3.2 The result collected by means of questionnaire
3.2.5. Causes of the students‟ mispronunciation
Question 8 was carefully designed to investigate the causes of the students‟ mistakes with the fricative and affricative sounds, which could be considered as a key to solve the problems. In this question, possible causes were listed and the subjects were asked whether they strongly agreed, agreed, neither agreed nor disagreed, disagreed or strongly disagreed with the listed causes.
A.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutionsA.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutionsA.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutionsA.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutions
37 Causes of mistakes
agree Agree agree nor disagree
Disagree
disagree No
of Ss
% No
of Ss % No
of Ss % No
of Ss % No of Ss % I don‟t know how to pronounce these
sounds. 13 9 50 33 67 44 16 11 4 3
These sounds are strange to me so I do not
pay attention to these sounds. 16 11 49 33 60 40 7 4 18 12
Vietnamese fricative sounds are not mentioned in the final position of a word, so I ignore them.
16 11 30 20 64 43 15 10 25 16
I pronounce these sounds as I perceive. 14 9 38 25 56 37 16 11 26 18 I pronounced these sounds in the same way
in English and Vietnamese. 27 18 44 29 56 37 16 11 7 5
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A.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutionsA.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutionsA.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutionsA.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutions
38 Causes of mistakes
agree Agree agree nor disagree
Disagree
disagree No
of Ss
% No
of Ss % No
of Ss % No
of Ss % No of Ss % I do not think that bad or wrong
pronunciation of these sounds will break communication.
9 6 32 21 71 47 35 23 4 3
I do not practice pronouncing these sounds
frequently. 8 5 63 42 42 28 12 8 25 17
I am afraid to ask for help from teachers or
friends to pronounce these sounds correctly. 9 6 40 27 51 34 40 27 10 7
Table 11: Causes of the students’ mispronunciation
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A.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutionsA.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutionsA.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutionsA.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutions
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Strongly agree Agree
Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree
Figure 16: Causes of the students’ mispronunciation
As can be seen from the chart, one of the most striking features is that the respondents have different points of view in term of causes of their mispronunciation. 44% of the respondents concurred with statement 1 “I don‟t know how to pronounce these sounds”. Likewise, 40% agreed with statement 2 “These sounds are strange to me so I do not pay attention to these sounds.” In both cases, there was a marked degree of strong agreement (9%
for statement 1 and 11% for statement 2). This pattern is also repeated in the statement 3, 4 with the level of (strong) agreement of 11%, 9% respectively.
Luckily, only a small percentage of students express their opposition to four statements above.
Moreover, the statistics collected indicate that 37% of students reject the proposition “Games are time-consuming and ineffective in learning English grammar” as opposed to 12% agreeing. However, the most concerned issue is that the large percentage of surveyed participants (25%,27%) showed their support with the statement 5 and 6 “I pronounce these sounds as I perceive ” and “I do not think that bad or wrong pronunciation of these
A.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutionsA.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutionsA.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutionsA.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutions
sounds will break communication” while these issues were disagreed by 5%
and 3% of respondents. This is a wrong perception of English learners when they consider the two languages the same. Additionally, most of them said that they did not practice pronunciation frequently (42%). This is one of the most important reasons explaining their mispronunciation.
It was less clear whether “I am afraid to ask for help from teachers or friends to pronounce these sounds correctly” (statement 8), as there is a 50:50 split in the responses, although there was more strong disagreement (7% than strong agreement (6%) on this issue.
To nutshell, through the survey questionnaire to the students, various causes of their mistakes in producing fricative and affricative English sounds were revealed. These results reflect the existing problems in learning English pronunciation and need the practical and specific solutions.
A.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutionsA.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutionsA.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutionsA.study.on.mistakes.commonly.commited.by.the.10th.grade.students.at.kim.thanh.high.school..hai.duong.in.the.pronunciation.of.english.fricative.and.affricative.consonants.and.some.possible.pedagogical.solutions
CHAPTER 4