Pronunciation mistakes on ending sounds A case study of second year English majors at Ho Chi Minh City Open University

_ HOCHI CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY EACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE HO CHI MINH CITY G5835 9⁄3C8£x3Œ569%5C5593 PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES ON ENDING SOUNDS A Case Study of Second-year English Majors

_ HOCHI CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY EACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE

HO CHI MINH CITY

G5835 9⁄3C8£x3Œ569%5C5593

PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES ON ENDING SOUNDS

A Case Study of Second-year English Majors

at Ho Chi Minh City Open University

A paper submited in partial fulfilment of the requirements

for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in English

Submitted by PHAM TRAN YEN VI Supervised by NGUYEN THI HOAI MINH, M.A

ABSTRACT

This paper is entitled “Pronunciation Mistakes on Ending Sounds: A Case Study of Second-year English Majors at Ho Chi Minh City Open University.” Being spurred

on achieving some empirical data of this area, the researcher hopefully contributes

a kind of food-for-thought to the teaching and studying English pronunciation in

Faculty of Foreign Languages, Ho Chi Minh City Open University

Five chapters of the thesis are to serve for this purpose First, the framework of the study was formed mainly from the researcher’s perceptions about the importance of English ending sounds and the possible problems related to the places of articulation of English consonants Detailed records on the subjects’ mistakes while they read English texts and quantitative analyzing process lead to some interesting findings

Typically, one-third of the counted ending sounds were missed pronouncing by the subjects On term of gender, there is hardly any’ correlation between making mistake habits and different sexes Additionally, speed of producing spoken

English does not seem have much account on making mistakes behaviors Finally,

taking part in some other extra classes, which also implies having more practice with formal instructions, may lessen pronunciation mistakes in ending sounds

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

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CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

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2.2, TYPES OF ENGLISH’S ENDING SOUNDS

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iv

CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 OVERALL MISTAKES MADE BY THE GROUP INVESTIGATED 13 4.2 CLASSIFYING MISTAKES ACCORDING TO GENDER veel 4,3, CLASSIFYING MISTAKES ACCORDING TO SPEED OF READING 17 4.4, CLASSIFYING MISTAKES ACCORDING TO EXTRA CLASS .18 4.5 CLASSIFYING MISTAKES ACCORDING TO CHANCE FOR

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1: The number of ending sounds of the texts

Table 5.1: Overall mistakes by students

Table 5.2: Statistics of ending sound mistakes according to gender

Table 5.3: Statistics of ending sound mistakes according to speed of reading

Table 5.4: Statistics of ending sound mistakes according to chance to study outside

class

Table 5.5: Statistics of ending sound mistakes according to communication outside

class

vi

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 5.1: Students’ mistakes on ending sounds based on places of articulation Chart 5.2: Ending sounds' mistakes of male and female students

Chart 5.3: Ending sounds' mistakes according to speed of students

Chart 5.4: Ending sounds’ mistakes according to chance to study outside class Chart 5.5: Ending sounds' mistakes according to communication outside class

vii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 AIMS OF THE STUDY

This study aims at finding out some pronunciation mistakes on English ending

sounds of second-year students in Ho Chi Minh City Open University (HOU)

To serve for this purpose, the researcher first describes systems of English

ending sounds and then investigates a group of second-year English-major students’ performance The framework of the study categorizes conventional places of articulation of English consonant sounds In the light of the result, the

researcher desires to achieve a common understanding of this group’s ending

sound pronunciation behaviors

1.2 RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY

In English, most words end in consonant sounds (Dale and Wolf, 2000.) In Vietnamese, however, words end in vowels and open sounds As far as the researcher has experienced, there are many English-major students of HOU pronounce English without ending sounds The possible reason can be traced back to the difference between English and Vietnamese Furthermore, although they may be aware of pronouncing the end sounds, the presence of some

English-final consonants which Vietnamese is lack of makes it hard for them to

produce these sounds correctly Many of students even omit these ending sounds

which may cause misunderstanding For example, if a student does not

pronounce the sound /t/ in the word belt /belt/, it becomes bell /bell/ Therefore, the researcher wants to have a systematic look at these problems More

importantly, an understanding-oriented look into students’ mistake-making habits on this area can hopefully reveal some practical implications for learners, teachers and program designers.

1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This study takes place in the Faculty of Foreign Languages, HOU Fourteen second-year English-major students are invited to take part in the survey

Students’ personal information and their performance results are coded in numeric data, followed by a quantitative analysis The work has carried out

within four months from early June to early October - 2007 The study goal is achieved by focusing on mistakes on ending sounds the target group makes when they read two English texts To make the work more achievable, the

assimilation, liaison, weak forms, linking words are out of the scope of this study

1.4 RESEARCH QUESTION

This is one question that guides this study:

What are types of pronunciation mistakes on ending sounds made by second- year English-major students in HOU?

1.5 OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

The study will be described in five chapters Apart from chapter one - the

introduction of the study, other chapters will be organized as follows:

¢ Chapter two reviews part of literature relevant to the topic investigated and a brief discussion on the importance of ending sounds

e© Chapter three introduces the methodology employed in the study

e Chapter four reports the results of the study and presents discussion of the findings

e Chapter five is for conclusions of the study and implications for the

improvement of pronouncing English’s ending sounds

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

To the researcher knowledge, there has been little research concerning about providing information of students’ pronunciation mistake-making habits However, the content of variety of pronunciation text books confirms the fact

that ending sounds are essential in English

This part includes some opinions of the professionals about English’s ending

sounds to provide direction for the study Handcock ( 2004: 60), demonstrated that “it is important to pronounce the final consonants” A typical article studied

about contractions, a part of ending sounds also point out that “contractions are very common in spoken English”, (http://www.englishclub.com/) According to another researcher, Brazil (2006) mentioned that pronouncing English’s cluster was difficult for some These sources contribute to my research to find out the

common mistakes in pronunciation of 2™ year English-major students in HOU

and then hunt down for solutions to help students to overcome their mistakes

It is the researcher’s intension to discuss the importance of ending sounds The

next part of section categorizes types of English’s ending sounds and describes

conventional places of articulation related to ending sounds The description of these parts frames the study’s investigation direction and to some extents,

establishes the importance of the study

2.1 IMPORTANCE OF ENDING SOUNDS IN ENGLISH

ending sounds that help us to distinguish words which have nearly the same sounds, A few examples can be taken to demonstrate this point:

Ex: _ belt /belt/ and bell /bel/

change /tfeind3/ and chain /tfein/

hold /hould/ and hole /haul/

Being badly aware of this can cause unintelligibility to listeners That is, the quality of speaker’s delivery, with which meaning is thoroughly covered, partially depends on the control of producing ending sounds Students, who do not realize this role of ending sounds may lapse into incomprehensible speeches, thus fail to fulfill spoken communication occasionally

noun or possessives, etc

2.2, TYPES OF ENGLISH’S ENDING SOUNDS

2.2.1, Plural nouns

Here are some examples of plural forms in English:

Ex: coat - coats door - doors

date - dates fax - faxes

The rules of forming plural nouns involve an adding consonant sound at the end

of the word while Vietnamese does not have this rule Therefore, one key problem Vietnamese students have is failing to pronounce the ending sound of plural words

Another common problem is that students do not usually pronounce ending sound properly, so "cars" /ka :z/ sounds like "cars." /ka :s/, or using an extra

syllable when a sound is enough, so "books" sounds like "book-is."

We can easily find out rules of pronunciation for regular plurals in many English

books, shortly like the following:

1 Use the /s/ sound to pronounce the plural when a word ends in one of these (unvoiced) sounds: /p, f, k, t, @/ Examples: rope-ropes /s/, wreck-

wrecks /s/, bat-bat /s/

2 Use the /z/ sound to pronounce the plural when a word ends in one of these (voiced) sounds: /b, m, n, 1, d, n, g, r, v, z/ and all vowel sounds

Examples: tub-tubs /z/, rim-rims /z/, can-cans /z/

3 Use the syllable /1z/ sound to pronounce the plural of a word that ends with one of these sounds: /s, z, f, dg, tf, ij Examples: bus-buses/1z/,

wish-wishes/Iz/, watch-watches /Tz/

These seemingly simple rules can complicate the problems mentioned above

The conventional pronunciation of —s, -es has sure been a big trouble of learners

To have /s/ sound pronounced is difficult, to have it pronounced correctly is even

more difficult

2.2.2 Tenses

2.2.2.1 Past tense verb

A quick review on the rules of pronunciation for regular verbs enable us to

understand how sophisticated it is in pronouncing past tense verbs ending

sounds:

1 Use a /t/ sound to pronounce the past tense when a word ends in one of

these (unvoiced) sounds: /p, f, k, s, f, 0, t{/ Examples: talk-talked /1/, wish-wished /t/, watch-watched /t/

2 Use the /d/ sound to pronounce the past tense when a word ends in one

of these (voiced) sounds:/b, m, n, j, 1, 0, g, ©, Vv, Z/ and all vowel sounds

Examples: rob-robbed /d/, fill-filled /d/, agree-agreed /d/

3 Use the syllable /1d/ sound to pronounce the past tense of a word that ends with a /t/ or /d/ sound Examples: need-needed /1d/, want-wanted

/d/

Just like the plural noun, two basic common problems can be located

- Not pronouncing the ending sound, so "called" sounds like "call."

- /d/ is sounded like /t/, so "tried" sounds like "trite." Using an extra

syllable when a sound is enough, so "liked" sounds like "lik-ed" (2

syllables)

When the verbs in past tense are used separated for practice, discriminating those endings usually take lots of energy It is obvious that the task is even more

difficult when they are used in sentences

2.2.2.2 Present perfect tense

The present perfect tense is formed with a present tense form of the auxiliary

"have" plus the past participle of the verb Regular verb of the present perfect tense is the same as the past tense about which was mentioned above

Ex: I've worked here since 2004

I’ve never seen a sea horse

2.2.2.3 Simple present, third-person singular

ag?

For third-person singular subjects, the base form plus an “s” or “es” ending

Ex: He goes to school every morning

She understands English

2.2.3 Possessives

Possessives are formed by adding an apostrophe and "s" or only an apostrophe Ex: One girl's bicycle was pink

The twins’ bicycle has two seats

Sometimes, students do not pronounce possessive (s), thus teacher’s chair >>

teacher chair

2.2.4 Contractions

Contractions are very common in spoken English We often "contract" or shorten

words in English For example, we may say "he's" instead of “he is”

2.2.4.1, Positive Contractions

Some contractions can have two or three meanings For example, he'd can be he

had or he would It depends on the rest of the sentence Look at these examples:

Ex: He'd like to go (He would like to go.)

He'd finished when I arrived (He had finished when I arrived.)

I'm >>I am I've >> I have I'll >> I will/l shall I'd >> I would/I should/I had You're >> you are

He’s >> he has/he is

2.2.4.2 Negative Contractions

With the verb "to be", two negative forms are possible we aren't or we're not,

In tag questions, am not is contracted to aren't,

Ex: I'm late, aren't I? >> “Not” is contracted to be “n’t”

Aren't >> are not

Can’t >> cannot, can not

Mightn't >> might not

Shouldn’t should not

Won't >> will not

2.2.4.3 Other Contractions

Here are some more examples showing some very common contractions

Ex: here's >> here is

there'll >> there will

that's >> that is

where's >> where is

who’d >> who would?

2.2.5 Clusters

English has many words which end with two or three consonant sounds

(clusters) This can create problems for Vietnamese students who are not used to pronouncing words with consonant endings

Common problem of Vietnamese students are do not pronounce the last sound,

so "just" sounds like "jus." or delete one of ending sounds

Ex: kept

start

first

desk

2.3 ENDING SOUNDS’ PLACE OF ARTICULATION

To produce a correct sound, in general, and an ending sound, in particular, speaker has to place his organs of articulation in proper positions Also, the

manner of pushing or keeping the air must be in a good control

Ending sounds’ places of articulation is an important aspect of the production of ending sounds Here are types of ending sounds’ places of articulation:

e Bilabial: sounds involve the lips /p, b, m/

Labio-dental: sounds involve the teeth and the tongue /f, v/

Dental: the teeth and the tongue /0, ð/

Alveolar: the tongue and the ridge /t, d, s, z, n, 1, r/

Polato-alveolar: the hard palate, the alveolar ridge and tongue / tf, d3, J, 3/ e© Velar: the soft palate and the tongue /k, g, n/

Learning a new language means to learn some new places of articulation in that language Difficulties often occur when learners of English fail to locate their organs to those places of articulation From this perspective, the researcher

conducts the investigation in which pronunciation mistakes are counted based on

different conventional places of articulation in English