Teaching English consonants in English textbook 10 effectively. I. Introduction 1. Rationale: In the ages of the world development, intercommunicating and high technology, English has become an international language. As a result, teaching English has become a compulsory subject at schools in Vietnam for many years. And nowadays, it has become more important because in the past, students had to learn English, but they did not have to take English exams in Secondary School Graduation exams. In traditional teaching, students were required to acquire English grammar. But nowadays, in the light of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), students are required not only to have good knowledge of vocabulary and correct grammar, the four language skills but also correct pronunciation. They are required to acquired various skills and language items including English grammar, English vocabulary and English pronunciation.. Accurate pronunciation is a must in English learning for students. Therefore, learning English pronunciation is of great importance to students, even for their exams. In addition, this will help them to have a good job in their future and enable them to communicate with foreigners successfully if they have a chance and the need.
Teaching English consonants in English textbook 10 effectively. I. Introduction 1. Rationale: In the ages of the world development, intercommunicating and high technology, English has become an international language. As a result, teaching English has become a compulsory subject at schools in Vietnam for many years. And nowadays, it has become more important because in the past, students had to learn English, but they did not have to take English exams in Secondary School Graduation exams. In traditional teaching, students were required to acquire English grammar. But nowadays, in the light of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), students are required not only to have good knowledge of vocabulary and correct grammar, the four language skills but also correct pronunciation. They are required to acquired various skills and language items including English grammar, English vocabulary and English pronunciation Accurate pronunciation is a must in English learning for students. Therefore, learning English pronunciation is of great importance to students, even for their exams. In addition, this will help them to have a good job in their future and enable them to communicate with foreigners successfully if they have a chance and the need. Despite realizing this importance, Vietnamese students still can not acquire correct English pronunciation. The main reason is that the traditional teaching laid the emphasis on grammar has led to this problem. Many students can not pronounce English words and sentences correctly. They often pronounce them with equal stress, flat intonation and no rhythm at all. 1 English pronunciation seems to have become the most serious problem that students meet when they learn English. This is happening at almost upper secondary schools in Vietnam except for foreign language specializing schools. Situated in the central part of the country, Ha Tinh is much poorer than other provinces and have a lot of difficulties. Although Ha tinh is said to be the place of study and gifts, it still has many weaknesses in terms of teaching of learning because of some main reasons. Firstly, most of the teachers are very young and lack of teaching experience. Furthermore, the students here mostly come from poor families. They do not have good conditions to study. Moreover, classes at Ha tinh upper secondary schools are large, crowded and poorly equipped which make speaking lessons more difficult. Therefore, learning condition in Ha Tinh is not really good except for some schools in the city. As a certain, their learning English is really bad. And if some students are said to be good at English, it means they are good at English grammar. Most of them find it hard to express themselves orally. If anyone can, he has problems in pronouncing English words and sentences. In the English lessons, only teachers speak , and most of the time, teachers have to speak Vietnamese because they are afraid that their students do not understand what they are speaking. Although English has been compulsory for many years, students in the province have not paid much attention to it. If some students at Ha Tinh upper secondary schools invest time to study the subject, it is just because of the exams they have to take. Many students fail the national examination for the Secondary School Diploma because they can not do English tests well. Due to this, students here tend to concentrate on English subject more and more. However, 2 because of many factors, especially the objectives of the test, English teaching and learning in this area focus much on grammar, not other skills. Traditionally, teachers did not pay much attention to teaching pronunciation. And the old English textbooks did not involve teaching pronunciation, either. That is why pronunciation seems to be very difficult for most of the students. Teachers here tend to ignore teaching pronunciation to the students. When we teach our students with the new textbooks, most of them are unwilling to have pronunciation lessons in Language Focus part, because they find it hard to achieve as good and correct pronunciation as in the CD. For the teachers and students at most of upper secondary schools in Ha Tinh, pronunciation is a great problem. Most students complain about difficulties they get in learning English speaking skill in general and in pronunciation in particular with the new textbook. We ourselves realize that our students really have bad pronunciation. As a result, students here have a lot of problems when they do the tests on pronunciation as a part of the graduate examinations. And they also get a lot of difficulties in speaking English, even simple words or sentences. This is a serious problem not only at Ha Tinh upper-secondary schools but also at many other mountainous and remoted schools. So, investigating the problems and then find out some suggestions to improve the situation are very helpful for teaching and learning English at our school. Because of these above reasons, I decided to do research on students’ difficulties in learning English pronunciation. But with the limitation of time and space, I just focus on common English consonant problems and techniques to improve the situation entitled: “An investigation into Ha Tinh Upper Secondary students’difficulties in learning English consonants and 3 techniques to improve the situation”. The study was conducted to seek the answers to the question of which English consonants students at upper secondary schools often have difficulties with and what techniques should be applied to help them overcome those difficulties. 2.The aims: With the above rationale, my study was conducted with these following main aims: -To investigate the difficulties that Upper Secondary students meet when they learn English consonants. -To recommend some techniques for teachers and learners to overcome these difficulties. 3. Scope of the study: Because lack of research conditions and time, the study was only to investigate the main English consonant problems. The participants I chose for the research were only the students at my schools. With classroom observation, I chose all the students in classes that I attended to be the participants. With the experimental application, students in two classes of grade 10 th were chosen to do the designed exercises and to test the results. 4. Research methodology: The study employed different methods and instruments to get the data. - With the first task, investigating the main consonant problems that students often meet when they learn English, I mostly employed classroom observation and note- taking as well as my own experience of teaching English in Ha Tinh for many years. 4 - With the second task, checking whether the techniques I suggested are effective or not, I did an experiment. II. Literature review 1. Some main differences between the two language consonant systems- A contrastive anlysis. To find out the most common consonant problems that Vietnamese high school students often meet, firstly, a comparison between the two consonant systems should be made first because the consonant systems between the two languages also differ greatly. It is clear that there are a lot of differences in the comparison of Vietnamese and English consonant systems. According to Roach, P. (1983), English has twenty- four consonants. They are: p, b, m, f, v, t, d, k, g, θ, δ, s, z, l, z, h, n, ŋ, r, j, w, t∫, dʒ, ∫. The classification of these consonants is based on the manner of articulation and place of articulation. Vietnamese is different from English. Vietnamese has 30 consonants. It has twenty-two initial consonants pointed out by Doan Thien Thuat (initial consonants are ones which stand at the beginning of a syllable) . They are : b, m, f, v, t, t, d, n, s, z , l, ţ, ş, z, , c, …k, ŋ, x, γ, p, h. In addition to 22 initial consonants above, Vietnamese has 8 final consonants including 6 consonants and 2 semi- consonants or 2 semi- vowels. Comparing the two consonant systems, we can see that, firstly, there are some English consonants which do not exist in Vietnamese language such as dʒ, θ, ð, j, w…That these symbols do not exist in Vietnamese is a great difficulty for them to acquire. They are not familiar with these ones, so it is 5 very difficult for them to produce the correct sounds of these consonants. Besides, learners have a confusion of similar sounds: /b/ and /p/, /dʒ/ and /ð, /θ/ and /th/…and have difficulty in pronouncing consonant clusters such as /desks/, /fifθ/ in the words “desks” and “fifth” because consonant clusters do not exist in Vietnamese. Another difference that can cause pronunciation problems related to grammar which do not occur in Vietnamese. That is ‘s-ending’ in plural nouns, the third singular personal verbs (Simple Present tense) and “ed- ending’ in regular past verbs and regular past participles. Vietnamese learners often pronounce ‘s-ending’ as /s/ and ‘ed-ending’ as /ɪd/ but in fact English is different and is not always pronounced like that. The main reason for this is that in Vietnamese, there is no concept of the voiced consonants and voiceless consonants. If teachers provide learners with some main classifications of consonants including the state of the vocal cords (voiced and voiceless), learners can avoid wrong pronunciation in this case. For example, they can know when they pronounce ‘s-ending’ as /s/, /z/, /ɪz/ and ‘ed-ending’ as /ɪd/, /t/, /d/ for phonetic words ending in voiced, voiceless or some specific sounds…. In addition, Vietnamese learners have a confusion of the form of the indefinite article: ‘a/an’ and the way to pronounce definite article: ‘the’. They know that ‘a’ stands before a consonant and ‘an’ before a vowel but sometimes they can’t explain some problems such as a university, an M.P, an hour…and they still make mistakes. Teachers need explain to them that consonants and vowels here are phonetic words but not letters (ju:n ɪ vəsə 6 ti/, /mp ɪ / and / a ʊ ə/ ) and the rule for a/an does not change. ‘The’ is pronounced as /ðə/ when it stands before a consonant and as /ðɪ/ before a vowel. Nevertheless, Vietnamese learners can not distinguish this without realizing English phonetic symbols, specially consonants. Consequently, teachers should pay attention to the missing knowledge of consonants of learners in order to instruct them in time. The above is a brief comparison between the two consonant systems in which the main differences between Vietnamese consonant system and the English one are pointed out so that we can analyze the main consonant problems more easily. 2. Some common pronunciation problems. Doff, A.(1988:113) pointed out that students in different countries have different problems with English pronunciation. However, there are some common pronunciation problems that learners often make when they speak English. According to him, there are some main categories of common problems that are likely to occur as followings: - Difficulties in pronouncing sounds which do not exist in the students’ own language. For example, the consonant /ð/ is of great hard for Vietnamese students of English because this sound does not exist in Vietnamese language. - Confusion of similar sounds, e.g. /ð/ and /z/. - Difficulty in pronouncing consonant clusters. As I mentioned in the previous part, there are many consonants that exist in English but do not exist in Vietnamese. So Vietnamese learners of 7 second English language often have many problems with the system of English consonants. The problems that they have with English consonants seem to be many more than the ones that they have with English vowels. The followings are common mistakes that Vietnamese students often meet when they speak English pointed out by Avery, P. and Ehrlich, S.(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 is much shorter than their English equivalents. This means that even when Vietnamese speakers pronounce these consonants in final position, English speakers may have difficulty 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 practise 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, fricatives /f/, /v/, / θ/, /ð/, /s/,/z/, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ 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/ and /ð/ as in “thank” and “than” 8 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 are 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 lot of consonant clusters that contain many consonants at the same time. This causes a lot of difficulties for them because they are not familiar with this. Often, Vietnamese students tend to omit one or two consonants in a consonant cluster. For example, they may pronounce the word “ first” into /fɜ:t/ or the word “looked” into /lʊk/ or /lʊt/. Problem 6: “-ed” and “-s” ending problems as mentioned above. In short, I have given out the main problems that Vietnamese students often have when they learn English consonants. With the main problems, I suggest some recommended techniques to teach English effectively. 3. Classroom observation and findings To check whether students at Ha Tinh upper secondary schools meet the same problems as above, I did a lot of classroom observation with my students. Certainly, classroom observation is an instrument that can help researchers bolster the qualitative and quantitative results. Hopkins(1993) described classroom observation as a “pivotal activity” with a crucial role to 9 play in classroom research, teachers’ personal professional growth, and school development as a whole ( as cited in McDonough, J and McDonough, S 1997:101). McDonough, J and McDonough also stated that observation with its associated instruments can help researchers gain the validity of the data . So it can help me test the validity of the data obtained about students’ difficulties in learning English consonants When observing the class, I did a lot of note taking to ensure that the information collected was rich and triangulated . To make the students feel comfortable in the lessons, I just sat at the last row and took part in many different lessons as a non-participant observer to have a naturalistic observation. From many different observed lessons, I found out that students here had a lot problems with English consonants, but the most common ones are the mistakes as mentioned above. However, from my classroom observation, I also realize that ending sounds are of great problem to our students. They tend to omit the ending sounds. For example, the word "five", "find", "fight", "fine" may be pronouced the same. III. Some recommended techniques to help teachers and students better the situation. In accordance with the above problems, the followings will be some suggestions for English pronunciation teaching for upper secondary school teachers of English. First of all, I would like to state that the teachers’ methods of pronunciation teaching play a very important role in motivating and improving students’ English in general and students’ pronunciation in 10 [...]... repeat individual words containing consonant clusters 2 Listen and repeat the phrases containing consonant clusters 3 Listen and repeat conversation containing consonant clusters The above are some useful techniques for teachers to teach and students to practise English pronunciation In short, there are many ways of teaching English consonants, the above 19 are just some main ones They are very useful in. .. vowel-consonant-vowel In English, consonant clusters have two positions, initial and final Most of Vietnamese students often have more difficulties with the final consonant clusters than the initial ones In this case, teachers of English should combine different techniques, using demonstration combined with association and explanation The followings are some techniques from the easy type to more difficult and meaningful... application to two classes of grade 10 th I was in charge In the textbook, the technique is mostly minimal pairs or nearly minimal pairs However, with the two experimental classes, I applied more techniques to teach English consonants to one class, and the other class was taught with the technique as designed in the textbook After three lessons of Language Focus in which English consonants were presented, I... sounds of which both are in English or to contrast the two similar sounds of which one is English, the other is Vietnamese In the second case, to contrast a Vietnamese sound and an English sound that have nearly similar pronunciation, we call the technique “bilingual minimal pairs” 13 Missing words: (A Doff, (1988)) Another very simple way to teach consonants is using missing words Using this techniques,... hope that in the future, there will be some studies that can give a more objective result In this writing, I would like to give some recommendations as followings: - First of all, some more research on pronunciation problems such as teaching English vowels, stress, intonation and rhythm should be carried out so that we can improve our pronunciation teaching and learning - Secondly, some provincial workshops... consonant sounds are minimal pairs, informationgap activities, matching exercises, chain stories, fluency activities, dialogues, role plays and games These various techniques can help students improve their learning consonants as well as other individual sounds, and at the same time, they can motivate learning atmosphere The followings are the detail description of some techniques: 11 1 Teaching pronunciation... out with many pronunciation contrast around a variety of themes Matching exercises: :(P Avery and S Erhlich (1992) ) Another way in teaching English consonants is by giving students matching exercises The teacher can divide the class into two groups, group A has a written description of several people, group B has a picture containing all of the people of which there are descriptions The object of this... pair either in English or in Vietnamese, and ask students to identify which choice the teacher has made in each case by shouting out the language “Vietnamese” or “ English You can also use this technique to contrast two similar sounds in a English Minimal pairs are pairs of words that have one phonemic change between them For example: "let" and "lit", “leave” and “live” are minimal pairs Using these... useful in teaching consonants in a very communicative way Although there are many other techniques to teach English pronunciation, I just recommend some above because they are suitable for the English level of Ha Tinh Upper secondary students These techniques are easy to construct and also interesting enough to motivate students to learn With the techniques described above, we should choose ones in accordance... is going to read contrasting sounds or words aloud to the class and that they must decide which sound is being uttered each time and indicate this by ticking the appropriate column next to the number To some extend, this technique has some similarities with the minimal pair technique Information gap activities:(P Avery and S.Erhlich (1992) ) One of the easiest techniques for practising consonants in