Luận văn problems of hatinh learners in pronouncing english final consonants

The aim of the study ‘The study aims at finding out if HTU leamers have difficulties in pronouncing English word final consonants and what the causes of these problems are.. Research met

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUTHIFS:

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

PHAM THI TU HANG

PROBLEMS OF HATINH LEARNERS IN PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANTS

(Khó khăn của học vién Ha Tinh trong việc phái âm phụ âm

cuối Tiếng Anh)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME TIESIS

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60.22.15

HANOT- 2010

2

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDLES

PHAM THI TU HANG

PROBLEMS OF HATINH LEARNERS IN PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANTS

(Khó khăn của học viên Hà Tĩnh trong việc phát âm phụ âm

cuối Tiếng Anh)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: Ha Cim Tam Ph.D

HANG!- 2010

DECLARATION

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 7

Rationale of the study

‘The aim of the study

Hypothesis

The scope of the stud

Research method

Organization of the sludy

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT 9

Chapter I: LITERATURE REVITW 9

1.5 Review of previous research

Chapter 2: THE STUDY 23

2.1 Research questions

2.2 Data collection instruments

2.3 Data vollection procedures

PART THREE: CONCLUSIO

1 Conelusions

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Consonants of English

Table 2: Number of subject mispronounced the consotintz under study

Table 3: Sotmds deviations of the consonants under study made by the informants

Table 4 Sound omission made by informanis

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 communigalion may even be broken down “A lsamer who sonsisiontly misprononmecs 2 range of phonemes can be extremely difficult for a speaker fom another language

community to understand” (Kelly, 2000:11) ‘here 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 leamers are not the exception even though they have leamt English since the early age Another reason is that no research has been carried

on this ficld al Hatinh University (HTU), This leads the author to the thouglit of making a research on “Problems of [atinh learners in pronouncing Bnglish final consonants” with the

purpose of finding out the causes of mispronunciations

2 The aim of the study

‘The study aims at finding out if HTU leamers have difficulties in pronouncing English word final consonants and what the causes of these problems are The results will provide an overview of leamers’ 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 leaning correc! pronunciation so ax lo produce Enghsh word-finat consonants properly

3 Hypothesis

1 HTU learners have difficulties in pronouncing Haglish word-final consonants

2 Their problems may be caused by mother tongue interference

4, The scope of the stuily

This research presents several analyses on the pronunciation of the five consonants

cocuming in some solected words using for recording namely /s/, /tf/, /8/, it, /p/ in final

position made by the ten English majored students studying al IITU with a hypothesis thai

9 these consonants are pronounced in Viemamese-tike 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 sonnds is in comparison with that described in the analylical Gramework basing on Received Pronunciation (RP) standard A combination of different data collection methods was used including recording the pariicipants’ pronunciation of prepared words and observing their spoken English in class, Details of methodology applied in the study are discussed in Chapter 2 of Patt two

6 Organization af the stuily

The study composes of three parts:

Part onc, Tniraduction, incndes the Tationale, aims, research question, scope, method and organi vation of the sindy

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 summatizes 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

Parl three, Conclusion, summarizes the findings and gives suggestions for improving English final pronunciation for HTU students,

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

The first section provides some basic linguistic and phonetic concepts to bring a common view of the matter studied including phonetics, phonology, ad articutatory phonetics The second section describes consonanls in genoral, English and Viettamose consouanls 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 concemed 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, (ack CR et al, 1997)

Articulatory phoneties deals with the way in which speech sounds are produced Sound are usually classified according to the position of Tips and the tongue, haw 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 lo measure the characteristics of these sound waves

Auditory phonetics deals with how speech sounds are perecived by the listener,

1.2 Phonology

Phonology is essentially the description of the systems and pattems 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 # phonemic difference if two words (such as “while” and “right” or “cal” and bat”) differin only a single sound

“Phonology deals with the speakers’ knowledge of the sound system of a language It is therefore exclusively concemed with langue or competence [ ] Phonology can be divided

"1 into two branches: (1) segmental phonology and (2) suprasegmental phonology" (Skandera

& Burleigh, 2005-5)

Phonology is primarily concemed 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 phonalogy of English looks al the vowels, consonants and suporasemental fealures

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 pattems 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 abstraet units called phonemes When we transcribe a word in a way thal shows none of the detaits of the pronunciation Uvat, 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

undetlying phonemes,

This rescarch aims al finding oul if HTU students have difficulties in pronouncing the five chosen English consanants in the final position Tl takes the problems of their pronunciation into consideration which concerns with the way they use their organs of articulation pronouncing such sounds, ‘'his is also what articulatory phonetics study, so the theoretical background of it is presented with more details as follows

‘Those parts of the body below (not the lungs) belong to the vocal tract ‘The vocal tract is

2001)

In neatly all speech sounds, the basic source of power is the respiratory system pushing air of the lungs Air fiom the lungs goes up the windpipe and into the larynx at which point it must pass between two small muscular folds called the voual 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 wacl, The shape of the vocal wacl is very important factor in the

production of speech

The parts of the vocal traci thal can be used to form sounds are called articulatots 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 thal can be Taised 10 press against the back wall of the pharynx and shut off the wasal tract, preventing air from going out through the nose AL the lower end of the soft palate is a small appendage hanging down that is known as the avila ‘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 longue: it is aclually the forward part of the body of the longue, and it Hes underneath the hard palate when the tongue is al rest, The remainder of the body of the tongue may be divided inte the conlor 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,

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

spoken language that is charactized by closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence, (Crystal, 2003:242)

Consonants, actually, are sounds made with closed or nearly closed articulations, As a consequence, they tend io break up the stam up speoch, defining a perceptual and articulatory edge or margin, for a unit (word or syllable in a word) that includes oue or more

vowels

1.4.1 Classification of consonants

Consonants are formed by interrupting, restricting or diverting the airflow in a variety

of ways They can be divided into different kinds in accordance with three categories, i.e the degree of vocal cord vibration, the place and the manner of articulation Some consonants involve the vibration of the vocal cords: these are the voiced consonants Others have no vocat cord vibration: these are the voiceless consouanis However, the distinction is not absolute: depending on where in a word consonant appears, there may be degrees of

voicing,( Kelly, 2000 : 5-7)

1.4.1.4 The manner of articulation

‘The manner of articulation refers to the interaction between the various articulators act

in such way that the air is temporarily trapped, and then suddenly released Consonants classified bascd on the manners of articulation arc plosive, affricute, fricative, nasal, lateral,

approximant, (Kelly, 2000)

Plosive a comptole closure is made somewhere in the voual tract, and

the soft palate is also raised Air pressure increases behind the closure, and is then released ‘explosively’

Affricate a complete closure is made somewhere in the mouth, and the

soft palate is raised Air pressure increases behind the closure, and is then retcased more slowly than in plosives

Fricative when bwo vocal organs came close enongh together for the

movement of air between them to be heard Nasal a closure is made by the lips, or by the tongue against the palate,

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the soft palate is lowered, and air escapes through the nose

Lateral a partial closure is made by the blade of the tongue against the

alveolar ridge, Air is able to flow around the sides of the tongue,

ApproximantVocal organs come near Io cach other, but not so close as to cause

audible friction

1.4.1

‘The place of articulation

The place of articulation focuses more on what the various articulators actually do ‘The place of articulation defines both the area of the oral-pharyngeal vocal tract where the constriction is made and the part of the tongue used to form the constriction The sounds of this classification include bilabial, labio-dental, dental, alveolar palato-alveolat, palatal, velar and glottal, (Kelly, 2000)

With regards to the place of articulation, the following table summarizes the main

movements of the various artictlators:

Bilabial Using dosing movement of both lips

Labio-dental Using the lower lip and the upper tecth

Dental ‘The tongue tip is used either between the teeth or close to the upper

teeth, Alveolar ‘The blade of the tongue is used close to the alveolar ridge

Patato- The blade (or fip) of the tongue is used just bchind the alveolar

Palatal ‘The front of the tongue is raised close to the palate

Velar The back of the tongue is against the soft palate

Glottal The gap between the vocal cords is used to make audible friction,

1.4.1.3 The degree of voral cord vibration

Voicing is also one the main categories that consonants have to base on when being described The vocal folds may be held against each other al jusl the right tension so that the air flowing past them from the lungs will cause them Lo vibrale againsl each other This process is called voicing, Sounds that are made with vocal fold vibration are said fo be

voiced.

pairs of sounds in English which differ only in voicing that is, the two sounds have identical places and manners of articulation, but one has vocal fold vibration and the other doesn't, for cxample, fs, 7/ or 18, 8

Describing the force of articulation, the icrms fortis or strong and Jenis or weak arc often used in spoken English fortis happens to equate with unvoiced sounds, which require

a more forcefully expelled airstreams than Jenis sounds which in Enplish happen to be voiced As far as Linglish consonants are coneemed, the distinction is most useful when it comes to distinguishing between sounds that are articulated in essentially the same way, one using the voice, the other not An example pair is /p/ (unvoiced, and fortis), and /bi (voiced, and lenis), (Kelly, 2000)

1.4.3 English consonants

Most dialects of English have about 24 distinctive (phonemic) consonant sounds divided according to three different categories: voicing, place and manner of articulation, as shown in the table 1 with the rows for places of articulation and the columns for manners of articulation (Kelly, 2000)

1.4.2.1 Classification of English consonants

A stop cuts off airflow through either the mouth or the nese so there are oral and nasal

stops Oral stops are often called plosives: [p, b], [t, đ], [k, a] Nasal stops arc usually called

nasals: [m], [n] and [I] English fricalives include [f, v], (8 8], fs, 4, [f, 3] anẻ [h] English approximants are [j], [Ww], [.1], and [{], Affricates can be seen as a sequence of a stop anda fricative which have the same or similar place of articulation, and there are only two afiticative sounds in English [ tÍ | |a5}, (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), The summary of

English consonarts is shown in Table 1 below:

Place of articulation

Table 1: Consonants of English, (Kelly, 2000)

(Table 1 shows the places and manners of articulation for consonants Whenever a cell has

two consonants, the voiceless is placed to the left and the voiced is to the right.)

The studicd consonants can be calcd in different terms: Plosive or stop /p, t#, afffticate Aft, tticative /6/ if basing, on the manner of articulation; bilabial /p/, alveolar /t, s⁄, dental /3 /

and posl- (palalo) alveolar / 1f/ if basing on place of articulation ép/, /A/ and Af / are strong and long fiction

1.4.2.2 Phonetogical rules

‘When we speak English, we do not only pronounce individual sounds, but the strings of phonomes which make up uticrances, In connecicd speech, sounds are not sometimes produced as they have to, but some changes happen to ther, In other wards, some of them can be assimilated, elided or linked For example, the phoneme/t/ can become bilabial before a bilabial consonant as in He's a rather fat boy (t/ assimilates to /p/) In the sentence: We arrived the next day (/t? elided between /ks/ and /&/), ip/ or /Ú and /4/ may be

elided when they appear within a consonant cluster (Kelly, 2000)

Assimilation is the change of one sound into another sound because of the influence of

neighboring sounds, as the change of undelying[n] lo [mw] in “input’fimput] or of

underlying[z] to [3] in ‘docs she” [da 3] (Ladefoged, 2000: 271)

English, suppose is often pronounced as [spouz|, faciory |'tektri |,( Richard et all, 1992: 121)

The most common elisiou in English are: and /d/, when they appear within a consonant cluster For example, in the phrase nex! day if is clided between /ks/ and /d/, complex consonant clusters are simplified, for example, aets fukts! can be simplified to feke/, texts Aeksts/ to Heks/

When we say a sentence in Linglish, we join or "link" words fo sach other Because of this linking, the words in a sentence do not always sound the same as when we say them individually Linking is very important in English Linking r is the most familiar case The phoneme r cannot occur in sytlable-final position in RP, but when a word’s spelling suggests

a final x, and a word beginning with a vowel follows, the usual pronunciation for RP speakers is to pronounce with r, for example, hear [his] but hear are [hior 3]

The following section presents a Hat of rules for English consonant altophanes which are variants of a phoneme The allophones of a phonemes form a set of sounds (1) da not change the meaning, of a word, (2) are all very similar to one another, and (3) occur in phonetic contexts different from one another- for example, syllable initial as opposed to syllable final The differences among allophones can be stated in terms of phonological rules (Ladefoged, 2001: 271) The rules for English’ consonant allophonos are described as

follows

1 Consonants are longer when al the end of a phrase

2 Voiceless stops ‘p, k, t/ are aspirated when they are syllable initial

3 Obstrucnis- slops and fricatives- classificd as voiced (thal is /b, đ, g, v, % 8, ¥) are

voiced through only a small part of the articulation when they occur at the end of an

utterance (as /v/ in “try to improve”) or before a voiceless sound (as /d/ in “add two”)

4 8o called voiced slops and affricales +b, d, g, đã are voiceless when syllable initial,

except when immediately preceded by a voiced sound

5 The approximants /w, r, j, l are at least partially voiceless when they occur after

initial /p, i, #/, as in “play, twin, cue”

6 Voiveless stops /p, k, U are nol aspirated in such words as “spew, stew, skew”

7 Voiceless stops and alfncates /p, &, t, af / are longer than the corresponding voiced

stops and affticates /b, 4, g, dj’ when at the end of a syllable.

19

& Stops are unexploded when they occur before another stops in words such as “apt” and “rubbed”

9 In many accents of English, syllable final /p, t, k/ are accompanicd by a glottal stop,

as in pronunciation of “tip, pil, kick” However, tlris Tule does nol apply te all varietics af English

10 In many accent of Fingtish, /V/ is replaced by a glottal stop when it occurs before an alveolar nasal in the same word, as in “beaten”

11 Nasals are syilabic at the end of a word when unmediately after an obstruents as in

13a, Alveolar stops and alveolar nasal plus slop sequence become voiced laps when they occur between two vowels, the second of which is unstressed

14 Alveolar consonants become dental before dental consonants, as in “eighth, tenth, wealth” ‘his rule applies to all alveolar consonants, not just stops, and it often applies boundaries, as in “at this” in more rapid style of speech, some of these dental consonants tend to be omitted altogether

15 Alveolar stops are reduced or omitted when between two consonants

16 A consonant is shortoned when iLis before an identical consonant

17 A homorganic voiceless stop may be inserted after a nasal before a voiceless fricative followed by an unstressed vowel in the same word

18, Velar stops become more front as the following vowel in the same syllable becomes more tront

19 The lateral A/ is velarized when after a vowel of before a consoruml al the end of

word (Ladefoged, 2001: 56-60)

1.4.4 Vietnamese Consonants

There are 19 consonants in the Hanoi dialect of Viemamese These consonants were

listed in ‘Table 2 below, (Taiffalo, 2001) ‘These consonants were represented slightly

contain retroflex consonants /tr/, /S/, and /Z/ (Nguyen 1997:20)

ficaral Ishia’ darial atvanlar palatal velar [jnHa

susp asp

vuiee up u u Volcelzsz Eicabve + 2 x k voicee - Eicaive ¥ 5 Y

voiced — Lateral 1 voi ral on " o 1

“Table 2: Viclnernesc consonants of Hanoi dialcet

Gloltal stop #/ was not invluded in the consonant system of Table 1 However, according to Thompson (1987-21), giottal stop could be recognized as a phoneme The voicing of [b] and [d] are predictable allophones of ép/ and ‘U’ respectively, following initial

Lenis oral consonants in Vietnamese are ‘fv t"] s zx A hy They are less articulated than

the fortis stops They occur only in initial position

‘Nasal consonants in Vietmamese are ‘mn N/ They are fully voiced and about midway in

telation lo the extremes of lenis and fortis They all occur bath initially aud finally

1.4.5 English vs Vietnamese

21 Itis easy to infer from ‘Table ] and 2 that there are more similarities than differences

in the manner and the place of articulation of the consonants in the two languages For instances, both of the languages share the placc and manner in articulating many consonants such as /p, b, m, w/ (bilabial- stop, nasel, approximant), /k, 1 (velar stop, aasal), /f v/ (labiodental- fricative), // (palatal- approximant), ¿n, 1/ (alveolar- nasal, lateral approximant),

Js, zi (alveolar- fricative) and /hAplottal- fricative)

And it is certain that in the two phonological systems there are foreign sounds to each other, which make them different languages ‘I'ypical

in Vietnamese, the dental aspirated sound /t"y is in letters ‘th’ the same way as the dental, fricative English sounds /@ 8/ lookin words, However, they are different in the manner of articulation, that is, the former is stop, and the Taticr is fricatives, which ercales problems for learners in trying to tcamn cach other's lmguage Another lypical example of the sound in both languages, which make most of

Viemamese leamers confused in articulating them ‘Ihey are the /c/ in Vietnamese and /tf /

in English They seem to sound similar due to the same manner of articulation, but they are different in the place of articulation, that is, the former is alveolar and the latter is palatal /p/

and fi/ in both languages have the same place of articulation bat different manner of

articulation In English, fp, tf have 3 different allophones, ie they are aspirated in word

initial, not aspirated in medial position and not completely released in word final, (Vo Dai Quang: 24), Besides confusing sounds, the two languages also have the sounds that the other completely does not have in terms of either the place or the, manner of articulation, for

cxample, the palatal stop /c/, palatal nasal Ay, the velar fricative /4y/ in Victnamese, and the

post alveolar fiicative /¥ and affticative /dy in English, ete

Research shows that English consonants which have different either place or manner of

articulation from Vietnamese scem to be often mispronounced by Vietnamese Icamers

Of five English consonant ‘s, tf, 3, t, p/ which are the subjects of the study /tƒ, ð7 do not exist in Vietnamese , /p, t, s/ bave the different manner of articulation from those in Vietnamese, thus if is understandable that the subjects mispronounce them most of the time when they speak,

1.5 Review of previous research

There have been a number of studies about Vietnamese’ difficulties in pronouncing

Tesearch,

Osturne (1996; 164-181) analyzed a case study trom her subject - a Vietnamese native speaker who came to the United States in 1972 - then drew the conclusion that: “In additional to cluster reduction, optional deletion of single syllable-final consonants, especially fricatives, which is attested for Vietnamese L1 speakers [ ] was found”, and

“Consonants omitted, however, were always final consonants not permitted by Vietnamese

She also stated that Vietnamese is non-thotic so there is no /t/ sound at the end of English syllables spoken by Vietnamese What can be concluded from this study is that Vietnamese leamers have a tendency to: firstly move strange English ending sounds towards similar sounds which exist in heix mother tongue, secondly omil the sounds that are tuo dificult for

them and thirdly reduce final clusters

In the article “Common pronunciation problems of Vietiamese learners of Finglish”

‘Tam (2005) pointed out the two main problems in pronunciation of Vietnamese leamers, that

is, sound omission and sound confusion Relating to English final consonant pronunciation, she stated that Vietnamese speakers omitted ending sound most fiequently A reason for sound omitting is a negative transference of their L1 duc to the habit of “swallowing” the ending sound in the mother tongue The following table shows her research results an problems of mispronunciation of the informants in the study