LV ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANT SOUNDS EXPERIENCED BY THE TENTH FORM STUDENTS IN QUANG NAM PROVINCE

1 Chapter INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE One of the most important objectives of learners of English is to speak English accurately and fluently Most English learners try to speak as much like native speakers as possible so that they can not only easily understand what the native are saying but also be easily understood In fact, it is very difficult for them to know how to produce the language in a perfect way Practising English pronunciation can help improve our listening and speaking skills Learners of English in general and students at high school in Quang Nam province in particular must try their best to develop good English pronunciation It may be theorized that not many teachers at high school have paid due attention to teaching pronunciation yet Another factor may be that the students in Quang Nam speak English with the local accent In her research “The Coronal – Velar relationship in Vietnamese Dialects”, Pham Thi Hoa (1997) pointed out: Quang Nam speakers often try to standardize their dialects when they have to communicate with people from the other dialects Children usually “read” in the standardize dialect, which they are taught in school as an educational policy (Cu et al: 1977), but “speak” in their dialects at home [33, p.69] That makes them difficult to produce sounds in English, simply in this example: cab – cap They are incapable of distinguishing between voiced and voiceless sounds of stops, fricatives, affricates, in particular, as well as the consonant sounds at the final position in general As a result, students at high schools in Quang Nam experience big problems in their pronunciation in terms of stress, intonation, rhythm, sound linking, vowels, diphthongs, and consonants as well Moreover, the tenth-form students have learned the new Tieng Anh 10 textbook in this school year Four language skills, namely, listening, speaking, reading, and writing should be integratedly developed and a pronunciation part mentioned goes through in each unit of the textbook In other words, students should be helped to develop both receptive and productive skills My proposed research project is intended to identify effective ways to help students, particularly, high school students in Quang Nam province to develop their ability in pronouncing English sounds more accurately With my knowledge from the M.A course and teaching experience in many years, I attempt to make an investigation into the problems or difficulties that the tenth-form students in Quang Nam may experience in pronouncing English final consonant sounds 1.1.1 Theoretical background Although final sounds play a crucial role in the English language, not many Vietnamese learners of English are aware of this Therefore most students fail to perceive English final sounds and to pronounce them accurately in their speech When the words in phrases and sentences are said separately, students can recognize the sounds quite easily However, when they are said in a rapid connected speech in which sounds are linked together, it is not easy for students to perceive Therefore, students are likely to encounter a great number of difficulties in connected speech The difficulties in English pronunciation for Vietnamese speakers are probably caused by the differences in the pronunciation of the two languages In English, final consonant sounds are pronounced clearly to distinguish meanings of words On the contrary, in Vietnamese, final consonant sounds not function in the same way 1.1.2 Practical background Performing the English final consonant sounds is not easy for Vietnamese students of English in general and students at high schools in Quang Nam in particular From my teaching experience in many years, I have noticed that most of the students not pay attention to the released final sounds In English, final consonants, however, are the codas of the syllable that help learners recognize and understand the meaning even in their connected speech Correct pronunciation of the English final consonants and sound linking is a requirement for the learners if they are to understand other people and to be understood in English communication The proposed study is aimed to investigate how school students perceive and produce English final consonant sounds in words, phrases, sentences and extended discourses Based on the findings, possible solutions will be suggested to help students overcome their limitations 1.2 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY • To confirm the findings of previous studies done by other researchers • To identify the likely problems experienced by the tenth-form students at high schools in Quang Nam • To help the students develop their ability to perceive and to perform English final sounds and linking sounds accurately To offer some suggestions to make students be aware of how to pronounce the final sounds accurately and to link the final sounds in connected speech in an appropriate way as well 1.3 AIMS, OBJECTIVES AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1.3.1 Aims This study aims to investigate how English final sounds are perceived and performed by the tenth-form students at high schools in Quang Nam province and to offer suggestions of solution to obstacles in pronunciation 1.3.2 Objectives The objectives of the study are: ● to identify how students perceive and produce English final consonant sounds ● to suggest some implications for teaching the problematic final consonant sounds 1.3.3 Research questions With the objectives mentioned above, the answers to the following questions are sought: Which English final consonants are likely to cause troubles to Vietnamese tenth-form students in Quang Nam in terms of perception and production? What are the causes of students’ mistakes in perceiving and pronouncing English final consonants? How can the teachers help students to overcome these difficulties? 1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY This study will examine the English final consonant sounds experienced in listening and speaking However, due to the limited time and resources, the investigation will be restricted to the tenth-form students studying at some high schools in Quang Nam, and to the final consonant sounds in three concrete ways: ● The final consonant sounds at the end of the utterance or sentence; ● The final consonant sounds preceding the word beginning with a vowel; ● The final consonant sounds preceding the word beginning with a consonant 1.5 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY The study is presented in five chapters as follow: Chapter one, “Introduction”, includes the rationale, significance of the study, aim, objectives, and research questions, the scope of the study, and organization of the study Chapter Two, “Literature Review”, is an overview of previous studies on vowels, diphthongs, English stops and linking sounds The theoretical knowledge consists of the final consonant characteristics in articulatory and acoustic approach mentioned and a contrastive analysis in English and Vietnamese final consonants The aspects of connected speech are also presented Chapter Three, “Method and Procedure”, presents the hypotheses, research method and procedure of data collection and analysis Chapter Four, “Results and Discussions”, describes the results of actual performing pronunciation drawn from the data collected to define what the common errors and the problems in pronunciation that tenth-form students at high schools in Quang Nam may experience are Chapter Five, “Conclusion and Recommendations”, the conclusion is drawn from the study and some implications for practical solutions is given out There have also been some limitations and unsolved problems 1.6 DEFINITION OF TERMS 1.6.1 Definitions of consonant sounds There are many definitions of consonants: - A consonant is a speech sound made by completely or partly stopping the flow of air being breathed out through the mouth [21, p.263] - A speech sound that is not a vowel, involved or characterized by harmony, a letter of the alphabet standing for a spoken consonant [49] - A consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture sufficient to cause audible turbulence, at once or more points along the vocal tract [50] - A consonant is a sound formed by the occlusion or near occlusion of the breath stream Consonants differ from the vowels by the audible friction with which by they are produced [9, p.17] - A consonant is a speech sound where the airstream from the lung is completely blocked (STOP), partially blocked (LATERAL) or where the opening is so narrow that the air escapes with audible friction (FRICATIVE) With some consonants (NASALS) the airstream is blocked in the mouth but allowed to escape through the nose With the other group of speech sounds, the VOWELS, the air from the lung is not blocked There are a number of cases where the distinction is not clear-cut, such as /j/ at the beginning of the English word yes where there is only very slight friction, and linguists have sometimes called these semi-vowels or semi-consonants [35, p.78] Among these definitions I like the definition in the Longman dictionary by Richards et al, (1993) best because of its clearness This definition helps the learners know and distinguish kinds of consonants in English There are twenty-four consonantal phonemes which are classified according to their places of articulation and manners of articulation 1.6.2 Errors and mistakes 1.6.2.1 What is an error? - An error is the use of a linguistic item in a way which a fluent or native speaker of the language regards as showing faulty or incomplete learning [35, p.127] Productive errors are those which occur in the language learner's utterances; and receptive or interpretive errors are those which result in the listener's misunderstanding of the speaker's intentions Competence in a language can be regarded as composed of productive competence and receptive competence These two competencies not develop at the same rate It is not uncommon to hear people say that they understand a language better than they can speak it, or vice versa 1.6.2.2 What is a mistake? - A mistake made by a learner when writing or speaking and which is caused by lack of attention, fatigue, carelessness or some other aspect of PERFORMAMCE [35, P.127] 1.6.2.3 The difference between an error and a mistake According to Richards et al, (1993) there is a distinction between an error and a mistake An error is made by a learner who has incomplete knowledge A mistake is made by a learner when writing or speaking and which is caused by lack of attention, fatigue, carelessness, or some other aspect of performance “In the study of second and foreign language learning, errors have been studied to discover the processes learners make use of in learning and using a language.” [35, p.127] 1.6.3 Error analysis According to Richards et al, (1993) error analysis is the study and analysis of the errors made by second language learners Error analysis may be carried out in order to: a identify strategies which learners use in language learning b try to identify the causes of learner errors c obtain information on common difficulties in language learning, as an aid to teaching or in the preparation of teaching materials [35,p 127] 1.6.4 Contrastive analysis Contrastive analysis is an inductive investigative approach based on the distinctive elements in a language Contrastive analysis is the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities [51] 1.6.5 Sound perception Sound perception is the process of perceiving sounds - the perception of sound as a meaningful phenomenon It deals with experimental and theoretical work about how complex sounds are processed by the human hearing system [52] 1.6.6 Sound production Sound production is the process of producing sounds - the production of sound as a meaningful phenomenon It deals with experimental and theoretical work about how complex sounds are processed by the human speaking system [53] Chapter LITERATURE REVEW This chapter reviews the literature related to my study The first part is a description of the prior research The second part is the description of the English and Vietnamese sound systems to help the students understand more clearly about the final sounds The last one reviews the background of pronunciation teaching 2.1 PRIOR RESEARCH ON THE TOPIC Books on phonetics and phonology have been written by many famous linguistists in English as well as in Vietnamese “Pronunciation Contrasts in English” was written by Nelsens (1973) Minimal pairs of consonants or vowels are clearly discussed This book helps teachers of English teach pronunciation in distinguishing the words that confuse the students when they listen to or say something “An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English” by Gimson, A.C (1975) clearly describes English consonants and deals with phonetic developments and variants in terms of transcription of vowels as well as consonants, especially the descriptive consonants of acoustic features “Ngữ Âm Tiếng Việt” by Đoàn Thiện Thuật (1980) describes the sound system of Vietnamese consisting of vowels and consonants and some rules of final sound distribution There has been a great deal of research on the interference between the first language and the second language in many languages Lado (1957) presented the contrastive analysis approach, especially the second chapter in his book “Linguistic Across Cultures”, how to compare two-sound systems which provide useful information on many aspects to consider when comparing the sound systems of two languages In recent years, a great deal of research on English pronunciation has been carried out by students and post-students of English Contrastive analysis of different aspects of pronunciation between English and Vietnamese has been shown such as Vietnamese learners of English with assimilation, elision and linkage problems by Huỳnh, A.T (1992) and Nguyễn, H.H (1992) They found the students’ mistakes and difficulties and gave the solution to help them overcome these obstacles Common pronunciation mistakes in stress, strong and weak forms and linking sounds by Huỳnh, N.H and Lê, M.P (1999) concluded that Vietnamese students had great difficulties in recognizing native sounds and even misunderstanding the meaning of utterances For example: “It’s an aim” might be heard as “It’s a name.” [22, p 45] Other studies are about the English vowel sounds experienced by the first year students of English at Danang University, Master thesis by Nguyễn, K.D.H (2001), English diphthongs in Quang Ngai learners’ discourse, Master thesis by Bùi, T.T (2004) They investigated the phenomena that the learners encounter and gave the suggestions to help them in learning English “English stops in Vietnamese students’ discourse of English in Danang University”, Graduation paper by Tạ, T.G (2002) was carried out based on the contrastive analysis between English and Vietnamese stops, identified the problems students encounter when performing the English stops and some suggestions for the effective pronunciation teaching were also mentioned to help students go over the problems “A research on the pronunciation of inflectional endings in English by the eleventh-form students in Danang city”, Graduation paper by Nguyễn, T.T (2006) was about to identify the problems encountered by students when they perform English inflectional endings especially in connected speech and to suggest some teaching activities to help them improve their pronunciation in particular and their performance of inflectional endings in spoken discourse However, these studies did not tackle the problems of pronunciation of the final consonant sounds by Vietnamese students and did not offer solutions for problems related to connected speech in listening and speaking skills either In an attempt to fill this gap, this study is designed to explore this problem In this study, 10 Vietnamese is chosen as language (L1) and English chosen is language (L2) to make it easy to the research 2.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.2.1 Background to English final consonant sounds - A consonant is a speech sound made by completely or partly stopping the flow of air being breathed out through the mouth [21, p 263] - What is a final consonant? A final consonant is a speech sound that occurs at the end of a linguistic unit, and the airstream from the lung is completely blocked (STOPS) e.g [p, t, k, b, d, ] , partially blocked (LATERAL) e.g [l] or where the opening is so narrow that the air escapes with audible friction (FRICATIVES) e.g [f, , s, , v, , z, ] With some consonants (NASALS) e.g [m, n, ] the airstream is blocked in the mouth but allowed to escape through the nose In English, consonant sounds are usually distributed in three positions: initial, medial and final These are about twenty-one consonant sounds distributed at final position They are [p, b, t, d, k, , f, v, , , s, z, , , t , d , m, n, , l, r] Peter Roach (1999) pointed out that the plosives in final position, [b, d, ] normally have little voicing and [p, t, k] are, of course, voiceless The plosion following the release of [p, t, k] and [b, d, ] is very weak and often not audible According to O’connor (1980), [ ] is one of the final sounds that seldom appears in the final position of the word There are only a few words ending with [ ] such as rouge [ru ], beige [bei ], garage [ r ], barrage [b r ] a English stops/ plosives According to Roach, P., (1999), in English there are six stop consonants: [p, t, k, b, d, ] occurring at the end of the word The glottal stop [ ] occurs frequently but it is less importance because it is an alternative pronunciation of [p, t, or k] in a certain contexts The stops have different places of articulation: -[p] and [b] are bilabial, the lips are pressed together 59 to cause the problematic pronunciation In addition to this teaching pronunciation certainly deserves strong attention in the English class, especially in classes with a communicative approach Poor pronunciation will cause problems in oral communication no matter how good a speaker’s control of English grammar and vocabulary might be Many of the problems, in fact, are also caused by the influence of the dialects Therefore, teachers of English need to help students be aware of this tendency in order to be able to speak English clearly and intelligently 5.2 RECOMMENDATIONS I would like to suggest some recommendations for teaching pronunciation related to final sounds in English to enhance the perception as well as production of final consonants in communication The main thing is the teaching activities that help students pronounce the difficult consonants unavailable in Vietnamese sound system These teaching activities should be designed for students to adapt their wrong habit of pronunciation, to raise their awareness of the differences between English and Vietnamese sound systems, to integrate their right pronunciation in class and to help them to have a habit of self evaluation of the mistake correction 5.2.1 Raising their awareness of the differences between English and Vietnamese sound systems The students have a habit of speaking with their mother language pronunciation when they learn a new foreign language It is difficult for them to eliminate the interference The learners of English in general and the Quang Nam tenth-form students in particular, therefore, need to be aware of the differences between the characteristics of the two languages and their syllable structures It is inferred from the questionnaire that the students need more practice of accurate as well as fluent enunciation and the guidance of using sound linking in the speech They should be provided with phonetic and phonological knowledge because it will help them improve their perception and production of sounds 5.2.2 Integrating pronunciation teaching in English lessons 60 Vanessa Steele (2005) concluded that “pronunciation work should be seen as an integral part of what goes on in the classroom” Pronunciation work is an important part in learning language activities The goal of integrating pronunciation teaching is set to contribute to learning language more effectively and efficiently Raising learners’ awareness of the pronunciation, whenever they arise, is the first step towards helping learners to speak more naturally Kenworthy J (1993) pointed out that teachers’ preparation of lesson at home must be careful The teachers decide at what levels they are going to exploit materials In particular there are several aspects of pronunciation that can be easily integrated into vocabulary work such as sounds, stress pattern, linkage and simplifications, sound/ spelling correspondences, and cluster of sounds Therefore, the teacher must approach pronunciation in such a way that it encourages appropriate attitudes to help learners Besides, learners must be encouraged to accept the “self-monitor” role to bring their pronunciation under control From the students’ results diagnostic tests, most of them suffered from performing in connected speech They really didn’t know how to produce the final sounds of words to link together They failed to comprehend the native speakers’ utterance in natural speech It means that integrating teaching pronunciation involves in helping students both to identify and practice the sounds of which a language is composed, that is to say, its phonemes As a result, students have more chances to improve their production and perception sounds 5.2.3 Helping students have self-evaluation and monitoring of the mistake correction Learners are usually dependent on their teachers for the feedback on their performance Therefore, one of the teachers’ tasks is to help students realize the mistakes and guide them to correct and evaluate themselves Once learners begin to spontaneously correct their own performance, this is also the sign of development 61 of self-evaluation and monitoring skills “Teachers must find ways to tap these developing skills, for unless learners develop the ability to monitor their own speech and make this a habit, then the possibility of change or adjustments in pronunciation will be blocked.” [23, p.118] The way that students themselves can evaluate their pronunciation is the recording done by practising conversations with partners In this case, they can listen to the tape at the end of the stage and evaluate their own speech The replay provides the students with feedback 5.3 TEACHING ACTIVITIES FOR FURTHER APPLICATION IN CLASSROOM 5.3.1 Teaching activities have been used so far by pronunciation teacher, especially when they teach pronunciation of English final consonants sounds There are many methods of teaching and correcting pronunciation applied in class activities However, the arrangement of the syllabus can not cover all the aspects of the second language learning and teachers only spend a little time correcting the pronunciation mistakes It may be said that the students’ failure in producing English final consonant sounds and sound linking in the diagnostic test can be more likely treated as deriving from such factors According to the students’ choice in the questionnaire, it seems that most teachers get acquainted with the traditional ways of teaching pronunciation Giving the phonetic transcriptions of words and repeating after the teachers’ voice are the most popular activities in class In addition to making this clearly, the teachers should give various pronunciation exercises to help students form stable habits from the beginning of leaning second language Besides, the teachers should also find some ways to improve students’ phonetic and phonological ability to avoid making them bored with the only raw pronunciation exercises, especially, the teachers know how to integrate pronunciation into other activities, particular in teaching pronunciation through teaching new words 62 5.3.2 Recommendation for further teaching activities It is unnecessary for teachers to teach pronunciation that focuses on every sound of a foreign language, but the teachers should know how to make their students realize and distinguish the similar and different sounds between their mother tongue and the target language Moreover, to help the students to have better pronunciation, the teachers have to spend much time designing various interesting and useful activities for teaching pronunciation From the results of investigation on students’ actual performance, I suggested that effective consonant pronunciation teaching can not be achieved through consonant description, but the teachers should put the consonant sounds in particular activities properly designed to make the lesson more interesting and to help students avoiding pronunciation mistake 5.3.2.1 Activity 1: Pronunciation diagnosis Aim: Focus on English final consonant sounds Time allotted: 15 – 20 minutes Material: pen and paper, Preparation: none Procedure: Get students into groups of five, sitting face to face with pen and paper Ask each student to think of a topic they would like to talk to his/ her partner about or minutes Students take turns to speak while their partners listen and take notes The listeners’ job is to write any word the final consonant of which the speakers pronounce in a way which they think is different from the way they themselves say it The listeners must not interrupt At the end of the talk, the partners look together at the notes and discuss them Be available to answer the queries and to distinguish between what is an acceptable variation in pronunciation and what is simply incorrect Make students change over roles and repeat exercises Continue, changing roles after one another as long as the time is over 63 Variant: The focus point can be in any other aspects of pronunciation, for example, stress, vowels, intonation The listeners’ job only is to note down these features in the speakers’ monologue about which they are in doubt Further commentary: This activity helps students resolve doubts about standard pronunciation by analyzing their speech each other The first listening may not bring to light many important issues, however, the longer the exercise continues, the more students get from it 5.3.2.2 Activity 2: My favorite songs Aim: Focus on the final sounds and the sound linking Time allotted: 20 – 25 minutes Material: a cassette, tape including songs recorded and the handouts about the song lyrics (Appendix E illustrates some English songs for predicting pronunciation of the final sounds and sound linking) Preparation: make the copies of the handouts for each member of class Procedure: Divide the class into pairs Ask students to work in pairs Give students handouts Ask them to discuss and predict where the final sounds that can link to the next ones are Next, ask students to listen to the song to confirm their prediction They can imitate to sing aloud and produce what they heard from the tape recorder Further commentary: The advantage of this activity firstly is that the students can have time to discuss and compare the answer with their partners Then they may argue and support the ideas each other They have a chance to brainstorm before listening to the song and their prediction is confirmed by a native speaker’ voice performance so that they can realize how the final sounds and sound linking are actually 64 produced in natural speech Moreover, learning pronunciation by listening to songs makes students feel interested in learning any foreign language 5.3.2.3 Activity 3: Conversation misunderstanding Aim: focus on the confusing sounds Time allotted: 15 – 20 minutes Material: cassette recorder, blank tape, handouts Preparation: make the copies of the handouts and prepare the cassette tape including the content in Appendix F Procedure: Teacher divides students into groups of five or six in which students sitting in long line Arrange the room so that these groups are spaced well apart and not too close to each other Before the game, teacher can draw students’ attention to the target sounds that cause the confusion when hearing, for example, /s/ and /z/ (Appendix F) Teacher gets the students at the beginning of the lines to listen to speaker on the tape saying Then it is the students’ duty to whisper what they heard to the one sitting behind them The first tells the second, the second tells the third… Do the same, students take turns to pass the information The last ones get the information to write on the board After all the responses are written on the board, the teacher have all the students listen to the tape again The members of groups will decide the correct answer before the teacher’s feedback Groups with more than two incorrect responses have to sing a song as a penalty Teacher can change the students’ position of the line so that they can have a chance to listen to the pronunciation of the native speaker’s voice After the game, teacher may have students some more exercise to practise their listening Variant: 65 Teacher can design other pairs of the sounds that make the students misunderstand Further commentary: The advantage of this activity is that all students in class have a chance to practise pronunciation as well as learn how to the native speaker produces the sounds, especially the confusing sounds Moreover, the students can judge their pronunciation one another As a result, they are able to distinguish the minimal pairs of sounds in learning English 5.3.2.4 Activity 4: How to apply connected speech! Aim: focus on the sound linking in a specific way Time allotted: - 10 minutes Material: Handouts, cassette player, tape recorded the content of the lesson Preparation: make the copies of the handouts (Appendix G) relating to the rules of linking Procedure: Divide students into pairs, ask them to discuss the way they can link the sounds together Deliver the handouts and guide them to follow the steps in the handouts Ask students to work in pairs to exercise below and read it aloud Play cassette player for students to check and find the mistakes by themselves, after that, the teacher helps them to correct the mistakes Further commentary: This activity aims at introducing the rules of sound linking There are many areas in connected speech The teacher should introduce students one for each time in the class This makes students feel easier in acquiring the rules in each area 5.3.2.5 Activity 5: Describing activities Aim: Focus on the accuracy and fluency in pronunciation Time allotted: 25 - 30 minutes Materials: Picture including outdoor activities 66 Preparation: make copies for the handouts (Appendix H) Procedure: Teacher divides class into groups of five or six and gives each group a picture Teacher asks students to describe the picture in detail After all, they will discuss other group before presenting in class Teacher gives the comment and chooses the best one in interesting content and good pronunciation Further commentary: This activity helps students increase their production of spoken English because they have to use many kinds of words including different sounds to describe the activities for free time Not only having some chances to practise all English sounds in spontaneity, they get to know how to describe a picture logically so that their partners can get and support the ideas They can monitor their output to the speech more clearly 5.3.2.6 Activity 6: How much you know about Vietnamese consonant sounds? Aim: Focus on finding the similarities and differences between some English and Vietnamese consonant sounds Time allotted: 30 minutes at home Procedure: Divide class into three groups Ask each group to study at home to find out the similarities and differences between some English and Vietnamese consonant sounds Then make a report follow some questions: a What are the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese consonant sounds? b Which sounds you think it the most difficult to pronounce? 67 Ask each group to give a report in front of the class Draw students’ attention to common mistakes made by students basing on the similarities and differences Further commentary: This activity helps students’ awareness of the similarities and differences between some English and Vietnamese consonant sounds From this, they have knowledge of consonant sounds to contribute their pronunciation better 5.3.2.7 Activity 7: Fast food Aim: Focus on the consonants, final sounds and linking sounds Time allotted: 15 – 20 minutes Preparation: Make a copy of each of the four Fast food menus The handouts (Appendix I) relating in four fast food menus Procedure: Divide class into groups One student in each group will be working in the Fast food restaurants Explain to the class that there are four Fast food restaurants operating in four parts of the classroom Appoint one (or more) of the students to work behind each of the counters of these restaurants and give them the menu to study These students are not allowed to show the menu to any of their customers Tell the rest of the lass that they are tourists and they not have much money left Give each student a fast food list Tell them that the object of the activity is to buy what is on their list for the lowest possible total price To this, they will have to go to each of the restaurants in turn and find out how much everything costs They must remember where they can get the cheapest items, go back and buy them and write the name of the restaurant on their list They may have to buy something on their list from each of the four restaurants in order to get bargain 68 Remind students that they must be polite at all times and that they must not jump their place in the queue Counter staff can refuse to serve anyone who does not follow these rules This should help with discipline! Further commentary: This activity helps students to pay attention to the final sounds and sound linking in their speech Firstly, teacher asks students to speak slowly, try to pronounce the final sounds and link them together Next, they talk to one another to practice by themselves The teacher monitors and corrects the mistakes that students make If the class is large (more than 24 students), the teacher has more than one student behind the counter of the restaurant Or the teacher will make extra copies of the menus for either of these variations to work 5.3.2.8 Activity 8: Applying “Hot Potatoes”, an effective learning software There are various activities for teaching pronunciation With the helpful software “Hot Potatoes”, we can design pronunciation exercises to help students more easily remember the knowledge they get Actually, this software turns out to be an interesting way of learning pronunciation As the activity is carried out, students take roles of players in an entertainment programme Some typical exercises are introduced in Appendix J 5.4 LIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 5.4.1 Limitations of the study Having some teaching experiences in many years at high school and realizing phenomena of students’ inability in pronunciation in real life, I tried to investigate into the students’ performance of final consonant sounds and their sound linking Because of the constraint of time, the study was carried out to explore pronunciation mistake on a small scale population in actual performance The research has been completed with my enthusiasm and interests, however, some difficulties and limitations are unavoidable in the study So I am very grateful and willing to receive any comments as well as remarks from the readers 5.4.2 Suggestions for further research 69 This study has just touched the tenth-form students’ problem of English final consonant sounds and their sound linking There is a need for further research into some other aspects of consonants as well as consonant clusters in different positions Moreover, research into the influence of students’ local accent needs to be done to find the solution to help them achieve better pronunciation in English BIBLIOGRAPHY In Vietnamese [1] Cao Xuân Hạo (1998), Tiếng Việt vấn đề ngữ âm ngữ nghĩa ngữ pháp, Nhà Xuất Bản Giáo Dục [2] Cù Đình Tú, Hoàng Văn Trung, Nguyễn Nguyên Trứ (1977), Ngữ Âm Học Tiếng Việt Hiện Đại, Nhà Xuất Bản Giáo Dục [3] Đặng Thị Lanh, Bùi Minh Toán, Lê Hữu Tĩnh (2001), Tiếng Việt tập một, Nhà Xuất Bản Giáo Dục [4] Đoàn Thiện Thuật (1998), Ngữ Âm Tiếng Việt, Nhà Xuất Bản Đại Học Quốc Gia Hà Nội 70 [5] Huỳnh Anh Tuấn (1992), Hiện tượng đồng hoá âm vị, đọc nuốt đọc nối tiếng Anh - Những khó khăn nghe nói học sinh Việt Nam, Luận văn tốt nghiệp đại học, Đại Học Sư Phạm Ngoại Ngữ Đà Nẵng, Đà Nẵng [6] Hữu Đạt, Trần Trí Dõi, Đào Thanh Lan (1998), Cơ Sở Tiếng Việt, Nhà Xuất Bản Giáo Dục [7] Mai Ngọc Chừ, Vũ Đức Nghiệu, Hoàng Trọng Phiến (2000), Cơ Sở Ngôn Ngữ Học 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http://www.esldepot.com/page.php?xPage=free-esl-why-games.html [49] http://www.wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn [50] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/consonant [51] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrastive_analysis [52] http://fp.tm.tue.nl/jfschouten/education/seminars/current/sound%20perception.htm [53] http://fp.tm.tue.nl/jfschouten/education/seminars/current/sound%20production.htm [...]... mistakes was the recognition in the phonetic features of the final consonant sounds for minimal pairs and linking sounds for conversation The students pronunciation was tallied in tables The results of it give insights into the students knowledge of pronouncing the final consonant sounds and linking sounds 3.7.2 Group classification For the convenience of the judgment after surveying, the data collected... pronunciation mistakes in the students actual production sounds in minimal pairs, in phrases and in conversation There were many kinds of mistakes in students actual pronunciation about the vowels, diphthongs, initial consonants, etc…I only focused on the final consonant sounds and linking sounds The others were ignored for the assumption Most of the students failed to pronounce the final sounds This led... structures in these two languages ● The third step is to compare the similarities and differences of final consonant sounds between English and Vietnamese pronunciation ● The fourth step is to generate hypotheses about the errors and problems that the tenth- form students in Quang Nam province may experience in pronouncing English ● The fifth one is to collect data from tenth- form students in the high... watch” Students pronunciation of the minimal pair “wash – watch” Figure 3.1 The demonstration of the minimal pair “wash – watch” made by native English speaker as compared with a Quang Nam tenth- form student The second section was to get the information from the students actual perception sounds in sentences by realizing the words and the linking sounds that they heard The identification of the mistakes... carried out using the procedure of tallying frequencies, recording the results, presenting the data in frequency and percentage distribution tables, and analyzing and interpreting the data 3.7.1 General evaluation The first part of the survey was carried out aiming at the students recognition of the important final consonant sounds and linking sounds The researcher got the information about the current... clearly as English All of the Vietnamese codas are unreleased/ closed consonants Cao Xuân Hạo (1998) studied that in a syllable structure, the final consonant sound plays an important role, therefore, it is different from the initial consonant sound and it is also a direct element of the syllable 2.2.3.2 Linking sounds in English and Vietnamese a Linking sounds in English Sound linking is one of the four... understand English speakers when they link sounds together, that is to say, they are talking at normal speed When we say a sentence in English, we join or link words together Because of this linking, the words in a sentence do not always sound the same as when we say them individually Linking sound is very important for listening or speaking in English If we are able to recognize and use linking sounds, ... occurs in three positions, initial, medial and final f English retroflex The alveolar retroflex [r] in English is produced by the curved shape tongue 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 13 to cause friction The lips are rather rounded, especially when [r] is at the beginning... about the questionnaire, the researcher had a reliable result that evaluates the students learning English The results reflected the students true knowledge of learning English Appendix A summarizes the real information 3.4 DESCRIPTON OF POPULATION AND SAMPLE 3.4.1 Description of population These subjects involved in the research are the tenth- form students studying at five high schools in Quang Nam They... tenth- form students performance 32 Problems Bilabial stops Alveolar stops Velar stops Labial fricative Interdental fricative Alveolar fricative Alveopalatal fricative Alveopalatal affricate Nasal Members context [p, b] [t, d] [k, ] [f, v] [ , ] [s, z] [ , ] [t , d ] [m, n, ] final final final final final final final final final 3.6 DATA COLLECTION The data collection was carried out employing the subjects described ... ] final final final final final final final final final 3.6 DATA COLLECTION The data collection was carried out employing the subjects described above The questionnaire was delivered to 150 students. .. studying at some high schools in Quang Nam, and to the final consonant sounds in three concrete ways: ● The final consonant sounds at the end of the utterance or sentence; ● The final consonant sounds. .. sounds and linking sounds Students lack of knowledge about English final consonant sounds and linking sounds They have faced with the difficulties in pronouncing final consonant sounds and linking