000029015 PRONUNCIATION ERROR ANALYSIS AND THE WAY TO HA VE BETTER PRONUNCIATION IN TEACHING ENGLISH AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF CIVIL ENGINEERING PHÂN TÍCH LỖI PHÁT ÂM VÀ CÁCH PHÁT ÂM TỐT HƠN TRONG GIẢNG DẠY TIẾNG ANH TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC XÂY DỰNG HÀ NỘI

000029015 PRONUNCIATION ERROR ANALYSIS AND THE WAY TO HA VE BETTER PRONUNCIATION IN TEACHING ENGLISH AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF CIVIL ENGINEERING PHÂN TÍCH LỖI PHÁT ÂM VÀ CÁCH PHÁT ÂM TỐT HƠN TRONG GIẢNG DẠY TIẾNG ANH TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC XÂY DỰNG HÀ NỘI

HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES

DEPARTM ENT OF PO ST-G RADUATE STUDIES

•RONUNCIATION ERROR ANALYSIS AND THE WAY TO HAVE BETTER PRO NU NC IA TIO N IN TEACHING ENGLISH AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF CIVIL

ENG IN EER ING

SUPERVISOR : MR PHAM MINH CUO NG M.A CANDIDATE : H O A N G MINH HIEN

THIS DISSERTATION IS PRESENTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLM ENT OF THE R EQ UIREM ENTS OF THE

DEGREE OF MASTER OF TFSOI

À TRUNCTÂM /sj> tHONEniHNUVIÈN

x m J M i S

= ■

Hanoi, March / 2000

Certificate of originality

I certify my authorship of the Thesis

submitted today entitled

PR O N U N C IA TIO N ERR O R ANALYSIS AND THE WAY TO

H A V E BETTER PR O N U N C IA TIO N IN TEA C H IN G

E N G LISH AT HANOI UNIV ERSITY OF CIVIL

EN G IN EER IN G

In terms of the Statement of Requirements For Thesis in

Master's Programmes issued by the Higher Degree Committee

I hereby state that I, Hoang Minh Hien being the candidate for the degree of M aster O f A rts ( TESO L) accept the requirem ents of the University relating to the retention and use of M aster’s theses

deposited

in the library In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of

my thesis deposited in the library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of theses.

Hanoi, M arch 2000 Hoang Minh Hien

Title of Dissertation : Pronunciation error analysis and the way to have

better pronunciation in teaching English at Hanoi

U niversity o f C ivil Engineering.

Name o f C andidate : Hoang Minh Hien

Home address : 89 Đ ê La Thành Đ ống đa - Hà nội.

Award for which you are registered (if appropriate )

Date o f start D issertation : Septem ber 1999.

Date o f Subm ission : M arch 2000

For office use only

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T

So many people help me in doing M.A course First of all, I would like to thank Mr Ta Tien Hung, and Mr Tran Quang Huy for giving me a good chance to complete M.A course, then I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Mrs Nguyen Thi Ninh, Mrs Pham Thu Huong for their great help in choosing the necessary materials and great encouragement

I do not forget to thank all the lectures for their useful lectures on all the subjects I have learnt in my course And the most important lecturer is Mr Pham Minh Cuong - whose lecturers on phonetics gave me a very good idea to choose the subject of my thesis : Phonetics Mr Pham Minh Cuong as my supervisor also helped me so much in choosing the most suitable title for my thesis and his good advices really helped me so much to overcome all the problems ocurred when I began to complete my thesis

Latter on, I would like to thank my parents , my aunt in law , my husband and all of

my colleagues for their great cooperation in my everyday life , which really encouraged me and fostered me to complete my difficult course

A B S T R A C T :

English has been taught as one of important subjects at Hanoi University of Civil Engineering (HUCE) for only about 10 years The teaching practice has revealed many problems Among them the errors in pronunciation is considered the most serious problem

The goal o f my thesis is to find out the common pronunciation errors made by HUCE students ; the reason of their errors and the way to help them avoid making errors

In HUCE , English is taught in four terms The first three terms are for general English ESP is included in the fourth term At HUCE students are trained to learn how to read books on their special subjects so teaching pronunciation is not considered important enough in teaching English language

The ambition of my thesis is that in such a short time we can work out the best way to train our students not only abilities to read books, but also the abilities to speak well And when they leave the college, they can relatively fluently communicate with the foreigners in their future jobs

My thesis also points out the importance of teaching and learning English pronunciation to help awareness of the necessity of good pronunciation and the present problems associated with teaching and learning it

In order to improve the teaching and learning English at HUCE in the thesis the author

also wants to make a comparison between sound systems of English and Vietnamese , propose the way to teach English pronunciation for students at HUCE as the goal of pronunciation teaching is normally to develop the learner’s pronunciation in such a way that enables the learner effectively communicate with native speakers As far as the author is concerned the best way to help students overcome their difficulties in learning pronunciation is to learn their phonetic errors, present the errors and analyze them to find out the best way to control these errors

Referring to this problem ,we have to find the answers to the following questions :Why do some students cannot pronounce some certain English sounds correctly?

What are their tendencies in pronouncing these sound ?

What are the causes of their difficulties ?

Which appropriate methods can help our students overcome these difficulties?

How to make the lessons on phonetics interesting and effective

In order to explain and answer the above-mentioned questions I have made a series of research by questionnaires, negotiating and comparison The topic of these researches

is the sound system of English and Vietnamese As the certain sounds, which cause many phonetic errors are the sounds whish are absent in Vietnamese but present in English And when pronouncing these sounds Vietnamese learners tend to substitute for those sounds which are phonetically similar In this Thesis, the author also suggests some materials for drilling

The author of this thesis hopes that this report will be practical use for teachers and students in the Hanoi University of Civil Engineering

Acknowledgment vi

Abstract vii

Table of contents ix

Introduction xi

C h a p t e r I : A p p r o a c h e s in t e a c h i n g E n g l i s h p r o n u n c i a t i o n 1

C h a p t e r II : T h e r o le o f t e a c h i n g p r o n u n c i a t i o n in l a n g u a g e t e a c h i n g 5 II I : The importance of teaching pronunciation in second language teaching 6

II.2 : The relationship between pronunciation and m eaning 8

II.3: The relationships between pronunciation and the four language s k il l s 13

II.3.1 : Pronunciation and listening 13

II.3.2: Pronunciation and speaking 16

II.3.3: Pronunciation and reading 18

II.3.4: Pronunciation and writing 19

C h a p t e r III : T e a c h i n g E n g l i s h a n d E n g l i s h p r o n u n c i a t i o n in H U C E 21 III 1: A n Overview of teaching English pronunciation in Vietnam 22

II.2: The teaching of English pronunciation at H U C E 24

C h a p t e r IV : T y p i c a l p h o n e t i c e r r o r m a d e b y V i e t n a m e s e l e a r n e r s 26 IV 1 : Errors in pronouncing English v o w e ls 27

IV.2 : Errors in pronouncing English diphthongs 29

IV.3 : Errors in pronouncing English consonants 30

IV.3.2: Errors in pronouncing English c lu s te r 32

C h a p t e r V : E r r o r A n a l y s i s 37

V.l : Vowel s o u n d s : 39

V.1.1 : Similar vowels in Vietnamese and English 40

V l 2: Vietnamese vowel sounds which do not exist in English 42

V 1.3: English vowel sounds which do not exist in Vietnamese 42

V 1.4: Problems for Vietnamese students in pronouncing English vowels 43 V.2: D ip h th o n g s 44

V 2 1: Similar diphthongs in Vietnameses and E n g l i s h 44

V 2.2 : Vietnamese diphthongs whi ch do not exist in E n g lis h 47

V.3 : Consonant sounds : 48

V.3.1 : Similar consonants in Vietnamese and English 49

ix

V.3.2 : Vietnamese consonants that do not exist in English 52

V.3.3 : English consonants that do not exist in Vietnamese 53

V.4 : Allophones 54

C h a p t e r V I : S u g g e s t e d m a t e r i a l 57

VI 1: Introduction 58

VI.2: Suggested Materials 62

VI.2.1: English vowels 62

VI.2.1.1: Theoretical b a c k g ro u n d 62

VI.2.1.2: Suggested M a te ria ls 65

1 : Lesson One / i: / 65

2 : Lesson Two / 3 / 67

3 : Lesson Three / O / 69

4 : Lesson Four / 83 / 71

VI.2.2 : English diphthongs 73

VI.2.2.1: Theoretical b a c k g ro u n d 73

VI.2.2.2: Suggested m a te ria ls 73

1 : Lesson One / I d/ 73

2 : Lesson Two / ed / 75

VI.2.3: English c o n so n an ts 77

VI.2.3.1: Theoretical b a c k g ro u n d 77

VI.2.3.2 : Suggested materials 81

1 : Lesson One./ 0/ 81

2 : Lesson Two / 6 / 84

3 : Lesson Three / j / 86

4 : Lesson Four / 3 / 88

5 : Lesson Five / tj / 90

6 : Lesson Six / d3 / 92

7 : Lesson Seven / j / 94

8 : Lesson Eight / w / 96

9: Lesson nine / p / 98

10: Lesson ten / g / 100

C o n clu sio n 102

Bibliography 103

IN TRO DU CTIO N

“ Speaking a language requires us to matter almost one hundred per cent the system o phonology, and from fifty per cent to ninety per cent the system of grammar, while ; common person can shift with one per cent or less the vocabulary.”

1m term of phonetics, in Learning a new language, the principle problem is the m a ste r

of the sound system- to understand the stream of speech, to hear the distinctive sounc features and to approximate their production

Native speakers are used to pronouncing their mother tongue, their organs of sp eed are used to certain articulations, have a constant accuracy but now they must drill it different habits This hardly avoids difficulties, especially at the beginning, peaking about the difficulties in learning a second language, a well-known linguis L.Bloomfield said: ” W hen practising speaking a foreign language, we often replac< the phonem es o f that language by the closest phonemes in our mother tongue Sometimes, the phonem es in the mother tongue are the same as those o f foreigi tongue, so we can pronounce them rather exactly However, there are phonemes o foreign language which are somewhat like ours can be pronounced wrongly Th< misunderstanding is m ore serious if two or three phonemes of foreign language are th< same as certain single phonem e of native language.In this case we usually place their

by our single phoneme

( L.Bloomfield, Language : 83

To learn a new language is always difficult for every foreigner In term o pronunciation it is rather more difficult Because the people are used to pronouncing their native language Their organs of speech are used to the manner of producing thei mother tongue And For the teachers in our division, learning to speak English sound; correctly is much m ore difficult due to the fact that English language is the seconc foreign language for all o f them Before learning English, the teachers had to lean Russian, the way to produce Russian sounds as correctly as possible And it took their

a long time to teach Russian in the college as well Due to the fact that learning to speak Russian is much more easily than English The form of written and spoken Russian is similar to each other as Vietnamese language Almost all the teachers of Russian found English pronunciation is quite difficult to learn And it is especially difficult when the spoken form and written form are not allways the same and in some cases are even quite different.

Despite all these difficulties almost all of the teachers in our division have successfully completed their learning English in in-sesrvice course at Hanoi University of Foreign Studies and National University And they also prepared well enough to do their teaching English in HUCE

But pronunciation errors are unavoidable for every English speakers and learners ( even for some native speakers ) because of some distinguishing features of English language ( the difference in English written and spoken forms; English stress ; English intonation; English accents )• And as an English learner I used to try all my best to learn it well, but I was not very successful I have learned English since 1988 and I have allways been very careful whenever I had to deal with English pronunciation When doing my M.A course again I had to study English Phonetics ! But by this time I found it more difficult, but also more interesting and I decided to take it as the title of

my thesis I do not want to show off m yself as a brave learner , I only want to take a good chance to study English Phonetics as well as posible Beside it is a good way for

me to help my collegues, my students in their learning English

In my thesis, I would like to present all what I have learnt about English phonetics; The comparision of the importance o f pronunciation and other linguistic fields such as meaning, and the four language skills; the errors that English learners often make and the analyzis about these errors As I think the best way to overcome any mistake is to learn it, to find out the reason, why we do make it My thesis is ended with suggested lessons on some English sounds which do not exist in Vietnamese language and often

cause much confusion for English learners The lessons are adapted form some books

of some famous linguistics

The thesis is devided into six chapters :

Chapter One : The Approaches in Teaching Pronunciation

Chapter Two : The Important Role of Teaching Pronunciation in Teaching English Language

Chapter Three : Teaching English And English Pronunciation In HUCE

Chapter Four : Some Phonetic Erorrs That Vietnamese Learners Often Make

Chapter Five : Errors Analysis

Chapter Six : Suggested Lessons For Some English Difficult Sounds Which Do Not Exist In Vietnamese

Chapter I :

APPROACHES TO TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

Talking about approaches to teaching pronunciation, we have to refer to

- Selection - how the items to be taught are to be defined

Presentation - how they are to be actually taught in the classroom

With reference to selection , the different approaches can be placed along to two dimensions :

+ The size of the unit which is given precedence The separate segment of sound or the larger prosodic unit In the first case, we have a top-down approach, which begins with the articulation of individual vowels and consonants and works

up towards intonation

In the second case, we have a top-down approach, which begins with patterns of intonation and brings separate sounds into sharper focus as and when required Different purposes and stages in learning call for different priorities to top-down or bottom-up approaches

+ In the bottom-up approach, if you teach segments, the supra-segmental features will take care of themselves This has parallels with a structural approach to teaching the grammatical and lexical features of language In the top-down approach, the necessary segmental discriminations will follow of their own accord This is consistent with a more communicative perspective in language teaching.+ A second dimension has to do with whether the focus of attention is primary

on where the students are coming from or where they are going to In the first case,

as a matter of priority teaching of pronunciation will be concerned with possible first language interference And teaching will tend to concentrate on those aspects

of the pronunciation which are likely to present difficulties for particular groups of learners, given their linguistic background In the other case, the target-language behavior will be focused on, and a tendency to concentrate on those aspects of speech are more functionally significant in actual language use

These two dimensions are shown in figure I

Supra-segmental units

LI( Starting point )

B

L2(Destination )

D

Segmental units

(Dalton & Seidlhoffer, 1994 : 71 )

Figure I

With reference to presentation, the three kinds of procedure can be distinguished:

Exposure; exercise and explanation In the exposure procedure , spoken language

can occur in the context of some tasks and other activities which motivate the use of

language The specific sound features can be identified by exercise and practice in

perception and production can also be provided Exposure and exercise procedures are both based on the belief that students will be able to use the input for intake and learn the distinctions presented to them, either by inference or imitation In

explanation , the teacher can explain students in such a way that help them be aware

of phonetic and phonological facts In practice, these procedure can combine in various ways by answering the questions

- What is important to establish?

Which procedure to choose ?

Are they appropriate for particular features of pronunciation, particular purposes

or particular students?

According to these above dimensions we can have the diagram of approaches as follows

F ig u re 2

C h a p t e r II :

THE ROLE OF TEA C HIN G PRO NUNCIATION IN

L ANGUAG E TEACHING

11.1: The importance of teaching pronunciation in second

language teaching.

Pronunciation is an important component of English teaching, particularly in a non- English speaking country like Viet Nam Pronunciation can be defined in general teams as the production of significant sound in two senses Firstly, it is part of a code o f a particular language Or we can learn it as the production and reception of sounds o f speech Secondly, because sound is used to achieve meaning in context

of use, we can talk about pronunciation with reference to acts of speaking

When teaching a foreign language, one of the important tasks of the teacher is to help the learners to correctly produce the sounds of the target language So the teaching o f pronunciation is always a beginning part of teaching a foreign language Good pronunciation is very important for communication and for an active knowledge o f a foreign language So when learning pronunciation the learners have

to realize that they are not only learning to correctly produce the sounds, but also practicing the skills needed to communicate in real life

After several years of studying English in Vietnamese schools, students may know many English words and grammatical structures as well as know how to express complicated ideas, but they still find speaking English difficult And few o f them understand the concept of pronunciation Sometimes English native speakers do not understand what Vietnamese students have said This is not because of a lack of words or wrong sentence structure, but because of faulty pronunciation This situation is frustrating for students They have a good passive knowledge o f English, but cannot communicate because of pronunciation problem

Clear pronunciation is an important goal in language learning because poor pronunciation often prevents communication It is difficult to say that English is more difficult to pronounce than any other language But it is obviously that

teaching the sounds of English is difficult The reason is that there is a poor correlation between the sounds of English and letters of English alphabet That is why English dictionaries always give word transcription But in fact, the transcription in dictionaries is not always the form , which a word takes in natural speech In dictionary the pronunciation of a word is the word spoken in isolation, but in speaking most words are not pronounced in isolation They are pronounced in-groups And being pronounced in-groups the pronunciation of each member always influence other words or being influenced by others.

In order to achieve more success in teaching and learning pronunciation, before teaching English sounds it is desirable to give students a certain knowledge of practical phonetics such as air-stream mechanism, organs of speech, stress, the classification of English vowels, diphthongs and consonants A knowledge of sound classification will help students to understand the English sounds system and the order in which the sounds are taught A knowledge o f articulation processes will help students pronounce the sounds correctly and latter on identify errors in their own pronunciation

In “General phonetics” R.M Heffner presents a very clear definition o f phonetics and other concepts related to phonetics such as the sound of speech; phonemes According to Heffner the fundamental task of the phonetics and the primary business of phonetics is to identify and to describe the sounds of speech Phonetics then is the study o f the sound of speech As a science it seeks to discover general truths and to formulate general laws relating to these sounds and their production

In the sound sequence a number of configurations, which seems to be alike as we hear them and also in the manner in they are produced

Before giving concrete manners to produce a sound, Heffner points out the physiology of speech According to him, all the parts of a body participating in the

process of making a sound The Lungs, the tongue, the mouth, the teeth and so on And the way these parts work together to produce a sound (sound waves; vibration; energy; intensity; loudness; noises .) as well as how sounds are heard The most important part of the book refers to The Sound of Speech In this part Heffner clarified English vowels, consonants, diphthongs in isolation and in context Students have to learn by heart the classification of the sounds and the description

of the sounds as well

Nowadays English is spoken widely in the world But its pronunciation is not the same There are so many different English as American English; Indian English; Australian English; British English

Peter Roach also states that it is particularly important to learn to think English pronunciation in terms of phonemes than letters of the Alphabet And that when teaching English , firstly we need to teach English phonemes as they are the most important aspect of speech Nowadays, the symbols of English phonemes in different dictionaries are not always the same And English learners have often been confused by finding that the symbols used in one dictionary are different from the ones they have He also emphasizes that the symbols used in

this book “ English Phonetics and Phonology” are respect those devised by A.C Gimson for the “ English Pronouncing Dictionary These symbols are now used in most m odern works on English pronunciation published in Britain

II.2: The relationship between pronunciation and m eaning

When learning a foreign language, firstly the learner need to know some patterns, which are necessary in communication And for the beginners, they only have to know how to pronounce this pattern and in which situations they are used without knowledge of the grammar.( But they ought to know the meaning of these

patterns ) So in the very first step meaning and pronunciation both are important ones.

It is obviously that language is an instrument of communication Even for a new­born baby, when he/she wants to express his/her wants he/she tries to use the organ

of speech to produce a sequence of sounds so that the listeners can reply Although this reaction is known as the basic instance of the human being, but it also indicates that pronunciation is always the very first element that everyone has to deal with in their lives And for the language learner pronunciation is very important Everything can be expressed by a word and sound ( pronunciation ) and its meaning ( concept )

We can have a triangle to express the relationship of these relations ( page 11)

sound / teibl /

word : table meaning( concept): piece of

furniture consisting of a flat top supported on one or more legs

(A.S Hornby, 1989 : 1306 )

It is certainly that the sounds and the meaning of a word are inseparatable The word is a basic unit of language And the basic has two aspects : the form and the meaning The form is the string of sound and the concept or meaning must be linked to specific sounds Referring to this problem Foreskin ( 1978 : 138 ) said :

“ Every speaker o f a language knows thousands , even tens of thousands of words Knowing a word means knowing both its sound and its meaning Someone who

does not know English would not know where one word begins or ends in hearing

an utterance like

[ da ket eit dc rat ] He would not even be able to tell how many words have been

said A speaker of English, however, will have no difficulty in segmenting the sound into individual words “ The cat ate the rat ”

It is known that a word always has two types of meaning : word meaning ( the meaning of the word itself when it stand in isolation ) and other meaning in context ( when the word is put in different context, different situations )

For exam ple : The word table , when it is identified as a noun, it can have these

m eaning :

1 Piece of furniture consisting of a flat top supported on one or more legs

2 People seated at a table for a meal: “ H is jo kes am used the whole ta b le”.

3 Food provided at table: “ He keeps a good table” i.e provides good meals.

4 L arge area o f high level land ( also lablc-land ) : plateau.

5 List o f facts or figures systematically arranged, esp in columns: A table o f content.

6 At a table(while) having a meal: Children must learn to behave at table.

And when it is identified as a verb, it means to submit for discussion : The

O pposition have tabled several am endm ents to the b i l l

( A.S Hornby-O xfo rd A d v a n ced L ea rn er's D ic tio n a ry -1989:1306 ).

Because the meaning of a word is various, the task for the learner is to correctly identify the suitable meaning of the word in concrete situation, no matter what

sounds he/she heard Even for the similar sounds ( because of linking ):

I scream and ice-cream the listener can easily know the meaning in the concrete context / <//// having an ice-cream and I scream loudly

In English language, there are many words which have similar pronunciation but different meanings In this case, the learners may be confused if they do not know their meanings well enough

For example : Ship and Sheep

It and Eat

Man and Men

Night and Knight

Knew and N ew

In practice, sometimes when the learner hears a word , he/she may not know how to spell it The meaning may be guessed in the context, in relation to other words Firstly he/she needs to write out the transcription and then can use the ‘w o rd ’

correctly in the sim ilar situation This kind o f learning is only useful for the learner in certain speaking situation but never in writing task

Another difficulty for English learner dealing with some English words , which have the same form/ spelling but different pronunciation and so different meaning The factor that causes this problem is English stress

For example : ‘discus / ’diskds / means a noun : đĩa ( trong môn thể thao némđĩa, meanwhile discus / disk,\s / means a verb : thảo luận, tranh luận

Or ‘record / ‘rekd:d / means a noun : sổ sách, hồ sơ,ký lục

and r e ’cord / ri’k o:d / a verb means : ghi âm

In English, stress is the way we emphasize something or give it prominence, and if

we listen to spoken language we can hear that certain elements seem to be given more prominence or emphasis The term stress is used in two different wavs :

First, it can be used as conventional label for the overall prominence of certain syllables over others

Second, the use of the term stress is concerned with the way in which speakers actually achieve this impression of prominence “In producing the continuous sound-stream of speech, speakers do not keep up a steady degree of articulatory energy : over some stretches the energy level in the articulatory and respiratory and respiratory muscles is higher than in others”

(Dalton & Seidlhoffer, 1994 : 33)

In the above example, word-stress helps the listener to recognize words, so placing the stress on the wrong syllable is a common cause of misunderstanding English word has its own rhythm The rhythm of English speech depends on the alternation

of stressed and unstressed syllable This speech rhythm is important for understanding

In contract with Vietnamese language there is somewhat similar to Vietnamese intonation With different intonation we can make different meaning of the word or

of the sentence

For example : A: Anh giúp em nấu cơm nhé ?

B: Gì ?

If the intonation o f ‘GÌ ’is lightly raised , it means a question

But if the intonation is sharply fallen , it means disagreement

II ? : The relationship between pronunciation and the fo u r language skills.

11.3.1: The relationship between pronunciation and listening :

“ Listening is an integral part of all language skills, whether the activity is speaking, reading or writing, it is somehow related to listening For example, learning to read

is learning to associate the spoken sounds of language with the written symbols on a page and responding in the same way that one would to spoken language To learners, particularly beginners, reading is the process of reconstructing task that someone has to represent the words that are heard by ears or in the mind”

(De Haven, 1979 : 147 )

By listening the learner can get the primary input of language And language learners usually begin with listening first, then they learn to speak and later to read and to write Firstly, without knowledge of the language we are learning, only by listening to the native speaker saying, we can imitate them , speak after them and pronounce the words somehow like them Then we can continue with reading the ready-known sentences and writing them down This kind of learning a foreign language has its advantages and disadvantages And as for me, It think the most disadvantage is t h a t : to have good pronunciation, a language learner has to listen to the standard pronunciation of the language But the chance to do this is rarely

In our university - a non-language university there haven’t been any English speakers coming to work on teaching English language The usual “English speakers” our students listen to are their Vietnamese teachers So if the teacher does not have good pronunciation he/she can have bad effects on their students’ pronunciation It is seriously dangerous if they are used to the pronunciation Once something become o n e’s habit, it is too difficult to correct

According to David and Rinvalucri, in teaching listening, dictation can provide a wealth of example of ways in which dictation can be used as a motivating and productive ‘tool ’for learning and teaching And ,again, in that case the teacher should have good pronunciation Besides, if the teacher’s pronunciation is quite different from the pronunciation they listen to in the tape recordings or difficult to hear, to understand, the effect is much worse and students may not consider their teacher as high as he deserved That is why learning to have good pronunciation is not only the desire of the learners but firstly also a crucial needs for language teachers.

However, because of the special feature of our university is non-language

e n v iro n m e n t The aim o f learning is to train our students’ reading and writing skills

so the listening tasks are always a kind of listening for main information And our students only pay their attention to the main information, main context of the listening task but not to the way to pronounce the words correctly In the situation where students do not have motivation and time to learn about pronunciation, apparently the teachers also do not consider it necessary to give lessons on this topic and with the responsibility o f the language teacher, knowing the importance of pronunciation he/she can only make them know about it by correcting their pronouncing mistakes orally

The lack o f knowledge of pronunciation is also one of the reasons why up to now listening has always been the most difficult language skill for every language learner especially for English learner Although the main reason is that the distinguishing feature of English is that English words are written and spelt differently And the words itself differently pronounced in isolation and in connected speech , when it is put in a sentence , in accordance with other words Another reason is because students themselves do not have good pronunciation,

they pronounce the words not correctly enough to understand other native speakers speaking And in fact, when learning language students often start with pronunciation In order to understand the spoken language students have to listen to the sound o f language But they do not understand this fact Consequently different sounds will bring different signals to the ears of listeners and then they will have different ideas in their minds And certainly faulty pronunciation will lead to the production of different strings of sounds and so the listeners will get signals that differ from the intended ones.

Referring to the difficulty in listening to English words Christian Dalton & Barbara Seidlhofer points out that , in connected speech, native speakers tend to minimize articulatory effort and maximize ease of articulation In minimizing their efforts in articulation, they tend to make adjacent sounds more like each other (assimilation ), and sometimes they leave a sound out altogether(elision ), but they may also insert

a sound in order to make for a smoother transition ( linking )

Dealing with assim ilation when w e speak at normal speech, individual sound

segments follow each other so quickly that the tongue may never reach the ‘ ideal position’ connected with a particular sounds ( It is the exact position of the tongue and other articulators) and in connected speech it depends on the neighboring sounds M any words can have varying pronunciation according to the surroundings they are in

For exam ple : the word go o d by itself is pronounced / g o d /

But in phrases g o o d boy it may become / g ob bDi /

a g ood m an it may become / g o b maen /

a go od g irl it may become / g o g g3l /

they pronounce the words not correctly enough to understand other native speakers speaking And in fact, when learning language students often start with pronunciation In order to understand the spoken language students have to listen to the sound of language But they do not understand this fact Consequently different sounds will bring different signals to the ears o f listeners and then they will have different ideas in their minds And certainly faulty pronunciation will lead to the production of different strings o f sounds and so the listeners will get signals that differ from the intended ones.

Referring to the difficulty in listening to English words Christian Dalton & Barbara Seidlhofer points out that , in connected speech, native speakers tend to minimize articulatory effort and maximize ease of articulation In minimizing their efforts in articulation, they tend to make adjacent sounds more like each other (assimilation ), and sometimes they leave a sound out altogether(elision ), but they may also insert

a sound in order to make for a smoother transition ( linking )

Dealing with assim ilation ,when we speak at normal speech, individual sound

segments follow each other so quickly that the tongue may never reach the ‘ ideal position’ connected with a particular sounds ( It is the exact position of the tongue and other articulators) and in connected speech it depends on the neighboring sounds M any words can have varying pronunciation according to the surroundings they are in

For exam ple : the word g o o d by itself is pronounced / g o d /

But in phrases g o o d boy it may become / g ob boi /

a g o o d m an it may become / g o b maen /

a g o o d g irl it may become / g o g g3l /

Another example : the final t may becom e p before a following bilabial, or k before

a following velar Thus that boy are pronounced / dret bDi /

or may be pronounced / dasp bDi / and that girl are pronounced / dret g 31/

or may be pronounced / dcek g3l /

( Wells and Colson, 1971: 53-54)

Assimilation is a difficult factor in pronunciation but luckily it rarely happens as the context usually m akes things quite clear

Like assimilation, elision m akes words and sentences easier to say Elision happens

if the articulation is weaken too much , the sound may disappear altogether Naturally, it is the vowels from unstressed syllable which are the first to go in not- so-careful pronunciation

For exam ple :

The word practical can have careful pronunciation [ prasktikal ]

or quick pronunciation [ praekti kl ]

And the phrase needs o f the can have quick pronounce [ m:d za 6d ]

(Dalton and Seidlhofer, 1994: 30)

All o f these cause so m any difficulties in listening task I will discuss about this problem in the chapter analyzing the pronunciation errors that our students often make

11.3.2 : The relationship between pronunciation an d speaking :

Knowledge of pronunciation plays an important role in speaking It helps language learners recognize the sound before producing it Mac Carthy said ( 1979;7) :

“ Speaking and pronouncing both relate to the some basic activities, but pronouncing concentrates on how the speaking is done, though speaking necessarily involves pronouncing, a consideration of speaking takes into account also what is said, the idea expressed, the words used, the construction and turns of phrase, the style and so forth In English phonetic and phonology, Peter Roach also points out the basic activity which takes place in both speaking and pronouncing: “ All the sound we m ake when we speak are the result of muscles contracting, the muscles in the chest that we use for breathing produce the flow of air that is needed for almost all speech sounds : muscles in the larynx produce many different modifications in the flow o f air from the chest to the mouth After passing through the larynx the air goes through what we called the vocal tract, which ends at the mouth and nostrils Taking about the relationship between pronunciation and listening, I already have

m entioned to assimilation, elision and linking And the tendency towards simplification and ease of articulation is universal, different languages and different dialects o f the same language may follow different path

For example : In Vietnamese language, we also find assimilation In speaking,

Vietnamese people tend to pronounce gi, r the same as d\ tr as ch ; v as x This

problem cause the difference between phonetic transcription which is shown by the symbol [ ] and phonemic transcription / / Every time when an English learnermeets a new word he/she always looks it up in a dictionary and its phonemic transcription as well Because phonemic transcription is the transcription of each phonemic within the word, it is the most common and least cumbersome method of indicating unambiguously the spoken relation of a language “ It is particularly useful as a corrective instrument in the case of a language such as English where the orthography fails to mirror consistently the present-day pronunciation of a foreign language, the allophonic conventions to be related to a phonemic symbol being

easily leant Sometimes, however, it may be helpful, at least in the early stages, to include symbols representing allophone in order to emphasize a particular feature of the language, e.g in teaching English ."

( Gimson, 1962 : 55 )

I I 3 J : The relationship between pronunciation and reading :

Reading is one of the important activities in language learning, so when teaching a language, we have to take into account reading Reading is not only a way to get information and a pleasure activity, but also a way to consolidating and expanding our knowledge of language We can describe reading as a process of turning selected printing cues into an oral language equivalent to retrieve meaning Reading involves recognition o f certain patterns of symbols and these symbols represent particular sounds which form the word we use or hear spoken A good reader can pick up the various signal that a writer transmit and to use them to, link idea together and predict the form and content of the message A correct prediction

m eans successful comprehension “ Reading, looked at this way, is seen as a process o f asking questions and finding the answers to those questions The reader needs training in predicting how a text is going to develop and what a writer is likely to say next.”

(Kenedy and Bolitho, 1984 : 73 )

In general, reading books enables us to enrich our English vocabulary, which helps

us so much in learning Reading books on phonetics in particular is especially very important one We can get more and more knowledge as well as a thorough understanding of the subject we learn Doing the M.A course , we have to read so many books At first most of us found it difficult to do But gradually, we got used

to reading and now, we cannot do anything without reading In my opinion, in learning new words, the best way to remember the new word is to write and read

aloud the word at the same time By writing we can remember the spelling of the word, by reading aloud, we can train our pronunciation and distinguish the difference between spoken and written forms of the word.

II.3.4 : The relationship between pronunciation and writing :

Writing is one of the language skill and it is often taught to learner after teaching listening, speaking and reading It is obviously that, spelling is a part of writing, errors in spelling may cause problems in understanding the meaning of words or sentences Spelling is also linked to pronunciation : faulty pronunciation tends to lead to misspelling

For example : When hear the utterance : “ Is he a student ?” because of linking

some students write Is she a student ? “

Or “ A single room fo r tonight” may become “ A single room fo r two nights “ And

“ He walks to work.” may become “He works two work

This error often applies in English, where one letter does not always correspond to one and the same sound

According to Gronnel (1979 ; 202 ) the relationship between English pronunciation and spelling is described as a two-way system and not entirely reversible, that is from spelling-to-sound for reading, and from sound-to-spelling for writing This means that readers can identify the printed words which they are already have in their spoken vocabulary by the use of spelling-to-sound correspondences This is particularly useful in the beginning stages of reading because from a relatively small set of correspondences, a large number of words can be generated This gives learners the ability to read many words on their own On the other hand, good pronunciation seems to be associated with accurate spelling, so the use of sound-to- spelling correspondences can help students to spell better Although spelling is only

a part of writing, but it is very much important one When we mark the

composition, we have to pay attention to the good content, good expression and the

last one is always spelling Incorrect spelling may impede the communication

process There is a fact that reading and writing

activities are concerned with a written text, not with the spoken word Reading is concerned with the recognition of aspects of that structure, whereas writing has to

do with the production of the text

C h a p te r H I :

TEACHING ENGLISH AND ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

IN HUCE

III 1: An overview o f teaching English and English pronunciation

Vietnam

Before 1945, Vietnam was dominated by France and French was the second language to be taught in primary schools after the native language French was also the medium of instruction in secondary schools and tertiary instructions in Vietnam Only in some m ajor secondary schools , which were sponsored by the government, English was taught as a foreign language The teachers of English there were French, and English text books used at that time were written by French authors Later, some Vietnam ese teachers such as Nguyen Van Khon, Tran Van Dien, Le Ba Kong , who had learned English at these schools, wrote materials for teaching English to Vietnamese learners

At that time Vietnam ese learners started to learn English by using word lists In order to help V ietnam ese learners to pronounce the English words ( not individual sounds ), the teachers o f English tried to find corresponding sounds or combinations

of sounds in Vietnamese words

For example the letter ‘I ’ is pronounced /ai/ as /ai/ in Vietnamese ; ‘for’ is

pronounced as p h o

And when they pronounce some English words that do not exist in Vietnamese, but they do not find the corresponding Vietnamese sounds to help them pronounce those sounds, they tend to make these similar to Vietnamese sounds which sound like English words, even though the combination of sounds did not make any sense For example :

why was pronounced / hoai/

work was pronounced / y ok /

This way of teaching was designed to help Vietnamese learners to learn English

quickly and easily But obviously, this way of teaching pronouncing create many problems.

- Firstly, by using a meaningful Vietnamese word as an approximation of the English sound students would have an absurd semantic connotation with the Vietnamese word when using English

- Secondly, because English and Vietnamese sounds and syllable structure are not the same, a Vietnamese “ transcription” of the English word led to a Vietnamese, and not an English pronunciation

F or exam ple

The word “ teacher” is pronounced / title1/ but may be pronounced / tit cd/

But at this time this kind of pronunciation is acceptable It did not matter much to learners ,because the aim of learning English was to promote reading and translating abilities and the method of teaching was grammar-translation

In 1959, four years after the liberation of the North of Vietnam, the Teachers’ Training University was established ( it is now Foreign Language College of The National University ) There was a department of foreign languages English, French, Chinese and Russian were taught in this college

At that time, an English lesson was always started with word lists, and the teacher asked students to imitate what he/ she had pronounced Each word was practised two or three times in the classroom, then the students learned to read the text

This way of teaching English was continued for some years When the Hanoi Foreign Language College was established and English was taught there, the teachers of English in this college always started English teaching with English pronunciation Step by step, English pronunciation became a separate subject in the teaching of English

English became an important foreign language in V ie tn a m e se tertiary education system only in late 1980s and early 1990s under the influence of the launch of “ open door ” and “ renovation ” policy Latter on, English teaching and learning has vigorously developed and captured a very important position very soon.

In Hanoi University of Foreign Studies and Hanoi Foreign Languages Teachers’ Training College the objectives of teaching English is aimed to teach active language skills : that is to enable students to communicate in English, both orally and in writing During the course, students learn English pronunciation , spoken English, listening, reading and writing , English grammar, Vietnamese-English translation, English-Vietnamese translation and English civilization And because the students in these colleges are trained to be teachers o f English They not only need to have correct pronunciation, but also need to know how to pronounce sounds

The spectrum of general English courses, both private and public, has become more and more various to meet the dramatically increasing demands of the society Facing challenges of the market economy, most of English teachers had to make special effort to improve their qualifications And special courses and programs on teachers’ qualification improvement usually funded by the government or international organizations have been held A number of English teachers have been sent to English speaking countries for further studies These activities have resulted

in considerable qualification improvement of the teaching staff

I l l.2 : T e a c h i n g E n g l is h a n d E n g l i s h p r o n u n c ia t io n in H U C E

The development of the division of foreign languages of Hanoi University of Civil Engineering can be an example of the affect of these programs In 1993 most of the English teacher, who used to work as Russian teachers were still attending

retraining tertiary education programs of English led by in-service training departments o f either National University ( NU) or Hanoi University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) There were only two B.A of English, who received “ formal training” tertiary education of English language in the division A lack of teacher forced the division to employ all these “ in-service training graduates ” as English teachers.

Presently, we have one Master of Arts; one P.G of Dip Ed Sidney University; five P.G students of HUFS in the division

In the situation when almost all the teachers have to learn English in in-service Course, the time for their learning is limited They have not been able to fulfill their mission completely as well as they expected But because of the great demand of teachers of English, all the teachers had to give English lessons right after they have finished their course There was no time for them to improving and maintaining what they have learned That is the main reason why they sometimes make mistakes

in their teaching Although in learning, mistakes are unavoidable, but in teaching,

we must try to minimize making mistakes

And the in-side reason is the age of the learners; the habit in speaking mother tongue and the first foreign language and the difficulties in everyday life

The out-side reason is that English pronunciation itself is very difficult; the time for learning is limited and the lack of suitable materials Up to now there have not been any special materials about English pronunciation in HUCE In HUCE English have always been a sub-subject so its pronunciation is not an exception So in my thesis I would like to introduce some materials of some famous linguistics The materials are clear and short enough to read through They refer to some typical sounds which

do not exist in Vietnamese, the classification and description of these sounds are also presented

C h a p t e r IV :

THE ERRORS TH AT V IE T N A M E SE STU D EN TS

O FTEN HAVE IN PR O N UNC IATIO N