A the interference of the mother tongue in the first year students’ english pronunciation at thai nguyen university of technology

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ********************* HOÀNG THỊ THÊM THE INTERFERENCE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE IN THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION AT THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Ảnh hưởng của tiếng mẹ đẻ đến phát âm Tiếng Anh của sinh viên năm thư nhất Trường Đaịhocc̣ Ky t ̃ huâṭCông nghiêpc̣ Thái Nguyên M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111 Hanoi, 2014 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ********************* HOÀNG THỊ THÊM THE INTERFERENCE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE IN THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION AT THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Ảnh hưởng của tiếng mẹ đẻ đến phát âm Tiếng Anh của sinh viên năm thư nhất Trường Đaịhocc̣ Ky t ̃ huâṭCông nghiêpc̣ Thái Nguyên M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111 SUPERVISOR: HÀ CẨM TÂM, PhD Hanoi, 2014 i DECLARATION -*** -I, Hoàng Thị Thêm, hereby certify that this minor thesis entitled THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE ON THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION AT THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY is completely the result of my own word for the Degree of Master at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi and that this thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other university or institution Signature Hoàng Thị Thêm ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis could not have been accomplished without the help, encouragement and support of many people who all deserve my sincerest gratitude and appreciation First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm, for her priceless support, wholehearted guidance, and timely encouragement during the time I conducted this research I am also grateful to all the lecturers at the Department of Post-graduate Studies, College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi whose support and considerations have enabled me to pursue the course I would also like to send my thanks to all my colleagues who have helped me a lot in creating good conditions in teaching and helping me with their experiences during my thesis My special thanks also go to the students from two classes 49J1 and 49H for their whole-heated participation in the study Finally, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my beloved family – my parents, my husband, my children, whose support and encouragement has always been a great deal of strength that has helped me a lot to overcome all problems to complete this thesis iii ABSTRACT The research in this minor thesis was carried out to investigate whether the mother tongue influences students‟ English pronunciation at Thai Nguyen University of Technology It sought the answers to the following questions: What are pronunciation mistakes made by students at Thai Nguyen University of Technology? Are they caused by mother tongue influences? The study was conducted with two classes (49J1, 49H) consisting of 100 students in their second term The data of the study were obtained using research instruments: class observation and recording After that the data was analyzed and the findings of the research revealed that Vietnamese has influences on the first year students‟ English pronunciation at Thai Nguyen University of Technology At the end of the research, the researcher proposed some suggestions to improve students‟ pronunciation iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES TABLES Page Table 1: Mistakes observed in the class and recorded in the oral test 17 Table 2: Mistakes by participants 18 v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Declaration i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii List of tables and figures iv Table of Contents v Part A: Introduction 1 Rationale of the study 2 Objectives of the study Research questions of the study Scope of the study Methods of the study Organization of the study Part B: Development Chapter 1: Literature review 1.1 The interference of the mother tongue in foreign languages 1.1.1 Definition of the mother tongue and foreign languages 1.1.2 The interference of the mother tongue in foreign languages 1.2 English pronunciation 1.2.1 English consonants 1.2.2 English vowels 10 1.2.3 Consonants clusters 12 1.3 Vietnamese pronunciation 12 1.3.1 Vietnamese consonants 12 1.3.2 Vietnamese vowels 13 1.4 Review of Previous studies 13 Chapter 2: The study 15 2.1 Methodology 15 vi 2.1.1 Setting of the study 15 2.1.2 Participants 15 2.1.3 Data collection instruments 15 2.1.3.1 Class Observation 15 2.1.3.2 Recording 16 2.1.4 Data collection procedures 16 2.2 Findings and discussion 17 2.2.1 Description on the three most frequent types of mistakes 17 2.2.2 Data analysis and discussion 19 2.2.2.1 Mistakes in omission of sounds 19 2.2.2.2 Mistakes in sound replacement 20 2.2.2.3 Mistakes in consonant clusters 24 Part C: Conclusion 26 1.Major findings of the study 26 2.Implications 26 Limitations of the study 28 Suggestions for further study 28 REFERENCES 29 APPENDICES I PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study Language plays a very important role in communication People all over the world can communicate with each other by speech or writing that are the two primary modes of linguistic communication In a speech communication situation, a speaker always tries to make him/ her understood and interested What makes people understood and interested in one‟s English is firstly his/ her pronunciation Pronunciation is definitely the biggest thing that people notice when you are speaking English A person can express his idea with simple words and simple grammar, but there is no such thing as simple pronunciation Learning a language consists of learning its vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation Learners with good pronunciation are likely to be understood even if they make mistakes in other area, whereas learners with bad pronunciation will not be understood, even if their grammar is perfect In fact, pronunciation is becoming increasingly recognized as a crucial area for language learners (Celce-Murcia et al, 1996) All learners know the importance of pronunciation However, they find it difficult to acquire an accent which is intelligible One of those difficulties is caused by the interference of their mother tongue in their language learning because each language has its own rules and phonetic system which may cause a lot of obstacles to learners in practising and performing them correctly In their book, Avery and Ehrlich (1992) show the reason why speakers of English are able to recognize Spanish accents, Russian accents, Chinese accents … That is because the nature of a foreign accent is determined to a large extent by a learner‟s native language Like any learners of English, Vietnamese learners are coping with so many difficulties in pronouncing English because of the mother tongue interference Vietnamese and English differ a great deal, but Vietnamese students often transfer sound patterns of Vietnamese into English, that makes their pronunciation imperfect and unintelligible As a teacher of English, I can see mistakes that students at TNUT have made in producing sounds Therefore, I would like to conduct this research to point out how Vietnamese affects students‟ English pronunciation and make some corresponding improvements Those are the reasons why I decide to a research entitled: “The interference of the mother tongue in the first year students‟ English pronunciation at Thai Nguyen University of Technology.” Objectives of the study The objectives of this study are stated as follows: - To discover pronunciation mistakes made by students at Thai Nguyen University of Technology - To investigate whether the causes of the mistakes come from students‟ mother tongue Research questions of the study: To achieve the aims mentioned above, this study tries to answer the following questions: What are pronunciation mistakes made by students at Thai Nguyen University of Technology? Are they caused by mother tongue influences? Scope of the study The study was carried out with two classes (49J1, 49H) comprising 100 students in their second term, the academic year 2013-2014 In this thesis, the interference of the mother tongue in pronunciation is dealt with, but the study cannot cover all the problems related to pronunciation, this study only focuses on the mother tongue interference in producing English sounds Methods of the study A combination of different data collection methods were used including recording students‟ pronunciation in an oral test, observing their performance in class and notetaking Organization of the study The thesis consists of three parts: introduction, development with three chapters and conclusion Part A: Introduction presents the rationale, aims, research questions, and organization of the study Part B: Development includes three main chapters Chapter Literature review provides a brief literature review relevant to the study In this chapter, section discusses the interference of the mother tongue in foreign 21 2.2.2 Mistakes in sound replacement In reference to the second type of mistakes, sound replacement, the students made this type of mistakes in consonants and vowels They made mistakes of replacing consonants more than mistakes of replacing vowels In our data, the informants replace some English sounds with some Vietnamese sounds J = z, I = t‟, tr = C, DN = C The results displayed in Table revealed that the students made 171 mistakes of sound replacement in the oral test and 373 mistakes from the observation Among these mistakes, the most frequent was the replacement of /J/ with /z/ In the two classes, the students made 121 mistakes in replacing /J/ with /z/ and 50 mistakes of sound replacement were made by 16 students in the oral test In students‟ talk, mistakes of sound replacement can be realized clearly when they produce words containing the sound /J/ such as the, there, together, father, mother, other… For example, they said /z+/ instead of /J+/ for the word the In Vietnamese the spelling of /z/ is „d‟ or „gi‟ and in English the sound /J/ is presented by the letter „th‟ The sound /z/ is produced by the blade tongue and alveolar, but the sound /J/ is produced by the tongue and the teeth, the tongue is placed between the teeth Although the Vietnamese sound /z/ and the English sound /J/ are both fricatives, they are differently pronounced in term of place of articulation The sound /J/ does not exist in Vietnamese so many students substitute /z/ for /J/ when they pronounced words with /J/ Most of the students at TNUT in the study replaced /J/ with /z/ For example, „they‟ was said as „dây‟ in Vietnamese, “that” was said as /z$t/ The results from the above table illustrated the importance of the sound /J/ in English The students made 171 mistakes which are collected from the observation and recording The reason why the frequency of this mistake is a lot is the words containing the /J/ sound are among the most frequently used words in the English language such as the, this, that, their, them, then, they Relating to the interdental sound, students made mistakes when pronouncing words with / I/ In our data, only students said the words containing the / I/ sound and all of them replaced the sound / I/ in English with the sound /t‟/ in Vietnamese in 10 22 words: things, think, three, thin… The mispronunciation of this sound is due to the similarities in orthographic of Vietnamese and English Although the / I/ sound in English and the /t‟/ sound are pronounced differently, they have the same spelling „th‟ Therefore the students often produced a heavily aspirated stop /t‟/ in Vietnamese instead of / I/ in words From the result of not-taking, it showed that this type of mistakes is the second most frequent type when most of the students substituted /t‟/ for / I/ with 73 mistakes in many words: thought, thick, thin, think, thing, thank, through… Another common mistake that the students made when they spoke English is the replacement of /tr/ with /C/ It can be seen from the above tables, the students made 56 mistakes in producing /tr/ in a lot of words such as: centre, train, trouble, try, travel, traditional, tram… In a speaking lesson in 49H, when talking about transport, a student said a sentence “I travel to school by tram”, but it sounded like “I chavel to school by cham” 12 students substituted /C/ for /tr/ in 17 words belonging to basic vocabulary stock, for example, country, centre, train, try… The results indicated that many of the students found it difficult to release /tr/ The reason may be that the combination of /tr/ is unfamiliar to the participants in particular and students in the north in general Both Vietnamese and English have the same spelling “tr”, but tr in Vietnamese represents the sound /t/ The problem is that northerners in Vietnam not produce the sound /t/ Therefore there is no difference in pronunciation of two words: „trê‟ and „chê‟ and students always pronounce „chê‟ for two words For this reason, when speaking English, many of the students could not pronounce the combination /tr/ correctly, they replaced /tr/ with /C/ in Vietnamese The students did not said /trein/ for the word train, /trai/ for the word try, but they replaced a Vietnamese sound /C/ in the position of the sound /tr/ Thus these two words said by the students sounded like /chein/ and /chai/ This influence of the dialect prevents students from pronouncing correctly in the target language All of the participants in the study live in the north of Vietnam, so they cannot pronounce the combination /tr/ correctly In reference to the influence of the dialect, /l/ and /n/ are freely substituted for each other in word-initial position In fact, the subjects replaced /l/ with /n/ and /n/ with /l/ with 63 mistakes collected from the note-taking and recording Out of 63 mistakes, 21 mistakes of substituting /l/ for /n/ and 18 mistakes of replacing /n/ with /l/ were made by the subjects in the two classes In table 2, there were three subjects replacing /l/ with /n/ in 12 words 23 and /n/ with /l/ in 10 words For example, the word „life‟ was pronounced as „nife‟ and „many‟ was pronounced as „ maly‟ The tables showed that these two types of mistakes were least frequent but they caused unintelligibility for hearers and led to miscommunication These mistakes are easily recognized when they are said by many people in some areas in the north of Vietnam In Vietnamese phoneme system, /l/ is lateral sonant and /n/ is nasal But Vietnamese people live in some areas in the north not know when to say a word with /l/ or /n/ in Vietnamese In some provinces, “Cơm nếp” was said as “cơm lếp”, “lúa” (rice) was said as “núa” Thus when the people in these areas speak English words beginning with /l/ and /n/, they cannot recognize the difference between these two sounds As a result, they continue making pronunciation mistakes as they make mistakes in Vietnamese The participants are from different provinces in the north where a lot of people cannot distinguish the difference between the two sounds /l/ and /n/ This is the reason why many students replaced /l/ and /n/ with each other freely Next, the mispronunciation of /p/ to /f/ or /b/ and the mispronunciation of /r/ to /z/ are related to the Vietnamese phoneme system The Vietnamese language does not have the two sounds /p/ and /r/ in the initial position These two sounds can occur in some words such as “đèn pin, rađiô” but they are loanwords Because of the inexistence of the two sounds, it is really hard for students to pronounce the sounds and even they not how to produce these sounds To pronounce the words with /p/ and /r/ in the initial position, the students often substituted a /b/ or an /f/ for /p/ and a /z/ for /r/ In Vietnamese both /b/ and /p/ are stops but /b/ is voiced and /p/ is voiceless The students not have the habit to pronounce /p/ in the initial position so they substitute a voiced sound /b/ for a voiceless sound /p/ In addition, /f/ in Vietnamese is represented the letter combination ph (beginning with p) so student can substitute either /b/ or /f/ for /p/ In our data, at least 43 words which beginning with the sound /p/ replaced with /b/ or /f/ were recorded and 42 words were take-noted The results indicated that there were subjects making 43 mistakes of this type but only one student substituted /f/ for /p/ in the word play Instead of saying “/plei/ ”, he said “flei” in his talk Actually /p/ mistaken for /b/ is more common than for /f/ Similarly /r/ is commonly mistaken for /z/ especially in the North of Vietnam This mispronunciation makes hearers misunderstand The students pronounced many words incorrectly because they substituted /z/ for /r/ such as /zais/ instead of /rais/ in the word 24 rice, /zentl/ instead of /rentl/ in the word rental and /zok/ instead of /rok/ in the word rock When the researcher took notes, 26 words were mispronounced and students replaced /r/ with /z/ in 16 words in their speech Another mistake that the students made was the substitution of /DN/ for /z/ or As can be seen from the two tables, the mistake of the substitution of /DN/ for /z/ or is also common at my university Out of 30 students, 12 students mistook the sound /DN/ for /z/ or /tM/ in 17 words, and at least 44 words were transcribed from note-taking As the sound /DN/ does not exist in Vietnamese, /DN/ is not pronounced correctly by many of the students /DN/ is a combination of the voiced sounds /d/ and /N/ but this combination seems to be very difficult for many of the students Besides, students not seem to know how this combination should be articulated and not try to find out about this In regards to the mistakes of sound replacement in vowels, the results revealed that the students made three main types of these mistakes: the replacement of the sound /i:/ with /I/, the replacement of the sound /u:/ with /'/ and the replacement of the sound /*:/ with /+/ There were 84 mistakes of the sound replacement made by the students of the two classes through the observation 13 students made mistakes of replacing the sound /i:/ with /I/ in 19 words such as: the word week is produced as /wIk/ instead of /wi:k/ 16 students substituted /'/ for /u:/ in 23 words: supermarket, afternoon, soon, school, who … Only students said 15 words containing the sound /*:/ in and they all made these mistakes From these results, it proved that the mistake type of replacing vowels is very common at our university Vietnamese also has three vowels /u/, /i/ and /ɤ/ These Vietnamese vowels sound like the English sounds /'/, /"/, /+/ but they are articulated differently However Vietnamese speakers cannot distinguish the differences between these sounds so they substitute the Vietnamese equivalent for the English vowel Furthermore, Vietnamese students often fail to recognize as well as produce English /u:/ and /'/, /i:/ and /I/, /*:/ and / +/ They not sound distinct as they to the native speaker of English For example, suit and soot sound alike to them with /'/ They often produce the two vowels identically This is a negative 25 transfer that inhibits students from speaking English correctly and can lead to misunderstandings.‟ 2.2.2.3 Mistakes in consonant clusters The third type of mistakes that students made was producing consonant clusters The table showed that when producing English consonant clusters, the students deleted one of the consonants of the cluster or inserted a vowel /+/ between the consonants of the cluster The insertion of a vowel /+/ was more common than the deletion of one of the consonants of the cluster 16 students inserted /+/ in 55 words For example to produce crazy, smart, dress, breakfast … the students inserted /+/ like c+razy, s+mart, d+ress, b+reakfast… In one of a student‟s talk, he said “my father usually wears s+mart k+lothes at work” instead of “my father usually wears smart klothes at work” This prevents students from fluency in their speech Regarding the deletion, only three students deleted the sound /w/ in the word swim The sound may be like /sIm/ not /swim/ A sentence “I can swim” was said as “I can sim” by the students Properly speaking, Vietnamese does not have any consonant clusters which are new to the Vietnamese as well as to the speakers of other monosyllabic languages The students therefore face many difficulties in mastering all English consonant clusters So with all types of clusters, the students tend to insert a vowel /+/ between the consonants of the cluster to match their segmental phoneme structure (CV) The word crazy /kreizi/ can be produced as /k+reizi/ 26 PART C: CONCLUSION Major findings The researcher has presented the results of the study which showed that students‟ pronunciation mistakes are caused by mother tongue interferences Among these mistakes, ending sound omission is the most common Because Vietnamese people not have to pronounce the final sounds or the Vietnamese final consonants are actually silent Therefore the habit of “swallowing” ending sounds of the mother tongue really inhibits the pronunciation of English ending sounds Among the ending sounds, /DN/ is the most frequently omitted because Vietnamese does not have this sound and it is really hard for students to pronounce In mistakes of sound replacement, the substitutions of /t‟/ for /I/ and /z/ for /J/ occur continuously Because the two sounds /t‟/ and /I/ have the same spelling, students think that they have the same articulation so they often produce /t‟/ instead of /I/ Moreover Vietnamese does not have the sound /J/ thus students try to find another sound /z/ in Vietnamese to replace /J/ 27 To pronounce English consonant clusters more easily, students tend to insert a vowel /+/ between the consonants of the cluster or delete one of the consonants of the cluster 16 students in the study inserted a vowel /+/ between the consonants of the cluster Implications Given the pronunciation problems, the researcher would like to give some suggestions and some practical solutions to overcome the difficulties in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning pronunciation Firstly, pronunciation should be paid much attention For example, it should be considered as a part in the textbook and taught carefully Secondly, teachers should show students how to pronounce the English sounds Regarding ending sounds, the habit of omitting the ending sounds causes misunderstandings and unintelligibility so teachers need to help students pronounce these ending sounds First students must know how to produce the ending sounds /tM, z, s, M, I, J, t, v, d, p, k, f, DN/ Next teachers let students release these sounds in words such as live, life, push … and then in sentences With word-final fricative consonants /f/, /v/, /I/, /J/, /z/, /s/, /M/, teachers should point out the similarity between the initial and final sounds and have students practise them in words and sentences Moreover students should practice the pronunciation of the /s/ and /z/ in words that have grammatical endings – the plural, the possessive, and the third person singular present tense Concerning problems of sound replacement, teachers should help students distinguish the differences between these sounds and teach them how to pronounce the sounds In order to help students not substitute /t‟/ for /I/, /z/ for /J/, teachers make sure that the pupils know how to pronounce them Teachers tell students that to make /I/, put your tongue between your teeth, then blow out air between your tongue and your top teeth and to make /J/ first practice /I/, then use your voice to make /ð/ Teachers have students try tongue twisters such as Those three thugs think that they threw those things there As for the replacement of /p/ with /b/ or /f/, teachers point out that the lips come together for the English /p/ sound, whereas the bottom lip touches the top teeth for /f/ for substitution of /f/ for /p/ For substitution of /b/ for /p/, teachers focus on the aspiration of /p/ in trying to get students to make the distinction between /p/ and /b/ in initial position, 28 then get students to practice these two sounds in minimal pairs such as pet and bet, pride and bride… With regards to /l/ vs /n/, teachers should point out that /n/ is made with air escaping through the nose and that /l/ is made with the air escaping around the sides of the tongue Later teachers give students word combinations such as „night light‟ and „slow snow‟ to provide practice in distinguishing between the two sounds As to consonant clusters, because students often insert an /+/ between the consonants, teachers should ask students to practice increasing their speed, until the inserted vowel disappears For example:  ə  ə  ə  bəlue b lue b lue b lue blue Thirdly teachers need to pay more attention to student‟s pronunciation and try to correct them any time possible When students speak, teachers try to correct them immediately and let them pronounce again The substitution of one sound for another sound is very dangerous and students always make the same mistakes Therefore, teachers should encourage students to spend plenty of time practising Moreover pronunciation is not easy to study, thus teachers should involve students‟ motivation to learning pronunciation by various exercises and games while teaching By doing that students may feel less boring and learning pronunciation does not become too difficult for learners Finally availability of materials for teaching is also necessary The use of language laboratory will enhance proper pronunciation Learners will listen to pronunciation from native speakers which will help the learners pronounce sounds correctly Learners should be taught to use the dictionary properly in terms of spelling and correct pronunciation Limitations of the study Although much effort has been made, the limitations of this research are unavoidable This study only focuses on the interference of the mother tongue in English sounds not on other aspects of pronunciation such as: stress, intonation, rhythm … Besides this study was only conducted at Thai Nguyen University of Technology, it was not widely carried out with students of many universities in the country Thus the statement that Vietnamese influences students‟ English pronunciation is not completely exact 29 Suggestions for further study Because of the scope limitation, the following topics could be best to study: - The interference of the mother tongue in learning intonation at Thai Nguyen University of Technology - A contrastive analysis between Vietnamese and English intonation - The interference of the mother tongue in English stress REFERENCES Avery, P., & Ehrlich, S (1992) Teaching American English Pronunciation Oxford: Oxford University Press Brown, A (Ed.) (1991) Teaching English Pronunciation: A Book of Readings Routledge: London Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D., & Goodwin, J (1996) Teaching pronunciation Reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Chiang, C S , & Dunkel P (1992) The effect of speech modification , prior knowledge, and listening proficiency on EFL lecture learning TESOL Quarterly , 26,345-374 30 Clarey, M.E & Dixson, R.J (1963) Pronunciation Exercises in English Prentice Hall Regents Cù Đình Tú, Hồng Văn Thung, Nguyễn Ngun Trứ (1978), Ngữ Âm Học Tiếng Việt Hiện Đại, Nhà Xuất Bản Giáo Dục Đoàn Thiện Thuật (1978), Ngữ Âm Tiếng Việt, Nhà Xuất Bản Đại Học Quốc Gia Hà Nội Finegan, E (1994) Language: Its Structure and Use Harcourt Brace College Publishers Hubbard, Jones, Thorton and Weeler (1980) A Training Course for TEFL, Oxford: Oxford University Press 10 Kenworthy, J (1987) Teaching English Pronunciation Longman Group UK Limited 11 Ladefoged, P.1982 (1975) A Course in Phonetics New York: Harcourt Jovanovich 12 Nguyễn Hữu Quỳnh (1994) Tiếng Việt Hiện Đại, Trung Tâm biên Soạn Từ Điển Bách Khoa Việt Nam 13 O‟ Corner, J (1980) Better English Pronunciation Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 14 Roach, P (1998) English Phonetics and Phonology Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 15 Swan, M., &Smith, B (1999) Learner English Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 16 Ur, P (1991) A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 17 Vương Hữu Lễ, Hoàng Dũng (1994), Ngữ Âm Tiếng Việt, Trường Đại Học Sư Phạm Hà Nội http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_language Oxford University Press, Oxford Learner‟s Pocket Dictionary, (Third Edition, China, 2003), p.343 I Students Sounds omitted S1 He like (s)learning Engli (sh) S2 I don‟t really like cat (s) S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S9 S10 II APPENDIX B Table Students‟ performance of English pronunciation in spoken discourse Students‟ talks Last summer, Chi Minh my sister’s house weeks I went there by train My hobby is going shopping, so I went Thuan Kieu supermarket and bought some things which I enjoyed After that, I went to Dam tau Beach These places are very beautiful holiday I have a friend His name is Thao He eyes and tall nose, me He always wears trousers and shirt Sometimes he wears jeans and T-shirts We like wearing the same Sen III doing the same things are crazy about football We go to football Sunday school I have many friends, but Thao is the best friend I think it is fun to have my friend My Loan She‟s She comes from Nam pupil in Ninh Xuan, She‟s small She has got long-hair and black eyes Especially she has got very white complexion She often wears dresses She likes a plastic doll In her free time, she often go for walk with doll She is crazy about music and she sings well She learns hard So she is the best pupil in her class She could paint she doesn‟t go to school, she paint school, picturesof IV intelligent and funny I love my young sister very much Last summer I had an exciting holiday with my friend in Nha Trang city seaside at weekends We went to sunbathe on the beach every morning After that we had breakfast and drink coffee We went for a walk and shopping In the afternoon I went swimming At night we went to the cinema and went for walks I like the holiday very much because the seaside was very beautiful and very exciting My name is Hieu I‟m a girl I live in Lao Cai I have a family I like music and films I don‟t like golf My sisters are small We like children songs Our family is very happy At the moment, I‟m studying in Thai Nguyen Technology V near the school and I live with [lɪ] my friends They are good We [f+ren] live far from home, so we [fæməlɪ] always miss our families [dr"m] We still have hopes and dreams [naɪ] that once day, we will be successful in life [fæməlɪz] [driːmz] [laɪf] ... The interference of the mother tongue in learning intonation at Thai Nguyen University of Technology - A contrastive analysis between Vietnamese and English intonation - The interference of the. .. Richards and Platt (1992) define the mother tongue as follows: ? ?a first language which is acquired at home.” They also indicate that the first language is a person‟s mother tongue or the language... the tongue and the teeth 8 /M/, /N/: The fricatives are so called palate-alveolar, which can be taken to mean that their place of articulation is partly palatal, partly alveolar The tongue is in