correcting english consonants commonly mispronounced by second-year non-english majors at ulis_vnuh = sửa các lỗi sai phát âm phụ âm tiếng anh thường mắc phải ở sinh viên ngoại ngữ tại trường đại học ngoại ngữ

Problems with Pronouncing English Consonants among Learners of English as a Second/ Foreign Language .... What are students’ remaining problems in terms of pronunciation of English conso

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACCEPTANCE i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

PART I INTRODUCTION 1

1 Statement of the Problem and the Rationale for the Study 1

2 Aims of the Study and Research Questions 3

3 Scope of the Study 4

4 Methodology 4

4.1 Design 4

4.2 Participants 4

4.3 Data collection instruments 5

4.4 Data collection process 6

4.5 Data analysis 6

5 Significance of the Study 7

PART 2 DEVELOPMENT 8

CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW 8

1.1 Key Concepts 8

1.1.1 English Pronunciation 8

1.1.2 English Sounds and English Consonants 9

1.1.3 Vietnamese Consonants and a Comparison with English Consonant System 11 1.2 Related Studies 13

1.2.1 Problems with Pronouncing English Consonants among Learners of English as a Second/ Foreign Language 14

1.2.2 Causes of Troubles with English Sounds 16

1.2.3 Teaching Techniques 17

CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY 24

2.1 Participants 24

2.2 Data Collection Instruments 26

2.2.1 Questionnaire 26

2.2.2 Interviews 28

2.2.3 Audio Tapes 29

2.2.4 Field Notes 29

2.3 Action Plan 30

2.3.1 Material 32

2.3.2 Research plan 33

CHAPTER 3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 38

3.1 Research Question 1 What are English consonants that are often mispronounced by non-English majors? 38

3.2 Research Question 2 What are the reasons for the students’ problems of pronunciation? 42

3.2.1 Inadequate exposure to English language 42

3.2.2 Inadequate understanding of English sounds 43

3.2.3 Influence of mother tongue 44

3.2.4 Influence of first foreign language, i.e major 45

3.2.5 Influence of hometown dialects 46

3.2.6 Hesitation to express oneself 47

3.2.7 Other reasons 47

3.3 Research Question 3 What are the appropriate techniques employed? 51

3.3.1 Phonemic chart, Sound description 51

3.3.2 Minimal pairs 53

3.3.3 Tongue twisters 54

3.3.4 Comparing students’ speech with the model 55

3.3.5 Games 56

3.3.6 Continuous feedback 56

3.4 Research Question 4 What are students’ remaining problems in terms of pronunciation of English consonants after the project? What are possible reasons? 57

PART III CONCLUSION 64

1 Major Findings of the Study 64

2 Limitations of the Study 67

3 Suggestions for Further Research 68

4 Recommendations 69

REFERENCE 71 APPENDICES I

APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 II APPENDIX 3 IV APPENDIX 4 V APPENDIX 5 VII

LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND ABBREVIATION

TABLES

Table 1: Classification of English consonants

Table 2: Vietnamese initial consonants

Table 3 Vietnamese final consonants

Table 4 Classification of participants basing on gender and time learning English

Table 5 Research program – action plan

Table 6 Students’ problems of English consonants at the beginning of the project

Table 7 Problems of consonants by students in group mini-presentation

Table 8 Problems of consonants by students in voice recordings

Table 9 students’ problems of consonant pronunciation at final process

FIGURES

Figure 1: Features of pronunciation

Figure 2: Stern’s range of procedures for teaching pronunciation

Figure 3 Action research cycle

PART I INTRODUCTION

This initial part serves stating the problem and the rationale for the study,

as well as the aims, objectives, design and the scope of the whole paper Above all, it is in this chapter that the research questions are identified to work as clear guidelines for the whole research

1 Statement of the Problem and the Rationale for the Study

The essentiality of teaching and learning the pronunciation of a language has been proved by many researchers in the world Setter and Jenkins (2005: 3) did show the significance of the ability to communicate orally in English In other words, it is the key factor to maintain successful oral communication Speaking such an international language, effective communicators of English, especially non-natives need to have an acceptable pronunciation Therefore, learning pronunciation is of significance in English study for learners of English

as a foreign language (EFL learners)

In University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University Hanoi (VNU-ULIS), English has been taught in all faculties It is the major of students of Faculty of English Language Teaching Education Other students learn English as their second foreign language The latter group are addressed non-English majors in this study They spend four semesters, from the fourth to the seventh ones, officially learning English at university The current study take non-English majors in their first semester, who are assumed at elementary level as its subjects

Despite its significance to the successful learning of English, pronunciation has not been paid enough attention considering its proportion in the syllabus of non-English majors at VNU-ULIS With 4 or 3 credits (for non-English majors at their first and later terms respectively), those students are required to cover all four skills The limitation of time is a challenge to ensure students’ improvement in pronunciation as it is not a separate skill or subject As

an important condition to the proficiency of listening and speaking skills (Setter and Jenkins, 2005: 1), it is believed that pronunciation deserves to receive more emphasis in the syllabus of non-English majors

English pronunciation is divided into two main aspects: segmental and suprasemental (Roach: 2000, Cruttenden: 2001) The former, also called sounds

or phonemes, forms different segments of words The modification of one sound may alter word meaning and consequently influence the meaning of the whole utterance or discourse Moreover, a consistent mispronunciation of a range of phonemes may be the failure to the intelligibility of the speech especially when both listeners and speakers are not native speakers (Kelly, 2003: 11) Considering their basic but undeniable role in teaching and learning English pronunciation, sounds are in focus of the study

Despite its importance to enhance learners’ communicative competence, teaching and learning pronunciation has never been an easy task It is even “the most difficult aspect” of second language as stated by Setter and Jenkins (2005: 1) In regard with such a complex issue, particularly English sounds, a great deal

of research has been done to identify learners’ pronunciation problems and their reasons (see Chan & Li, 2000, Nguyen, 2005, Walker, 2000, Kenworthy, 1988) Research on techniques and activities to facilitate teaching and learning has been

also a field of interest to many researchers (see Kelly, 2003, To, 2006) Fraser (2001) suggested not only approach but also specific techniques to teach pronunciation at various students’ levels while Hancock (2000) provided games that can be integrated in class to boost students’ understanding and performance However, as mentioned previously, little research has been conducted in the field teaching pronunciation of sounds to non-English majors at VNU-ULIS Hence, there exists a gap which the current research is aimed at bridging

2 Aims of the Study and Research Questions

The project will be carried out to reach the following aims Firstly, the researcher will attempt to set an overview of the research subjects by detecting English sounds which are frequently mispronounced by many of the student participants This part of the study can enrich the abundant research on ESL learners’ problems of pronunciation (Chan & Li, 200, Nguyen, 2005, Sang,

2007, Vu, 2008) Secondly, the factors that caused the problems will be identified, so that possible techniques to solve the problems will be proposed Finally, students’ progress after the project will be assessed 18 students of Chinese Faculty will be involved in the research as participants

The study will, therefore, answer four questions below:

1 What are English consonants that are often mispronounced by English majors?

non-2 What are the reasons for the students’ problems of pronunciation?

3 What are appropriate techniques to correct the problems?

4 What are students’ improvements in terms of pronunciation of English consonants after the project?

3 Scope of the Study

As stated above, the research will focus on non-English majors from different faculties at VNU-ULIS in their third semester when they begin learning the language formally at university Those students at their first English term are chosen because it is believed that any help given at their beginning period may have better effect later on Certain teaching techniques related to pronunciation training will be studied and discussed to find out the suitable ones The treatment will be conducted on the subjects during 10 weeks’ time of the semester

4.3 Data collection instruments

In order to address three research questions, field notes, audio tapes, questionnaires and semi-interviews will be used as the data collection methods

Field notes will be employed by the teacher researcher in every session of the research project to detect students’ errors of English sounds as well as judging the effectiveness of teaching techniques applied in class

At the first week of the research project, questionnaires will be conducted

on the students to collect students’ personal information that is useful for considering their pronunciation ability as well as Moreover, it is used find out those students’ opinions on the reasons for their mispronunciation

Semi-structured interviews will be conducted in front of the whole research group in the third, the ninth and the fifteenth weeks of the semester The information will be employed to clarify that collected from questionnaires if necessary and seek for deeper responses

Audio tapes will be used as a means of assessing students’ pronunciation ability through their voice recordings prepared at home These data will be collected in weeks 7 and 13 of the semester

Details about the above research methods will be discussed in the third chapter, named Methodology

4.4 Data collection process

Data from field notes and journals will be keep during all 10 weeks so that the state and changes of the class can be well followed Whereas, those from questionnaire, audio tapes and interviews will be collected at the specific time mentioned above

Research question 2: the analysis of data through interviews and questionnaires will help find out the causes of students’ pronunciation problems

Research question 3: the effectiveness of teaching and correcting techniques will be judged during the whole process Then the ones which work well on the student participants will be chosen

Research question 4 Teachers’ field notes on mini-presentations in the last week and during the research project as well as the students recordings in week 13 will be the answer to the last question

5 Significance of the Study

Once completed, the project will serve as part of continuous research on the teaching of pronunciation for non-English majors at ULIS - VNUH

Firstly, the participant students will experience helpful activities and thus improve their pronunciation of English consonants Secondly, the results of the study will be a reference to teachers of English while they work on this part of pronunciation training

In this first chapter, the researcher has discussed the following points:

(a) Statement of the problem and the rationale for the study

(b) Aims and objectives of the study

(c) Scope of the study

(d) Methods of the study

(e) Significance of the study

These issues have not only justified the major contents and structures of the study but will also work as the guidelines for the rest of the paper

PART 2 DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the literature on the current research will be discussed concerning background and related studies It begins with the key concepts of English pronunciation and sound and a comparison with that of Vietnamese Then an overview of related studies will serve revealing the research gap and justifying the aims and objectives of the present paper

1.1 Key Concepts

1.1.1 English Pronunciation

Though reaching a general agreement on the significance of pronunciation

in second or foreign language learning, researchers have not come to a consensus about its definition

According to Daniel Jones (1998:5), pronunciation refers to the way people pronounce words, which narrows down its scope to word-level Murphy (2003 cited in To, et al., 2006) discussed the term in view of hearers’ perception

of the information conveyed through speakers’ pronouncing of not only “words” but also “phrases and sentences” In other words, he emphasized on message-

transferring function of pronunciation However, this is still too general a definition Setter and Jenkins (2005: 1) provides readers with a clear view of the issue:

“Pronunciation involves the production and perception of segmentals (sounds), both alone and in the stream of speech, where they undergo number of

modifications and interact with suprasegmental (prosodic) features, particularly stress and intonation”

The researcher is in favor of the last definition for its inclusion of all the aspects that are universally accepted in the pronunciation of a language Details are presented in figure 1 below

(adapted from Kelly, 2000) Figure 1: Features of pronunciation

1.1.2 English Sounds and English Consonants

Among the two major features of pronunciation, the current study concerns with only sounds (or phonemes) Phonemes are the smallest units of sounds which distinguish two words English has 44 phonemes, 24 consonants and 20 vowels (see Jones, 1998, Roach, 2000, Cruttenden, 2001)

Despite being a debatable issue, a distinction between consonantal and vowel phonemes is of significance concerning the current study It is common to distinguishing them according to their production, which is partly agreed by Hancock (1995), Cruttenden (2001) and Jones (1998) Regarding such a criterion, vowels are those sounds that are production without any obstruction to the flow of air from the larynx to the lips; the other sounds are named consonants (Roach, 2000: 10) In an attempt to define the two terms, Cruttenden (2001) emphasized the central position in syllables of vowels and the utterance at syllable edges of their counterparts Based on the combination of ways discussed above, /w, j/ are semi-vowels despite their vowel-like production

English consonants were categorized according to their manner, place of articulation and voicing, which is illustrated as in table 1 below

Palato-Palatal Velar Glottal Plosive + 

(adapted from Cruttenden, 2001) Table 1: Classification of English consonants

1.1.3 Vietnamese Consonants and a Comparison with English Consonant

System

A comparison between English and Vietnamese consonant systems can help identify items that the two languages do not share, which could be a major cause of students’ mispronunciation as shown by Dr Duong Thi Nu (2009) Therefore, the classification of Vietnamese consonants are provided here for this purpose

Manner of articulation

Place of articulation

Labial Alveolar

Alveo-palatal Palatal Velar Glottal

Manner of articulation Place of articulation

Bilabial Alveolar Velar

There is hardly any restriction of position for a certain English consonant

in one word, meaning the sound can appear at the beginning, in the middle or at

the end of the word In Vietnamese phonology, however, only 8 consonants could be in word-final position (table 3), while 22 items form a group called word-initial position The two groups share 5 items which are /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/

In contrast to the theory, in practice, normally, those with Hanoi dialect do not produce alveo-palatal sounds /ʈ /, /ʐ /, /ş/, which are tended to be replaced with //, /z/ and /s/ respectively (Duong, 2009) Those alveo-palatal sounds are produced by people from central region of Vietnam

Considering the manner of articulation, place of articulation of consonants

in two languages, it is clear that no dental and palato-alveolar sounds or their

similar ones are found in Vietnamese A study by Dao Thi My Hanh (2007) share the same idea As the influence of phonological feature of their mother tongue is among important reasons for learners’ mispronunciation of English consonants, the current research is an attempt to focus on the English sounds that do not appear in Vietnamese phoneme systems Moreover, previous research reports on Vietnamese learners have revealed that most of those sounds are often mispronounced (Dao, 2007, Nguyen, 2007, Vu, 2008, Duong, 2009)

1.2 Related Studies

Thanks to its undeniable influence on successful communication

“receptively and productively” (Jenkins & Setter, 2005: 2), pronunciation and

the teaching of such a difficult, however, major area of English learning have gained a great deal of attention from instructors and researchers worldwide The identification of learners’ problems as well as their cause has attracted attention from researchers worldwide and within our country Moreover, a large body of

research papers and books concerning teaching sounds has been introduced The following section sheds a light on studies worldwide as well as one in Vietnam

1.2.1 Problems with Pronouncing English Consonants among Learners of

English as a Second/ Foreign Language

Being able to identifying their problems is of great significance to improve students’ learning of pronunciation with appropriate techniques This opinion is

the justification for this part in the study

Non-native speakers of English obviously find it difficult to acquire English pronunciation Moreover, pronunciation problems may be different for learners of different their mother tongue (L1) or phonological experience The following part discusses common problems encountered by learners of English from various Ls1 including Vietnamese

Related Studies Worldwide

In his famous book, Better Pronunciation, O’ Conner (1980) presented a 5

categories of pronunciation problems among learners from 6 Western and

Oriental nationalities One of them is sound substitution with other ones from

English or from learners’ L1 due to the lack of corresponding English sounds in their mother tongues As revealed by Dr Helen Fraser (2001, p 33), speakers of other languages usually replace English consonants that are unfamiliar with near ones available in their mother tongues (also seen in Cruttenden, 2001, Lewis & Hill, 1992, River & Temperley, 1978) Dental fricatives  ð and  are among the most difficult phonemes for speakers of other languages due to the

lack of them in most languages other than English (Cruttenden, 2001: 184) He also noticed that /t/ and /d/ were used as their frequent substitutions Internationally, the argument was also underlied by research conducted on Cantonese Chinese and Japanese learners by Chan & Li (2000) and Makino (2007) respectively The Cantonese Chinese in Chan & Li’s (2000) study had difficulties with palato-alveolar affricates / as they often subtituted them with two similar alveolar sounds in their mother tongue /tz, ts/

Related Studies in Vietnam

Vietnamese students somehow shared those mistakes with their foreign counterparts while had their own problems with English consonants The case study by Nguyen Mai Phuong (2005) proved that /z, d/ and / / were produced instead of  ð and  correspondingly In the same study, it was seen that some Vietnamese learners substituted English plosive  with Vietnamese stop ones Dao (2007) proved that these two dental consonants accounted for the quite high frequency of mispronunciation among her participants

Researcher Tran Thi Lan from Hanoi University of Foreign Studies shared with Nguyen (2005) on the identification of Vietnamese speakers’ difficulties in articulating the two phonemes // is also another universally troublesome phoneme The studies on Spanish learners (Walker, 2001), Korean (Sang, 2007) and Chinese ones (Chan & Li, 2000) showed that it is commonly replaced by

 Vietnamese learners also share the same problem Nguyen Thi Quynh

Hoa (2007) proved that 80% of her subjects were found mispronounce // sound Most of her informants confessed that this sound and its voiced counterpart were among their problems

Also in Dao Thi My Hanh’s (2007) study, the analysis of the research results showed that // was difficult consonant while // was still mispronounced by many of her students In her article, Dr Duong (2009) did mentioned 4 pairs of English confusing consonants, which are // - /s/, // - /z/, // - /z/ or /s/, // - Vietnamese //

1.2.2 Causes of Troubles with English Sounds

Related Studies Worldwide

A variety of factors have been investigated to account for the problems related to English pronunciation faced by foreign learners

Being considered the most influential factor, mother tongue interference has been studied thoroughly As showed by Kenworthy (1988), Rivers and Temperly (1978), as well as Chan and Li (2000) learners’ native-language plays

an important role in their English acquisition In terms of English sounds, it was

emphasized by the two latter researchers that: “English sounds which have no

counterpart in the native language will at first be difficult for students to distinguish” (p 162)

Despite its great influence, negative mother tongue interference is not the only hindrance to non-native learners’ English pronunciation Other factors may

affect the learning are learners’ age, interest and motivation they raise on the issue, amount of exposure to English language as perceived by Kenworthy (1988: 4 – 7) To enrich the literature, River and Temperly (1978) affirmed the importance of learners’ speech habits

Related Studies in Vietnam

In an action research on the role of continuous feedback in students’ pronunciation improvement Tran Thanh Phuc (2006) reviewed seven factors that affect the pronunciation of Vietnamese learners Apart from well-known causes: native language, learners’ ages, she emphasized the influence of the amount of exposure to English, students’ own phonetic ability, their attitude to the learning

of the language, motivation and teacher’s role In attempt to discuss Vietnamese learners’ pronunciation of English sounds, Dr Duong Thi Nu (2009) showed four main reasons that account for their failure in making the truly English consonants: (1) failure in distinguishing the difference, (2) influence of the mother tongue, (3) perception of mistakes, (4) inadequate drills and practice

In conclusion, previous researchers reached an agreement on the factors that influence non-native learners’ pronunciation of English which are impact of their mother tongue, their own phonetic ability and the lack of effective teaching Besides, other reasons discovered are also worth considering as a reference for

the current study

1.2.3 Teaching Techniques

Related Studies Worldwide

The quality of sound production has great influence on the intelligibility of oral communication in all languages, including English Thus, abundance of research all over the world has been conducted on techniques to facilitate the teaching and learning of this aspect Stern (1996) presented the procedures to teach pronunciation developed from work by Stevens (1977, cited in Stern 1996)

in a continuum from implicit to explicit with four levels: exposure, imitation, speech training and practical phonetics

Implicit Explicit

Figure 2: Stern’s range of procedures for teaching pronunciation

In this view, contrary to Richard’s and Rodgers’ definition, pronunciation techniques are included in both explicit and implicit procedures Beginners need

to be made acquainted with the new language including new pronunciation firstly through teachers’ speech The latter techniques will then be applied on learners of latter stages Those suggestions were proposed to reach the ultimate goal of pronunciation learning as the ability to understand and produce acceptable segments without the necessity to achieve native-like level He also put special emphasis on learners’ perceptual and cognitive factors when discussing the applicability of those stages on teaching and learning Stern’s view served as the underlying theory of teaching pronunciation techniques and activities of different levels

To researchers, students’ awareness of phonetic symbols is a key figure in the success of pronunciation teaching

training

Practical phonetics

“need obviously to be associated with phonemic symbols; you need not to worry about whether or not students can cope with being introduced to phonemic script, as long as you are clear about explaining the purpose of it”

(Kelly, 2003: 39) Holding the same ideas with Stern (1996) on the first pronunciation teaching strategy, Underhill (1994) considered sound training the first issue to deal with Thus, carefully described activities to produce as well as discriminate sounds which expose learners to mouth movements and to the phonemic chart have been designed According to Underhill, it is of such great significance to get familiar with sound symbols in learning pronunciation that phonemic chart should be employed in a large variety of classroom activities Not only sounds

on their own, but also the comparison between them in terms of place and manner of articulation can be well presented on the chart as mentioned by Underhill Being perceived to enhance independence in pronunciation learning outside classrooms for those who understand it at an appropriate level, phonemic alphabet has been widely suggested in teaching by researchers and educators Appreciating the role of phonemic chart in mastering , Gerald Kelly (2003) recommended some techniques related to such a special alphabet Lewis and Hill (1999) also argued the importance of articulation practice in the first step of language learning by putting the role of the ability to pronounce new language superior to that of meaningful practice Concerning phoneme production,

“learner-friendly” descriptions of sounds have been introduced Some of them

are even given funny names according to their special phonological characteristics (2003: 38)

With “seven modes of chart usage” suggested by Underhill, identifying and differentiating sounds in isolation require a great deal of two-side interaction between teachers and learners This is also of important emphasis in Communicative Language Teaching approach

Teachers’ model plays an undeniable role in the learning process of pronunciation Therefore, a large amount of effort has been invested in techniques of model presenting Promoting the idea of combining various senses

in learning, the author of “Sound Foundations: Learning and Teaching

Pronunciation” introduced four techniques in giving models Making use of

those ones, teachers may give models once or more times verbally or even verbally (by mime and gesture, for example) to help learners shape the correct or acceptable sounds, while learners must pay high attention to their teaching Moreover, model must be constant and exact all the time delivered so that students have a reliable source of sample to refer to in their practice Accordingly, two techniques of giving speech sound model were introduced by Lewis and Hill (1999: 66)

non-To ease teachers’ job and improve learners’ success in pronunciation of sounds, a number of practical techniques have been suggested Apart from formal and serious teaching, funny games and activities could help increase students’ motivation and the effectiveness of the lesson

As a popular one to discriminate phonemes, Minimal Pairs is advised by

many researchers, like Kelly (2003), Hewings (2004), to name a few Besides,

being deemed to aim at helping “students achieve better pronunciation of

language items and to help them remember new items,” (Kelly, 2003: 16)

drilling was introduced in the same book accompanied with various learning

activities corresponding with different level of students Taping students’

speech to compare with each other as well as with a fixed model was also

proved to be an effective remedial technique It takes time for teacher to assess students’ improvement through their recording, thus, this technique need

considering carefully before being used Choral pronunciation, which seems

quite classical in language teaching, was recommended the book Practical

Techniques for Language Teaching Costing a little consideration, it can be

applied in a wide range of students’ levels and class sizes However, the effectiveness of this technique to individual students is still in doubt To increase learners’ motivation in classroom learning, the two authors did give advice on teachers’ class interacting and complementing manner Besides, Hewings (2004) suggested activities aiming at predicting and matching sounds with words to help identifying students’ proficiency and correcting the mistakes, if any In the same

book, he introduced Lip-reading as a way to enhance learners’ cognition of

sound articulation by looking at facilitator’s mouth to read the words silently

spoken Besides, Classifying words according to their consonant has been

popular for its convenience to organize as well as their effectiveness of reminding students of the targeted sounds According to Kelly (2003) another powerful activity could be employed in practicing consonants is using tongue twisters, i.e funny sentences repeating the same target sound Bareither (2007) provided learners and educators tongue twisters in form of words, phrases and sentences, which are categorized according to targets sounds This logical ways

of using these funny games (from word to sentence levels) can assure the effectiveness of the games as it prepare students step by step It is proved that

teachers keeping language to minimum in pronunciation practices and

varying their criterion of “good” in pronunciation teaching may work well to

improve students’ performance (Lewis and Hill, 1999) As integrated in speaking and/ or listening skill instead of being a dependent subject, pronunciation with practice activities needs to be effective and time-saving at the same time Meeting with this requirement, authors previously mentioned did present the time allotment as well as students’ assumed levels so that it could be helpful for teachers to apply in their teaching practice

Related Studies in Vietnam

In Vietnam, as a newly exploited teaching field, recently, pronunciation has received quite increasing attention with studies and teaching action as seen at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi However, the load of research on pronunciation teaching does not seem adequate with its importance, especially that on students whose major is not English

In an article published on the website of British Council in Vietnam, Dr

Tran Thi Lan suggested some “common effective tools for the teacher to use”

They are contrastive analysis, articulation, and minimal pairs However,

those findings were not supported by convincing arguments or research As a compilation from materials of different sources, Dr To Thi Thu Huong and her colleagues (2006) suggested a number of techniques of teaching sounds which

are minimal pairs, and pronunciation games employing phonemic alphabet

Those ones have been suggested in view of Communicative Teaching approach,

in which the ultimate goal of pronunciation learning is the communicative intelligibility, not native-like achievement Their teaching theory, therefore,

agrees with the popular current one in the world Suggestions from both Tran and To et al (2006) are teaching adaption which coincide with those delivered

by scholars worldwide The same conclusion can be seen in Tran’s (2006) study

in an attempt to correct her students’ mispronunciation of sounds She suggested

8 similar techniques to teach and correct students’ mispronunciation of sounds

Vu (2008) proved that (1) Eliciting and Telling, (2) Minimal pairs, (3) Phonemic

chart, (4) Exposure to English language are four really effective techniques to

correct students’ mispronunciation Those techniques are time-saving, therefore, suit well with the time limitation in class when pronunciation is integrated in speaking lessons

Considered second foreign language at university, English for non-English majors has been taught with little attention paid to the pronunciation Research

on this field has not received appropriate care either The real situation, then, provides a large gap for the researcher to bridge with her current paper

aim at Correcting English Consonants Commonly Mispronounced by

Second-Year Non-English Majors at VNU-ULIS

2.1 Participants

The research was conducted with the participation of 18 sophomore students from Faculty of Chinese Linguistics and Culture who were taking their first course of English as a second foreign language The researcher was also the teacher in charge of this group The full population of the group is 27; however, only those who took part in all classes of the research program were counted as its participants In order to prevent other 9 students from feeling excluded, the researcher did not inform them of her selection and treated all students equally when they took part in the research program, which was integrated in their formal learning while her judgments on the real participants’ performance were kept secret

The participants in this research were identified by three following characteristics Firstly, as stated before, they were in their first semester of learning English when joining in the research Secondly, there were two males in the research group; consequently, others were females Thirdly, they differ in their time of learning English before tertiary education, their knowledge of English sounds, which partly accounted for their problems of pronunciation

Table 4 Classification of participants basing on gender and time learning English

As proved by much previous research on pronunciation, students’ hometown dialects have a certain impact on their English performance, especially those from the Central area of Vietnam Therefore, students’ hometown were taken into consideration in this study as one of the reasons for students’ problem if any

The participants also revealed their time of exposure to English language

as well as their understanding of English phonetics 15 of them had been learning English since grade 6 while the others had started when they came to secondary school 10 out of 18 participants, who had been from high schools for gifted students of different provinces and big cities, reported that they knew how to deal with most of English consonants though there were still troubles with those which are not in Vietnamese The other students confessed that they were not really sure of the correct way to pronounce most consonants In fact, they pronounced the sounds as a habits or their intuition

In every faculty of Vietnam National University, Hanoi - University of Languages and International Studies, students are randomly arranged into groups regardless of their results in the university entrance exams or their hometowns When classes of English as second foreign language are planned, the same groups could be kept or 2 or 3 of them may be combined to create an appropriate class size Therefore, the research population in the current study with its diversity of many aspects, as presented, could help generate a generalizable knowledge of students learning English as their second foreign language at this university In other words, the validity of the research was generally ensured

2.2 Data Collection Instruments

The data was collected with the triangulation of 4 instruments, which are questionnaires, interviews, audio tapes and field notes, as the data collection methods

2.2.1 Questionnaire

In this action research, questionnaire was employed to collect participants’ personal information, as mentioned in 3.1., and the possible reasons for their pronunciation problems

Questionnaire was chosen as one of data collection instruments thanks to

its benefits in terms of saving time when collecting required data (Wallace,

1998:130) Though in action research, the research population is quite small compared with other forms of research, questionnaire is still a smart choice to collect a desirable data in the amount of time spent roughly on one participant In this case, the whole population is 18 students With such a small number of

people, questionnaire allows the researcher to find out opinion of all the subjects without the fear of lacking the representativeness due to bad sampling

In the current study, questionnaire was designed with 3 questions in form

of both closed and open questions apart from the very first part, serving as the introduction of its aim, the researcher and the study (see Appendix 1) Close questions ensured the structured-ness of the questionnaire In other words, they helped make sure that all information collected was well controlled by the researcher On the other hand, open questions allowed respondents to specify their ideas when necessary In this case, the close question is that of students’ gender, English learning time prior university experience and part of reasons for their mispronunciation Noticing that the causes of pronunciation problems could vary largely from person to person, the researcher spared an open question for participants to clarify their own factors with explanation if any Therefore, their answers could be as clear and informatics as possible

The first two questions aimed at identifying students’ personal information

of their gender, time learning English The last question was delivered to seek for the factors that may account for students’ pronunciation problems In this question, students’ own ideas are welcomed to give further explanation for their choices when necessary This could be valuable source of data for the teacher-research to find out suitable techniques to help her students solve their problems

The questionnaire had been piloted on 2 voluntaries a week before it was delivered to the research participants so that any ambiguousness and misunderstanding could be removed Therefore, the validity of data collected was confirmed Then questionnaires were contributed to all students in the class,

including those who would be excluded from the research group later, at the end

of the class contact in week 2 of the semester However, when writing up the report, the researcher would consider only 18 questionnaires of the real participants While doing their task, the students were well accompanied by the researcher, so any questions related to the questionnaire raised were answered right away All 27 questionnaires were returned after finished

2.2.2 Interviews

Semi-structured group interviews were chosen thanks to the benefits they give to the researcher and the research process There were three of them conducted in the third, the ninth and the fifteenth weeks of the semester It is globally agreed by researchers worldwide that semi-structured interviews follow

a prepared schedule in which their focus is fixed while its flexibility lies in that a certain level of freedom is still saved for the participants to express themselves naturally (Wallace, 1998: 147 and Noonan, 1992: 149) In this form of interviews, interviewers raise the questions and try to guide her interviewees by encouraging them to answer the questions without neglecting the main content

To save time, group interviews in form of informal discussions with the whole research group were carried out All the participants were given equal chances to raise their ideas For rather shy students, the researcher tried to encourage them

to have their voices heard

Interviews were used to yield data on the factors that affected students’ pronunciation of English consonants In the first interview, all the questions focused on asking the participants to explain their mistakes recorded by the researcher after the second week, when there had been no treatment made on the

group And after the two phases of learning pronunciation with many techniques applied and knowledge provided, apart from the explanation for their mistakes, the questions aimed at seeking for their motivation and lessons gained from teaching techniques Similar to questionnaire, before applying on the research population, interviews questions had been piloted on 1 voluntary to test their clarity and feasibility All of three interviews began with a brief introduction of their purposes and content so that the participants were well informed of what they were going to do (see Appendix 2)

Responses from participants were taken notes and categorized based on the questions provided, for organized notes could save time spent on analyzing data later

2.2.3 Audio Tapes

As a source of data to analyze students’ pronunciation errors and to assess their improvement, students’ oral speech recorded at home was collected twice during the research process They were handed in in week 7 and week 13 after the revision sessions It is believed that students would prepare their speech more carefully when they had more time to check and correct themselves Thus, their audio recordings could reflect their physical abilities as well as their awareness and knowledge of pronunciation in the best condition, which sometimes was not reflected in real life conversation as affected by their fossilized habit

2.2.4 Field Notes

Another means to analyze students’ pronunciation during the research process is field notes It is a powerful tool to focus on “the performance of

individual student, […] interesting or common errors made by students, […] amusing incidents, remarks”, which “can prevent our hard-won experience ebbing away and being lost in the tide of the pressures caused by getting on with the next thing.” (Wallace, 1998: 58) With such a research paper, dealing with correcting students’ pronunciation, field notes were employed in speaking sessions, when students had the most chances to express themselves naturally through discussions, and mini-presentations to identify their pronunciation problems The records would then be analyzed so that students’ pronunciation performance could be compared after each session and after the whole process

After considering students’ problems, the researcher – teacher would

identify and classify problem areas and find appropriate techniques to deal with

2.3 Action Plan

The current study was conducted as an action research thanks to the suitability of this research form to solve the problems among a specific group of students Firstly, action research is situational, which means that it perfectly fits the specific state of the class on research In this sense, as the aim of the study is

to correct the pronunciation of some English consonants among a certain group

of students, action research allows the research to closely focus on and find out the problems as well as the treatments that best work on the groups The remedies found and applied would, therefore, suit the participants the best As stated by Wallace (1998), “action research involves the collection and analysis of data related to some aspects of our professional practice This is done so that we can reflect on what we have discovered and apply it to our professional action.” Secondly, action research is a cycle of research activities in which problems are

identified and solved in the way that fits the real situation of the research group After the situation and its effectiveness are judged, a new cycle could be begun

to solve remaining or emerging troubles if any In this form of research, the teacher of the group also plays the role of the researcher; thus, the initial situation, the changes of the professional practice as well as the effectiveness of the treatments could be well kept track and assured The power she had as a teacher could help her change the treatment if necessary without affecting any other teacher, not to mention the change may work better than the ones scheduled before based on the review of existing literature and her prediction The model of action research with its 5 steps could be seen and explained as follows:

Figure 3 Action research cycle (adapted from Ferrance, 2000)

Step 1 Identification of problem area

Step 2 Collection and organization of data

Step 3 Interpretation of data

Step 4 Action based on data

Step 5 Evaluation of results

In form of an action research, the current paper was carried to answer four research questions:

1 What are English consonants that are often mispronounced by English majors?

non-2 What are the reasons for the students’ problems of pronunciation?

3 What are appropriate techniques to correct the problems?

4 What are students’ improvements in terms of pronunciation of English consonants after the project?

2.3.1 Material

The core book of the English as a second foreign language course was New English File at elementary level, which consists of all four skills, grammar and pronunciation Some pronunciation parts of the book were made use in the research program The main material of the project, however, was English Pronunciation in Use by Mark Hancock (2003) and other supplementary materials

The book by Hancock (2003) was employed thanks to its systematic organization of sounds in comparison Moreover, the visual aid for sound articulation is also clear and easy to follow In terms of language bank, most words used in the book are understandable to students of elementary level Though activities suggested are not varied enough, they are interesting enough for students to do This was also the favorite pronunciation teaching material recommended by Tran (2006) in her research of the same field

2.3.2 Research plan

In this semester, one class contact accounted for 4 periods, during which all content of one file in New English File had to be covered Considering such a limited amount of time for each class contact, pronunciation teaching was integrated in speaking session of each lesson The average time spent on pronunciation was 30 minutes each week

Following the order of those five steps, the action plan of this research paper was organized in ten weeks of the semester Actually, the time allotment

of the 15-week term is not for just in-class teaching and learning In the case of this course, the first week served as an orientation session, when necessary information of the learning, teaching and assessment was delivered; and there was almost no content related to the actual learning and teaching Weeks 8 and

12 were saved for mid-term tests, and week 14 students’ self-study (see Appendix 3) The researcher made use of the other ten weeks for the convenience

of both the student-participants and herself In-class tasks as well as homework were delivered as the content of the project The procedure of the project was run

as follows Table 5 is the summary of the project

WEEK IN-CLASS TASK

CLASS TASK

OUT-OF-RESEARCH STEP

1

Step 1 Identification of problem area

Step 2 Collection and organization of the data

Step 3 Interpretation of the data

2 Group report on

discussion in class

Deliver questionnaires

Step 4 Action based on data

8 Mid-term 1 - Speaking

test

9 Sounds /k/, /g/

14 Students’ self-study

15 Mini group

presentations

Step 5 Evaluation of results

Table 5 Research program – action plan

At the very beginning of the project, the researcher identified students’ problems of English consonant pronunciation through their speaking in class This phase was carried out in the second week of the academic semester Making use of discussions with personal reports, the research had an overview of all the participants with the pronunciation problems Then, the errors were classified to find out the outstanding trends Another task completed in the first week of the project was questionnaire Information on the possible reasons for their difficulties in terms of pronunciation would be also helpful for the researcher to seek for appropriate teaching and correcting techniques later This phase, thus, provided data to answer the first two questions

The teaching and correcting content was conducted with two phases Lasting for 5 weeks, each dealt with a number of sounds causing students

difficulties and ended with a revision, after which student participants were asked to record their voices reading an assigned text The sounds to correct in each part were organized with different levels of difficulty experienced by the participants, i.e difficult sounds and easy sounds were conmbined, so that the learning could be less stressful In every session of the project, field-notes were made to record students’ performance as well as to assess the effectiveness of the teaching techniques Therefore, any improvements and remaining problems could be seen clearly through the whole process Moreover, appropriate techniques could also be justified In other words, questions number 3 and 4 were answered in this phase

In the first part of the teaching and correcting, the sounds on focus are /w/, /j/, //, //, /z/, /r/, //, //, in which //, //, // were considered more complex than the others After four weeks learning and correcting those 8 consonants (see table 5), a revision session was delivered to consolidate all learnt content, to assess the achievements and to identify remaining troubles the students had with those sounds Participants’ voice recordings were analyzed in this final step of the first part

The second part followed quite the same sequence of work as in the first one However, as it lasted for 4 weeks, there were only three weeks instead of four for learning and correcting sounds In this second phase, the researcher made a hard attempt to revisit problematic sounds in the first part and solve any remaining problems

The last content of the research is group mini-presentations in the last week of the semester (week 15) This activity served giving data to assess the