influence of the mother tongue, (3)perception of mistakes, (4) inadequate drills and practice

Especially, the study of Nguyen Thi Thu Huong(2010) attracts much of theresearcher’s concern In her study, she found out subjective and objective reasonscausing difficulties to students in pronouncing some English consonants Subjectivereasons are low pronunciation ability, passive ways of learning, low motivation toEnglish language learning while objective causes include mother tongue’sinfluence, poor learning background, articulation features of the consonants,teaching and learning environment inefficiency and inappropriate techniques used

by teachers

In short, previous researchers have found out common factors affectinglearners’ pronunciation of English, which are interference of the mother tongue,inadequate understanding of English sounds, and the lack of effective teaching andlearning The most common reason found in those studies is the interference ofmother tongue

The previous research focused only on some consonants with a narrow scope

of context With a wider context, this paper draws on a study investigating theerrors in pronunciation of consonants made by English learners and possibleexplanation of those errors