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 2 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

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

VU DOAN THI PHUONG THAO

CORRECTING ENGLISH CONSONANTS

COMMONLY MISPRONOUNCED BY YEAR NON-ENGLISH MAJORS AT VNU-ULIS

SECOND-(SỬA LỖI SAI PHÁT ÂM PHỤ ÂM TIẾNG ANH THƯỜNG MẮC PHẢI Ở SINH VIÊN NGOẠI NGỮ

2 TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ- ĐẠI

HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI)

M.A Combined Program Thesis

Field: English Language Teaching Metrology Code: 60 14 10

Supervisor: Nguyen Huyen Minh, M.A

HANOI, 2011

iv

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

v

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

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 (ULIS-VNUH), 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 ULIS-VNUH 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 ULIS-VNUH Hence, there exists a gap which the current research is aimed at bridging

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?

Scope of the Study

As stated above, the research will focus on non-English majors from different faculties at ULIS-VNUH 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

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

2 LITERATURE REVIEW English Pronunciation

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

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

English Sounds and English Consonants

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

Diphthongs

Short Long Voiced Unvoiced

Suprasegmenta

l features Intonation Stress

Word stress Sentence

stress

Post-ar

Palato-alveol

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

Vietnamese Consonants and a Comparison with English Consonant System

(adapted from Mai, Vu, & Hoang, 1997) Table 2: Vietnamese initial consonants

Manner of articulation

Place of articulation

Bilabial

Alveolar

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

-palatal sounds are produced by people from central region of Vietnam

Related Studies

Problems with Pronouncing English Consonants among Learners of English

as a Second/ Foreign Language

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 &

 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 (see also Chan & Li,

2000 and Makino, 2007)

/z, d/ and / / were produced instead of  andcorrespondingly In the same study, it was seen that some Vietnamese learners substituted English plosive  (Nguyen, 2005 and Dao, 2007) 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 In her article, Dr Duong (2009) did mentioned 4 pairs of English confusing consonants, which are  - Vietnamese 

Causes of Troubles with English Sounds

Researchers worldwide and within the country have identified causes

of troubles with English sounds as follows

Mother tongue interference has been studied thoroughly (Kenworthy,

1988, Rivers and Temperly, 1978 & Chan and Li 2000)

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, p 4 – 7) To enrich the literature, River and Temperly (1978) affirmed the importance of learners’ speech habits

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

Teaching Techniques

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 (Lewis and Hill, 1999: 66)

Other significant techniques suggested are Minimal Pairs, drilling, taping students’ speech to compare with each other as well as with a fixed model, choral pronunciation, Lip-reading, Classifying words according to their consonant, varying their criterion of “good” in pronunciation teaching

(Kelly, 2003, Hewings, 2004, Bareither 2007, Lewis and Hill, 1999)

Related Studies in Vietnam

As a compilation from materials of different sources, To et al (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 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

3 METHODOLOGY Design

To identify non-English majors’ problems with English consonants, their causes, effective techniques for pronunciation teaching, an action research will

be carried out

Participants

The participants of the current research will consist of 18 non-English majors at ULIS-VNUH To be specific, they are second-year students whose major is Chinese

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 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

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

4 RESULTS AND CONCLUSION Results

The following part served as a summary of the main findings fully presented in the previous chapter of the report

Firstly, the answer to question number one is the identification of the pronunciation that participants of the study encountered before taking part in it

11 out of 24 English consonants were reported as problematic sounds with at least 5 students having difficulties with Considered the most seriously mistaken sounds,and caused troubles to all 18 people of the research population Less students had troubles with  and  with 12 and 10 people for each sound respectively Being troublesome to 8 partipants / and /g/, which were followed by /k/ and /j/ with 7 victims, and /w/ with 6, accounting for roughly 30% of research participants With 5 students mispronouncing, /r/ was considered the least serious sound of 11 ones The common mistakes with these sounds fall into the following type: replacing the correct sounds with similar ones of that language or those of their mother tongue In general, the sounds in focus of the project are 

Secondly, factors that cause the problems discussed above were also

indentified Totally, there are 7 of them: (1) Inadequate exposure to English language, (2)Inadequate understanding of English sounds and English phonology, (3) Influence of native language, i.e Vietnamese, (4) Influence of hometown dialects, (5)Hesitation to express oneself, (6)Time management in learning phonetics, (7) Fossilized habits

It is noticeable that students’ problems were the result of the impact of more than one reasons Among 7 causes, the first three ones were shared by all

of the participants The others could be seen in the cases of different individuals

Thirdly, basing on participants’ problems and underlying factors that had been discovered, the researcher planned the specific teaching schedule with various techniques employed After the whole project, techniques that were proved effective in correcting students mistakes were reviewed and chosen They

are (1) Phonemic chart, Sound description, (2) Minimal pairs, (3) Tongue twisters, (4) Comparing students’ speech with the model, (5) Games, (6) Continuous feedback Each of them brings about its best effect when used in a

specific way and at specific time of the lesson

Fourthly, the answer to question 4 clarifies the remaining problems students still had at the end of the project as well as their reasons In other words, research population’s progress had been tracked Significant changes had been made to the performance of the students The number of students with pronunciation problems of English consonants had reduced considerately The highest number of students shared the same problematic sound is 12, compared with 18 at the beginning of the project Only 4 consonants caused troubles for at least 5 participants, i.e only these four sounds were considered problematic ones

at the end of the project The difficult sounds at this final stages are

with 5, 5, 9, 12 students having troubles respectively The reasons for their mispronunciation were the anxiety in speaking and their fossilize habits that they refused to change