KHOA LUAN TOT NGHIEP a study on problems in pronouncing english consonants of first year majored students

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In order to fulfill this graduation thesis, I have received a lot of help, advice, encouragement and supports from my teachers, my relatives and my friends First of all, I wish to express my gratitude to my supervisor Mrs Nguyen Thi Tuong Nhu for her valuable advice, comments, encouragement and wholehearted direction from the beginning days until the finished research thesis Her supports have helped me a lot during the time of my writing Secondly, I am also grateful to the Teachers of Faculty of Foreign Languages Studies at Tay Nguyen University for giving me valuable lessons and experiences for four years I have been at Tay Nguyen University Besides, I like to thank the English majored students course 2019 who willingly supplied me with the necessary data so that I could conduct the study successfully Finally, I would like to thank my lovely family and friends who have given me encouragement during the process of researching and writing this graduation thesis TABLE OF CONTENT LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English Foreign Language LIST OF TABLES, CHARTS Figure 1: Monophthongs (pure vowels) .4 Figure 2: Diphthongs Figure 3: Consonant sounds Figure 4: The positions of the lips in the production of bilabials Figure 5: The positions of the teeth and lips in the production of labiodentals Figure 6: The positions of the tongue the production of dentals .7 Figure 7: The positions of the tongue in the production of alveolars Figure 8: The positions of the tongue in the production of postalveolar .8 Figure 9: The positions of the tongue in the production of palatal alveolars .8 Figure 10: The positions of the tongue in the production of velars .8 Table 1: Classification of the English consonants 10 Table 2: The analysis of English consonant sounds in different positions of word 19 Table 3: The analysis of the students’ most problem in pronouncing English consonants 24 Table 4: Most common types of problems of the students 27 Table 5: The percentage of the students’ opinion on causes of their problems in pronouncing English consonants .28 CHAPTER I – INTRODUCTION This chapter consists of four sections In the beginning, the statement of the problem is mentioned Then, the objectives and significance of the study are displayed one after another Finally, the outline of the study is shown to give an overlook of the whole thesis 1.1 Statement of the problem In recent years, Foreign Language becomes a subject of interest in Viet Nam, especially English For instance, Ministry of Education and Training of Viet Nam decides to make the getting started English program for students from grade and and English is one of three compulsory subjects for primary students from grade instead two like before, in 2018 Moreover, nowadays, English is not only attached special caring in big cities, but also in rural provinces in order that every student can speak English However, though many students can speak English, there is a fact that many foreigners can not understand what Vietnamese students say in English The reason causes that problem is that Vietnamese students have some problems in pronouncing English sounds According to Hinofitis and Baily (1980), the fault which most severely impairs the communication process in EFL learners, is pronunciation, rather than vocabulary or grammar Pronunciation is an integral part of learning English, because it directly affects students’ speaking tests and communicative competence as well as performance Limited pronunciation skills can decrease students’ self confidence and restrict speaker’s credibility and abilities According to Ha Cam Tam (2005), learning a new language means learning a new way of using the speech organ, a new way of controlling the speech organ in order to produce sound peculiar to the language, and produce an intelligible speech Honestly, speaking English like native speakers is the dream of the English learners Therefore, a study on “problems in pronouncing English consonants of first year majored students at Tay Nguyen University” was carried out to help the students improve their pronunciation by identifying their mistakes in pronouncing consonants, the causes of those mistakes and finding some effective ways to improve pronunciation 1.2 Objectives of the study With the hope of getting more comprehensive and specific understanding of English consonants, finding out common consonants pronunciation problems faced by EFL learners and giving some solutions for those problems, the aims of this research are: - To find out problems that first year majored students have when they pronounce English consonants - To suggest some effective ways improving pronunciation of first year majored students 1.3 Significance of the study As said before, pronunciation is the essential part of learning English, because it directly affects students’ speaking tests and communicative competence as well as performance Be successfully good at English is not only having a large amount of vocabulary or a steady grammar knowledge, but also accurately pronunciation This study focuses on pronouncing English consonants that account for 80 percent in the English alphabet, which means that there are more consonants pronounced than vowels Moreover, this study will point out some common problems in pronouncing English consonants faced by first year majored students in order that students can improve their pronunciation With good pronunciation skills, they can also get high marks in Speaking and Pronunciation in use subjects In addition, this thesis also studies on articulation above the larynx, which makes first year majored students be similar to Phonetic and Phonology subjects, a difficult subject for every English majored students Last but not least, this study is easy to be followed that can help students, who are majored or not majored in English, be aware of pronouncing English consonants correctly 1.4 The outline of the study This graduated thesis consists of five main chapters: Chapter I - Introduction: introduces reasons for choosing the topic, objectives, significance and the outline of the study Chapter II - Literature review: lays out the theoretical background for the study The first section gives an overview of English sounds The second section concentrates on English consonant sounds and the last one shows some common problems in pronouncing English consonants of learners Chapter III - Methodology: describes the subjects, scope, research questions and the research methods of the study Chapter IV - Findings and discussion: presents, analyzes, synthesizes and discusses the findings revealed from the collected data according to the two research questions Chapter V - Conclusions and recommendations: gives some suggestions based on the findings of the study and summarizes the important points of the whole thesis This chapter is followed by the References and Appendices CHAPTER II – LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter presents some theoretical backgrounds that are related to the study It contains three sections to answer these following relevant questions: a How many sounds are there in English? b What are English consonants? c What are some common problems in pronouncing of EFL learners with consonants? 2.1 The English sounds How many sounds are there in English? Many English learners feel difficult to learn English not only because the English alphabet system is different from the native learner’s system, but also because the English sounds can not be represented adequately by the letters of the alphabet According to Jespersen(1905), “If we know the sounds of a word (in English) we can't know how to spell it; if we know the spelling, we can't know how to pronounce it” In short, there is no one-to-one relationship between the sounds that we hear and the spelling of those words For instance, the word “thank” has letters but sounds, or the word “six” has letters and sounds In another example, the letter “o” has many different sounds in different words like “hot”, “cow”, “Monday”, “computer” Therefore, it is essential to distinguish the English alphabet to the English sound The English alphabet contains only 26 letters, but the sounds have 44 sounds These 44 sounds are divided into 20 vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds 2.1.1 Vowel sounds Figure 2: Diphthongs Figure 1: Monophthongs (pure vowels) There are 20 vowel sounds that are consisted of 12 monophthongs and diphthongs The symbols of vowel sounds are presented in Figure and 2.1.2 Consonant sounds Figure 3: Consonant sounds As showing in Figure 3, there are 24 consonant sounds in English although there are only 21 consonant letters in the English alphabet, some of their phonetic symbols are identified as letters 2.2 The English consonants What are English consonants? 2.2.1 Definition of English consonants Many pieces of researches about pronunciation and consonants have been done “In articulatory phonetic, a consonant is a speech of sound that is articulated with complete of partial closure of the upper vocal tract.” (Harmer, 2001, p.23) Comparing to vowel, Rogers (2014, p.32) has the same idea, “Consonants are sounds that involve a major obstruction or constriction of the vocal tract; vowels are made with a very open vocal tract.” To help students get more understanding, Mr Y’trou gave an obvious detail of consonant definition, “Consonants are speech sound When we pronounce them, the organs of speech form the barriers; the air stream is completely or partially stopped before getting out of the mouth; and the pronunciation is with or without vibration of the vocal cords.” In other words, “a consonant is the sound in the production of which one articulator moves toward another or two articulators come together obstructing the air stream so the air stream can not get out freely” (Wikipedia) In brief, a consonant that is a sound of spoken language is produced by closure or stricture of the vocal tract to make the vocal vibrate or not 2.2.2 Significance of English consonants in pronunciation Learning to speak a foreign language, like English, is the first skills learners often look up to be able to be part of normal communication However, they have to deal with a new way of producing a new sound system Both native and nonnative learners are required to spend time practicing and producing comprehensibly that system (phonemes), which consist of vowels and consonants Besides, the act of producing sounds of speech refers to pronunciation Nobody can deny the importance of pronunciation in both communication and language skill improvement The good pronunciation helps learners have an effective communication, and their listening skills and speaking are booted well In addition, sound is a significant aspect because these two benefits of sound, according to Ha Cam Tam (2005), it is used as part of a code of a particular language, and it is used to achieve meaning in context of use By equivalently comparing set of pieces in chess game to phonemes, Roach (1983) point out, “the most important thing for communication is that we should be able to make use of the full set of phonemes” If someone changes the rule of any pieces’ move, no one accepts that the game is chess In a similar way, if speaker changes a phoneme when pronounce a word, no hearer can understand that word; or the hearer even thinks of another different word Therefore, pronunciation, a clearly sounds produce, attends an essential role in speaking to communicate effectively Moreover, consonants have an influential impact on pronunciation because they account for 80% letters in the English alphabet There are more consonant sounds than vowels, it does not mean that consonants are more important than vowels, but there would be so many consonants that should be pronounced carefully 2.2.3 Classification of English consonants According to Rogers (2014), consonants are usually classified by three ways: places of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing Base on the places of articulation we can know where the obstruction of the consonants occurs, the manners of articulation helps us know how the interaction between the articulation 10 many students could not pronounce it correctly and omitted one of the aspects, so they pronounced /dʒ/ sound like /ʒ/ Finally, the last type of problems found in the analysis is voiced sounds were became voiceless Frankly, voiced consonant sounds are quite trickier for the students than voiceless sounds, so the students tended to substitute an oppositions voiceless consonant sound for its voiced sound This happened in both initial and final positions, but final positions was found more problems above all others The consonant sounds that have their phonological oppositions the students often had problems in voicing with: plosives (/b/-/p/, /d/-/t/, /g/-/k/) and affricatives (/v/-/f/, /z/-/s/, /ʒ/-/ʃ/, /dʒ/-/tʃ/) To sum up, the students had four main of problems with consonants Firstly, the students omitted the final sound consonants Secondly, the students did not aspirated when pronounce some consonant sounds Thirdly, the students confused when pronouncing some consonant sounds Finally, the students often made voiceless consonants instead voiced consonant sounds Those problems are summarized in the table below: Type of problems Consonants Final sounds are omitted /p b d g v θ ð s z/ Sounds are not aspirated /p t k g tʃ/ Sounds are confused /θ/ = /s/, /th/ /s/ = /ʃ/ /ʒ/ = /z/, /s/ /ð/ = /z/, /d/ /ʃ/ = /s/ /dʒ/ = /ʒ/ /b/ = /p/ /d/ = /t/ /g/ = /k/ /v/ = /f/ /z/ = /s/ /ʒ/ = /ʃ/ Voiced sounds are became voiceless /dʒ/ = /tʃ/ Table 4: Most common types of problems of the students 4.2 Students’ opinion on causes of the problems in pronouncing English consonants sounds 32 After finding out the most common problems that first year majored faced with, a wondering turning up that what causes those problems, so a questionnaire survey was carried out to collect the students’ opinion on causes of their problems There were statements that expressed for main causes were stated for the students to choose: the interference of Vietnamese, poor teaching and learning background, the students’ passive learning ways, and students’ limitation of phonetic knowledge From the students’ response to the questionnaire, the percentages of causes of the problems analyzed above are recapitulated in the table below No Causes of problems in pronouncing English consonants Percentage (%) - The interference of Vietnamese makes you pronounce 98% English like Vietnamese - Because you speak Vietnamese more often than English you are confused when you pronounce English 78% consonant sounds - In High school, your English teachers rarely spend time practicing pronunciation but doing grammar and 72% vocabulary instead - You not know what articulatory phonetics are 95% - You pronounce some English consonant sounds as 80% Vietnamese sounds, because you think they are similar - You not pay much attention to pronounce English 40% consonants - You not practice pronouncing English consonant 64% sounds regularly Table 5: The percentage of the students’ opinion on causes of their problems in pronouncing English consonants As can be seen from table 5, most of the respondents (98%) expressed the interference of Vietnamese makes them pronounce English like Vietnamese This result indicated that the interference of the mother tongue of English learners is the most difficult trouble all EFL learners encounter, which was discussed in 2.3.2 This probably explained why most of the students omitted ending sounds so frequently, because Vietnamese speakers not often pronounce the ending sounds Moreover, “the habit of “swallowing” the ending sounds in the mother tongue is in fact a negative transference that inhibits the pronunciation of ending sounds in the target language.” (Tam, 2005) 33 Furthermore, the respondents to statement 2, demonstrate that 78% of the students are confused when they pronounce English consonant sounds, because they speak Vietnamese more often than English This illustrates the lack of English language speaking environment In addition to that, 72% of them confirmed, “In High school, their English teachers rarely spend time practicing pronunciation but doing grammar and vocabulary instead.” From the results of statement and 3, this reflects the students’ poor teaching and learning background In fact, English teachers in high school not have enough time in class for introducing the articulation of English consonants, which takes a part in leading the next causes The second highest percent (95%) of the students respond to the statement “They not know what articulatory phonetics are.” which was considered the limitation on English phonetics knowledge of the students In result, the students tended to replace a Vietnamese sound for a English sound According to Lado (1957), learners who learn a particular foreign language will find some features of that language easier, while other features more difficult The easier elements are similar to those in the students’ native language and the difficult ones are different from their native language Likewise, 80% of the students believed that some English consonant sounds are the same as Vietnamese It often occured when the students pronounced the consonant sounds /θ/ replaced by a Vietnamese sound namely ‘th’, an aspirate /t/ sound Besides, only 60% of the students paid attention to their pronunciation of English consonants and only 36% of the students practiced pronouncing English consonant frequently The findings implied that the students learn pronunciation of English consonants with a passive way of learning This seemed to relate to the carelessness and laziness of the students However, regarding the respond, the students still have awareness of their pronunciation of English consonants In conclusion, the students’ problems in pronouncing English consonants was mainly caused by the interference of the mother tongue, Vietnamese 4.3 Summary 34 The analysis of the results collected from questions of the questionnaire had the following major findings Firstly, the students had four main types of problems with consonants that were the omitting of word-final consonant sounds, aspiration of sounds, sound confusion, and word-final voiced consonant sounds Moreover, the most difficult consonants for the students to pronounce accurately were /θ ð/ and /dʒ/ Secondly, four main causes affecting the students’ pronunciation were: the interference of Vietnamese, poor teaching and learning background, the students’ passive learning ways, and students’ limitation of phonetic knowledge On the basic of these findings, suggestions will be made and presented in the next chapter 35 CHAPTER V – CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS The previous chapters have thoroughly elaborated on the introduction, literature review, methodology, and results of the research Finally, this concluding chapter will review what has been done in the study and offers some practical recommendations and some suggestions on how to improve pronouncing English consonants 5.1 Conclusion One of the aims of this study was to find out first year majored students’ problems in pronouncing English consonant sounds With the findings, the researcher hopes that they can help the students improve their learning pronunciation In order to accomplish that aims, two research questions were inquired by recording and questionnaire survey methods Through the student’s recorded analysis procedure and discussion, the result of survey point out that first year majored students at Tay Nguyen university had some common problems in pronouncing English consonants as following: Firstly, the most common problem is that students omitted word-final consonant sounds In other words, some consonant sounds occurring at the end of word were not released or released shortly that English native may be difficult to hear them For example, when pronouncing ‘cab’, the students made the airstream go from the lungs to the mouth, but they did not make it release and go out of their mouth, they swallowed it instead In another example, when pronouncing ‘cap’, the students again made the airstream go to the mouth and released it slightly without any aspiration Secondly, the students not aspirate when pronouncing plosive consonant sounds and the consonant /tʃ/ As being said in 2.2.3, plosive sounds are made by the air passes from the lung into the mouth then completely, and then escapes with a slight explosion However, the students not make them aspirate or aspirate them too slightly For /tʃ/, the students pronounce it like /ch/ in Vietnamese, and they make it like a affricative without aspiration 36 Besides, some students are confused when they pronounce some consonants and they often substitute /s/ for sounds they get confused The students get confused with /s/ and /ʃ/, because the sound /s/ in Vietnamese is made quietly like the sound /ʃ/ in English, so that the students make those two sounds similarly Moreover, the students substitute /z/ or /s/ for /ʒ/ In addition, an amount of students can not produce dental consonant sounds correctly They pronounce /d/ or /z/ instead of /ð/ For /θ/, they pronounced as ‘th’, a heavily aspirated /t/ Sometimes, they substitute /s/ for /θ/ when /θ/ occurs in middle and final positions Last of this type, they usually substitute /ʒ/ for /dʒ/ Fourthly, many students have difficulty in pronouncing word-final voiced consonant sounds, while they could easily pronounce their phonological opposite voiceless sounds As in plosive consonants group, students might have no difficulty with /p t k/ occurring in final positions, but they difficultly pronounced voiced plosives: /b d g/ It happened the same as fricatives and affricatives Therefore, the students often substitute a voiceless for a voiced sound, which means the students replace /p t k f s ʃ tʃ/ for /b d g v z ʒ dʒ/ Afterward, the questionnaire analysis was also carried out to synthesize the students’ opinion on the causes of their problems in pronouncing English consonants The causes are classified into objective causes and subjective causes: Firstly, objective causes consist of two aspects: • Students think that the interference of Vietnamese to their pronunciation is the biggest difficulty, which results in the omission, the inaccuracy or the deviation when they pronounce consonant sounds As being said, the students often substitute a Vietnamese sound for a nearly similar English one Besides, the most influent problem is the omission of final sound, because Vietnamese speakers often not release the final sounds, they not release the final sounds when • speaking English In addition, students blame inappropriate teaching techniques in High school and poor learning background for their mispronunciation in consonant sounds In High school, especially in rural provinces, the students not concentrate on 37 pronunciation, but grammar and meaning of words instead Moreover, they rarely practice speaking in speaking lessons, and they not have environment for practice speaking English Secondly, subjective causes are about students’ problems: • Students’ inefficient learning ways, in particular, a passive learning way, is a root cause of their mispronunciation in consonants The students just learn from class, but not learn by them self from the Internet The total time of English lessons in classes is not enough for the students to be good at speaking English, meanwhile, Internet develops very fast with so many websites for learning • English nowadays Students’ limitation of phonetic knowledge is a main cause that leads to students’ mispronunciation in English consonant sounds This cause might explain why the students often substitute a Vietnamese sound for an English sound With the limitation about phonetic, the students think they are the same, so they unreasonably substitute them Moreover, the dental and /dʒ/ sounds are difficult sounds to pronounce and they not appear in Vietnamese, so the students not know how to pronounce them and get confused Overall, the implementation of the study possibly found some common problems in pronouncing English consonants of many first year majored students at Tay Nguyen university Besides, it also found out several students’ opinion on causes that they think affect their pronunciation, which showed that students had awareness about their problems in pronunciation English consonants 5.2 Recommendations The researcher gives some recommendations to deal with the causes that students think that affect their pronunciation In fact, we can not change the objective causes, like the interference of learners’ mother tongue and learning background but we can change the subjective causes, which happened by ourselves Therefore, the following hereby recommendations focus on first year majored students’ learning ways to help students enhance their pronunciation by themselves: 38 • One of the students’ problems is that they substitute a Vietnamese sound for an English consonant sound when pronouncing is mainly caused by their limitation of phonetic knowledge Thus, to deal with that problem, students should enrich their knowledge about phonetics from books in the school’s library or the Internet It also helps students be familiar with Phonetics and Phonology subject • they will study in third year After having a general knowledge about phonetics, students should look up to hear a native clear voice of pronouncing English consonants in some English pronunciation study websites on the Internet or some English study channels in YouTube Some study websites and channels introduce students the ways to pronounce English consonants in detail with pictures describing places and • manners of the sounds as well Learning with practicing is an effective learning way, so that students should practice pronouncing every English consonant sounds, and practice pronouncing words, which contains English consonant sounds Also, students should have a suitable practicing timetable, and they should practice regularly in a long time, so that their speech organs can be familiar with new way of producing a new sounds • system Having an effective practicing way is also an important factor to boot students’ pronunciation ability If some students want to practice pronouncing alone, they should record their pronunciation, and then compare their recorded pronouncing to a native English speaker’s pronunciation of the English consonants However, it is better for students to have a peer when practicing, because they can • exchange their comments on each other Finally, it is necessary to have an optimistic attitude when learning pronunciation in general, learning phonetics in particular If the students are more concerned about their pronunciation of the target language, they tend to have better pronunciation of the target allophones (Elliott, 1995) Moreover, whatever the students’ accent or voice are, if they are hard-working enough, they would have good English pronunciation They may not sound like a native English speaker but at least they may have got as close to it as they can In a pronunciation guide book, Better English Pronunciation, O’Connor (1980) says, “One of the most 39 important things to remember is that everyone can improve, even if they have no great talent for language” Hopefully, these recommendations can help first year majored students overcome their English consonants pronouncing problems as well as help them improve their pronunciation 40 REFERENCE Aleo, Y T (2016) A course on English phonentics & phonology Tay Nguyen University Burns (1999) Quantitative and Qualitative Collaborative Action Research for English Language Teachers Cambrige University Press Dung, N T (2014) Some common on pronunciation problemss facing Vietnamese learners of English Ba Ria Vung Tau University Elliott, A R (1995) Foreign Language Phonology: Field Independence, Attitude, and the Success of Formal Instruction in Spanish Pronunciation The Modern Language Journal Haries, R (2011) The Possible Causes for the Pronunciation Problem Retrieved from SCRIBD Harmer, J (2001) How to teach pronunciation Hinofotis, F B (1980) American undergraduate reaction to the communication skills of foreign teaching assistants In TESOL “80: Building Bridges: Research and Practice in TESL" (pp 124-125) Jespersen, O (1905) Essentials of English grammar Lado (1957) Lingustics across cultures: applied linguistics for language teachers University of Michigan Press Marks, J (2007) English pronunciation in use (elementary) Cambrige University Press O'Connor, J D (1980) Better English Pronunciation Cambridge University Press Peter Avery, S E (1992) Teaching American English Oxford University Press Rao, P V (2018) English Spelling and Pronunciation - A Brief Study Journal for Research Scholers and Professionals of English Language Teaching 41 Roach, P (1983) English phonetics and phonology: a practical course Cambridge University Press Rogers, H (2014) The Sounds of Language: An Introduction to Phonetics Routledge Tam, H C (2005) Common Pronunciation Problems of Vietnamese Learners of English VNU Journal of Foreign Studies Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3, from https://www.wikihow.com/Write-Phonetically Figure 4, Figure 5, Figure 6, Figure 7, Figure 8, Figure 9, Figure 10 Teaching American English, by Peter Avery, S E, 1992, Oxford University Press 42 APPENDIX This questionnaire is designed and conducted to gather information for the research of my graduation thesis entitled “A study on problems in pronouncing English consonant of first year majored students in Tay Nguyen University” Your answers are important to collect data for the research and highly appreciated You can look up the IPA transcriptions of the words before recording All the information provided by you in this questionnaire is to be used for the research purpose only Thank you very much! Can you pronounce 24 English consonant sounds and those following words in the table? /p/ /b/ pea, repeat, cap bee, hobby, cab /t/ /d/ tall, contain, hit dark, address, spend /k/ /g/ cup, across, lack good, forget, tag /f/ /v/ fine, coffee, wife vine, never, leave /θ/ /ð/ thing, author, both this, father, bathe /s/ /z/ saw, assign, house zoo, music, prize /ʃ/ /ʒ/ shape, fashion, push vision, pleasure, beige /tʃ/ /dʒ/ cherry, nature, match job, soldier, large /m/ /n/ /ŋ/ man, email, team nine, sunny, open ring, singer /l/ /r/ /w/ /j/ /h/ let, flat, tall right, scary wet, away you, canyon heard, ahead Can you read aloud following sentences? /p/ and /b/ Pack your bags and bring your passport /t/ and /d/ Don’t go down town after dark /k/ and /g/ A girl likes the color gold 43 /f/ and /v/ Stephen is driving a van full of vines /θ/ and /ð/ I thought those chairs were thirty year olds /s/ and /z/ He cuts roses with the scissors /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ It’s his pleasure to have a machine shop in Asia /tʃ/ and/dʒ/ Who likes chicken chop and orange jam for lunch? /n/, /m/ and /ŋ/ The man often sings many songs in the morning /l/, /r/ and /h/ He’s listening to the radio and reading /w/ and /y/ I usually walk to work but I used the car yesterday Please tick in the boxes that you think they are the causes of problems in pronouncing English consonants - You not pay much attention to pronounce English consonants - You pronounce English consonant sounds as Vietnamese sounds, because you think they are similar - You not know how to pronounce English consonant sounds - You not practice pronouncing English consonant sounds regularly - In High school, your English teachers rarely spend time practicing pronunciation but doing grammar and vocabulary instead - Because you speak Vietnamese more often than English, you are 44 confused when you pronounce English consonant sounds -Other:……………………………………………………………… 45 ... identified as letters 2.2 The English consonants What are English consonants? 2.2.1 Definition of English consonants Many pieces of researches about pronunciation and consonants have been done ? ?In articulatory... below: Place Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Post-alveolar Palatal Palatal alveolar Velar Glottal Table 1: Classification of the English consonants 14 2.2.4 How to pronounce English consonants. .. English consonants According to Rogers (2014), consonants are usually classified by three ways: places of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing Base on the places of articulation we can