Some typical pronunciation errors made by first year english major students at thuong mai university

ABSTRACT Nowadays, English plays an important role in all areas of life, especially in international integration An essential task of education is that English learners should communicate successfully with the target language To this, learners must have a deep understanding of the sound system in English language Therefore, pronunciation skill is the most important factor In fact, there are still many pronunciation errors of English learners, creating language barriers that prevent them from integrating with the outside world A large number of English major students of Thuong Mai University are also experiencing these problems Indeed, in spite of being learned English in secondary school and in high school, many students of English Faculty at Thuong Mai University are weak at English pronunciation This has a significant impact on their learning other subjects such as listening, speaking, reading, interpreting, etc as well as creates many restrictions in communicating with native speakers In this study, the author studied typical English pronunciation errors of freshmen of English Faculty at Thuong Mai University, then proposed some solutions to freshmen in particular and all students of English Faculty in general to improve their pronunciation All data and information were collected from 50 students from classes of the English Department The findings indicate that firstyear students tend to make pronunciation mistakes with vowels and consonants However, they have not had real effective method to improve their pronunciation errors Therefore, the findings from the study are hopefully of benefit not only for first-year English major students at Thuong Mai University but also all students interested in the pronunciation area by raising their awareness of their own study ACKNOWLEDGEMENT When completing this graduation paper, I would like to express my deepest and most sincere thanks to many people for their invaluable help in the process of conducting research First and foremost, I would like to send my sincere gratitude towards my supervisor Ms Do Thi Bich Dao, for her constructive and timely feedbacks as well as her continuous encouragement from the beginning and through the study process Without her help, I could not finish my graduation paper I would love to thank all the teachers at Thuong Mai University for bringing me the world of knowledge during my course and helping me complete this important document I would also like to send my sincerest gratitude to all first-year students who have enthusiastically participated in the study Their participation has been important to this research Last but not least, I want to send my truly thanks to my family and friends for their endless love and support through the challenging time of conducting the research Without the encouragement of them, I could not have got this far TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS .iii LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND CHARTS v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Previous studies .2 1.3 Aims of the study 1.4 Research Subjects 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Research methodology 1.6.1 Setting 1.6.2 Sampling .5 1.6.3 Data collection 1.6.4 Procedures for data collection and analysis .7 1.7 Organization of the study .8 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .9 2.1 English pronunciation 2.1.1 Definition of pronunciation 2.1.2 Aspects of pronunciation .9 2.2 English pronunciation errors .17 2.2.1 What are English pronunciation errors? 17 2.2.2 Factors affecting English pronunciation of students .18 2.2.3 English pronunciation errors made by Vietnamese learners 19 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS 23 3.1 Result from survey questionnaire 23 3.1.1 Background information about students’ English pronunciation skill 23 3.1.2 Student’s difficulties in English pronunciation learning 25 3.1.3 What are strategies you use when you practice English pronunciation? .31 3.2 Result from personal interview 33 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATION AND SUGGESTIONS 36 4.1 Major findings of the study 36 4.2 Suggestions for the Improvement of the Pronunciation Errors 36 4.3 Limitation of the study and suggestions for further research 38 CONCLUSION 39 REFERENCES APPENDIX LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND CHARTS  List of tables Table 1.1 Participants from seven classes Table 3.1 Student’s English background information Table 3.2 Student’s used method and program in learning English pronunciation skill Table 3.3 The efficiency of students’ method /program in improving English pronunciation  List of figures Figure 2.1 Places of articulation (Roach, 1983: 8) Figure 2.2 Primary cardinal vowels Figure 2.3 Chart of English Consonant Phonemes  List of charts Chart 3.1 Factors affecting student’s English pronunciation 26 Chart 3.2 Student's difficulties in English pronunciation .28 Table 3.4 The vowel and consonant sounds that students often make mistakes .30 Chart 3.3 Methods used to improve English pronunciation skill 31 Table 3.5 The efficiency of used learning methods to improve pronunciation skills of students .33 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS  EU: European Union  EFL: English as a Foreign Language  ESL: English as a Second Language  TMU: Thuong Mai University  VPM: Voices, Place and Manner  RP: Received Pronunciation  N, V, A: Noun, Verb, Adjective CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale Nowadays, English has become the global language Among hundreds of different languages, the world has chosen English as a mean for people to understand each other English is the official language of 53 countries and territories, the official language of the EU and the third widely used language after Chinese and Spanish The international events like the Olympics, global organizations, and multinational companies consider English as common language of communication Vietnam is also one of the countries which use English as the second language Therefore, English plays an important role in Education sector as one of the main subjects in many schools in Vietnam This shows the importance of English in all fields of economy, culture, society, etc However, a sad fact that Vietnamese young people are learning English as a formal subject at school but almost still express to be lack self when communicating with foreigners Many students after graduation still cannot speak more than simple sentence such as greetings and introduce themselves The reason is that they cannot pronounce English words correctly which discourages them from talking and communication To master a language is not easy at all We often hear about four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing in English but forgetting that pronunciation is also one of the important skills If learners want to listen to English well, they must first say it correctly and pronounce it correctly That requires a knowledge system of vocabulary and the process of practicing pronunciation, word and sentence stress If learners pronounce one word wrongly, when they hear the native speakers say that word, they cannot understand it because they may find the word very strange, not recognizing it and as a result English learners not understand the whole sentence Besides, if learners speak wrongly, native speakers cannot understand what they are saying or cause misunderstandings At Thuong Mai University, most of first-year English major students still have many mistakes in pronunciation If English learners want to communicate fluently, English learners have to repair pronunciation mistake as soon as possible, especially at the first year at university There are many pronunciation errors that learners make such as words and sentence stress, intonation, linking sound, length of vowel sounds, ending sounds etc This is one of the most disturbing things for students pursuing an English-related career in the future if there is no method to change and overcome From the reasons mentioned above, to improve student’s pronunciation, the researcher has decided to carry out the study entitled "Some typical pronunciation errors made by first-year English major students at Thuong Mai University" 1.2 Previous studies Prior to the 1980s, the pronunciation field was less interested not only in language teaching at schools, but also in the found literature There were not much researches about pronunciation errors According to Brown (1991), among 1420 articles in four leading English teaching journals, only 95 of them investigated pronunciation In other words, between 1975 and 1988, the rate of the articles related to pronunciation is only 7.6 % After 1980 and onward, people began to pay attention to communication methods and the pronunciation prerequisite skill has been made as the “Intelligible pronunciation is an essential component of communicative competence” (Morley, 1991) Because of that, many researchers started to find out about different issues such as the influence of the factors on second language acquisition of pronunciation (Moyer, 1999; Thompson, 1991; Flege, Munro, & MacKay, 1995) When the researchers learned about the segmental aspects which are consonants and vowels, they have realized the importance of the suprasegmental features such as stress, rhythm, intonation to maintain the healthy conversations (Celce-Murcia et al 1996) Finally, the study has been conducted with a pragmatic aim These researches were made to investigate the pronunciation errors of the EFL learners so as to describe the current situations of the students in terms of pronunciation development, to define what extent the curriculum serves the aim of pronunciation teaching with the chosen documents like coursebooks Thank for these studies, it is easier for teachers in preventing these errors from becoming fossilized errors and designing the lessons according to the needs of the learners (Hojati, 2013; Kaỗmaz, 1993; Himanolu, 2011; Tergujeff, 2012; Gordani & Khajavi, 2012) The research about “Teaching English Intonation to ESL/EFL Students”, Mehmet Celik, (2001), Hacettepe University, Turkey put forward a framework of English intonation as a second of foreign language to non- native speakers of English That English intonation framework should include four main characteristics of intonation: intonation units, stress, tone and pitch range Therefore, the phenomena of intonation in English should have a part of utterance, intonation unit, as a basis for studying all kinds of movements and features of the voice Each intonation unit has a type of tonic stress: (unmarked) utterance-final tonic stress, or emphatic, or contrastive, or new information stress, the last of which is more frequently used in utterances given to wh-questions Moreover, intonation units often have one of these tones: low-rise, high-rise, fall and fall-rise Tones are assigned to intonation units related to the type of voice movement on syllables Finally, all intonation units must be said in one of three levels: high, mid and low Although this framework may be ratified to be useful and feasible for pronunciation practitioners in the field of ESL/EFL (English as a Second Language/ English as a Foreign Language), it seems to be rather general and theoretical In order to pronounce perfectly, English learners need to focus on many different aspects such as intonation, stress, vowel, consonant, ending sounds, link word, etc Besides, an equally important thing is how to present the pronunciation way of vowels and consonants because they seem to be the basic things in pronunciation learning processing 1.3 Aims of the study Initially, the researcher wants to find out the most common pronunciation errors made by first- year English major students of TMU Secondly, the researcher desires to draw out an appreciate approach to help improve the English pronunciation skill of English learners in general and first-year English major students of TMU in particular More specifically, the study is an attempt to answer the two research questions: - What are typical pronunciation errors that first-year English major students of TMU often make? - What are methods for first- year English major students to overcome English pronunciation errors? 1.4 Research Subjects Firstly, the aim of the researcher is to find out the typical pronunciation errors of first-year English major students at TMU, thus only first-year students of English faculty at TMU would be the main research subjects of the study Most of the freshmen are in rural areas from different provinces Therefore, their pronunciation is greatly influenced by the local language, especially students in Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Ngai, etc In addition, the process of learning English at high schools of these students mainly focuses on grammar for exam preparation, not investing time to practice pronunciation skills and speaking skills Besides, the teaching method at the university is different from the teaching method at high school If in high school, the students are dedicated by the teachers to instruct step by step, in the university environment, students must be more self-aware in learning with the guidance of teachers 1.5 Scope of the study Because of the small scale of the study as well as the limitation of time, expense and experience, the study concretely places a focus on the freshmen of English major at TMU Specifically, there are 50 first-year students from classes at English faculty of TMU participating in this study with a survey research design Besides, the researcher will also choose out of those 50 students to take part in a direct interview These students are from both rural and urban areas As the researcher mentioned in the " Research subject" part, the aim of the study is to find out the typical pronunciation errors of first-year English major students at TMU, therefore the researcher only finds out about pronunciation aspects, not focusing on other skills such as speaking, reading, writing and listening 1.6 Research methodology 1.6.1 Setting The quantitative data collection process was carried out through a survey questionnaire with the participation of 50 students who were randomly selected from seven classes of English Faculty at TMU After that, the researcher created a direct interview to ask out of the 50 selected students about difficulties in English pronunciation, the mistakes they often make and the methods they used to improve English pronunciation skills methods Later, the researcher can provide students with useful ways to improve their English pronunciation from the pros and cons of their learning methods 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 A B C Always Often Sometimes D E Never Chart 3.3 Methods used to improve English pronunciation skill Note:      A: Imitating native speakers B: Practicing with your friends C: Attending an English course D: Recording and listening your voice E: Self - practicing your pronunciation through some channels such as: youtube, radio, dictionary, etc  Imitating native speakers Chart 3.3 shows that the most common way that students use to improve their English pronunciation skills is imitating native speakers 76% of participants say that they always apply this method to practice There are students, accounting for 18% of participants who often imitate native speakers and 6% of respondents sometimes use this method to enhance English pronunciation skill In addition, no one denies the efficiency of this learning method  Practicing with your friends From the description of the respondents, there are 32 students, accounting for 64% of participants who have never practiced speaking English with their friends and 14% of those who often spend time in speaking English with their friends The number of students who sometimes use this method is 6, equivalent to 12% of the participants Only 10% of students say that they always use this method as a useful and convenient way to learn English pronunciation  Attending in English courses 58% of students say that they not join in any English language center to practice pronunciation skills and only 36% of participants say that they sometimes use this method In addition, there are students who regularly learn pronunciation in English center No student uses this method every day  Recording and listening to your voice As can be seen from the chart 3.3, 50% of students say that they sometimes record their voice and then listen as a way to improve their English pronunciation skills There are 13 students equivalent to 26% of respondents who have never used this method while only 18% of respondents often apply it with the aim of pronouncing English more fluently and effectively There are students who always use this method  Self-practicing your pronunciation through some channels such as youtube, radio, dictionary, etc 11 and 19 are two numbers that reflect the number of students who always or frequently use channels such as youtube, radio, dictionary to learn English pronunciation skills The number of students who sometimes use this method is 6, accounting for 12% of the participants Only students have never used these channels as a means to learn English pronunciation  Question 9: Are the methods you have applied effective in improving your English pronunciation skill? Number of Questions Options Are the methods you have applied Yes 14 28 No 36 72 effective in improving your English pronunciation skill? students Percentage (%) Table 3.5 The efficiency of used learning methods to improve pronunciation skills of students After asking students about their learning methods in improving English pronunciation skill, the research continued to ask them whether these methods work for them In the next part, the researcher will propose some useful solutions for students to learn English pronunciation According to table 3.3, there are 36 students, accounting for 72% of participants who report that the methods they applied are ineffective for them and only 28% of students say that their English pronunciation was improved by applying those methods 3.2 Result from personal interview After receiving the questionnaire replies from 50 first-year English major students of TMU, the researcher selected five of these respondents to participate in a personal interview Among the selected students, there are students coming from the Northern provinces and students in the central region All of these students were asked three key questions regarding their difficulties about pronunciation aspects and the methods they used to improve their English pronunciation skills  Questions 1: Do you think English pronunciation is as important as skills like listening, speaking, reading and writing? Why? There are out of students who say that pronunciation is not as important as other skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing The reason is that they often focus on the other skills to serve for studying and exam preparation with the aim of achieving high scores  Question 2: In the aspects of pronunciation including vowels, consonants, stress, intonation, linking sounds, what aspects you often make the mistakes? Why you find it is difficult to fix this error? In the five aspects of English pronunciation that the researcher offers to ask students including vowels, consonants, stress, intonation and linking sounds , all five students say that they often pronounce some English vowels and consonants wrongly, especially those not in the Vietnamese sound system In addition, out of students say that they could hardly imitate the intonation of native speakers because of certain differences between the two languages Vietnamese has a lot of punctuation, while English has many accent rules  Question 3: What methods and strategies you use to improve your English pronunciation skills? What are the benefits of that method/strategy? There are students who often record and listen to their voice again They think that this method makes it easier for them to recognize their pronunciation errors However, the right or wrong perception depends heavily on their knowledge of sound The rest of them often use some channels like youtube, radio, dictionary, etc to mimic pronunciation way of native speakers Almost all students not often practice pronunciation with their friends or take part in pronunciation courses in English centers In short, there are two common pronunciation errors that students often make are vowel and consonant Specifically, the sounds that students often make mistakes include /ɪ/, /ʊ/, /æ/, /s/, /ð/, /θ/, /l/, /n/ The method of imitating native speakers and voice recording are two popular methods that students use to improve English pronunciation Practicing with friends and joining English courses are not favorite choices for students to enhance their pronunciation skills because of time limitation Mimicking native speakers is a good method for students When using this method, students should choose short and appropriate videos in which native speakers pronounce clearly and accurately and then practice imitation The selection of short videos will give students more motivation to imitate rather than long videos that makes them feel tired and frustrated quickly Through these videos, students have the opportunity to observe and imitate the movements of the mouth, lips and tongue of native speakers If indigenous people speak too fast, students can rewind the video to observe without fear of disturbing anyone It is an effective way to improve vowel and consonant sounds Students should take their time and practice everyday, but it is not necessary to spend too much time practicing for a day Instead of that, they should spend a reasonable period of time every day on imitating Another method for all students is recording their voice and then listen again to check for errors Students can find a short audio file and repeat what they said and then compare the difference between the audio file and their recording This method can help students find out their mistakes and the way to overcome those mistakes In addition, singing English songs is also a not bad choice to improve student's English pronunciation This method not only helps students practice English pronunciation but also helps them relax after exhausting lessons The lyrics often include a lot of common expressions Moreover, thank to rhythm and lyrics, students can remember English words easier Therefore, it also helps students enhance their English vocabulary Another method that can help students pronounce well is to read the short conversation aloud It is very helpful to train vocal muscles and practice for to 10 minutes, this will definitely make a difference CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATION AND SUGGESTIONS 4.1 Major findings of the study When looking for the answers to two research questions, the researcher tried to investigate and describe the typical pronunciation errors made by first-year English major students at TMU along with their strategies in improving English pronunciation Through the results obtained from the two research methods (questionnaires and personal interviews), the researcher realized that most of the participants had difficulties in pronouncing vowels and consonants in the English sound system In addition, students also often make mistakes with stress of word, intonation and linking sounds but the rate is not as high as vowels and consonants Specifically, the sounds that students often make mistakes include / ɪ /, / ʊ /, / æ /, / s /, / ð /, / θ /, / l /, / n / There are of these sounds that are not in the Vietnamese language sound system This explains partly why students often pronounce wrongly Indeed, the difference between the target language and the source language has created significant barriers to the process of pronunciation learning Another reason may be the wrong manner the students pronounce and the inexact place they put their articulators to produce the sound The third reason is the challenges of the fossilised sound system of learner's mother tongue In addition, there are other causes including the lack of interaction with native speakers, lack of motivation and negative learning attitudes, etc Although students used a variety of methods to improve and enhance their English pronunciation skill such as attending courses in English center, imitating native speakers, recording their voice, learning via different channels such as youtube, radio, etc, the efficiency that the methods brought was not high This makes students still confused when dealing with English pronunciation errors 4.2 Suggestions for the Improvement of the Pronunciation Errors The main findings gained from current research can provide some things that can be done to improve students' English pronunciation ability In general, this can also help provide English teachers at TMU, especially those who teach pronunciation skill, descriptive information about some typical pronunciation errors made by first-year English major students and learning methods to improve and enhance this skill First of all, a positive attitude towards pronunciation learning is one of the important factors that make students successful in this skill Therefore, students need to acknowledge the vital importance of pronunciation skills for practical communication and the process of their language learning The difficulty level of this skill requires students to work hard, practice patiently every day Teachers act as a bridge for students to gain more beliefs and motivations in improving English pronunciation skill By raising right attitudes and perceptions, students can develop themself a love, passion and responsibility for their own learning This almost guarantees their success in learning this skill Secondly, students need to learn how to listen to native speaker's pronunciation and their own pronunciation to compare each other Some sounds may be difficult to distinguish when students are listening If students can hear the difference, it will be easier to speak the difference Therefore, recording student's own voice and then listening and listening to native speakers via some channels such as youtube, radio, dictionary, etc are recommended methods for students to apply Thirdly, the textbook for students should include sections that involve both sound systems and pronunciation exercises with audio-visual content The curriculum should be modified, which focuses on not only four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing but pronunciation skill In addition, the time to learn subjects in relation to English pronunciation skill should be extended to ensure that all lessons are covered and help students have time to practice pronunciation Furthermore, the students should be interacted more with native speakers It will help improve their English pronunciation faster and better 4.3 Limitation of the study and suggestions for further research Although the researcher attempts to validate research methods and collect and analyze data with careful consideration, the research still exists some limitations The first is the limited number of participants Data is collected only from 50 students of classes Therefore, the results of the study cannot be generalized for all first- year students of the English Faculty at TMU Using a convenient sampling procedure makes it difficult for researchers to collect information and data due to the different schedules of participants and researchers Secondly, due to the limitation of time and expertise of the researcher, this study focused on analyzing common errors about vowels and consonants Other factors such as stress of word, intonation or linking sounds are not deeply exploited In summary, this study only stops at the word level If the survey was conducted at the sentence level then, result of typical pronunciation errors would be described more comprehensive CONCLUSION From the results obtained in this study, it can be seen that many students make pronunciation mistakes related to vowels and consonants Specifically, the sounds that students often make mistakes include / ɪ /, / ʊ /, / æ /, / s /, / ð /, / θ /, / l /, / n / There are of these sounds that are not in the Vietnamese language sound system This explains partly why students often pronounce wrongly The difference between the target language and the source language has created significant barriers to the process of pronunciation learning Another reason may be the wrong manner the students pronounce and the inexact place they put their articulators to produce the sound The third reason is the challenges of the fossilised sound system of learner's mother tongue In addition, there are other causes such as the lack of interaction with native speakers, lack of motivation, negative learning attitudes, etc Therefore, the researcher has proposed some solutions for those pronunciation errors such as imitating native speakers, practicing with your friends, attending an English course, recording and listening student's own voice, learning English pronunciation via some channels as youtube, radio, etc Finally, the researcher hopes that this study will be useful for the first - year English major students at TMU, and any students are interested in this problem REFERENCES Abbas, P.G (2011), Why is Pronunciation So Difficult to Learn? Retrieved April 19, 2019 from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1080742.pdf Abercrombie, D (1991), Teaching pronunciation In A Brown (1991), Teaching English Pronunciation, pages 87-95 Routledge, London Avery, & Ehrlich (1992) Teaching American English pronunciation Oxford: University Press AMEP research centre (2002), Fact sheet - What is pronunciation? Retrieved April 19, 2019 from http://www.ameprc.mq.edu.au Celce-Murcia, M (1996), Teaching Pronunciation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Celik, M (2001), Teaching English Intonation to EFL/ESL Students Retrieved April 9, 2019 from http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Celik-Intonation.html Do, T B D (2012) Second- year students’ self- study of listening: attitudes and strategies (Unpublished Graduation Paper) Vietnam National University, Hanoi Morley, J (1991), Intelligible pronunciation is an essential component of communicative competence Retrieved March 25, 2019 from https://www.academia.edu Mohammad S.H (2011), Barriers of Teaching Pronunciation, Retrieved March 25, 2019 from https://tuhin.academia.edu Ngo, B N (2001) The Vietnamese language learning framework Part one: Linguistics Retrieved April 20, 2010 from http://www.seasite.niu.edu Nguyen, T.D (2015), Some common pronunciation problems facing Vietnamese learners English, Journal of Science and Training, 47- 50 Nunan, D (2003), Pratical English Language Teaching, McGraw- Hill: London Paul, J.L (2008), https://methods.sagepub.com Questionnaire Retrieved April 9, 2019 from Pham, T.C.C (2009) Errors 1st year students at E.D, HULIS, VNU make with eding sounds and strategies to overcome using communicative teaching (Unpublished Graduation Paper) Vietnam National University, Hanoi Roach, P J (1995), English Phonetics and Phonology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Sarah M.S (2012), Personal Interview Survey Retrieved April 16, 2019 from https://explorable.com APPENDIX Some typical pronunciation errors made by first- year English major student at Thuong Mai University I am Nguyen Thi Thuy from class K51N6 I am doing a study on the above topic for the graduation paper I would like to ask for your help with this questionnaire, which serves as the major source of data for my paper There would be no “right” or “wrong” answer, and all the information received from this questionnaire will by all means be strictly kept confidential Therefore, please answer the questions as sincerely as possible Thank you for your cooperation! -Please fill in some basic information about yourself! What is your name? ……………………………….…… How old are you? ……………………………….…… What is your class? …………………………………… Part A: Background information about your English pronunciation skill Put tick(s) (√) to choose the suitable answer(s) for the following questions: How many years have you been learning English? □ – years □ – years □ – years □ More than years Which level your pronunciation belongs to? □ Excellent □ Good □ Average □ Bad What language – learning methods and programs have you used to learn English pronunciation skill? You can tick more than one answer □ Self-learning □ English center learning □ School learning □ Tutor learning □ Your own method (Please specify): ……………………… …………… Do you think that method/ program helps you in improving your pronunciation skills? □ Yes □ No Please specify the reason why you think that method/program improve or not improve your pronunciation skills ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… Part B: Student’s difficulties in English pronunciation learning In your opinion, what factors affect your English pronunciation? [1 Not influential, A little influential, Fairly influential, Very influential] Factor The influence of mother tongue Lack of interaction with natives The insufficient exposure to English in terms of time and quality Insufficient technical support The priority of the other skills over pronunciation Lack of motivation The attitude towards English pronunciation skill Which aspects of pronunciation you find more difficult? [1 Always; Often; Sometimes; Never] Aspects Word stress Vowel Consonant Intonation Linking sound Other aspects: …………………………………… Which of the specific following sounds you often make mistakes? Option Yes Sound /i:/ /ɪ/ /ʊ/ No /u:/ /æ/ /e/ /s/ /z/ /ð/ /θ/ /p/ /f/ /b/ /l/ /n/ Part C: What are strategies you use when you practice English pronunciation? Have you ever applied any of the following methods to improve pronunciation skills? (1 Always; Often; Sometimes; Never) Strategy Imitating native speakers Practicing with your friends Attending an English course Recording and listening your voice Self – practicing your pronunciation through some channels such as: Youtube, radio, dictionary, etc Your own idea: ………………………………………… Are the methods you have applied effective in improving your English pronunciation skill? □ Yes □ No Please specify the reason why you think that method/program improve or not improve your English pronunciation skill APPENDIX SOME QUESTIONS FOR PERSONAL INTERVIEW Do you think English pronunciation is as important as skills like listening, speaking, reading and writing? Why? In the aspects of pronunciation including vowels, consonants, stress, intonation, linking sounds, what aspects you often make the mistakes? Why you find it is difficult to fix this error? What methods and strategies you use to improve your English pronunciation skills? What are the benefits of that method/strategy? ... the study entitled "Some typical pronunciation errors made by first- year English major students at Thuong Mai University" 1.2 Previous studies Prior to the 1980s, the pronunciation field was less... researcher is to find out the typical pronunciation errors of first- year English major students at TMU, thus only first- year students of English faculty at TMU would be the main research subjects of... pronunciation errors made by first- year English major students of TMU Secondly, the researcher desires to draw out an appreciate approach to help improve the English pronunciation skill of English