Difficulties in learning pronunciation met by the first year students of English major at Hanam Teachers Training College = Khó khăn trong việc học phát âm của 20150227.PDF

LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES Table1: Students’ evaluation of the importance of pronunciation 15 Table2: Students’ evaluation of the difficulties in learning English pronunciation 15 Table 3

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration……… i

Acknowledgements……… ii

Abstract……… iii

Table of contents……… iv

List of charts and tables……… ……… vi

PART I: INTRODUCTION……… ……… 1

1 Rationale of the Study……… ……… 1

2 Aim of the Study……… 1

3 Research Questions……….……… 2

4 Methods of the Study……… ……… 2

5 Scope of the Study ……….……… 2

6 Significance of the Study……… ……… 2

PART II: DEVELOPMENT……… 3

Chapter 1: Literature Review ……… 3

1.1 Place of Pronunciation in Communicative Competence and Foreign Language Learning……… 3

1.2 Approaches to Pronunciation Teaching –Pronunciation Teaching Methodologies ……… 3

1.3 Factors Affecting Pronunciation Learning ……… 5

1.4 Differences in the Sound Systems of the Two Languages: English and Vietnamese ……… 7

1.5 Some Common English Pronunciation Problems Met by Vietnamese Learners ……… 8

Chapter 2: Methodology ……… 12

2.1 Context of the Study ……….……….……… 12

2.2 Participants of the Study ……… 12

2.3 Instruments ……… 13

2.3.1 Survey Questionnaire ……… 13

2.3.2 Interview ……… 13

2.3.3 Classroom Observation ……… 14

Chapter 3: Data Analysis and Discussions ……….……… 15

3.1 Data Analysis and Discussions ……… 15

3.1.1 Students’ Evaluation of the Importance of Pronunciation ……… 15

3.1.2 Students’ Difficulties in Learning English Pronunciation ……… 15

3.1.3 Students’ Difficulties with English Vowels ……… 17

3.1.4 Students’ Difficulties with English Consonants ……… 18

3.1.5 Students’ Difficulties with Stress, Intonation and Rhythm ……… 22

3.1.6 Causes of Difficulties in Learning English Pronunciation ……… 24

3.1.7 Teachers’ Suggestive Teaching Techniques ……… 26

3.2 Summary of the Findings 26 Chapter 4: Recommendations ……… 28

4.1 Amount of Exposure ……… 28

4.2 Attitudes and Motivation ……… 28

4.3 Suggested Teaching Techniques ……… 29

PART III: CONCLUSION ……… ……… 37

1 Conclusions of the Study……… 37

2 Limitations of the Study……… 37

3 Suggestions for Further Study.……… …… 37

REFERENCES ……… 39 APPENDICES ……… ……… I-VII

LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES

Table1: Students’ evaluation of the importance of pronunciation 15 Table2: Students’ evaluation of the difficulties in learning English pronunciation 15 Table 3: Students’ evaluation of the difficulties in pronouncing long and short

Table 4: Students’ evaluation of the difficulties in pronouncing English consonants 19 Table 5: Students’ evaluation of the problematic positions of consonants in a word 19 Table 6: Students’ evaluation of the difficulties in pronouncing consonant clusters 20 Table 7: Students’ awareness of the concepts of stress, intonation and rhythm 22 Chart 1: Students’ evaluation of causes of the difficulties in learning pronunciation 24

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

English has become a language for global communication these days In this common trend, English in Vietnam has become one of the important, compulsory subjects at schools, from primary school to high school system No longer are students merely required to master English grammar and vocabulary to sit for a test, they are now studying English to develop their own communicative skills, of which intelligible pronunciation plays a crucial part With poor pronunciation, students have problems either making themselves understood or understanding others Therefore, there must be the appropriate concern on teaching and learning pronunciation

With the main purpose of training students majoring in English with high communicative competence, the role of teaching and learning English pronunciation has been appreciated right from the beginning of the course at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College First-year students majoring in English at the college have to complete the course titled “Practical Pronunciation” with the course book “Ship or Sheep” by Ann Baker (1997) Nevertheless, from the very first day of my teaching career in here, from my own observation and experiences, I faced a fact that they had serious problems in pronunciation during the pronunciation course even though each lesson was designed with clear, stated objectives A number of students mispronounced separated words and words combined in a sentence Others pronounced a sentence with equal stress, flat intonation and no rhythm at all Therefore, investigating the problems then look for some pedagogical suggestions to improve the situation would be useful for the pronunciation learning and teaching at my college Last but not least, the issue has not caught much attention of our teaching staff and there has not been any research on students‟ problems in learning pronunciation at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College so far

Being motivated by the situation, I would like to carry out a case study in order to figure out the problems in learning English pronunciation met by the first year students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College The research findings would be followed with suggestive implications with the hope that the first year students at my college could do their best with their English pronunciation

2 Aims of the Study

This study is conducted with the following purposes:

- to investigate the first year students‟ perception on learning English pronunciation

- to find out what difficulties the first year students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College meet when they study English pronunciation

- to offer possible solutions to help students overcome their difficulties in learning English pronunciation

4 Method of the Study

This study is conducted as a case study which employs multi methods including qualitative and quantitative methods The former uses naturalistic observation, narrative diaries, and collection of existing information while the later makes use of such instruments as questionnaires and structured interviews

5 Scope of the Study

The study focused on pronunciation learning of the first year students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College with the course book “Ship or Sheep” by Ann Baker (1997)

6 Significance of the Study

Despite the fact that pronunciation plays an important role in learning a foreign language,

so far there have been few studies on the learning and teaching this language aspect compared to other language skills such as speaking, listening, reading and writing The study looks for the first year students‟ difficulties in their learning English pronunciation, following by pedagogical implications for the learning and teaching situation at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College Therefore, it contributes to enriching the researches on teaching English pronunciation and to promote students in their learning afterwards The results of this study would be of much benefit to both teachers and students of English

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Place of Pronunciation in Communicative Competence and in Foreign Language Learning

Pronunciation plays a very important role in communicative competence since successful communication cannot take place without correct pronunciation (Celce-Murcia et al, 1996) Obviously, we may be proficient at grammar and have huge vocabulary, but we pronounce words wrongly, we just cannot get ourselves understood in oral communication And even if we speak in an understandable way, still, we have to work on our pronunciation Poorly pronounced segments and suprasegments may have the result of disorienting the listener and inhibiting comprehension

Pronunciation is as important as any other aspects of foreign language learning like syntax

or vocabulary Correct pronunciation is very necessary to develop speaking skill Pronunciation also has close connections to the other fields such as listening and even grammar Once a person can pronounce correctly the endings of the words, for example, he can, at the same time give grammatical information There is no doubt that incorrect pronunciation tends to disrupt communication just as incorrect spellings do (Sebastine, 2009)

In short, pronunciation has important values not only in oral communication but also in foreign language learning Acquiring good pronunciation is what a learner needs to make effort to do on the way of mastering a foreign language

1.2 Approaches to Pronunciation Teaching –Pronunciation Teaching Methodologies

The two general approaches to pronunciation teaching described in Celce-Murcia et al (1996) have been adopted by many researchers, which are intuitive-imitative approach and analytical-linguistic approach

An intuitive-imitative approach assumes that students can develop acceptable

pronunciation and speaking skills when exposed to the target language through accurate models This approach relies heavily upon imitation and repetition, without any explicit information provided by teachers

- The Direct method, which gained acceptance in the late 1800s and 1900s, was formed from observations of children attaining their first language In this method, students would listen and imitate a model of the target language that was spoken by the teacher (and later by recordings) (Celce-Murcia et al, 1996) However, students who showed accuracy in controlled practice might fail to transfer what they learned to actual communicative language use (Cohen, Larson-Freeman, & Tarone, 1991)

- From the late 1960s and the early 1980s, there was a decline in explicit pronunciation teaching with the invention of the language lab The Total Physical Response by Ashers‟s (1977) and Natural Approach by Krashen and Terrell‟s (1983) were among the most popular in the pronunciation training In Total Physical Response, students would begin to speak when they were ready and they were expected to make errors in the initial stage The main initial focus of Natural Approach was listening, which gave students the opportunities to internalize the target sound system Indeed, many contemporary researchers still adopt this view but

it still needs further investigating if the method has the persuasive foundation

An analytical-linguistic approach recognized the importance of explicit intervention of

pronunciation pedagogy in language acquisition The approach employs a variety of pedagogical aids including phonetic chart, contrastive exercises and articulatory descriptions In this approach, students are given explicit information about how to produce the sounds and rhythms of the target language

- The 1940s and 1950s witnessed a noticeable movement emphasized on explicit instruction of phonetics with Audiolinguisim in the United States and the Oral approach in Britain Also relying on the recording or the teacher to model the target language followed by the students‟ repetition of that language; however, teachers also drew from their knowledge of phonetics and for the first time used simplified charts of the IPA and articulatory models in the classroom The Audiolinguism relied much on drilling sound contrasts and minimal pairs with very little attention to intonation and conversational speech The techniques of minimal pairs drill were used extensively by Baker (1997) in her very popular course book on contrastive segmental instruction “Ship or Sheep.”

- The 1980s witnessed the significant shift with discourse based communicative approach with the ultimate goal was communication Under this trend, pronunciation teaching focused more on a “top-down” approach instead of the original “bottom up” method of teaching isolated sounds In other words, the focus of teaching pronunciation seemed to shift from mastery of segmentals (e.g vowels and consonants) to fluency, highlighting the importance of elements of suprasegmentals (Pennington, & Richards, 1986) Techniques used to teach pronunciation included listening and imitating, phonetic training, minimal pairs drilling in context, visual aids, reading aloud, recording the students‟ production with more focus on suprasegmental aspects of pronunciation It can be seen that communicative approach seems to be more balanced approach with the focus on both accuracy and fluency The approach had characteristics of both intuitive-imitative approach and analytical-linguistic approach

In the light of communicative language teaching (CLT), learners are expected to achieve

“intelligible pronunciation” of the target language, which is, according to Kenworthy, (1987), understood by a listener at a given time in a given situation That is, students are able to understand, accept and declare to be recognized meaningfully in their oral communication

To sum up, trends of teaching pronunciation have been changing a lot during different periods Nowadays, teaching pronunciation plays a very important part in the language teaching It is the main target connected with other skills to get the highest purpose of learning a foreign language, which is communication

1.3 Factors Affecting Pronunciation Learning

There are many factors affecting the learners' pronunciation According to Kenworthy (1987:4-9), factors such as the native language, the age, amount of exposure, phonetic ability, attitude and identity, motivation and concern for good pronunciation have great influence on pronunciation learning

1.3.1 The Native Language

The native language plays an important role in learning to pronounce English as it is clearly seen that a foreign accent is influenced by some of the sound characteristics of the

learner's native language Due to the role of native language, there has been a great deal of research on the differences between sound systems of English and other languages in terms

of sound system as well as problems, difficulties the learners face when studying English According to Kenworthy, (1992: 4): "To put it very crudely, the more differences there are, the more difficulties the learners will have in pronouncing English.”

1.3.4 Phonetic Ability

Researchers demonstrate that some people are able to mimic sounds more accurately than others These abilities are innate, so this factor seems to be out of the teacher's control What the teacher can do is to investigate the abilities of the learners and provide a variety

of tasks so that something will suit the needs and ability of each learner

1.3.5 Attitudes and Identity

It has been claimed that factors such as a person‟s „sense of identity‟ and feelings of „group affiliation‟ are strong determiners of the acquisition of accurate pronunciation of a foreign language In many studies of attitude and motivation in language learning, it has been shown that those learners who show positive feelings towards the speakers of the new language tend to develop more accurate, native-like accents

1.3.6 Motivation and Concern for Good Pronunciation

It cannot be denied that motivation is an important factor that determines the people's participation in every activity especially in language learning Motivation makes people

more active in learning The more motivated the people are, the greater the cognitive process is Celce Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin (1996) considered that motivation and

concern for good pronunciation affect pronunciation accuracy

1.4 Differences in the Sound Systems of the Two Languages: English and Vietnamese

There are a number of books discussing this matter In this study, the detailed comparison

of Vietnamese and English pronunciation by Doan Thien Thuat (2003), Nguyen Thien Giap (1997), Ha Cam Tam (2005), O'Connor (1967), McNeil (1987), Hinst and Cristo, (1998) has been adopted The main differences between English and Vietnamese pronunciation are presented hereafter:

1.4.3 Consonants

English has 24 consonants but there are only 22 in Vietnamese There are some phonemes

in English but not in Vietnamese and vice versa In Vietnamese, a letter is often represented by the same phoneme In English, some phonemes seem to be represented by identical letters but different pronunciation Vietnamese in general is spoken with a staccato delivery Syllables and words are not linked together as in English but are clearly separated from each other Especially final consonant clusters cause the greatest difficulties for Vietnamese students

1.4.4 Stress

Vietnamese is a basically monosyllabic language Unlike English - a polysyllabic language, most Vietnamese words have only one syllable And unstressed syllable do not occur in Vietnamese Even in compound nouns, each syllable has its own distinctive tone This is the reason why stress within words does not exist in Vietnamese

1.4.5 Intonation

There are six tones in Vietnamese: level tone, falling lone (grave), rising tone (acute), broken tone (till), dot, and low-rising These ones are lexical; they change the meaning of words, just as changing one of the segmental phonemes (consonants and vowels) in English can change the meaning of a word

In English, on the other hand, intonation plays a much greater part A statement can be made into question by using intonation without changing the word order, which is not possible in Vietnamese

That is the reason why Vietnamese learners, while studying English, do not pay much attention to learning English intonation, as they are not aware of the importance of using correct intonation

In conclusion, Vietnamese and English sound systems are different A teacher of English should take all these differences into consideration in order to make the learning and the teaching process more effective Basing on these components of pronunciation, moreover, the first year students‟ difficulties in learning English pronunciation would be discussed in details

1.5 Common English Pronunciation Problems Encountered by Vietnamese Learners

For most Vietnamese learners, learning English pronunciation is of great challenge

As being mentioned above, great differences between the sound systems of English and Vietnamese cause a number of problems to Vietnamese speakers when they study English pronunciation Vietnamese is a tone language, that is, pitch changes distinguish word meaning Most words in Vietnamese consist of only one syllable, there are fewer consonants than in English and there is no consonant cluster That is why they often meet some main problems when producing English as followed:

1.5.1 Vowel Problems

Avery and Ehrlich (1992) pointed out that while Vietnamese make many word distinctions, the English lax vowel pairs are still problems to them They often meet difficulties in distinguishing vowels such as /e/ vs /æ/, short /ɪ / vs long /i:/, /ə/ vs /ɜ :/, /ɒ / vs /ɔ :/ Vietnamese students often produce the same manner with these two different pairs of vowels This can cause misunderstanding to foreigners

1.5.2 Consonant Problems

Vietnamese learners studying English as the second language often have many problems with the system of English consonants since there are many consonants that exist in English but do not in Vietnamese The problems that they have with English consonants seem to be much more than the ones that they have with English vowels The followings are common mistakes that Vietnamese students often make when they speak English pointed out by Avery and Ehrlich (1992)

Problem 1: Word - final voiceless stop consonants: /p/, /t/ and /k/

In Vietnamese, the voiceless stop consonants /p/, /t/ and /k/ occur at the end of a word, but these consonants are never released in final position and are much shorter than their English equivalents This means even when Vietnamese speakers pronounce these consonants in final position, English speakers may have difficulties hearing them Thus, a word such as “beat” may sound like “bee”

Problem 2: Voiced and voiceless stops in word final position: /b/, /d/, /g/, vs /p/, /t/, /k/

As Vietnamese has no voiced stops at the ends of words, Vietnamese speakers need to practice in distinguishing between voiced and voiceless stops in this position For example, words such as “cap” and “cab” may sound identical, with a short unreleased /p/ at the end

of both words

Problem 3: Word final fricative consonants: /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ / and /dʒ /

In Vietnamese, the above fricatives do not occur at the final position of a word, but in English, they do That is why Vietnamese students often omit these fricatives at the ends of the sounds

Problem 4: /θ/, /ð/ as in “thank” and “than”

In fact, these two consonants do not occur in Vietnamese In stead, there are two

consonants in Vietnamese that make them difficult to distinguish with these /θ/ and /ð/,

they are “th” (sound like the aspirated “t”) and “d” (sound like the consonant “z” in English) In fact, the manner of producing these Vietnamese sounds is different from the

two /θ/ and /ð/, but their sounds seem a little the same That is why Vietnamese students often substitute a /d/ for /ð/ and a /t/ for /θ/

Problem 5: Consonant clusters

In Vietnamese consonant clusters do not happen at the initial and final position When they speak English, they have to meet a number of consonant clusters that contain many consonants at the same time Being not familiar with this, Vietnamese students often delete one or more than one consonant in a consonant cluster so that it will be easier for them to produce the sound

1.5.3 Stress, Rhythm and Intonation Problems

As being mentioned in the previous part, Vietnamese is basically monosyllabic language, whereas English is a multi-syllabic language Moreover, in an English multi-syllabic word, there must be a stressed syllable, which is very different from Vietnamese Therefore, Vietnamese students often have problems with stress in English

Since Vietnamese learners often delete the final consonant in a consonant cluster, they will not link the words together to make the rhythm of the sentence

Intonation is also a problem for Vietnamese students In a tonal language like Vietnamese, intonation plays very little role in changing the meaning of a sentence Instead, we often use particles to change the meaning of a sentence, from a statement into a question or an exclamation Meanwhile in English, intonation plays a very important role in changing the meaning of a sentence With different intonation, the meaning of an utterance can change differently

In short, it can not be denied that pronunciation and teaching pronunciation are important parts to be concerned about in any language course It is even more important for those who are or will be teachers of the language Hence, in this chapter great effort has been made in order to review related theories of pronunciation learning and, more importantly,

the differences between sound systems of English and Vietnamese and common difficulties met by Vietnamese learners when learning English pronunciation Basing on such background knowledge of the topic, the study would seek answer to the question whether the first year students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College meet the same difficulties or not in the next chapters

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 2.1 Context of the Study

Being an educational unit of Hanam Department of Education and Training, Hanam Teachers‟ Training College takes responsibility for training office workers specializing in English for joint-venture companies in the industrial zones in the city, some interpreters and translators to work in the foreign projects, and teachers of English for secondary schools in the province From 2006 Hanam Teachers‟ Training College launched courses for students majoring in English Up to now, there have been seven English classes With the main purpose of training students with high communicative ability and competence in English, teaching and learning pronunciation play an important role in the college‟s training process However, it is quite clear that students studying in Hanam are quite different from students studying in big cities such as Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City Frankly, they have more difficulties in learning English than students in big cities in terms of ability and condition For most students, studying in Hanam is in the last choice when they fail in the entrance examinations to university elsewhere Some students choose to study at our college because of their financial and health condition Moreover, almost all students here come from rural areas of Hanam such as Kim Bảng, Lý Nhân, Thanh Liêm, Bình Lục, where they get used to passive ways of learning, which is embedded deeply in their mind from primary school to high school Last but not least, in spite of being a satellite city of the Hanoi capital, Hanam still is not a favorable English learning environment for most learners of English As it is a poor fact that even when some of the students have great interest and desire to upgrade their English, it is difficult for them to find good places to learn and practice English Moreover, most students still do not know how to exploit the Internet effectively for their studying For most students studying at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College, to be honest, they have never had a chance to meet foreigners Resources

of reference books at the college are also limited These internal and external constraints in learners and environment make the quality of learning English in general and learning English pronunciation in specific quite low

2.2 Participants of the Study

With the limited number of the first year students in a school year at our college, the study was conducted on the group of 80 students of the two English classes, K15A and K15B All of them had learnt English for at least three years They had to take the English test

with the same format from the Ministry of Education in the national entrance exam for college However, their English scores were not high, in which the highest was 8.0 and the lowest was 3 In general, their grammar and reading are comprehensible, but their pronunciation is not good

In the closed questions, students are asked to tick one or more options that are the most appropriate to them, while the open-ended ones require students to write down their individual opinions on the difficulties they meet in learning English pronunciation

Since the questionnaires are for students majoring in English, they were all in English Yet, with the first year students, language used is quite simple and familiar so that students can feel free and be at their best to express their thoughts

2.3.2 Interview

Interview is said to be suitable as a research instrument for needs analysis, program evaluation, individual case studies and mini-surveys (Nunan, 1991) Thus, it was chosen to look for in-dept information for the research As a matter of fact that participants of this study are the first year students who are still very shy and may have problems expressing their ideas orally, interview questions were designed for six teachers of English at the college who are more experienced and better at presenting their viewpoints These teachers were chosen for the interview since they used to be or are responsible for pronunciation courses of the first year students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College

Nine interview questions aim at investigating students‟ difficulties in learning English pronunciation in the eye of their teachers of English Moreover, important information about main causes of these difficulties and teachers‟ possible solutions are hoped to be found after the interviews

2.3.3 Classroom Observation

Hopkins (1993) described classroom observation as a “pivotal activity” which played crucial role in classroom research, teachers‟ personal professional growth and school development as a whole (as cited in McDonough and McDonough, 1997: 101) In this study, classroom observation was employed before and after the two main research instruments above In other words, classroom observation gave me reasons for doing this research and then it helped me test the validity of the data collected in the questionnaires and interview After my own experiences observing pronunciation classes of the first year students (natural observation), I saw a problem that despite great efforts, teachers of English could not obtain their objectives in each pronunciation lessons That put me in a divided mind whether the first year students met any difficulties in fulfilling their pronunciation tasks I did this study to look for explanations for that mismatch After having data from in the questionnaires and interview, I did classroom observation again, this time with a lot of note takings and some audio-taping to ensure that the collected data was triangulated To make students feel free, I just sat at the back row and took part in four different lessons of two groups as a non-participant observer

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

Data analysis is not a simple description of the data collected but a process by which the researcher can bring interpretation to the data (Powney & Watts, 1987) In the following parts, the researcher interprets the results from the feedback of questionnaires for students, interviews for teacher and class observations The study mentions the first year students‟ difficulties in learning English pronunciation

3.1 Data Analysis and Discussion

3.1.1 Students’ Evaluation of the Importance of Pronunciation

Question Options Strongly

Table1: Students’ evaluation of the importance of pronunciation

It can be seen clearly from Table 1 that there is a high level of agreement about the significance of pronunciation in teaching and learning English 93,7 % students strongly agree that pronunciation is very important in English learning and the rest 6,3 % sharing the point, agree that pronunciation should be taught Remarkably, none of the students thinks pronunciation unimportant

For the second question, it shows a good signal that all students recognize the importance

of pronunciation in their future job, which, as being mentioned in the previous chapter mainly are teachers, translators or office workers

3.1.2 Students’ Difficulties in Learning English Pronunciation

Table2: Students’ evaluation of the difficulties in learning English pronunciation

While almost participants of the study admit the importance of pronunciation in their English learning process, most of them, once more strongly agree that pronunciation is difficult to learn The reason for their choice may come from the fact that they have few

chances to practice pronunciation outside their class or they have bad influences from their Vietnamese pronunciation as suggested in the interview with the teachers

3.1.2.2 Interview

In the interview, answering for the first question about students‟ difficulties in learning English pronunciation, all of six respondents highly agree that their students do have serious problems in pronunciation learning According to these teachers, their students make a lot of mistakes when producing any English, from single words to more complex utterances

- Teacher 2 also adds that their students also recognize the mistakes they make; yet doing the right is another matter Therefore, what their students often do in the case of making mistakes is merely keeping silent in class They do not dare to raise their voice due to their poor pronunciation They‟re hopeless

- Teacher 3 shows her disappointment that even some students who are capable of pronouncing correctly single sounds still make mistakes in the clusters or in multi-syllable words

- Teacher 6 concludes that “students do face difficulties during the pronunciation course and it is our responsibility to help them overcome those problems; otherwise they will fail in their language learning”

Question 2 in the interview with teachers addresses major difficulties met by the first year students in pronunciation learning As experienced teachers of the pronunciation course for the first year students, all the teachers give a lot of problems that their students often make Following are some main ones:

- Teacher 1: My students have many problems when they pronounce English The most common ones are word-ending sounds and stress

- Teacher 2: It’s very difficult to list all the problems they have in the pronunciation course The main ones, I think are word-ending sounds, stress and intonation Besides, it seems difficult for them to distinguish sounds in pairs, for example /æ/ and /e/; /s/ and /z/

- Teacher 5: I don’t know what to talk about because there are too many mistakes students often make in my lesson even though I try hard to model the sounds or ask them to listen and repeat the tape The main ones may be the mistakes in

producing word-ending sounds, stress, both word and sentence levels and intonation

In short, through questionnaire and interview, it is confirmed that more or less all the first year students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College have difficulties in learning English pronunciation More investigation about the true problem at our college would come in the answers to the next questions

3.1.3 Students’ Difficulties with English Vowels

3.1.3.1 Questionnaires

Questions 4 deal with students‟ difficulties in pronouncing English vowels In this question, students are asked to mark the vowel sounds they have difficulties in pronunciation Remarkably, a number of students (65%) show that they have problems in pronouncing diphthong vowels rather than single vowels The top list problematic diphthong sounds to students are /əʊ / (60%); /ʊ ə/ (60%); /eɪ / (52%); /aʊ / (50%); /ɪ ə/ (48%) It is understandable since with such diphthongs where two vowel sounds are connected in a continuous, gliding motion, students have to produce two separate sounds as one at the same time What‟s more, the highest number of students, 70 students find it hard to produce /æ/ in a native way Other 56 students (70%) show that they have troubles with short and long vowel pairs such as /i:/ and /ɪ /; /ə/ and /ɜ :/; /ɒ / and /ɔ :/

Question Options Strongly

agree

Agree No opinion Disagree Strongly

disagree

Table 3: Students’ evaluation of the difficulties in pronouncing long and short vowels

To complement this question, question number 8 looks at students‟ difficulties in distinguishing long and short vowels 56% of the respondents strongly agree that they have difficulties with long and short vowels, 31% show their agreement and the rest 13% have

no opinion on the problems So far, long and short vowels distinction has also caused challenges to the first year students in the English pronunciation learning process

3.1.3.2 Interview

In teachers‟ interview question number 3, more details about students‟ problems with English vowels are presented The answers from six teachers guarantee the data collected from students‟ questionnaire They also point out the most problematic vowels for their students are the pair /æ/ vs /e/

Teacher 1 gives some more explanations for the phenomenon: I think that my students have such difficulties in pronouncing the vowel sounds /æ/ and /e/ is partially due to their accents Even in Vietnamese, they are easily recognized to

be a Hanam citizen when pronouncing /e/ in such Vietnamese words as /mẹ/ (mother) or /em/ (younger sister or brother) I know some other provinces where people have such a way to pronounce /e/, like Nam dinh or some parts of the former Hatay

Besides, the teachers share other mistakes by their students with long and short vowels in contrast, for example /ɒ / vs /ɔ :/; /ʊ / vs /uː/; or /ə/ vs /ɜ :/

Four out of six teachers complain that their students often substitute the long vowels by the

short ones, except for the pair /ʊ / vs /uː/ where students tend to have all pronounced as a long /uː/ instead of a short /ʊ /

Teacher 4 also adds some examples as below:

- “good” is pronounced /gu:d/ instead of /gʊ d/

- “see” is pronounced /sɪ / instead of /si:/

- “read” is pronounced /rɪ d/ instead of /ri:d/

In short, main difficulties namely long and short vowels distinction, diphthongs and the pronunciation of the vowel /æ/ are addressed in both question for students and interview question for teachers There should raise some concern about teaching these sounds then in order to improve the situation

3.1.4 Students’ Difficulties with English Consonants

3.1.4.1 Questionnaires

Question number 5 and 9 in the questionnaire seek problematic consonants of the first year students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College After all, there are a number of consonant sounds that cause troubles to students in their pronunciation learning

No Consonants Tick for “Yes” No Consonants Tick for “Yes”

No Consonants Tick for “Yes” No Consonants Tick for “Yes”

Table 4: Students’ evaluation of the difficulties in pronouncing English consonants

First, as can be seen in the chart, students have difficulties in pronouncing the fortis stop consonant /t/ (53% respondents); the fortis plosive /p/ versus the lenis /b/ (46% respondents), and more seriously the pair of the interdental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ (90% respondents) This number can be understandable to their teachers since in the interview they present their students‟ difficulties in distinguishing some similar sounds between Vietnamese and English, such as /θ/ in English versus /t/ or /th/ in Vietnamese; /ð/ in English versus /d/ or /z/ in Vietnamese Some other consonants sounds that do not exist in Vietnamese are listed in students‟ answers as problematic sounds such as the lenis fricative /dʒ /, /ʒ / (60% respondents) and the velar nasal /ŋ/ (32% respondents) Second, of three positions where English consonants can stand in a word, as named in question number 9, ending-word consonants are shown to cause the most difficulties to students (76 respondents) Other 46 respondents (57.5%) find consonants at the beginning of a word troublesome while just a few students (15% respondents) think consonants at the middle of

a word can cause them difficulties in pronunciation

Question Options At the beginning At the middle At the end

9 No of Ss 46 (57.5%) 12 (15%) 76 (95%)

Table 5: Students’ evaluation of the problematic positions of consonants in a word

Last but not least, question number 10 in the survey questionnaire looks at students‟

difficulties in pronouncing English consonant clusters

Question Options Strongly

agree

Agree No opinion Disagree Strongly

disagree

10 No of Ss 40 (50%) 30 (37.5%) 7 (8.8%) 3 (3.7%) 0

Table 6: Students’ evaluation of the difficulties in pronouncing consonant clusters

As can be seen in the table, most students admit that they find English consonant clusters difficult to pronounce Only three students show their confidence in their pronunciation of English consonant cluster while other seven students are not sure about their own ability

3.1.4.2 Interview and Class Observation

Regarding to students‟ difficulties in pronouncing English consonants, question number 4

in the interview also guarantees data collected in the questionnaire The teachers presented many mistakes that their students often meet with English consonants First, according to all six teachers in the interview, the most serious problems with English consonants for their students are final word consonants Most students ignore the final consonants of a word, especially the eight consonants /t/; /k/; /f/; /v/; /θ/; /ð/; /dʒ /; /tʃ /

Teacher 6 gives some examples of her students‟ mistakes:

- “five” is pronounced /faɪ / most of the time

- “myself” is said like /mai seo/ in stead of /mai „self/

- “church” is often pronounced /tʃ ɜ ːt/ or /[ch]ɜ ːt/ in stead of /tʃ ɜ ːtʃ /

During the class observation process, it is noticeable that most /p/ and /t/ appearing in the word finals were omitted while some other consonants were substituted by the similar Vietnamese sounds Teacher 3 shares the point that their students often pronounce /t/ for /θ/; /d/ for /ð/; /z/ for /dʒ / or /ʒ /; and /s/ for /ʃ /

To illustrate, teacher 5 gives some typical problems with English consonant that their students often make

- “both” is pronounced /bəʊ t/ or /bəʊ ð/ instead of /bəʊ θ/

- “though” is pronounced /zəʊ / instead of /ðəʊ /

- “bridge” is pronounced /brit/ or a bit better /briz/ instead of /bridʒ /

- “show” is pronounced /səʊ / instead of /ʃ əʊ /

Second, it is shown in the teachers‟ answers that a few students still confuse voiceless with voiced consonants, especially three pairs: /p/ with /b/; /s/ with /z/ and /θ/ with /ð/ In my notes during class observation, such minimal pairs as “pen” and “Ben”; “pin” and “bin”

were often mispronounced by many students The other pairs of voiced and voiceless sounds standing at the end of a words were also noted to be difficult to most of students, for example, “tomatoes” was pronounced /tə‟mɑ ːtəʊ s/ in stead of /tə‟mɑ ːtəʊ z/; “both” was pronounced /bəʊ t/ or /bəʊ ð/ in stead of /bəʊ θ/ Another confusion comes with the pair /l/ and /n/ In one of my notes during the pronunciation classes, almost the consonant sound /l/ is substituted by the sound /n/ by many students (16 students)

To illustrate, one teacher gives examples of their students mistakes in pronouncing “will” as /wɪ n/ instead of /wɪ l/; “feel” is pronounced /fɪ n/ instead

of /fiːl/

Third, in their answers to question 5 in the interview, all six teachers confirm their students‟ problems with English consonant clusters, which, in their answers is understandable since these sounds do not exist in Vietnamese According to these teachers, what their students often do when facing consonant cluster is to omit one or more consonant in the cluster so that it becomes easier to pronounce Two of these six teachers also give a number of examples for their students‟ mistakes Some are as follows

- “desks” is pronounced /des/ with /sk/ omitted

- “tests” is pronounced /tes/ with /st/ omitted

- “months” is pronounced /mʌ nts/ in stead of /mʌ nθs/

- “last” is pronounced /lɑ t/ in stead of /lɑ ːst/

To sum up, the results from questionnaires, teachers‟ interview and classroom observation all show that in comparison with theirs with English vowels, the first year students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College have more difficulties in pronouncing English consonants wherever they stand, in the word finals, in isolating words as well as within utterances With strange consonants students firstly move them towards similar sounds which exist in their mother tongue, secondly omit the sounds that are too difficult for them

3.1.5 Students’ Difficulties with Stress, Intonation and Rhythm

Table 7: Students’ awareness of the concepts of stress, intonation and rhythm

Question 6 asks the respondents how well they understand the concepts of stress, intonation and rhythm With the first concept – stress, there are 60 very-clearly answers (75%), 15 respondents (18.8%) whose answers are “quite well” and the rest 5 students (6.2%) who choose option “not really” That is to say, students are lectured clearly enough

so that they can have basic understandings of the term Yet good practice of stress is another issue to be further discussed in the next part The second term to be looked at for students‟ understanding is intonation A small number (11%) show their confidence with English intonation, meanwhile a considerable number of students (55%) show that they just understand the concept but not really well 30% of the respondents are not sure whether they understand the term or not and the rest 4% admit their failure with English intonation To make matter worse, the concept of “rhythm” is shown to be the most problematic by most respondents Among 80 students, there is no student choosing the first option – “very clearly” There are two students choosing the option “quite well” and many answers come as “not really” (47.5% respondents), meanwhile a number of students (40% students) answer that they do not understand the concept at all In short, the three concepts stress, intonation and rhythm are shown to be difficult to most of the first year students at Hanam Teachers‟ Training College This must be considered a serious matter since with little understanding about the concept of the term, how these students manage to achieve correct stress, good intonation and native-sound rhythm in their oral speech?

In order to have a better look at these three components of English pronunciation in comparison with the others, question 7 asks students to rate consonant sounds, vowels sounds, stress, intonation and rhythm due to the number of difficulties they cause to the learning process Understandably, what students do not understand well causes them more