Problems of Hatinh learners in pronouncing English final consonants. M.A. Thesis Linguistics: 60 22 15

1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES PHẠM THỊ TÚ HẰNG PROBLEMS OF HATINH LEARNERS IN PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANTS (Khó khăn học viên Hà Tĩnh việc phát âm phụ âm cuối Tiếng Anh) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 HANOI- 2010 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES PHẠM THỊ TÚ HẰNG PROBLEMS OF HATINH LEARNERS IN PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANTS (Khó khăn học viên Hà Tĩnh việc phát âm phụ âm cuối Tiếng Anh) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 Supervisor: Hà Cẩm Tâm Ph.D HANOI- 2010 DECLARATION TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF TABLES AND ABBREVIATIONS v PART ONE: INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study The aim of the study Hypothesis The scope of the study Research method Organization of the study PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Phonetics 10 1.2 Phonology 10 1.3 Articulatory phonetics 11 1.4 Consonants 13 1.4.1 General description of consonants 13 1.4.1 Classification of consonants 14 1.4.3 English consonants 16 1.4.4 Vietnamese Consonants 19 1.4.5 English vs Vietnamese 20 1.5 Review of previous research 21 Chapter 2: THE STUDY 23 2.1 Research questions 24 2.2 Data collection instruments 24 2.3 Data collection procedures 24 2.4 The subjects 25 2.5 Analytical framework 25 2.5.1 Plosive or stop /p, t/ 25 2.5.2 Affricate /tʃ/ 26 2.5.3 Fricative /ð, s/ 26 2.6 Data analysis 27 2.6.1 /ð/ sound 28 2.6.2 /p/ consonant 29 2.6.3 /tʃ/ consonant 29 2.6.4 /t/ consonant 30 2.6.5 /s/ consonant 30 2.7 Discussion and findings 33 PART THREE: CONCLUSION 36 Conclusions 36 Implications 37 Limitations and suggestions for further study 38 REFERENCES 39 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Consonants of English Table 2: Number of subject mispronounced the consonants under study Table 3: Sounds deviations of the consonants under study made by the informants Table 4: Sound omission made by informants ABBREVIATIONS HTU: Hatinh University RP: Received Pronunciation L1: Mother tongue L2: Second Language PART ONE: INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study English has become one of the most popular languages in the world It is a main tool for global communication Therefore, correct pronunciation plays a very important part in using spoken English Mispronunciation may lead to misunderstanding and the process of the communication may even be broken down “A learner who consistently mispronounces a range of phonemes can be extremely difficult for a speaker from another language community to understand” (Kelly, 2000:11) There is a fact that a lot of Vietnamese learners often mispronounce English words, especially word-final consonants As a result, they produce incomprehensible utterances Hatinh learners are not the exception even though they have learnt English since the early age Another reason is that no research has been carried on this field at Hatinh University (HTU) This leads the author to the thought of making a research on “Problems of Hatinh learners in pronouncing English final consonants” with the purpose of finding out the causes of mispronunciations The aim of the study The study aims at finding out if HTU learners have difficulties in pronouncing English word final consonants and what the causes of these problems are The results will provide an overview of learners‟ pronunciation at HTU and give suggestions for teachers to improve the situation The findings of this research will hopefully help HTU students to raise their awareness of learning correct pronunciation so as to produce English word-final consonants properly Hypothesis HTU learners have difficulties in pronouncing English word-final consonants Their problems may be caused by mother tongue interference The scope of the study This research presents several analyses on the pronunciation of the five consonants occurring in some selected words using for recording namely /s/, /tʃ/, /ð/, /t/, /p/ in final position made by the ten English majored students studying at HTU with a hypothesis that these consonants are pronounced in Vietnamese-like way Basing on the findings, problems in pronouncing these sounds and the causes of them will be pointed out with solutions Research method In the study, the author intends to figure out if HTU students have difficulties in pronouncing some English word final consonants and how different their pronunciation of these sounds is in comparison with that described in the analytical framework basing on Received Pronunciation (RP) standard A combination of different data collection methods was used including recording the participants‟ pronunciation of prepared words and observing their spoken English in class Details of methodology applied in the study are discussed in Chapter of Part two Organization of the study The study composes of three parts: Part one, Introduction, includes the rationale, aims, research question, scope, method and organization of the study Part two, Development, consists of two chapters Chapter one, Literature Review, presents the theoretical background relevant to the research The first section describes the basic concepts of phonetics, phonology and articulatory phonetics The second section offers a theoretical presentation of consonants, English consonants and the consonants under study The last section summarizes the review of previous research related to consonant pronunciation Chapter two, the Study, describes the context of the study, the participants, the method, the findings and discussion Part three, Conclusion, summarizes the findings and gives suggestions for improving English final pronunciation for HTU students PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 10 This chapter is devoted to the presentation of the theoretical issues related to the study The first section provides some basic linguistic and phonetic concepts to bring a common view of the matter studied including phonetics, phonology, and articulatory phonetics The second section describes consonants in general, English and Vietnamese consonants The final section discusses the review of some previous research related to consonant pronunciation 1.1 Phonetics Phonetics is the study of human speech sounds It is concerned with various aspects relevant for the physical characteristics of sounds Several branches of phonetics can further be distinguished, depending on the narrower domain of interest of the respective field There are three main areas of phonetics: articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and auditory phonetics, (Jack C.R et al, 1997) Articulatory phonetics deals with the way in which speech sounds are produced Sound are usually classified according to the position of lips and the tongue, how far open the mouth is, whether or not the vocal cords are vibrating and so on Acoustic phonetics deals with the transmission of speech sounds through the air When a speech sound is produced it causes minor air disturbances (sound waves) Various instruments are used to measure the characteristics of these sound waves Auditory phonetics deals with how speech sounds are perceived by the listener, 1.2 Phonology Phonology is essentially the description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds in a language, (Ladefoged, 2001:23) It involves studying a language to determine its distinctive sounds and to find out which sounds convey a difference in meaning When two sounds can be used to differentiate words, they are said to belong to different phonemes There must be a phonemic difference if two words (such as “white” and “right” or “cat” and “bat”) differ in only a single sound "Phonology deals with the speakers‟ knowledge of the sound system of a language It is therefore exclusively concerned with langue or competence [ ] Phonology can be divided 11 into two branches: (1) segmental phonology and (2) suprasegmental phonology" (Skandera & Burleigh, 2005:5) Phonology is primarily concerned with how we interpret and systematize sounds It deals with the system and pattern of the sounds which exists within particular languages The study of phonology of English looks at the vowels, consonants and superasemental features of the language Within the disciplines of phonology, when we talk about vowels and consonants we are referring to the different sounds we make when speaking, and not the vowel and consonants letters we refer to when talking about spelling When we describe the sound patterns that occur in English, we want to be able to say that in some sense there are always the same underlying sounds may change depending on the context in which they occur The phonology of a language is the set of rules that describe the changes in the underlying sounds, the abstract units called phonemes When we transcribe a word in a way that shows none of the details of the pronunciation that are predictable by phonological rules, we are making a phonemic transcription, (Ladefoged, 2001) The variants of the phonemes that occur in details phonetic transcriptions are known as allophones They are generated as a result of applying the phonological rule to the underlying phonemes This research aims at finding out if HTU students have difficulties in pronouncing the five chosen English consonants in the final position It takes the problems of their pronunciation into consideration which concerns with the way they use their organs of articulation pronouncing such sounds This is also what articulatory phonetics study, so the theoretical background of it is presented with more details as follows 1.3 Articulatory phonetics Articulatory phonetics, one of three main branches of phonetics, is the study of the organs of speech and their use in producing speech sounds The term 'organs of speech' refers to those parts of the human body that are concerned in various ways with the production of speech A lot of them are only secondarily concerned with the production of speech- their primary functions have to with eating, chewing, and swallowing food, and respiration Those parts of the body below (not the lungs) belong to the vocal tract The vocal tract is 12 divided into the supraglottal and the subglottal tract (as shown in Picture1),(Ladefoged, 2001) In nearly all speech sounds, the basic source of power is the respiratory system pushing air of the lungs Air from the lungs goes up the windpipe and into the larynx at which point it must pass between two small muscular folds called the vocal folds If the folds are apart, as they normal are when breathing out, the air from the lungs will have a relatively free passage into the pharynx and the mouth But the vocal folds are adjusted so that there is only a narrow passage between them, the airstream will cause them to vibrate Sounds produced when the vocal folds are vibrating are said to be voiced , as opposed to those in which the vocal folds are apart, which are said to be voiceless The air passages above the larynx are known as the vocal tract The shape of the vocal tract is very important factor in the production of speech The parts of the vocal tract that can be used to form sounds are called articulators The articulators that form the lower surface of the vocal tract often move towards those that form the upper surface The names of principal parts of upper surface of the vocal tract are the upper lip, upper teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate and soft palate or velum The soft palate is a muscular flap that can be raised to press against the back wall of the pharynx and shut off the nasal tract, preventing air from going out through the nose At the lower end of the soft palate is a small appendage hanging down that is known as the uvula The part between the uvula and the larynx is the pharynx The lower lip and the specific names for different parts of the tongue form the lower surface of the vocal tract The tip and the blade of the tongue are the most mobile parts Behind the blade is what technically called the front of the tongue: it is actually the forward part of the body of the tongue, and it lies underneath the hard palate when the tongue is at rest The remainder of the body of the tongue may be divided into the center which is partly beneath the hard palate and partly beneath the soft palate; the back, which is beneath the soft palate; and the root, which is opposite the back wall of the pharynx 13 Picture 1: The organs of speech Articulatory phonetics deals with the major aspects of speech production They are the air stream mechanism, the state of vocal cords, the state of velum, the place and the manner of articulation, ( Davenport & Hannahs, 1998) On the other hand, this study is paid attention to consonants, particularly the five studied consonants; therefore, the manner, the place of articulation and voicing- the three main features of consonants are discussed with more interest later 1.4 Consonants 1.4.1 General description of consonants A consonant is a speech sound where the air stream from the lungs is completely blocked (STOP), partially blocked (LATERAL) or where the opening is so narrow that the air escapes with audible fiction (FRICATIVE) With some consonants (NASALS) the air stream is blocked in the mouth but allowed to escape through the nose (Richard et al, 1997) A consonant is a speech sound that functions at the margins of syllables, produced when the vocal tract is either blocked or so restricted that there is audible friction (Crystal, 2003) From a phonetic point of view, they are articulated in one of two ways: either there is a closing movement of one of the vocal organs, forming such a narrow constriction that it is possible to hear the sound of the air passing through; or the closing movement is complete, giving a total blockage The closing movement may involve the lips, the tongue, or the throat But in each case the overall effect is very different from the relatively open and 28 /p/ 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 82.33 66.67 100 /tʃ/ 80.00 100 80 60 60 100 100 40 /t/ 44.44 66.67 100 77.78 66.67 77.78 33.33 100 100 Table 3: Mispronunciation across the subjects As can be seen from this table, all of the subjects have problems in pronouncing English word-final consonants, 80 % mispronounced all the five consonants sounds, 20% mispronounced out of the five consonants The mispronunciation of the five studied consonants was mostly sound omission and sound deviation which is shown in the following table and below A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 A7 A8 A9 A10 /s/ (9) 3 2 /ð/ (5) 2 2 /tʃ/ (5) 1 0 0 /p/ (6) 6 6 /t/ ( 9) 5 6 Subjects Sounds Table 4: Sound omission made by informants In producing isolating words, the frequency of sound deviation is higher than sound omission It seems that the informants tried to pronounce the words correctly, but they failed Their mispronunciations are shown as follows: h /ð/ is usually pronounced like /t / in Vietnamese or /z/ or sometimes /θ/ /tʃ / is mispronounced as /s, ʃ , t/ and /c/ in Vietnamese /p/ is produced like /b, f, s/ /t/ is pronounced like /s/ /s/ is made as /z/ 2.6.1 /ð/ sound 29 Of all five studied sounds, the rate of mispronunciation made of final /ð/ is the highest The voiced /ð/ is most confused with /z/ by A1, A2 and with voiceless /θ/ by A2, A7 and A8 Consonant /ð/ in bathe, breathe and smooth is made as /θ/ by A6 with schwa addition Most of the subjects except for A2 and A7 pronounced /ð/ in “clothe” A1, A2 and A3 made it as /z/ and A5, A3 produced it as /zə/ “With” was produced as /wiz/ (40%), as /wiθ/ (40%) and as /wis/ (20%) Only A5 pronounced the word “smooth” correctly When pronouncing this consonant most of the subjects did not put the tongue tip making light contact with the back of the top, front teeth or they did not protrude the tongue tip between upper and lower teeth, so they could not pronounce this sound correctly 2.6.2 /p/ consonant The phoneme p is realized as allophones, for example the p in „pen‟ is likely to be aspirated, in „happy‟ is not aspirated and in „stop‟ is not aspirated strongly or not completely released, (Vo Dai Quang: 24) When p is not aspirated, the air escaping through the vocals cords does not make a sound like h, when p it is non - released the air is not escaped Regarding to /p/ sound, most of the informants produced word-final /p/ without aspiration (A5, A7) In another word /p/ was not pronounced strong enough After the total closure, the air was not released explosively Moreover, some made it as a voiced /b/ (A7, A9) or even as /s/ (A10) /p/ was also pronounced as /f/ by A5 2.6.3 /tʃ/ consonant The alveo-palatal affricate /tʃ/ is articulated with the tongue tip, blade and rims close against the alveolar ridge and side teeth and there is audible friction However, when pronouncing this sound, most of the informants could not like this According to Kelly (2000), after the complete closure the air releases slowly and then there is audible friction, but some of them could not make this friction (A1, A3, A5) The data shows that /tʃ/ was pronounced like /c/ in Vietnamese Each was produced like ích and teach like tích in Vietnamese Besides, /tʃ/ was made as /s/ in much by A5 and A8 and /t/ by A3, A4, A5 and A6 30 2.6.4 /t/ consonant Most of /t/ sounds appearing in the two tasks were omitted Mostly, /t/ was pronounced like /t/ in Vietnamese, that is, it is not strongly aspirated in word final (by A1, A3, A4, A5 and A6) /t/ was produced like /s/ by A2, A3, A4 and A5 Of all the ten informants, A9 pronounced best She rarely mispronounced the sounds under study and other consonants in word final 2.6.5 /s/ consonant Of all five studied sounds, the confusion made with final /s/ in the word list is the smallest It was only made as /z/ by A2 Most of the subjects pronounced it correctly However, /s/ was also dropped out as much as other consonants under study in connected speech In connected speech, most of the consonants under study were omitted Only those in words at the end of the sentences were pronounced Of all words containing sounds under study only the words: trip map, cat, smooth and march are pronounced, but /ð/ in smooth was made as /ðə/ and /t∫/in march as /t∫ə/; /p, t/ was made without aspiration by all the informants Most of the subjects produced /p, t/ without releasing the air explosively The data analysis pointed out that 100% of the subjects omitted the final consonants A3 and A8 „forgot‟ most the final sounds They dropped 21 out of total 34 sounds appearing in the word list, followed by A2 (18) then A6 (15) A7 and A9 seemed to remember these sounds, but mispronounced them One of the most interesting things can be seen is that when the consonants under study ended with letter „e‟ such as in breathe, bathe, escape, or clothe, they are always added to schwa Generally speaking, the omission of the consonants under study in word final in isolating words or within utterances is a serious problem for the subjects of the study They dropped out all the sounds under study as the habit of “swallowing” sounds in Vietnamese Additionally, the data shows that they did not use any phonological rules such as assimilation or elision or r linking mentioned when they spoke English naturally in casual or in rapid speech /p/ and /t/ were dropped most often (90%) although these sounds exist in Vietnamese A2, A3, A4, A6 and A10 omitted all final /p/ appearing in the word list The 31 second highest number of sounds dropped out is s/ and /ð/ /tʃ/ was dropped the least A1 and A5 omitted nearly all sounds in word final The sounds she produced were mispronounced very often, only /ð/ in smooth was pronounced correctly A6 omitted nearly all final sounds She made the rest as /s/ with schwa addition A7 made all /s/ as /z/ and /tʃ/ as /tʃə/ and omitted other sounds In analyzing A8‟ speech, it is surprising that she produced all /s/ as /sə/ and the other consonants under study are ignored A9 pronounced correctly in connected speech She only mispronounced bathe as /basə/ With A10, sound omission is the most common error in producing utterances She did not pronounce any consonants in the final position Consonants /ð/ Sound deviation /θ/ (A1, A2, A7, A8) /z/ (A1, A3, A4, A5, A8, A9, A10) h /p/ /tʃ/ /t/ /s/ Subjects with deviations /t /(th) (A2, A7, A8) /b/ (A7, A9) /f/ (A5) /s/ (A10) /s/ (A5) /ʃ/ (A5, A8) /t/ (t) (A3, A4, A5, A6) /c/ (ch) (A1, A3, A5) /s/ (A2, A3, A4, A5) t (, A3, A4, A5, A6) /z/ (A3) Table 5: Sound deviations of the consonants under study The data collected from observation during the teaching time of the author describes more persuasive evidence to draw a conclusion besides that taken from the recordings as the subject‟s performance is more natural The following table will describes what was observed Types of mistakes No of subjects with mistakes 32 Sound /s/ 10 /ð/ 10 /p/ 10 /tʃ/ 10 /t/ 10 /s/=/z/ /ð/=/d/,/z/, th /p/ =/b/, /f/ /tʃ/= „ch‟, /t/ /t/= /s/, t omission Sound confusion Table 6: Mispronunciation in class interactions Results from classroom observation shows that without the preparation the ten informants mispronounced English final consonants more frequently They omit most of final consonants However, in connected speech they perform the same as they did when recorded The subjects sometimes used the linking r but never assimilated or elided sounds when possible From the results shown in table 6, it can be affirmed that 100% of the subjects did not pronounce the consonants /s, ð, p, tʃ, t/ correctly when they spoke English in the class About sound confusion, there is a little difference between the data taken from the recordings and that from the class performance As they dropped most of the studied sounds, sound confusion is less These problems not only happen to the informants but to all the students in the class It can be inferred that whether the subjects are aware or not when speaking, many of them cannot produce English final consonants correctly It can be concluded that the more similar the sounds to Vietnamese are, the higher frequency of omission of them is, especially in connected speech In Vietnamese, the informants not have habit of pronouncing the coda of the words As a result, they did the same when producing English final consonants This is a very clear evidence of the mother tongue interference 33 2.7 Discussion and findings The results from recordings and observation show that all the subjects have problems in pronouncing the five studied consonants /s, ð, p, tʃ, t/ in word final when they are in isolating words as well as within utterances With the English consonants which are strange, HTU learners firstly move them towards similar sounds which exist in their mother tongue, secondly omit the sounds that are too difficult for them Sound omission is very popular among HTU learners Consonant sounds that exist in Vietnamese were dropped very often by the subjects of the study The frequency of mispronouncing /ð/ is the highest (90%) this indicates that /ð/ is the most troublesome sound to articulate for HTU students Concerning sound deviation, the most salient feature can be found is that all /p, t/ in word final are not aspirated There is certainly confusion between voiced and voiceless sounds which happens fairly common between /p, b/ and /ð, θ/ h /ð/ was mispronounced as /z/, /θ/ or /t / in Vietnamese The reasons for these problems are firstly /ð / does not exist in Vietnamese; therefore, the students find it difficult to learn its articulation with the tongue tip making light contact with the back of the top front teeth Secondly, the way it looks in letters the same as it does in Vietnamese, i.e „th‟ also made the students automatically pronounce it as the way it is in their native language Moreover, the letter „th‟ can be pronounced like /ð/ or / θ/, thus, the informants also get confused /ð/ with / θ/ Relating to /p, t/ sounds, all of the subjects pronounced them as they did Vietnamese codas Nearly 100 % of /p/ and /t/ appearing in word final in the data were omitted Some informants confused voiceless /p/ with voiced /b/ (A7, A9) In writing form, /tʃ/ looks the same as the letter „ch‟ in Vietnamese; but their articulation is different with the tongue tip; blade & rim close against the alveolar ridge and side teeth, the front of the tongue raised When the air is released, there is audible friction /tʃ/ is a strange sound to Vietnamese learners, thus it was mispronounced very often 34 In articulating /p, t, tʃ/ in word final, the subjects of the study did not pronounce them strongly enough; thus there is no audible friction made with /tʃ/ And /p, t / were not aspirated strongly enough They made these sounds softer than they are /s/ is one of the popular sounds of English; it is not too difficult to pronounce this sound Therefore, the informants have better awareness of pronouncing this sound The number of errors made with final /s/ in the word list is comparatively small It was only confused as /z/ by A2 However, it is still a foreign consonant to the informants so they cannot avoid these errors when it comes to the sentences It can be inferred that the more closed the English consonants to the Vietnamese ones are the more frequently the subjects omitted these sounds It is the habit of „swallowing‟ final sounds in Vietnamese that interfere with the pronunciation of English word-final consonants of HTU students Another problem is that despite the transcription attached to the chosen words, these informants still mispronounced the words It is more surprising when they made many consonants as a completely different sound For example, A8 and A2 made some final consonants as /s/ This indicated that they did not remember the IPA, one of the basic matters of phonetics Although the students had preparation and managed to pronounce those sounds consciously they still could not speak automatically in class Some of them could pronounce single words correctly, but failed in producing the whole utterances and vice versa In brief, most of the subjects of the study had difficulties in pronouncing the five studied consonants in word final to different extend Their problems are sound omission and sound deviation Most of the consonants are not produced correctly by all informants as compared to the analytical framework described earlier The consonants nearer to Vietnamese including voiceless stops /p, t/ and fricative / tʃ/ are identified as their first language‟s own coda /p, t, c/ In Vietnamese, there are only six final consonants: /p/, /t/, /k/ (c/ch), /m/, /n/, /N/ (ng/nh) and two final semivowels: /i/ (i/y), /u/ (o/u)( Ngo, 2005), whereas almost every English consonant appears word-finally, except for /h/, /w/ and /j/, (Cummins, 1998) Dealing with consonants that are new and different from their coda, HTU students either omitted them or reduced them to the sounds that exist in Vietnamese Besides, they tended to use similar sounds existing in Vietnamese instead of foreign sounds in English Schwa 35 addition was also made between consonants to make new syllables in some cases As a result, their English is very “Vietnamese” The causes of the subjects‟ mispronunciation are due to the negative transference from L1 to L2 of HTU learners or their carelessness when pronouncing these sounds or maybe due to their lack of phonetic knowledge In conclusion, English final consonants play a very important role in conveying the meaning of the words Many English words that differ only in their coda for example, white, wife and wine They also play important roles in grammar for singular or plural and tenses The inability to produce exact word-final consonants may prevent speakers from being understood by others when speaking English, and more importantly, may affect their communicative process The analysis results of English final pronunciation of HTU students proved that these students have the same difficulties as the majority of Vietnamese learners face It can be affirmed that these are systematic errors However, it does not means there are no solutions to these problems Teaching and learning phonetic matters must be paid much more attention The most important thing is to get students involved in practicing pronunciation more and more outside the class Yet, it must be admitted that there is no guarantee that the data taken also included mistakes of pronunciation included by psychological factors such as anxiety, nervousness or noises and so on About the data taken by observing the subjects‟ performance in class, on one hand, it cannot be something absolutely true because the observer (the researcher) does not have as good ears as the native speaker does to recognize a hundred percent exact mistakes made by her students Furthermore, sometimes the researcher probably let in her background knowledge of the subjects‟ language competence that made her automatically understand what her students were talking about even when they spoke unclearly and incorrectly On the other hand, those data can partially be the evidence for fortifying the results taken from the students‟ recordings, which helps study the researcher come to an implication and a conclusion of the study 36 PART THREE: CONCLUSION Conclusions Correct pronunciation plays a very important part in communication Word final consonants convey the meaning of the words Mispronunciation of them can lead to misunderstanding and communication process can easily break down That is why in the 37 process of teaching, teachers of English should be more aware of the significance of word final consonants and their correct pronunciation Based on the results presented in the previous parts and some discussions so far it can be affirmed that all of the subjects of the study have difficulties in pronouncing the consonants under study Their main problems are classified into sound omission, sound deviation, and schwa addition The way they produced the studied sounds differently from those described in the analytical framework by either omitting them or replacing them by a sound similar to the ones existing in Vietnamese or by adding schwa to ease the pronunciation Of all, omission sounds is the most serious problem The causes for these problems are due to the following reasons Firstly, the way the subjects pronounced the consonants under study was interfered by their L1 which resulted in the omission or the deviation of the consonant sounds in word final Secondly, it is their ignorance of phonetic matters that prevented them from producing these sounds correctly Finally the informants have few chances of practicing English with English natives Implications Learning a foreign language is a long term process Oral communication requires correct pronunciation Learners may meet a lot of challenges when they learn how to pronounce properly For Vietnamese learners in general and HTU students in particular, it is extremely difficult to master English sounds as many of them not exist in Vietnamese language T Therefore, the teachers of English should get the students aware of the importance of correct pronunciation in practice so that they would spend more time on pronunciation from the beginning In designing or selecting materials for pronunciation it is important to take into account the purpose of the learners‟ language study, whether it is to acquire a native like accent or for intelligibility in international communication In most cases it - the accent selected - should be comprehensible to the greatest number of persons not sharing that particular language To improve HTU learners‟ pronunciation of English consonant in word final, first of all, the teachers should help students be aware of the significance of final sounds 38 In order to minimize the language interference, it is necessary for teachers provide the learners with the detailed description of consonant sounds such as their manner and place of articulation, the variants of each phoneme Besides, Vietnamese special features should be taken into account The limit of phonetic knowledge happens maybe owing to the carelessness of the learners or the teaching induced errors Therefore, firstly, teachers ought to teach correct pronunciation Secondly, it is essential to teach students theoretical matters related to pronunciation At the same time, teachers should ask the students to practice them in isolating words as well as in connected speech More importantly they should get students involved in learning how to pronounce words correctly and practice as often as possible Learning environment is also one of the disadvantages for HTU students learning English as there are few English natives and speaking English people there Thus, the best way for them to get used to various English accents is to listen from multimedia In short, despite the fact that HTU learners meet many challenges in learning pronouncing final English consonants due to the differences in the two languages, there are still ways to improve their English competence, in which none is better than practice The findings of this paper could be useful for teachers of English at HTU in improving their students‟ English final consonant pronunciation in particular and pronunciation in general Limitations and suggestions for further study Although this study has found out the answers to the questions relating to HTU pronunciation of English final consonants set up in the research questions, it still has some limitations First, the study only focuses on the five English consonants not all English consonants in word final The combination of these sounds with other sounds is not typical enough to find out various problems such as consonant clusters, linkage of sounds and so on Second, the study is likely not generalized due to limited in the number of subjects (ten informants) The results of the research would be more valid if a survey was included for the data collection As the sounds were recorded with informants‟ consciousness, there may include 39 some unavoidable factors such as anxiety and nervousness Consequently, the recorded sounds were not as closed to their nature they should be For further study, a thorough experimental study should be done to confirm the findings It is a good idea to research on how HTU learners use intonation or other aspects of connected speech when speaking English REFERENCES Cummins, Fred (1998), Sound patterns in Human Language: Syllables revisited, http://cspeech.ucd.ie/%7Efred/teaching/oldcourses/phonetics/syllables1.html Davenport M & Hannahs S.J (1998) Introducing Phonetics & Phonology- Arnold, Great Britain 40 Hanh (2007), A Study on Pronunciation of some English Consonants by Vietnamese learners MA Thesis Hanoi National University, Hanoi Crystal, D (2003), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press Kelly 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(pp3-5; 12-14; 19-26) Spencer, A (1996) Phonology Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Taiffalo (2001) Sound System in Vietnamese Retrieved from: http://www.dehan.org/vietnam/chuliau/lunsoat/sound/2.htm Tam (2005) “Common pronunciation problems of Vietnamese learners of English”, Journal of Science - Foreign Languages Retrieved from: http://news.vnu.edu.vn/Bai2.pdf Thao (2007), “Difficulties for Vietnamese when Pronouncing English: Final Consonants” Retieved from: http://www.multicsd.org/wiki/vietnam#vietnamese_phonology Thuật (1999) Ngữ âm tiếng Việt Hà Nội: NXB Đại học Quốc gia, Hà Nội Tran Thi Lan,“9 Essential English Pronunciation in the Vietnamese Context” Retrievedfrom: 41 www.britishcouncil.org/9_essential_english_pronunciation_in_the_vietnamese_context Vo Dai Quang “Lectures on Principles of Phonetics and Phonology” [p24] Yule, G (2006) The Study of Language Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Wikipedia, Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_language#Consonants APPENDIX Task 1: Makes [meiks] 12 Smooth [ smu:] 23 each [i:t∫] Yes [jes] 13 Clothe [ klouð] 24 watch [wɔ t∫] House [haus] 14 With [wið] 25 match [mæ t∫] Box [bɔ ks] 15 Trip [trip] 26 Cat [kæt] Miss [mis] 16 Keep [ki:p] 27 Late [leit] Course [kɔ :s] 17 Stop [stop] 28 Light [ lait] Class [kla:s] 18 Map [mæp] 29 tonight [tə‟nait] Price [prais] 19 Escape [ik‟skeip] 30 Past [pa:st] Police [pə'lis] 20 Jump [ dʒʌ mp] 31 Boat [but] 10 Bathe [beið] 21 Teach [ti:t∫] 32 Fruit [fru:t] 11 Breathe [bri:ð] 22 Much [mʌ t∫] 33 what [steit] 34 ate [eit] Task 2: The course starts in March Practice makes perfect You watch TV too much Each professor will teach us a subject I often bathe with soap to make my skin smooth 42 He ate in the late evening I want to be with you all the time When I turned on the light, I saw the cat Who will pay for the trip? 10 I stop to look at the map