a study on some common mistakes made by vietnamese learners of english when pronouncing english final consonants = nghiên cứu một số lỗi thường gặp của học viên việt nam khi phát âm phụ âm cuối trong tiếng anh

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ---    --- ĐÀO THÚY MAI A STUDY ON SOME COMMON MISTAKES MADE BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH WHEN

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-    -

ĐÀO THÚY MAI

A STUDY ON SOME COMMON MISTAKES MADE BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH WHEN

PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANTS

(Nghiên cứu một số lỗi thường gặp của học viên Việt Nam khi phát

âm phụ âm cuối trong tiếng Anh)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

HANOI, 2012

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

-    -

ĐÀO THÚY MAI

A STUDY ON SOME COMMON MISTAKES MADE BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH WHEN

PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANTS

(Nghiên cứu một số lỗi thường gặp của học viên Việt Nam khi phát

âm phụ âm cuối trong tiếng Anh)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: Huỳnh Anh Tuấn, Ph.D

HANOI, 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES v

LIST OF FIGURES vi

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1

1 RATIONALE 1

2 AIMS OF THE RESEARCH 2

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 2

4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 3

5 DESIGN OF THE STUDY 4

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT 5

Chapter 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW 5

I THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 5

I.1 General descriptions of stop consonants 5

I.2 Phonological characteristics and articulation of the sounds /p/, b/, /t/, /d/, /k/ and /g/ 6

I.3 Vietnamese final stop consonants vs English final stop consonants 10

II LITERATURE REVIEW 11

Chapter 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 19

2.1 Research questions 19

2.2 The informants of the study 19

2.3 Research method 20

Chapter 3: DATA ANALYSIS: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 23

3.1 The recordings 23

3.2 The survey questionnaire 29

PART THREE: CONCLUSION 38

1 Summary 38

2 Concluding remarks 38

3 Pedagogical Implications 41

4 Limitations and Suggestions for further research 42

REFERENCES 43 APPENDIX 1 I

APPENDIX 2 IV

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Stop consonants chart

Table 2: Sounds mispronounced by Vietnamese students

Table 3: Occurrence of mispronunciation across the 30 informants

Table 4: Percentages of informants producing sound omission

Table 5: Percentages of informants producing sound deviation

Table 6: Number of informants producing mistakes

Table 7: Causes of the informants‟ mispronunciation

Table 8: Informants‟ frequencies of applying pronunciation improving strategies

Table 9: Teachers of informants‟ frequencies of applying strategies to improve learners‟ speaking English

LIST OF FIRURES

Figure 1: Place and manner articulation of the sound /p/

Figure 2: Place and manner articulation of the sound /b/

Figure 3: Place and manner articulation of the sound /t/

Figure 4: Place and manner articulation of the sound /d/

Figure 5: Place and manner articulation of the sound /k/

Figure 6: Place and manner articulation of the sound /g/

Figure 7: Informants‟ years of learning English

Figure 8: Informants‟ perception of the role of pronunciation

Figure 9: Informants‟ difficulty in speaking English

Figure 10: Informants‟ opinion about the causes of mistakes

Figure 11: Percentage of informants applying pronunciation strategies Figure 12: Informants‟ ideas about their teachers‟ pronunciation teaching strategies

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

1 RATIONALE

Our world is developing every hour and international cooperation is one of the important strategies of each country to promote its socio-economic development To integrate successfully into the global economy, foreign language is considered to be indispensable Understanding the importance of foreign languages in general and of English in particular, the Vietnamese government has set up a curriculum for English learning for children from 6 years old onwards The number of English language centers has been remarkably increasing during the past two decades Whereas English is an urgent requirement for young graduates to get a good job, many of them find it difficult to speak English properly to meet this demand

It is widely recognized that success in language learning is the ability to communicate with others in a way that makes them fully understand what the speaker says and his intended meaning There are many Vietnamese students who have been learning English for many years but find it rather difficult to sustain a conversation This is because the focus is only on grammar and vocabulary when they are in high school As a result, they have good knowledge of these two components, but their pronunciation is poor Thus, it is easy to understand that pronunciation is one of the most important factors affecting successful communication Also, it is one of the reasons for communication breakdown

If the speaker pronounces the words incorrectly, the listener will get confused and find the speaking incomprehensible; or he may understand you in another way assuming something different from what is meant Therefore, pronunciation has great influence on the success of oral communication It is said that the better your pronunciation is, the better you will be treated and the more comfortable people will feel when dealing with you

At university level, it is really important to have good pronunciation because it helps students to be confident in taking oral exams Certainly, examiners will be impressed with examinees‟ vocal clarity, and students‟ presentation will sound more professional and persuasive to listeners

These premises have urged me into carrying research into the most common mistakes made by senior non- English major students at Thai Nguyen University of Economics and Business Administration (TUEBA) when pronouncing 6 English final consonants The research ultimately aims at finding out solutions and to help Vietnamese learners of English overcome these mistakes

2 AIMS OF THE RESEARCH

Making mistakes in pronouncing final consonants is regarded as very common for students when they learn English These difficulties are challenges for Vietnamese learners in general and for senior year non- English major students in particular if they do not find the most suitable study method for themselves In this study, the author investigates the most common mistakes made by those learners to:

 Identify the most common mistakes in pronouncing English final consonants: /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, and /g/ by senior non-English major students at Thai Nguyen University of Economics and Business Administration;

 Find out the causes of these mistakes;

 Provide some strategies to help students avoid mispronunciation

Hopefully, this research will provide one more reference source for teachers of English as

a second language when they teach pronunciation At the same time, this will also be useful to Vietnamese students of English in correcting their mistakes and improving pronunciation skills

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Research questions

The study addresses the following four questions:

1 Do Vietnamese learners of English make mistakes when pronouncing

English final stop consonants?

2 What are the most common mistakes students often make?

3 What are the causes of the mispronunciation?

4 What are the possible solutions to help learners correct these mistakes?

Research context

The research was conducted on 150 senior English non- major students of joint training program between Thai Nguyen University of Economics and Business Administration and Daegu Cyber University These students had a lot of chances to improve their English proficiency because most of the courses were taught in English

Research method

The study was conducted via a survey in which two instruments of data collection were used: recording the informants‟ pronunciation of selected isolated words and words within utterances, sentences and texts to find out the common pronunciation mistakes with stop final consonants and a questionnaire to investigate the causes of the mistakes and the solutions to the problems The data analysis is quantitative

4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The English alphabet is based on Latin and contains twenty six letters However, the English sound system consists of forty four phonemes: twenty four consonants, twelve pure vowels (monothongs), and eight diphthongs In general, Vietnamese learners have difficulties in pronouncing some of the English sounds only but not all of them

It is necessary to make a distinction between errors and mistakes According to

“Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics” by Richards J,

Platt J and Platt H (1992), errors results from incomplete knowledge but mistakes are made when writing or speaking and caused by lack of attention, fatigue, carelessness or some other aspect of performance

Due to time constraints, the length of thesis (minor thesis) and the researcher‟s knowledge, it is impossible for the researcher to study all the mistakes made by students when producing English consonants Therefore, this study only focuses on finding out the most typical mistakes made by some senior non-English major students at TUEBA when

pronouncing the six English stop consonants /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/ and /g/ at final position of

words with the following reasons:

 There has not yet been any research on all the six stop consonants Several authors have studied one or two certain consonants of the six only

 Six stop consonants are not so difficult to produce, however students seem to omit these sounds at final position Basing on my teaching experience, I find that most students often make mistakes with some plosive consonants like /t/, /d/, /p, /b/ and the most common mistakes are sound omission and sound deviation The said reasons have motivated me to carry out this study to find out the mistakes as well as

to offer strategies to help students to overcome this problem

5 DESIGN OF THE STUDY

The thesis comprises three parts:

The first part is the introduction which includes the rationale, aims, research methodology, scope and design of the study

The second part, development, is divided into three chapters Chapter one provides the theoretical background and literature review of the study The theoretical background presents the general description of stop consonants, the phonological characteristics and

articulation of the sounds /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/ and /g/ and a comparison between Vietnamese final consonants and English final consonants The literature review discusses

previous works related to consonant pronunciation among second language learners Chapter two is devoted to the methodology of the study in which the research questions are raised, the informants of the study are discussed and the research method is given with the data collection instruments, the data analysis methods and data collection procedure Chapter 3, data analysis: findings and discussion, analyses the data collected from the recordings and the questionnaire and presents the findings and discussion of the study The final part is the conclusion including a summary of the study, concluding remarks,

pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT

This chapter provides some key concepts as the theoretical background for the research The general description of 6 stop consonants, the phonological characteristics and articulation of these sounds and a comparison of Vietnamese final stop consonants and English final stop consonants are included in the theoretical background The second part

of this chapter is devoted to the review of some works related to this research

I THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

I.1 General descriptions of stop consonants

Roach, P (1990) defined that a plosive consonant is a consonant articulation with the following characteristics:

1 The closing stage, during which the articulating organs move together in order to form the obstruction; in this stage there is often an on-glide or transition audible in a preceding sound segment and visible in an acoustic analysis as characteristic curve of formants of the preceding sound;

2 The hold or compression stage, during which lung action compresses the air behind the closure; this stage may or may not be accompanied by voice, i.e vibration of the vocal cords;

3 The release or explosion stage, during which the organs forming the obstruction part rapidly, allowing the compressed air to escape abruptly; if stage (2) is voiced, the vocal cord vibration may continue in stage (3); if stage (2) is voiceless, stage (3) may also be voiceless (aspiration) before silence or before the onset of voice

The general descriptions of stop consonants can be illustrated in the following table:

Inter-alveola

r

palatal

I.2 Phonological characteristics and articulation of the sounds /p/, b/, /t/, /d/, /k/ and /g/

It is very important to distinguish between a phoneme and an allophone in English “A phoneme is a structural element in the sound system of a language Allophones are realizations of a single structural element in the sound system of a language” (Finegan: 2004: 113) The example below identifies the positions in which unaspirated [p] and aspirated [ph] occur:

 Plate [phleit] (aspirated [ph] occurs only at the beginning of the word)

 Sprint [sprint] (unaspirated [p] occurs only after [s])

The slanted lines / / is used to enclose phonemes and square brackets [ ] to enclose allophones

After reviewing Roach, P (1990) and Tam (2002), the researcher gives the following phonological characteristics and articulation of 6 stop consonants:

I.2.1 Phonological characteristics and articulation of the sound /p/

/p/ is a voiceless, bilabial, fortis (strong) plosive Its variants include an aspirated plosive

if the consonant is followed by a stressed vowel and occurs in syllable-initial position Being a bilabial stop, /p/ is produced by completely blocking the airstream at the level of the lips and by suddenly releasing the air with an explosion The soft palate being raised and the nasal resonator shut off, the primary obstacle to the airstream is provided by the closure of the lips Air from the lungs is compressed behind this closure, during which stage the vocal cords are held wide apart /p/ is distributed in initial, medial and final position It is spelt „p‟ as in „plane‟ /plein/ or „pp‟ as in „opposite‟ /ˈɒp.ə.zɪt/ and only

exceptionally „gh‟ as in „hiccough‟ /ˈhɪk.ʌp/ The letter „p‟ is silent when followed by another obstruent or a nasal in word-initial position such as in „psychology‟ /saɪˈkɒl.ə.dʒi/

or „pneumonia‟ /njuːˈməʊ.ni.ə/

Figure 1: Place and manner articulation of the sound /p/

(As retrieved from http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html)

I.2.2 Phonological characteristics and articulation of the sound /b/

/b/ is the voiced, lenis (weak) counterpart of /p/ In both /p/ and /b/, it is the lips which obstruct the oral cavity Voicing and force of articulation are the features that contrast the two phonemes, /b/ being like /p/ a bilabial sound The sound is distributed in all three basic

positions: initial, medial and final as in „bet‟ /bet/, „obey‟ /ə ʊ ˈbeɪ/, and „knob‟ /nɒb/ It is spelt

„b‟ as in „boy‟ /bɔɪ/ or „bb‟ as in „abbot‟ /ˈæb.ət/ The letter is silent in final position after „m‟

as in „lamb‟/læm/ The variants of /b/ include partially devoiced allophones in initial position:

as in „bring‟ /brɪŋ/ , and „big‟ /bɪg/ and laterally or nasally released allophones when /b/ is followed by the lateral /l/ as in „bless‟ /bles/ or by a nasal consonant as in „ribbon‟ /'ribən/ It

is not audibly released in

final position as in „rib‟

(As retrieved from http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html)

I.2.3.Phonological characteristics and articulation of the sound /t/

/t/ is a voiceless, apico-alveolar, fortis (strong) plosive To make this sound, the soft palate is raised and the nasal resonator shut off so that the primary obstacle to the air-stream is formed by a closure made between the tip and the rims of the tongue and the upper alveolar ridge and side teeth Both sides and the front of the tongue simultaneously touch the alveolar ridge laterally and anteriorly Air from the lungs air is compressed behind this closure, during which stage the vocal cords are wide apart The air escapes with noise upon the sudden separation of the alveolar closure

Like /p/, /t/ has an aspirated variant that occurs before stressed vowels when the phoneme

is distributed in syllable-initial position as in „tube‟ /tjuːb/ If preceded by „s‟, however, /t/

is unaspirated as in „stain‟ /steɪn/ Its distribution includes all basic positions It is laterally or nasally released if followed by /l/ or by a nasal consonant as in written

Figure 3: Place and manner articulation of the sound /t/

(As retrieved from http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html)

I.2.4 Phonological characteristics and articulation of the sound /d/

/d/ is the voiced, lenis (weak) counterpart of /t/ The voicing and force of articulation differentiate between the two sounds that share the same place of articulation in the alveolar region Air from the lungs is compressed behind the closure between the tip and the rims of the tongue, during which stage the vocal cords are wide apart and may vibrate for all or part of the compression stage according to its situation in the utterance

In short, /t/ and /d/ are alveolar; the tongue blade is pressed against the alveolar ridge Normally the tongue does not touch the front teeth as it does in the dental plosives found

in many languages

/d/ is distributed in initial, medial and final position as in „dig‟ /dɪg/, „addiction‟/ə'dik∫n/, and „pad‟ /pæd/ It is partially devoiced in initial position and in final position It is laterally released if followed by /l/ as in „riddle‟ /ˈrɪd.l ̩/ and nasally released if followed

by /m/ or /n/ as in „admit‟ /ədˈmɪt/ and „sudden‟ /ˈsʌd ə n/

Figure 4: Place and manner articulation of the sound /d/

(As retrieved from http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html)

I.2.5 Phonological characteristics and articulation of the sound /k/

/k/ is a voiceless, dorso-velar, fortis (strong), plosive sound, articulated with the dorsum

of the tongue elevated as well as retracted in order to form contact against either the hard palate or the soft palate depending on the context of the phonetic sound Like other voiceless plosives described above, it has an aspirated variant if the sound is distributed in syllable-initial position, in front of a stressed vowel as in „cat‟ /kæt/.

When making this sound, the soft palate is raised and the nasal resonator shut off, so that the primary obstacle to the air stream is formed by a closure made between the back of the tongue and the soft palate Air from the lungs is compressed behind this closure during which stage the vocal cords are wide apart

/k/ is distributed in initial, medial and final position and can be followed by a nasal consonant and be consequently nasally released like thicken or by the lateral liquid and be laterally released as in „fickle‟ /ˈfɪk.l ̩/ In spelling, the sound can be represented by the letter „c‟ as in „comb‟ /kəʊm/ or by „cc‟ as in „accuse‟ /əˈkjuːz/, by „k‟ as in „kill‟ /kɪl/, by

„ck‟ as in „pick‟ /pɪk/, by „ch‟ as in „architect‟ /ˈɑː.kɪ.tekt/, or by „qu‟ as in „queen‟ /kwiːn/

Figure 5: Place and manner articulation of the sound /k/

(As retrieved from http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html)

I.2.6 Phonological characteristics and articulation of the sound /g/

/g/ is the voiced, lenis (weak) partner of /k/ and it has basically the same features as its counterpart /k/ However when being produced, the vocal cords may vibrate for all or part of the compression stage according to its situation in the utterance Like other plosives, it is distributed in all three positions Its allophones include partially devoiced variants in initial position as in „gain‟

/geɪn/, devoiced variants in final position as in „dog‟ and laterally released when followed by „l‟ as

in „giggle‟ /ˈgɪg.l ̩/ and nasally released when followed by „m‟ as in „dogmatic‟

In spelling, the consonant can be rendered by „g‟ as in „get‟ /get/, by „gg‟ as in „beggar‟ /ˈbeg.ə r / or

by „g‟ followed by „h‟, as in „ghastly‟ /ˈgɑːs t  .li/; or by „g‟ followed by „ua‟, „ue‟, or „ui‟ as in

„guarantee‟ /ˌgær ə nˈtiː/, „guess‟ /ges/ or „linguist‟ /ˈlɪŋ.gwɪst/, respectively

Figure 6: Place and manner articulation of the sound /g/

(As retrieved from http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html)

I.3 Vietnamese final stop consonants vs English final stop consonants

Avery & Ehrlich (2010) presented the following differences between Vietnamese final stop consonants and English final stop consonants:

I.3.1 Final voiceless stop consonants: /p/, /t/ and /k/

In Vietnamese the voiceless stop consonants /p/, /t/, and /k/ may occur at the end of a word but these consonants are never released in final position and are much shorter than their English equivalents

/p/ is generally not aspirated in final position in English and is often not released which means air is not allowed to escape from the mouth Learners of English may have difficulty hearing this sound and may omit the /p/ when speaking, or they may produce the final /p/ too strongly, sometimes adding an extra vowel after it For example, the word

„cab‟ is pronounced as /kæ/, „stamp‟ as / stæm/ or „camp‟ as /kæm/

Similar to /p/, /t/ is also not released in final position in English The reason for this is that the mouth forms a /t/ sound but the tongue stays on the roof of the mouth and the air does not escape As a result, learners of English may omit the /t/ when pronouncing or may produce it too strongly Therefore, the word „wait‟ is pronounced as /wei/, „start‟ as /sta:/

or „laughed‟ as /la:f/

/k/ is usually not aspirated in final position in English in some words like „book‟ /bʊk/ or

„critic‟ /ˈkrɪt.ɪk/ It is often not released When it is pronounced, no air is let out Thus, learners may have difficulty with this

I.3.2 Voiced vs Voiceless stops in word final position: /b/, /d/, /g/ vs /p/, /t/, /k/

As Vietnamese has no voiced stops at the end of words, Vietnamese speakers find it difficult to distinguish between voiced and voiceless stops in this position As a result, sometimes they substitute voiceless /p/, /t/, and /k/ for voiced /b/, /d/ and /g/

Here are some words which are often mispronounced by Vietnamese students (source?)

II LITERATURE REVIEW

There have been many researches dealing with the mistakes, errors and difficulties made

by learners when pronouncing English sounds Particularly, they mainly focus on consonant issues as they are one of obstacles learners of English as a foreign language often cope with

According to Grunwell (1987), Dyson & Paden (1983), Treiman, Zukowski & Richmond- Welty (1995) and Treiman & Bourassa, (2000), errors with consonant sounds can be classified into 6 types:

1 Cluster reduction: This is the “deletion of one or more consonants from a target cluster

so that only a single consonant occurs at syllable margins” (Grunwell, 1987:217)

Eg: „blue‟ is pronounced as [bu]

2 Cluster simplification The error occurs when one/some elements of a cluster is/are pronounced in a different manner from the target phoneme (Grunwell, 1987:217)

Eg: „green‟ is pronounced as /gwin/

3 Epenthesis: This is the insertion of some vowel (normally a schwa) into cluster elements (Dyson and Parden, 1983)

Eg „drive‟ /draiv/ is pronounced as /dəraiv/

4 Coalescence: It occurs when the yielded pronunciation contains new consonant composed features instead of the original consonants

Eg: „swim‟ is pronounced as /fim/

Because the fricative feature of /s/ co-occurs with the bilabial feature of /w/, the result is a bilabial fricative, /f/ (Dyson & Paden, 1983,)

5 Omitting of nasal and liquid sounds: In consonant clusters consisting of pre-final + final consonants with nasals (/m/, /n/) or liquids (/l/, /r/) as the first element (m, n, l, r, + final consonant), nasal and liquid sounds are often omitted (Treiman, Zukowski & Richmond- Welty, 1995)

Eg: went  wet

Belt  bet

6 Phonetically possible spelling: In representing the first consonant of a cluster, spellers tend to spell words in an inaccurate but phonetically plausible ways (Treiman & Bourassa, 2000)

E.g.: „trap‟ => „chap‟

Among the six types above, the first, the second, the third, and sixth are predicted to be the problems of Vietnamese learners It is explained that in Vietnamese the number of consonant clusters are limited Therefore, they tend to have difficulty in pronouncing English consonant clusters However, only the first three types of errors are relevant to the study

It can be said that some English sounds are strange to Vietnamese such as /θ /, /ð /, //, /t/, // and /ʒ/ This causes a lot of difficulties for Vietnamese learners of English when making sounds A few Vietnamese researchers conducted their studies on typical mistakes, errors and problems of pronunciation faced by learners Simultaneously, solutions and suggestions for improvement are also given to help them overcome these Thao (2007) reported the following major findings of her research into errors and mistakes made by Vietnamese learners of English when pronouncing final consonants in English Five informants were asked to read aloud a word list and a text The most common mistakes and errors reported are omitting the ending sounds that are too foreign

or too difficult; reducing and moving the final consonants and clusters towards their first language and adding the schwa /∂/in final clusters

Although this research contains some limitations, its findings can be used for further research on the comprehensibility of Vietnamese-accented English for other English speakers or the typical influences of the mother tongue on Vietnamese speakers of English

Tam (2005) set up a research question involving the most common pronunciation problems of the students in the English Department of the University of Languages and International Studies To answer this question, the data collection was carried out through

an oral final examination During the exam, students were requested to talk about a

particular topic in approximately five minutes While listening to the students talking, the researcher took notes of the errors involving pronunciation Tam found that those Vietnamese speakers often omitted the ending sounds She concluded that there were three common errors in the pronunciation of her students: sound omission, sound redundancy and sound confusion

The sounds most frequently mispronounced by Vietnamese students in Tam‟s study are shown in the following table:

Table 2: Sounds mispronounced by Vietnamese students (Tam, 2007)

Hanh (2007) raised three questions in her study:

1 Do the subjects of the study have problems in producing /θ /, /ð /, //, /t/, //?

2 How do they differ from native speakers in articulating these sounds?

3 What are the causes of the mispronunciation?

From the results analyzed, the researcher affirmed that all the subjects of the study, whose English competence was at elementary level, did have big problems in producing the six studied consonants The informants‟ main problems relating to the studied consonants were either they mispronounced the sounds or omitted them, especially when the sounds

are in the final position The way the subjects of the study produced these sounds was different from the native speakers by either making the sounds softer or harder All of the

subjects had difficulties in producing the sound // especially when it is in the final

position; and many of them produced /θ/ the worst in every position, especially in the

initial Besides, all the subjects failed to work out the sounds when they are in the final position, including omitting and mispronouncing them

There were many reasons for the problems, including both subjective and objective ones The former is that the students were lazy in not trying harder to pronounce the sounds correctly, but instead they imposed their Vietnamese pronunciation on English words that

look like Vietnamese spellings, for example, words with “th” spellings

Hoa (2007) confirmed that the Vietnamese learners in her study did have difficulty when

pronouncing some English sounds such as /æ/, /θ/, /ð/, //, and // as revealed in the data

collected and analyzed especially in the findings of the recorded tapes Their difficulty was that they could not produce these sounds correctly Through the questionnaire and the interviews, some causes were explored such as pronouncing the sound the way the students heard them, imitating the teachers‟ and friends‟ pronunciations To improve the pronunciation of the learners, Hoa suggested that both teachers and students have to try harder Suggested methods were given such as recording, listening and repeating Also the learners should be informed about the similarities and differences between the English and Vietnamese For students, self practice is some advice they should pay much attention to

In addition to the studies above, Huong (2010) conducted research into the difficulties encountered by second year students at Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry in producing some English consonants with the participation of 100 informants Tape recording, a short listening test on pronunciation, and a survey questionnaire were used to collect the data According to the survey data, the seven difficulties in producing

the English consonant sounds /θ /, /ð /, //, //, /t/ and // were identified as follows”:

 Low pronunciation ability, passive ways of learning, and low motivation to English language learning (which were called difficulties due to subjective causes)

 Mother tongue influence/interference, poor learning background, articulation features of the consonants under the research, teaching and learning environment inefficiency, inappropriate techniques used by teachers (which were called difficulties due to objective causes)

Along with identifying the difficulties, Huong found that it was more important and indispensable to explore causes leading to difficulties in producing the above-mentioned consonants The answers to this were mother tongue‟s influence/interference, poor learning background, articulatory features of the consonants under research, teaching and learning environment inefficiency and inappropriate techniques used by teachers Based

on the findings and conclusions drawn, the researcher recommended the following possible solutions to the difficulties:

 English language teachers should be well-trained to adapt to the demands of the learners;

 In English classes, relevant communicative activities, which are audio -recorded, role-play, discussion, pair work and group work can be applied to develop students‟ pronunciation;

 It is essential for the teachers to be flexible, innovative and creative in organizing the class and guiding learners during the lessons by using individual, pair, group and whole class work;

 Students should be taught from the individual sounds basically to minimal pairs, to sentences, to a text and/or dialogue;

 Students need to focus attention to all sounds, with particular attention on the characteristics associated with them;

 Major students should be attended in small or medium size classes in which teaching and learning a foreign language is appropriate

In her study, Hang (2010) identified the difficulties in producing the consonants /p/, /t/,

/s/, /t/, and // by all the subjects The main problems were classified into sound

omission, sound deviation, and schwa addition Of all, sound omission was the most

serious problem Hang also gave the causes for these problems Firstly, the way the subjects pronounced the consonants in the study was interfered with by their L1 which resulted in the omission or the deviation of the consonant sounds in word-final position Secondly, it was their ignorance of phonetic matters that prevented them from producing these sounds correctly Finally, the informants had few chances to practice English with native speakers

According to Nu (2009), Vietnamese users of English made mistakes when pronouncing

the four English sounds //, //, /t∫/, // They often confused these sounds with other

sounds The confusing sounds are classified into 4 pairs: / /- /s/, / /- /z/, //-/z/ or /s/, /t∫/

-/ć/ The confusion of these sounds is due to four main reasons:

 Failure in distinguishing the differences between the sounds

 Influence of the mother tongue

 Inadequate perceptions of mistakes

 Inadequate drills and practice

After identifying the mistakes, Nu suggested effective ways to overcome the difficulty including: careful instruction in how to pronounce the sounds, comparative and contrastive analysis of the phonetic features of the sounds in English and those of the similar sounds in Vietnamese, and more emphasis on drills and practice

Tuan (2010, 2011) carried out two researches on pronunciation The first one is

“Teaching English discrete sounds through minimal pairs” (2010) This paper sought to examine possible problems facing English non-majored students at Hung Vuong University in recognizing and producing English discrete sounds as well as in what way and to what extent minimal pairs facilitated the teaching and learning of English discrete sounds The findings revealed that virtually all of the subjects faced the six pronunciation problems: omitting the word-final consonant, adding the word-final /s/ to English words not ending in /s/, adding the schwa /∂/ in the middle of a consonant cluster,

mispronouncing sounds that are strange to Vietnamese people, eg /t/ and /d/, failing to

differentiate between long and short vowels, and failing to differentiate between voiced

and voiceless consonants Both the student subjects and the teacher subjects showed their high appreciation of the pedagogical effectiveness of minimal pairs when employing either as a teaching or learning tool within the extent to which English discrete sounds were concerned The second paper is about “Vietnamese EFL learners‟ difficulties with English consonants” (2011) It was conducted to examine the most problematic English consonants facing the students at Hung Vuong University Data collected from the survey questionnaire revealed that the students had most difficulty in producing the English

fricatives //, // and the affricatives /t∫/ and /dʒ/ among the English consonants surveyed

The students tended to substitute Vietnamese sounds for the English sounds

The importance of pronunciation practice in language learning process and the causes of mispronouncing certain English sounds as well as the practical needs of teaching and learning English for Vietnamese learners nowadays in general and for Hue learners in particular were some major reasons which urged Bao (1999) to take a study on

“Difficulties often met with by Hue learners of English in pronouncing certain English sounds” In his dissertation, with a basic description of some sounds in English and Vietnamese, a careful comparison and contrast of commonly-mispronounced English sounds, a detailed analysis of data gathered from the learners at various levels and ages, Bao, analyzed the mechanism of making errors and proposed some methods to surmount these errors

To sum up, the above studies have revealed the most typical pronunciation mistakes and errors made Vietnamese learners of English Normally, they are sound omission, sound confusion and sound reduction In addition, these researches also investigated the problems and difficulties learners often met when they pronounced some certain English sounds that were unfamiliar or too difficult for Vietnamese users such as /θ /, /ð /, //, /t/, // and /ʒ/ Besides, solutions and suggestion were given to help learners improve their pronunciation ability

Chapter 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The theoretical background chapter has described the basic theories of phonetic matters regarding the study It is the fundamental knowledge to support this part of the research This chapter is supposed to present the methodology encompassing the addressing of the research questions, the informants of the study and the specific method applied to seek answers to the research questions Discussions about the research method include the data collection instruments and procedures Also mentioned in this section is the data analysis method which is quantitative The findings of the analysis are presented in the next chapter, data analysis: findings and discussions

2.1 Research questions

This research focuses on finding out the most common mistakes of TUEBA students when they produce the final consonants /b/, /p/, /t/, /d/, /k/ and /g/ The study was carried out to answer the following questions:

1 Do Vietnamese learners of English make mistakes when pronouncing

English final consonants?

2 What are the common mistakes students often make?

3 What are the causes of the mispronunciation?

4 What are the possible solutions to help learners correct their mistakes?

2.2 The informants of the study

There were 150 informants in the study They took different parts of the survey 30 of them were chosen to join the recordings and 150 respondents participated in the questionnaire The recordings helped to identify whether or not the informants made mistakes when pronouncing English stop consonants and the questionnaire aimed at investigating the causes of their mistakes and giving solutions as well

The informants of the study were senior students chosen from the cooperative undergraduate joint training program between TUEBA and Daegu Cyber University of Korea They were being trained to become businessmen and businesswomen As this was

an international joint training program, English was the language used mostly in teaching According to the curriculum, the students had to take an English preparatory semester lasting 6 months before they studied 8 major semesters The first major semester included

5 specialized courses and a basic English course For the basic English course, these students had a chance to study all skills including reading, speaking, writing, listening and pronunciation Especially, they were provided with the knowledge and roles of final sound in English Intermediate and advanced English were conducted in the second semester The textbooks used for these courses were Market Leader by David Falvey and Simon and Cause and Effect by Patricia Ackert In the second and third academic year, these students would have to take two more English courses named English for Business and Economics 1 and English for Business and Economics 2 The course books for these two specialized English courses were Head for Business (Intermediate and Advanced levels) by Jon Naunton In addition to the English courses, these cooperative students had

a lot of chances to learn the major courses taught in English by foreign professors coming from the partner university That is the reason why their English proficiency was much higher than the regular students‟

Most of the informants were from 21 to 23 years of age They were comparable in terms

of age, and knowledge of both the mother tongue and the English language Therefore, the scripts used to record their pronunciation were regarded as suitable for their level of English proficiency

Instrument 1: Recording informants’ pronunciation

This instrument helped the researcher identify mistakes when the informants pronounced final stop consonant in 4 different tasks: reading aloud isolated words, reading aloud sentences/utterances, reading aloud a conversation, and reading aloud a text and a story (see appendix 1, p.x)

The use of 4 various kinds of tasks was because the informants were assumed to pronounce isolated words and words in sentences and texts differently The material used

in task 1 was a list of 60 individual words ending in 6 stop sounds /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/ and

/g/ Task 2 consisted of 9 sentences comprising words ending in these sounds In task 3,

the material was a short conversation with some words ending in these sounds Task 4 contained two texts The first one was taken from the participants‟ textbook and the other, the story, was invented by the researcher This is because not all the six final stop consonants were found in the first text

Instrument 2: Questionnaire

A survey questionnaire was useful for the researcher for the following purposes:

 To see how much general English training and specific pronunciation training the participants had received

 To investigate how much the participants practiced pronunciation

 To explore the participants‟ perception of their own mistakes (compared to their actual errors and mistakes in the recordings)

There were totally 11 survey questions in the questionnaire In fact, just question 8, 9 and

10 helped to find out the answers for research question 3 and 4 of the research However,

it was very important for the researcher to discover further about other factors that might

be the reasons for the informants‟ mistakes The first two questions were used to see how much general English training the respondents had received Question 4 was about the students‟ perception of the importance of proper pronunciation to their communication Question 3 and 5 aimed at determining how often the specific pronunciation was practiced by the respondents Questions 6 and 7 were to identify the difficulties in

speaking English the participants were facing Question 8 which listed 9 causes of the students‟ mistakes was delivered to answer the third research question It is very important for the students to use necessary strategies to improve their pronunciation That

is the reason why the researcher raised question 9 to see whether the informants had tried any strategies to speak English better Question 10 was produced in order to discover how often the informants applied some of strategies suggested by the researcher and by themselves Finally, the researcher also took this chance to know how often her colleagues applied several techniques to help their students improve their English pronunciation

 Data analysis method

At first, the researcher intended to use both quantitative and qualitative method for data analysis However, after collecting the informants‟ answers of the survey questionnaire, the researcher found that none of them gave the answers for the open-ended questions Therefore, quantitative was the only method used for analyzing data collected from the recordings and the questionnaire

 Data collection procedures

In order to identify the subjects‟ mistakes in the pronunciation of 6 stop consonants in word final position, the researcher used the tape recording in the first phase 30 informants were gathered to be informed of the materials the researcher had prepared for their reading aloud which would be recorded The materials for the recording included 60 English isolated words, 9 sentences, a short conversation and two small texts with a lot of words ending in the studied sounds After identifying the subjects‟ pronunciation mistakes, the researcher carried out the second phase in which the questionnaire was given to 150 respondents of the research with the aims to find out the causes as well as the solutions for the students to correct their mistakes Prior to each phase, the informants for the recordings and the respondents for the questionnaire were asked to sign an informed consent for ethical issues All of them agreed to participate in the study voluntarily A pilot recording and a pilot questionnaire were administered before each phase to see whether there would be any problems with the tasks for the recording and the questions

for the questionnaire As no special problems arose, the researchers decided to apply the tasks and the questions as constructed

Chapter 3: DATA ANALYSIS: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

3.1 The recordings

The tasks for the recording were designed to find out the students‟ most common mistakes when pronouncing 6 stop consonants /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, and /g/ in English These were pointed out by letting them read aloud the individual words, separate sentences, a short conversation and a text which contains the words ending in those sounds

The following table shows details of the subjects‟ mispronunciation