A study on pronunciation errors made by fourth year students of english at vinh university and suggested solutions

VINH UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT ********** Ngun thÞ hång anh A STUDY ON PRONUNCIATION ERRORS MADE BY FOURTH YEAR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AT VINH UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS (NGHIÊN CỨU TÌM LỖI PHÁT ÂM TIẾNG ANH CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ TƯ KHOA NGOẠI NGỮ- ĐẠI HỌC VINH VÀ GỢI Ý MỘT SỐ BIỆN PHÁP KHẮC PHỤC) GRADUATION THESIS Field: Linguistics Vinh 2010 VINH UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT ********** A STUDY ON PRONUNCIATION ERRORS MADE BY FOURTH YEAR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AT VINH UNIVERSITY AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS (NGHIÊN CỨU TÌM LỖI PHÁT ÂM TIẾNG ANH CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ TƯ KHOA NGOẠI NGỮ- ĐẠI HỌC VINH VÀ GỢI Ý MỘT SỐ BIỆN PHÁP KHẮC PHỤC) GRADUATION THESIS Field: Linguistics Student: NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG ANH, 47B Supervisor: PHAN THỊ HƯƠNG, M.A Vinh 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT To complete the research, I have been lucky to receive invaluable contributions from many people First of all, I should like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Ms Phan Thi Huong, M.A for her indispensable supports, suggestions, advice and detailed comments, without which the research would not have been completed In addition, I would also like to extend my deepest thanks to teachers of phonetics – Ms Mindy Schott, Mr Tran Ba Tien, MA and Mr Pham Anh Tuan, MA for their materials of phonetics , my close friends - Oanh and Sơn for their reading my first draft as well as their invaluable suggestions, and comments and to all of my classmates for their various kinds of help and encouragement My warmest thanks are due to my loving parents and my siblings for their absolute unconditional love, support and forbearance Finally, I am all too aware that despite all the advice and assistance, I feel that the research is far from perfect; it is, hence, my sole responsibility for any inadequacies and shortcomings that thesis may be considered to have Vinh, May, 5th , 2010 Nguyen Thi Hong Anh ABSTRACT Nowadays, when English is used in larger and larger scale as an international language, it is an essential duty of education that users of English should communicate successfully with the target language It is a common knowledge that phonetics is a subject which helps students of English to pronounce well in learning and communicating in English However, many teachers of English have complained and many learners have self- criticized about their pronunciation So have students of English at Vinh University Indeed, in spite of being taught basic phonetics right in the first year of learning English, many of fourth year students of English at Vinh University are weak at pronouncing in English This has much influence on their learning other subjects such as: listening, speaking, reading, interpreting etc as well as creates many limitations in their talking with native- speakers of English In this research, the author studied typical pronunciation errors made by fourth year students of English at Vinh University, then suggested the students of English in general and fourth year students of English in particular some ways to improve their pronunciation as much as possible Questionnaire data was collected from 61 students from two classes 47A and 47B, then among them, 22 students were asked to record their pronunciation at their own home The findings point out that fourth year students tend to make pronunciation errors with vowels and consonants Yet, they have not had any real effective method to improve their pronunciation errors yet Therefore, the author, as a fourth year student, somehow, hopes that this paper will partly help fourth year students to be better at pronouncing in English ABBREVIATIONS FLD: Foreign Languages Department VU: Vinh University CD: Compact disc EFL: English as a Foreign Language RP: Received English E.g.: exampli gratia Etc: et cetera L1: Language one SL: Second language FL: Foreign language PR.: Public Relation TABLE OF CONTENT Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .i ABSTRACT ii ABBREVIATIONS iii TABLE OF CONTENT .iv LISTS OF TABLES AND FIGURES vii PART I: INTRODUCTION Justification of the Study Aims and Objectives of the Study .2 Scope of the Study .2 Methods of the Study 4.1 Subjects of the Study 4.2 Data collection instruments of the Study 4.3 Data analysis procedure of the Study Format of the Study PART II: DEVELOPMENT .5 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 English pronunciation 1.1.1 Standard English Pronunciation .5 1.1.2 Aspects of pronunciation 1.1.2.1 Articulatory phonetics a The articulators b The process of producing sounds c The working of the vocal cords .7 1.1.2.2 English sounds .8 a Pure vowel Sounds b Consonant sounds 11 1.2 Pronunciation errors: 16 CHAPTER 2: DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS 18 2.1 Subjects .18 2.2 Data collection procedure 18 2.3 Data analysis procedure 20 2.4 Findings and Discussion on Pronunciation Errors made by fourth year students of English 20 2.4.1 Errors concerned with vowel sounds 21 2.4.1.1 Description of vowel sounds errors 21 2.4.1.2 Error analysis .21 a /ɪ/ sounds error analysis 21 b /æ/ sound error analysis 22 c /ʊ/ sound error analysis 23 2.4.1.3 Typical vowel sounds errors collected from the recordings 24 2.4.2 Errors concerned with consonant sounds .25 2.4.2.1 Description of consonant sounds errors 25 2.4.2.2 Error analysis .25 10 ... the students? ?? pronunciation, a list of common pronunciation errors relating to vowels and consonants made by students was made by the author Then, the data was analyzed and summarized into tables... pronunciation, Standard pronunciation, English Pronunciation Errors Aspects of pronunciation such as the articulators and English sounds 1.1 English pronunciation Since the researchers have a strong desire... students of 47B and 4 7A who are weak at pronouncing English For that reason, we decided to a study on pronunciation errors made by fourth year students of English at VU to analyze the errors,