Ảnh hưởng của tiếng mẹ đẻ đến phát âm Tiếng Anh của sinh viên năm thứ nhất trường Đại học Kỹ thuật Công nghiệp Thái Nguyên = AThe interference of the mother ton

DECLARATION ---***--- I, Hoàng Thị Thêm, hereby certify that this minor thesis entitled THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE ON THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION AT THAI NGUYE

*********************

HOÀNG THỊ THÊM

THE INTERFERENCE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE IN THE FIRST YEAR

STUDENTS’ ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION AT THAI NGUYEN

UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Ảnh hưởng của tiếng mẹ đẻ đến phát âm Tiếng Anh của sinh viên năm thứ

nhất Trường Đa ̣i ho ̣c Kỹ thuâ ̣t Công nghiê ̣p Thái Nguyên

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111

Hanoi, 2014

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

*********************

HOÀNG THỊ THÊM

THE INTERFERENCE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE IN THE FIRST YEAR

STUDENTS’ ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION AT THAI NGUYEN

UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Ảnh hưởng của tiếng mẹ đẻ đến phát âm Tiếng Anh của sinh viên năm thứ

nhất Trường Đa ̣i ho ̣c Kỹ thuâ ̣t Công nghiê ̣p Thái Nguyên

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111

SUPERVISOR: HÀ CẨM TÂM, PhD

Hanoi, 2014

DECLARATION

-*** -

I, Hoàng Thị Thêm, hereby certify that this minor thesis entitled

THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE ON THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION AT THAI NGUYEN

UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

is completely the result of my own word for the Degree of Master at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi and that this thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other university or institution

Signature

Hoàng Thị Thêm

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis could not have been accomplished without the help, encouragement and support of many people who all deserve my sincerest gratitude and appreciation

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm, for her priceless support, wholehearted guidance, and timely encouragement during the time I conducted this research

I am also grateful to all the lecturers at the Department of Post-graduate Studies, College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi whose support and considerations have enabled me to pursue the course

I would also like to send my thanks to all my colleagues who have helped me

a lot in creating good conditions in teaching and helping me with their experiences during my thesis

My special thanks also go to the students from two classes 49J1 and 49H for their whole-heated participation in the study

Finally, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my beloved family – my parents,

my husband, my children, whose support and encouragement has always been a great deal of strength that has helped me a lot to overcome all problems to complete this thesis

ABSTRACT

The research in this minor thesis was carried out to investigate whether the mother tongue influences students‟ English pronunciation at Thai Nguyen University of Technology It sought the answers to the following questions:

1 What are pronunciation mistakes made by students at Thai Nguyen University of Technology?

2 Are they caused by mother tongue influences?

The study was conducted with two classes (49J1, 49H) consisting of 100 students in their second term The data of the study were obtained using 2 research instruments: class observation and recording After that the data was analyzed and

the findings of the research revealed that Vietnamese has influences on the first year students‟ English pronunciation at Thai Nguyen University of Technology At the end of the research, the researcher proposed some suggestions to improve students‟ pronunciation

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

TABLES Page Table 1: Mistakes observed in the class and recorded in the oral test 17 Table 2: Mistakes by participants 18

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Declaration i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

List of tables and figures iv

Table of Contents v

Part A: Introduction 1

1 Rationale of the study 2

2 Objectives of the study 2

3 Research questions of the study 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Methods of the study 2

6 Organization of the study 2

Part B: Development 4

Chapter 1: Literature review 4

1.1 The interference of the mother tongue in foreign languages 4

1.1.1 Definition of the mother tongue and foreign languages 4

1.1.2 The interference of the mother tongue in foreign languages 4

1.2 English pronunciation 5

1.2.1 English consonants 5

1.2.2 English vowels 10

1.2.3 Consonants clusters 12

1.3 Vietnamese pronunciation 12

1.3.1 Vietnamese consonants 12

1.3.2 Vietnamese vowels 13

1.4 Review of Previous studies 13

Chapter 2: The study 15

2.1 Methodology 15

2.1.1 Setting of the study 15

2.1.2 Participants 15

2.1.3 Data collection instruments 15

2.1.3.1 Class Observation 15

2.1.3.2 Recording 16

2.1.4 Data collection procedures 16

2.2 Findings and discussion 17

2.2.1 Description on the three most frequent types of mistakes 17

2.2.2 Data analysis and discussion 19

2.2.2.1 Mistakes in omission of sounds 19

2.2.2.2 Mistakes in sound replacement 20

2.2.2.3 Mistakes in consonant clusters 24

Part C: Conclusion 26

1.Major findings of the study 26

2.Implications 26

3 Limitations of the study 28

4 Suggestions for further study 28

REFERENCES 29 APPENDICES I

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Language plays a very important role in communication People all over the world can communicate with each other by speech or writing that are the two primary modes of linguistic communication

In a speech communication situation, a speaker always tries to make him/ her understood and interested What makes people understood and interested in one‟s English

is firstly his/ her pronunciation Pronunciation is definitely the biggest thing that people notice when you are speaking English A person can express his idea with simple words and simple grammar, but there is no such thing as simple pronunciation

Learning a language consists of learning its vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation Learners with good pronunciation are likely to be understood even if they make mistakes in other area, whereas learners with bad pronunciation will not be understood, even if their grammar is perfect

In fact, pronunciation is becoming increasingly recognized as a crucial area for language learners (Celce-Murcia et al, 1996)

All learners know the importance of pronunciation However, they find it difficult

to acquire an accent which is intelligible One of those difficulties is caused by the interference of their mother tongue in their language learning because each language has its own rules and phonetic system which may cause a lot of obstacles to learners in practising and performing them correctly

In their book, Avery and Ehrlich (1992) show the reason why speakers of English are able to recognize Spanish accents, Russian accents, Chinese accents … That is because the nature of a foreign accent is determined to a large extent by a learner‟s native language

Like any learners of English, Vietnamese learners are coping with so many difficulties in pronouncing English because of the mother tongue interference Vietnamese and English differ a great deal, but Vietnamese students often transfer sound patterns of Vietnamese into English, that makes their pronunciation imperfect and unintelligible

As a teacher of English, I can see mistakes that students at TNUT have made in producing sounds Therefore, I would like to conduct this research to point out how Vietnamese affects students‟ English pronunciation and make some corresponding improvements Those are the reasons why I decide to do a research entitled: “The

interference of the mother tongue in the first year students‟ English pronunciation at Thai Nguyen University of Technology.”

2 Objectives of the study

The objectives of this study are stated as follows:

- To discover pronunciation mistakes made by students at Thai Nguyen University of Technology

- To investigate whether the causes of the mistakes come from students‟ mother

tongue

3 Research questions of the study:

To achieve the aims mentioned above, this study tries to answer the following questions:

1 What are pronunciation mistakes made by students at Thai Nguyen University of Technology?

2 Are they caused by mother tongue influences?

4 Scope of the study

The study was carried out with two classes (49J1, 49H) comprising 100 students in their second term, the academic year 2013-2014

In this thesis, the interference of the mother tongue in pronunciation is dealt with, but the study cannot cover all the problems related to pronunciation, this study only focuses on the mother tongue interference in producing English sounds

5 Methods of the study

A combination of different data collection methods were used including recording students‟ pronunciation in an oral test, observing their performance in class

and note-taking

6 Organization of the study

The thesis consists of three parts: introduction, development with three chapters and conclusion

Part A: Introduction presents the rationale, aims, research questions, and

organization of the study

Part B: Development includes three main chapters

Chapter 1 Literature review provides a brief literature review relevant to the study

In this chapter, section 1 discusses the interference of the mother tongue in foreign

languages, section 2 presents some aspects of English pronunciation , section 3 discusses Vietnamese pronunciation and section 4 reviews previous studies

Chapter 2 The study consists of two sections: section 1 presents methodology, section 2 displays findings and discussion

Part C: Conclusion summarizes the major findings with reference to the research

questions mentioned in Part A This part also includes implications to improve students‟

pronunciation, limitations of the study and suggestions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter, literature review, presents a review of related literature that provides the theoretical background of the study It includes three main sections The first section mentions the interference of the mother tongue in foreign languages, and then an overview

on English pronunciation and Vietnamese pronunciation are presented respectively in section 2 and section 3

1.1 The interference of the mother tongue in foreign languages

1.1.1 Definition of the mother tongue and foreign languages

A first language (also native language, mother tongue, arterial language, or L1) is the language(s) a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity

Richards and Platt (1992) define the mother tongue as follows: “a first language which is acquired at home.” They also indicate that the first language is a person‟s mother tongue or the language acquired first Often this term is used synonymously with the native language

The first language is the language through which the child makes acquaintance with everything about it to communicate Mostly it may be their mother tongue

A foreign language is a language which is not a native language in a country A foreign language is usually studied either for communication with foreigners who speak the language, or for reading printed materials in the language (Richards and Platt, 1992)

A foreign language is a language indigenous to another country It is also a language not spoken in the native country of the person referred to, i.e., an English speaker living in Japan can say that Japanese is a foreign language to him or her These two characterisations do not exhaust the possible definitions, however, and the label is occasionally applied in ways that are variously misleading or factually inaccurate

1.1.2 The interference of the mother tongue in foreign languages

Mother tongue interference is defined as the use of elements from one‟s native language while learning the second language Mother tongue interference is one of the causes of mistakes

When we learn a foreign language, we often make mistakes in grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary caused by our first language “The sound system

(phonology) and the grammar of the first language impose themselves on the new language and this leads to a „foreign‟ pronunciation, faulty grammatical patterns and, occasionally,

to the wrong choice of vocabulary.” (Hubbard et al, 1983, p140)

Most linguists would probably agree that the mother tongue can affect learners‟ English in several ways Pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, discourse structure, handwriting and all other aspects of language use are likely to some extent to carry a mother-tongue accent But the most striking is in the case of pronunciation where the phonological structure of a speaker‟s first language and the associated articulatory setting

of the lips, tongue, jaw, etc usually his or her English speech quite strongly (Swan and Smith, 1987)

In fact, the mother tongue plays an important factor in learning to pronounce English In his book, KenWorthy (1987) emphasizes the role of the mother tongue by indicating the fact that a foreign accent has some of the sound characteristics of the learner‟s native language

Avery and Ehrlich (1992) point out that the sound system of the native language can be seen to influence our students‟ pronunciation of English According to them, students‟ pronunciation of English is influenced in at least three ways First, difficulties may arise when a learner encounters sounds in English that are not part of the sound inventory of the learner‟s native language Secondly, difficulties may arise because the rules for combining sounds into words are different in the learner‟s native language Thirdly, the patterns of stress and intonation, which determine the overall rhythm and melody of a language, can be transferred from the native language into the second language

They also state that the native language not only affects the ability to produce English sounds but also the ability to hear English sounds

English consonants have three basic characteristics making the main differences between them: place of articulation, manner of articulation and voicing

Depending on how the organs of speech combine together to form the barriers, Roach (1998) shows eight types of consonants: bilabial /p/, /b/, /m/, /w/, labio-dental /f/, /v/, dental /I/, /J/, alveolar /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /l/, /n/, palato-alveolar (post- alveolar) /M/, /N/, /CM/, /DN/, /r/, palatal /j/, velar /k/, /g/, /R/, glottal /h/

There are six types of consonants classified according to manner of articulation: fricatives /f/, /v/, /I/, /J/, /s/, /z/, /M/, /N/, /h/ , affricates /CM/, /DN/, nasals /m/, /n/, /R/, approximants /w/, /r/, /j/, lateral /l/, and plosives /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/ (O‟Corner, Avery and Ehrlich call plosives stops)

The third way to classify consonants is in terms of voicing which divides consonants into two types: voiced and voiceless English consonants consist of fifteen voiced consonants and nine voiceless consonants

In learning a language, it is very important to know how to produce a sound Linguists describe English consonants as follows:

Manner of

articulation

Place of

articulation

• Stop consonants (plosives)

According to Roach (1998), a plosive is a consonant articulation with the following phase:

- The first phase is when the articulator or articulators move to form the stricture for the plosive We call this the closure phase

- The second phase is when the compressed air is stopped from escaping We call this the hold phase

- The third phase when the articulators used to form the stricture are moved so as to follow air to escape This is the release phase

- The fourth phase is what happens immediately after the third phase, so we call it the post-release phase

English has six plosive consonants /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/ These plosives have different places of articulation

/p, b/ are bilabial, the lips are pressed together /t, 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 /k, g/ are velar, the back of the tongue

is pressed against the area where the hard palate ends and the soft palate begins All six plosives can occur at the beginning of a word (initial position), between other sounds (medial position) and at the end of a word (final position)

/s, z/ are alveolar fricatives with the same place of articulation as /t/ and /d/ The air escapes through the gaps between the tongue and the teeth

/M/, /N/: The fricatives are so called palate-alveolar, which can be taken to mean that their place of articulation is partly palatal, partly alveolar The tongue is in contact with an area slightly further back than that for /s/, /z/ If you make /s/ then / ʃ/, you should

be able to feel your tongue move backwards The air escapes through a passage along the centre of the tongue, as in /s/ and /z/, but the passage is a little wider Most speakers of RP have rounded lips for / ʃ/ and / ʒ/, and this is an important difference between these consonants and /s/ and /z/ In addition, the escape of air is diffuse (compared with that of /s, z/), the friction occurring between a more extensive area of the tongue and the roof of the mouth In the case of / ʃ/, the friction is voiceless, whereas for / ʒ/ there may be some vocal cord vibration

All the fricatives described so far can be found in initial, medial and final positions

In the case of / ʒ/, however, the distribution is much more limited Very few English words begin with / ʒ/ (most of them have come into the language comparatively recently from French) and not many end with this consonant Only medially, in words such as

“measure”, „usually‟ is it found at all commonly

/h/ is glottal fricative The place of articulation of this consonant is glottal This means that the narrowing that produces the friction noise is between the vocal folds When

we produce /h/ in speaking English, many different things happen in different contexts In the word „hat‟, the /h/ must be followed by an / æ / vowel The tongue, jaw and lip positions for the vowel are all produced simultaneously with the /h/ consonant, so that the glottal fricative has an / æ/ quality The same is found for all vowels following /h/

• Affricates

/ ʧ; ʤ/ are affricates In the articulation of / ʧ; ʤ/ the soft palate being raised and the nasal resonator shut off, the obstacle to the airstream is formed by a closure made between the tip, blade, and rims of the tongue and the upper alveolar ridge and side teeth

At the same time, the front of the tongue is raised towards the hard palate in readiness for the fricative release The closure is released slowly, the air escaping in a diffuse manner over the whole of the central surface of the tongue with friction occurring between the blade/front region of the tongue and the alveolar/front palatal section of the roof of the

mouth During both stop and fricative stages, the vocal cords are wide apart for / ʧ/, but

may be vibrating for all or part of / ʤ/ according to the situation in the utterance

• Nasals

/m, n/ are nasals The soft palate is lowered for both /m/ and /n/ For /m/ the mouth

is blocked by closing the two lips, for /n/ by pressing the tip of the tongue against the sides

of the palate Both sounds are voiced in English, as they are in other languages, and the voiced air passes out through the nose (O‟Corner, 1980)

/R/ is velar nasal In the articulation of /R/, the soft palate is lowered and all the air passes out through the nose The mouth is blocked by the back of the tongue pressed against the soft palate The sound is voiced (O‟Corner, 1980)

• Lateral /l/

/l/ is lateral Only one alveolar, lateral phoneme occurs in English, there being no opposition between fortis and lenis, voiced or voiceless, or fricative and non-fricative Within the /l/ phoneme three main allophones occur:

- Clear [l], with a relatively front vowel resonance, before vowels and /j/

- Voiceless [l0], following aspirated /p, k/

- Dark [ł], with a relatively back vowel resonance, finally after a vowel, before a consonant, and as syllabic sound following a consonant For clear [l], the front of the tongue is raised in the direction of the hard palate at the same time as the tip contact is made For dark [ł], the tip contact is again made on the teeth ridge, the front of the tongue being somewhat depressed and the back raised in the direction of the soft palate, giving a back vowel resonance Both [l] and [ł] are voiced, though partial devoicing may take place when a preceding consonant is fortis The actual point of contact of the tongue for [ł] is conditioned by the place of articulation of the following consonant; thus, in health, will they, the [ł] has a dental contact, but in already, ultra, all dry, the contact for [ł] is likely to

be post-alveolar

•Alveolar Approximant: /r/

/r/ is post-alveolar approximant When producing it, the tongue has a curves shape with the tip pointing towards the hard palate at the back of the alveolar ridge, the front low and the back rather high The tongue-tip is not close enough to the palate to cause friction The lips are rather-rounded, especially when /r/ is at the beginning of words The soft

palate is raises, and voiced air flows quietly between the tongue-tip and palate with no friction

• Palatal Approximant: /j/

The vocalic allophones of RP /j/ are articulated by the tongue assuming the position for a front half-close to close vowel and moving away immediately to the position of the following sound; the lips are generally neutral or spread When /j/ follows a fortis consonant such as /p/, /k/, devoicing takes place

• Labio-velar Approximant: /w/ The vocalic allophones of RP /w/ are articulated

by the tongue assuming the position for a back half-close to close vowel and moving away immediately to the position of the following sound; the lips are rounded The soft palate is raised and the vocal cords vibrate; but when /w/ follows a consonant, some devoicing takes place

1.2.2 English vowels

“Vowel sounds are produced by passing air through different shapes of the mouth, with different positions of the tongue and of the lips, and with the air stream relatively unobstructed by narrow passages except at the glottis” (Finegan, 1994, p89)

According to Roach (1998), English vowels consist of short vowels, long vowels, diphthongs and triphthongs

Short vowels are only relatively short There are seven short vowels in English: /"/, /-/, /$/, /)/, /'/, /&/, /+/

Long vowels are the vowels which tend to be longer than the short vowels in similar contexts There are five long vowels: /i:/, /*:/, /%:/, /&:/, /(:/

Finegan (1994) describes English vowels in the diagram below:

In these pairs of vowels, O‟Cornor (1980) indicates that /i:/ is longer than /I/, /u:/ is longer than /ʊ/ and /&:/ is longer than /ɒ/

English vowels can be summarized as follows:

/i:/ long high/ close front spread vowel

/"/ short high/ close front spread vowel

/e/ short mid front spread vowel

/æ/ short low/ open front spread vowel

/u:/ long high/ close back rounded vowel

/'/ short high/close back rounded vowel

/&:/ long mid back rounded vowel

/ɒ/ short low/open back rounded vowel

/%:/ long low/open back rounded vowel

/*:/ long mid central neutral vowel

/+/ short mid central neutral vowel

/)/ short low/open central neutral vowel

Diphthongs are sounds which consist of a movement or glide from one vowel to another The first part of diphthongs is much longer and stronger than the second part Diphthongs are divided into three groups as in this diagram:

A triphthong is a glide from one vowel to another and then to a third, all produced rapidly and without interruption There are five triphthongs in English: /-"+/, /a"+/, /&"+/, /+'+/, /a'+/

1.2.3 Consonant clusters

Roach (1998) defines English consonant clusters as follows: “When we have two or more consonants together we call them a consonant cluster.”

Avery and Ehrlich (1992) determine that English consonant clusters can be found

in the initial and final positions of words They classify initial clusters into five types The first type is initial two-consonant clusters beginning with a stop consonant such as „pl, pr,

bl, br, tr, tw,dr, kl,kr,.etc.‟ The second type is initial two-consonant clusters beginning with a fricative such as „fl, fr, sl, sw, sp, st, sk, sm, sn, sf, et.‟ The next one is clusters beginning with a nasal such as „mj‟ in „music‟ The fourth type is clusters beginning with /h/ such as „hj‟ in „huge‟; the last type is initial clusters of three consonants such as „spl, spr,str, skr,skw, et.‟

They also divide final clusters into four types: Final clusters of two consonants beginning with a nasal such as „mp, nt, nd, ns, nố, ndʒ, ŋk‟; final clusters of two consonants beginning with „l‟ or „r‟ such as „lp, lt, ld, lk, lf, lv, lố, ls, rp, rb, rt, rd, rk, rv,

rm, rn, rl.‟; final clusters of two consonants beginning with a fricative or stop such as „sp,

st, sk, ft, fố, pt, pố, ps, tố, kt, ks, dz‟ and final clusters of three consonants such as „kst, mpt, nts, nst, rts, rld‟

Furthermore, Avery and Ehrlich (1992) state that the addition of grammatical endings creates many more final consonant clusters For example, the plural ending /s/ when added to „text‟ creates the four-consonant cluster /ksts/

Manner of articulation

Vietnamese consonants can be classified according to manner of articulation, place

of articulation, and voicing They are shown in the following table:

About diphthong distribution, diphthongs in Vietnamese are mostly centering, e.g: /ie/ -iê, yê, ia, ya (hiền, miền, tiên), /ɯɤ/ -ươ, ưa (hươu, thưa, thương), /uo/ -uô, ua

(uống thuốc, lúa úa )

1.4 Review of previous studies

The interference of the mother tongue in English pronunciation has appeared in many studies, which means that it receives much attention for its importance Some of recent studies are summarized as follows:

The study entitled Mother tongue interference in the pronunciation of English sounds by Yoruba language speakers by Samson, Abdullahi and Olagunju was conducted

Place of articulation