possible solutions to the problems commonly encountered by students at hanoi university of technology in pronouncing the english affricative consonants = những giải pháp khả hữu cho những vấn đề mà sinh viên

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES **************** NGÔ THU HUYỀN POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS COMMONLY ENCOUNTERED BY STUDENTS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY IN PRONOUNCING T

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

****************

NGÔ THU HUYỀN

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS COMMONLY ENCOUNTERED BY STUDENTS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY IN PRONOUNCING THE ENGLISH

AFFRICATIVE CONSONANTS

NHỮNG GIẢI PHÁP KHẢ HỮU CHO NHỮNG VẤN ĐỀ MÀ SINH VIÊN TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC BÁCH KHOA HÀ NỘI THƯỜNG GẶP PHẢI KHI

PHÁT ÂM CÁC ÂM TẮC XÁT CỦA TIẾNG ANH

M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60 22 15

MA course: 18

Hanoi – 2011

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

****************

NGÔ THU HUYỀN

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS COMMONLY ENCOUNTERED BY STUDENTS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY IN PRONOUNCING THE ENGLISH

AFFRICATIVE CONSONANTS

NHỮNG GIẢI PHÁP KHẢ HỮU CHO NHỮNG VẤN ĐỀ MÀ SINH VIÊN TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC BÁCH KHOA HÀ NỘI THƯỜNG GẶP PHẢI KHI

PHÁT ÂM CÁC ÂM TẮC XÁT CỦA TIẾNG ANH

M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60 22 15

MA course: 18 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Võ Đại Quang

Hanoi – 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF FIGURES, CHARTS AND TABLES vii

ABBREVIATIONS viii

PART 1: INTRODUCTION Error! Bookmark not defined 1.1 Rationale Error! Bookmark not defined 1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study 1

1.3 Research questions 2

1.4 Scope of the study 2

1.5 Significance of the study 2

1.6 Design of the study 3

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 4

Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Theoretical Background 4

1.1.1 The role of pronunciation in EFL teaching 4

1.1.2 Factors affecting pronunciation learning 4

1.1.3 Consonants in English and Vietnamese 6

1.1.3.1 English consonants 6

1.1.3.2 Vietnamese consonants 7

1.1.3.3 Learners’ problems with consonant sounds 9

1.1.4 Affricative sounds 10

1.1.4.1 Definition 10

1.1.4.2 The description of affricates 11

1.1.4.3 Learners’ problems with affricates 12

1.2 Previous works 15

1.3 Summary of the chapter 16

Chapter 2: Methodology 17

2.1 Survey reseach 17

2.1.1 Definition 17

2.1.2 Steps in conducting a survey research 17

2.2 Techniques employed in the research 18

2.2.1 Data collection 18

2.2.1.1 Questionnaire 18

2.2.1.2 Tape recording 19

2.2.2 Data analysis 20

2.3 Procedures for the study 20

2.4 Summary of the chapter 20

Chapter 3: Findings and Discussion 21

3.1 Findings 21

3.1.1 Findings from the questionnaire 21

3.3.2 Findings from the tape recording 27

3.2 Discussion 29

3.3 Summary of the chapter 30

Chapter 4: Possible sollusions to the problems identified 31

4.1 Giving regular practice 31

4.2 Improving teaching techniques 31

4.3 Supplying supplementary exercises 34

4.4 Summary of the chapter 36

PART 3: CONCLUSION 37

1 Recapitulation 37

2 Conclusion remarks 37

3 Limitations and suggestions for further research 38

REFERENCES 39 APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 V APPENDIX 3 VI

LIST OF FIGURES, CHARTS AND TABLES FIGURES:

Fig 1: The position of the tongue in the production of /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ 11

Figs 2&3: Section of stop phase of /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ 12

CHART: Chart 1: The sounds that students find most difficult/ easiest to pronounce 26

TABLES: Table 1: English consonants 7

Table 2: Vietnamese initial consonants 8

Table 3: Vietnamese final consonants 8

Table 4: Manner and place of articulation of sounds /dʒ/, /z/ and /s/ 13

Table 5: Manner and place of articulation of sounds /tʃ/and Vietnamese /c/ 14

Table 6: Summary of Sample Profile 21

Table 7: Students’ attitude towards pronunciation 22

Table 8: Students’ learning habit and teachers’ response to students’ mistakes 23

Table 9: Students’ pronunciation difficulties in general 24

Table 10: The sounds that students find most difficult/ easiest to pronounce 25

Table 11: Student’s choices of correct sounds 26

Table 12: The result of the recording process 26

ABBREVIATIONS

CLT : Communicative Language Teaching

EFL : English as a Foreign Language

ELT : English Language Teaching

ESP : English for Specific Purposes

HUT : Hanoi University of Technology

IT : Information Technology

N-Power : Networking Power (Bach Khoa-Npower International Information Technology Education System)

M.A : Master of Arts

VNU : Vietnam National University

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale

Three prominent factors that develop four language skills are vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation In the light of CLT, accurate pronunciation is a must for broadening communicative competencies This leads to the fact that the need for the integration of pronunciation with oral communication is clearly realized This is the reason why teaching pronunciation is considered a really crucial job in teaching EFL

Despite realizing this importance, pronunciation is the most ignored aspect in the EFL

classes According to Celce Murcia (2007:2), “grammar and vocabulary have been much

better understood by most language teachers than pronunciation” This fact shows that

pronunciation is viewed as difficult for both students and teachers to prepare and master They take little concern to it Hardly do they spend time learning or practicing English pronunciation Consequently, many students often make mistakes in articulating English sounds and they find it difficult to get accurate pronunciation This fact posts the question

of how to change the attitude of students and teachers towards pronunciation

The above- mentioned matters are really true to the English teaching and learning situation at N-Power, HUT where a lot of students have troubles with pronunciation, especially with the English sounds In the scope of this minor thesis, the researcher does not have an ambition to find out all the sounds causing problems for students but a particular pair of English sounds - affricates - which challenge students when they are dealing with the system of English sounds Once the difficulties are found out, solutions to the problems can be worked out with the hope that it can help to improve students‟ pronunciation

1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study

1.2.1 Aims of the study

From the fact of existing limitations for students when dealing with pronunciation, with the hope of bringing about a small contribution to this aspect, the study aims to:

 Provide the students with basic knowledge of English affricative sounds /tʃ/and /dʒ/

 Help the students be able to pronounce English affricates accurately

 Help the teachers improve their pronunciation teaching techniques at HUT

1.2.2 Objectives of the study

The objectives are set as follows:

 To find out the difficulties students meet when pronouncing affricative sounds /tʃ/ and /dʒ/

 To state the causes of these difficulties

 To give out some possible solutions to the problems identified

1.3 Research questions

The objectives mentioned above are elaborated into the following research questions (1) What difficulties do students have in dealing with affricative sounds?

(2) What are the causes of those difficulties?

(3) What are the possible solutions to the stated problems?

1.4 Scope of the study

The study was carried out on only the first-year students at N-Power, HUT Due to time constraint and the scope of a minor thesis, only affricates - two complex consonant sounds

- which cause difficulties for students are taken into consideration It also focuses on finding out some problems when students pronounce these sounds and working out some possible solutions

1.5 Significance of the study

The study is designed to investigate students‟ difficulties when pronouncing the English affricates and suggest some solutions to solve the problems Thus, it helps to raise students‟ awareness of improving pronunciation learning More significantly, it offers the pedagogical implications for further applications of teaching pronunciation in the classroom

1.6 Design of the study

The research is presented as follows:

The first part is the introduction, which presents an overview of the study with the rationale for conducting the research, the aims, the objectives and the research questions

It also states the research scope as well as stresses its significance and outlines the content

of the study

The second part is the development of the study, which is divided into 4 chapters:

- Chapter 1: Literature review - provides the theoretical background and some previous work

- Chapter 2: Methodology - reports the methodology and the methods used in the research including the instruments and the procedures for data collection as well as the data analysis applied in the study

- Chapter 3: Findings and discussion - reveals some major findings basing on which the discussion is produced

- Chapter 4: Possible solutions – offers some useful suggestions to problems identified The last part is the conclusion of the study, which summarizes the major points presented

in the thesis, offers concluding remarks on the objectives and points out the limitations as well as provides some suggestions for further studies

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical Background

1.1.1 The role of pronunciation in EFL teaching

Pronunciation teaching should be paid more consideration by teachers since it occupies a considerable place in EFL classes Thus, mentioning of various issues relating to teaching pronunciation to foreign language learners is a must

It is highly recognized that correct pronunciation is necessary for a speaker to communicate According to Kelly - an expert at teaching pronunciation - the importance

of teaching pronunciation is evaluated as following: “A consideration of learners‟

pronunciation errors and of how these can inhibit successful communication is a useful basis on which to assess why it is important to deal with pronunciation in the classroom”

(Kelly, 2000:11) The statement indicates the great importance of pronunciation in communication Since pronunciation is so important, teaching and learning pronunciation

should be paid enough attention to This idea is also shared by Stevick : “pronunciation is

the primary medium through which we bring our use of language to the attention of other people” (1978, quoted in Pennington, 1996:2) There are still several researchers carrying

out studies on the role of teaching pronunciation in EFL such as Haycraft (1971), Kenworthy (1987), Brown (1991), Pennington (1996), etc

It can be seen clearly that, the effects of pronunciation on the successful communication are so significant that teaching pronunciation is deservedly put in high position in teaching language Therefore, teaching pronunciation has been taken into account for many years due to the changes in the purpose of foreign language learning in general and English in particular Learners take English courses for successful communication in their work and lives so they want to achieve native-like pronunciation

1.1.2 Factors affecting pronunciation learning

There are a lot of researchers studying on factors that may affect students‟ pronunciation

In Teaching English Pronunciation, Kenworthy (1987) indicates six categories that affect

pronunciation learning: (1) native language, (2) age, (3) amount of exposure, (4) phonetic

ability, (5) attitude and identity, and (6) motivation and concern for good pronunciation These factors are briefly summarized as follows

The Native Language

The differences between the sound systems of English and other languages are compared

by a lot of researchers Kenworthy, J (192: 4), stated that: “To put it very crudely, the

more differences there are, the more difficulties the learners will have in pronouncing English.” Since the “foreign accent” is easy to identify, learners‟ native language impacts

greatly on their ability of pronouncing English Take the case of the countries having the Latin writing systems like English, the pronunciation process is much easier in comparison with those having hieroglyphic languages

The age factor

It is often said that younger people can learn pronunciation better than the older ones However, there have been a lot of researches showing the opposite results Oyama (1976) conducted a research proving that the younger a person was when he started learning English, the more native-like was his accent Whereas, Snow and Hoefnagel-Hohle‟s study (1975) showed that the groups of older learners had higher achievement in pronouncing words than the younger ones

Amount of exposure

It‟s obviously that people surrounded by English will have more chance to speak English than who don‟t live in English-speaking environment Thus, many researchers have pointed out the amount of exposure to the target language as one of the factors that affect pronunciation accuracy (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 1996; Kenworthy, 1987; Suter, 1976) An adequate model of the target language in and outside of classroom is significant in EFL situation

Phonetic ability

Some people are thought to have better ability in phonetics than others It means they can get better results in mimicking as well as distinguishing sounds In this case, all the things that teachers can do are giving students different kinds of practice to deal with the problems of phonetics

Attitude and identity

Kenworthy (1987) states that the more people have positive feelings when speak the target language, the more accuracy they get The study also indicates that such feelings relate highly to integrative motivation, explaining that learners are willing to identify

Motivation and concern

Motivation plays an important role in learning pronunciation When learners pay enough attention to their pronunciation, they will improve their speaking so as to reach the point

of pronunciation competence In this case, teachers‟ concern also takes a part in learners‟ success Thus, Kenworthy (1987)stresses that a concern on the part of the teacher can instill a similar concern among the learners

In short, there are some major factors that affect pronunciation acquisition Teachers of foreign language should be aware of these when teaching pronunciation

1.1.3 Consonants in English and Vietnamese

1.1.3.1 English consonants

There are 24 consonants in the English consonant system, among which /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ are alveo-palatal affricates

Table 1: English consonants

Table 2: Vietnamese initial consonants

1.1.3.3 Learners’ problems with consonant sounds due to differences between

English and Vietnamese

Because of major differences between English and Vietnamese sound systems, Vietnamese speakers can have some pronunciation problems with vowels, consonants, stress and intonation However, due to limitation of time and of the study, I only focus on the mistakes in which Vietnamese students often meet in learning consonants

Firstly, the consonant sound systems between the two languages also differ greatly In English, there are 24 consonants, but Vietnamese has only 21 Unlike English, Vietnamese consonant system does not include any affricates Some phonemes exist in English but not

in Vietnamese and vice versa According to Doan Thien Thuat, these following English sounds are absent in Vietnamese

/dʒ/ /tʃ/ /j/ /θ/ /ð/ /p/ (initial) /t/ (initial)

change church year thing that pen top

Thus, those consonants are often confused with little the same sounds, for instance: /dʒ/

in genius /’dʒi:niəs/ is confused with /z/, /θ/ in thin /θin/ is confused with Vietnamese /ť/, / j/ in yard is confused with /z/

Secondly, in English, some phonemes seem to be represented by identical letters but

different in pronunciation, for example, “ch” in chemist is transcribed as /k/; “ch” in

cherry is pronounced as /tʃ/ Whereas, a letter is often represented by the same phoneme

in Vietnamese

Thirdly, unlike English, Vietnamese does not have consonant clusters at all Although some orthographic combinations of letters in Vietnamese look like consonant cluster such as: th, ch, ng, ngh, nh, tr, ph, in fact they represent only simple consonants phonologically such as ng /ŋ/, ph /f/, etc Meanwhile, English has many sequences of consonants including the initial such as “spread” /spred/ and the final such as “mixed” /mikst/ This feature brings lots of difficulties for Vietnamese learners As a result, Vietnamese students often delete one or more than one consonants in a consonant cluster so that it will be easier for them to produce the sound

Fourthly, in Vietnamese, the consonants are not stressed at the final position of a word while English consonants are often heard and pronounced in three positions: initial, medial and final, except /ʒ/, which is rarely found in the initial position That is why

Vietnamese students often omit these consonants at the end of the sounds such as night /nait/ is pronounced as /nai/, wine /wain/ is produced as /wai/, etc

Fifthly, generally, words are clearly separated from each other in Vietnamese, but in

English, words are linked when they are speeded up For instance, not at all /nɔtətɔ:l/

All in all, the above differences give clear reasons why our students often make mistakes when they face to English sound systems Teachers of English should pay attention to these problems when teaching pronunciation

1.1.4 Affricative sounds

According to O‟Conner‟s, (1980: 24): “There are two good reasons for beginning with

consonants rather than vowels First, consonants contribute more to making English understood than vowels do Second, consonants are generally made by a definite interference of the vocal organs with the air stream, and so are easy to describe and understand” That is the reason for the writer to mention English consonants in the study

Two of 24 consonant sounds in English considered complex are the affricates /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ These affricates are post- alveolar sounds in which /tʃ/ is unvoiced and fortis; /dʒ/ is voiced and lenis

Giving the definition of the affricates is necessary for making a clear description of these sounds

1.1.4.1 Definition

Among many definitions about affricates, Cruttenden‟s is considered a clear one He

defines: “The term „affricate‟ denotes a concept which is primarily of phonetic

importance Any plosive whose release stage is performed in such a way that considerable friction occurs approximately at the point where the plosive stop is made, may be called

„affricative‟ ” (Cruttenden, 2001: 171)

1.1.4.2 The description of affricates

There are three basic characteristics in the description of affricative sounds:

Place of articulation (where in the mouth, the airstream is obstructed)

In the production of affricates, the soft palate is raised and the nasal resonator shut off, the obstacle to the airstream is formed by a closure made between the tip, blade, and the rims

of the tongue and the upper alveolar ridge and side teeth The place of articulation of affricates is illustrated in figure 1

Fig 1: The position of the tongue in the production of /tʃ/ and /dʒ/

Manner of articulation (the way in which the airstream is obstructed)

As Cruttendence‟s description, in order to pronounce /tʃ/ and /dʒ/, the front of the tongue

is raised towards the hard palate in readiness for the fricative release The closure is released slowly, the air escaping in a diffuse manner over the whole of the central surface

of the tongue with friction occurring between the blade of the tongue and the alveolar (Cruttendence, 2001: 176)

Fig 2: Section of stop phase of /tʃ , dʒ/ Fig 3: Section of stop phase of /tʃ, dʒ/

Degrees of voicing (whether there is vibration of the vocal cords)

Voiceless sounds are made without the vibration of vocal cords while voiced sounds are the one produced with the vibration of vocal cords In the case of affricative sounds, during both stop and fricative stages, the vocal folds are wide apart for /tʃ/, but may be vibrating for all or part of /dʒ/ according to the situation in the utterance Therefore, /tʃ/

is unvoiced and /dʒ/ is voiced

1.1.4.3 Learners’ problems with affricates

Sound confusion

Many Vietnamese learners make mistakes in pronouncing the above mentioned consonants They often confuse these sounds with other sounds Therefore, the confusing sounds are classified into 2 pairs:

1- /dʒ/ - /z/ or /s/

2- /tʃ/ - Vietnamese/c/

The confusion of these sounds is due to some reasons:

(1) The mother tongue influence

(2) Failure in distinguishing the differences

(3) Inadequate practice

Comparing the 2 above-mentioned sound pairs

 Sound pair /dʒ/ - /z/ or /s/

Owing to no affricates in the Vietnamese consonant system so many Vietnamese speakers

of English find it difficult to pronounce /dʒ/, for which they have to make great effort to place their tongue at the point to make a plosive /d/ then quickly move their tongue a little

back to make a fricative /ʒ/ They often change /dʒ/ into /z/ or /s/ Thus, judge /dʒʌdʒ/ is pronounced /zʌz/ or /zʌs/ Mistakes can also be found in the pronunciation of orange,

damage, village, January, bridge, etc

Table 4: Manner and place of articulation of sounds /dʒ/, /z/ and /s/

Sound Voice Manner of articulation Place of articulation

/dʒ/ voiced Affricate alveo-palatal

/z/ voiced Fricative alveolar

/s/ voiceless Fricative alveolar

When making a mistake, speakers can‟t make /dʒ/ palatal and voiced As discussed above, /s/ and /z/ are pronounced differently from /dʒ/, whose production starts with a plosive stop sound and finishes with a fricative sound First the tongue touches the ridge of the upper front teeth for /d/, but instead of releasing quickly for a plosive sound like /d/, the tip of the tongue moves (further back than that for /z/) to the place for the fricative /ʒ/ The roundness of the lips also depends on the surrounding sounds

 Sound pair /tʃ/- Vietnamese /c/

According to the table of Vietnamese consonants, /c/ is produced by the contact of the

blade of the tongue against the front part of hard palate, voiceless and aspirated, while the English /tʃ/ is produced as a palato-alveolar consonant and voiceless with the tongue rolls

a little bit The confusion is indicated in the table below

Table 5: Manner and place of articulation of sounds /tʃ/ and /c/

Sound Voice Manner of articulation Place of articulation

/tʃ/ voiceless Affricate alveo-palatal

/c/ voiceless Stop palatal

When making a mistake, speakers fail to make /tʃ/ alveolar and affricate, but instead, they make it plosive stop Like /dʒ/, /tʃ/ is produced beginning with a plosive stop sound and finishing with a fricative sound First the tongue touches the ridge of the upper front teeth for /t/, then instead of releasing quickly for a plosive sound like /t/, the tip of the tongue moves (further back than that for /s/) to the place for the fricative /ʃ/ Vietnamese learners

of English often mispronounce /ʃ/ like Vietnamese /c/, which is a voiceless palatal stop and which is produced with the blade of the tongue touching the hard palate This sound

can be found both in initial and final positions, e.g cho, chung, chi, etc Therefore, English /tʃ/ in chop is incorrectly pronounced like Vietnamese /c/ in chop Mistakes can also be found in the pronunciation of cheap, change, church, etc

Absence of sounds

As mentioned, affricates are two complex sounds in English in the way that they are sounds, in the progress of articulating: starting as stop consonants and ending as fricatives However, according to Đoàn Thiện Thuật (2003:153), Vietnamese consonant system comprises three main categories of sounds: stops, nasal and fricatives This shows that the Vietnamese consonantal inventory does not contain the same consonants as its English counterpart, particularly, in Vietnamese language, there is no affricates at all Thus, Vietnamese students tend to make these sounds similar to the ones of their native

language, for example, they pronounce /tʃ/ as /ƫ/ in Vietnames trong and /c/ in Vietnamese cho, etc

It‟s supposed that, the effective way to help learners to overcome this is to help them practice as much as possible

Spelling and pronunciation differences

The reason for calling Vietnamese a „phonetic‟ language is its high level correspondence between spelling and pronunciation In Vietnamese, there is no case in which a letter represents more than one sound However, “English can have more than one sound value

So there is not always a strict one-to-one correspondence between sound and letter” (Kenworthy, 1987: 94) and “the relationship between spelling and pronunciation is more complex in English” (Kelly, 2000: 122)

Apart from some sounds represented by a single letter as /m/, /n/, /v/, many sounds can be represented by more than one letter or combination of letters Among these sounds, /tʃ/ &

/dʒ/ can be good examples for this: /tʃ/ can appear in chin, nature, question and /dʒ/ is shown in Job, management, large, etc

All in all, the lack of sound-spelling correspondence in English makes it “not always easy

for learners of whatever L1 to see how a written English word should be pronounced, or how a word they have only heard should be written” (Kelly 2000:122-3) That is why

teachers should help learners aware of the the relationship between written and spoken language

1.2 Previous works

There have been many researches on Vietnamese learners‟ difficulties in English pronunciation so far but only some of them refer to English sounds, especially consonant sounds Avery and Ehrlich (1992) are the two authors who studied on the facing problems Vietnamese speakers often meet when they study English According to their opinion: “As the sound systems of English and Vietnamese differ greatly, Vietnamese speakers can have quite severe pronunciation problems.” The most common problems challenging Vietnamese learners mentioned in their work are the omission and confusion of the final consonants For instance, Vietnamese often drop affricative sounds in the final position because there are no Vietnamese affricates at the word-final position, thus orange is often pronounced as /orin/ or teach is often sounded as /ti:t/

In the research named “difficulties for Vietmamese when pronouncing English: Final Consonants”, Nguyen Thi Thu Thao stated that Vietnamese speakers are not pronounced

English word-final consonants in a native-like way Instead, they try to pronounce these sounds by adding schwa, replacing by sounds closers to those or even omitting the sounds The problems Vietnamese speakers encountering when pronouncing English sounds, especially the consonant sounds, have been concerned by many researchers However, they only study the pronunciation problems in board aspects Due to the fact, this research focuses on only two English affricates which are considered as some of the most challenging sounds

1.3 Summary of the chapter

It is surely that pronunciation is one of the most vital factors that govern language teaching and learning following CLT method In order to stress on the significance of pronunciation, in this chapter the author focuses on giving brief literature review of English pronunciation teaching such as role of pronunciation in ELT, factors that affect pronunciation acquisition, learners‟ difficulties in learning English consonants and an overview of affricative sounds and problems that Vietnamese learners often face when pronouncing these sounds following with the overview of previous works on this aspect The chapter‟s purposes are to find out the most common difficulties with the English affricates encountered by Vietnamese students so as to find the solutions to the mentioned problems

Chapter 2: methodology

2.1 Survey research

2.1.1 Definition

According to Johnson, survey research is a study of a large group through direct study of a subset of that group (Johnson, 1992:104) Survey research is one of the most common types of quantitative, social science research It is a research method of collecting data from respondents‟ thoughts and behaviors using questionnaires and/or statistical surveys

In the 1930s and 1940s, this method was pioneered by sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld “The purpose of a survey is to learn about characteristics of an entire group of interest (a population) by examining a subset of that group (a sample).” (Johnson, 1922:113)

2.1.2 Steps in conducting a survey research

In the process to conduct a survey research, the researcher must highly care about how the research will be fulfilled There are a lot of steps involved in the process such as: pointing out the purpose of the study; defining the research questions; choosing the population; drawing a sample from the population; determining the data collection methods; developing instruments; gathering data; and analyzing data Hereinafter, some concepts related are made clear

a Population

Johnson defined population as follows: “Population is the entire group of entities or

persons to which the results of a study are intended to apply.” (Johnson, Approaches to

Research in Second Language Learning, p.110) Adding to the meaning of the concept,

Webster also stated: “A population is a group of individual persons, objects, or items from which samples are taken for measurement for example a population of presidents or professors, books or students.” (Webster, 1985)

b Sampling

A sample is a finite part of a statistical population whose properties are studied to gain information about the whole (Webster, Webster‟s ninth new collegiate dictionary, 1985) Sampling is the act, process, or technique of selecting a suitable sample, or a representative part of a population for the purpose of determining parameters or

characteristics of the whole population (Salant, P and D A Dillman, How to conduct

your own survey, 1994) Sample is a fraction of population being studied (Fritz Scheuren, What is a survey, 2004, p.9)

c Respondent rates

Respondent rate is defined as the percentage of survey invitations that result in a response Response rates vary greatly from survey to survey, affected by almost all aspects of the survey process

2.2 Techniques employed in the research

- Questionnaire for students

- Tape recoding for students

Each instrument has its own purpose:

2.2.1.1 Questionnaire

Questionnaires are commonly used in ELT research because they have many significant advantages, such as less pressure on informants, not under pressure of interview bias and analysis of answer is straightforward

There are three types of data: behavioral deals with people‟s actions, life-styles, habits and personal history; factual includes demographic characteristics (e.g age, gender and

race), residential location, marital and socioeconomic status, level of education, religion

and occupation, as well as any other background; attitudinal relates to attitudes, opinions,

beliefs, interests and values

Types of questionnaire items

* Close- ended questionnaire items

According to Dorney (2003), close-ended questionnaire items include five types: rating scales; multiple-choice items; ranking order items; numeric items and checklist

* Open ended questionnaire items

Open ended questionnaires can be classified in four forms: specific open questions, clarification questions, sentence completion items and short- answers questions

Questionnaires can save researchers‟ time, effort as well as financial resources since they are easy to conduct and the time requirement is also shorter than other forms

However, there are some drawbacks of questionnaires The respondents taking part in the process can be unreliable and unmotivated There is little, even no opportunity to correct the respondents‟ mistakes

Questionnaire employed in the research

* Aims of the questionnaire

In this study, the questionnaire was designed to investigate the difficulties students encountering in pronouncing the English affricates and help to find out the causes of these challenges In order to get the best results, the questionnaires are tailored with ten questions to clarify: the students‟ attitude towards English pronunciation (questions 1-2); pronunciation learning situation (questions 3-4); pronunciation difficulties (questions 5-8); difficulties with affricates (questions 9-10)

* Selection of participants

There are 88 first-year students at N-Power, HUT participating in the survey All of students taking part in the research have studied English at least for three years at high schools Thus, they‟ve got chance to get used with English

2.2.1.2 Tape recording

Tape recording is considered as an effective tool in teaching pronunciation It also helps teachers evaluate students‟ abilities to pronounce foreign languages in order to find out the solutions to the existing problems which challenge students

There are three parts to the process The first part asks students to read the individual sounds and words aloud In part two, students pronounce the sounds in some phrases The last one orders students to read some sentences including the sounds considering

2.2.2 Data analysis

With two useful data instruments named tape recording and questionnaire, all the data needed to analyze the main focus of this study were collected The research is done

by both qualitative and quantitative methods:

- Qualitative analysis: Analyzed the students‟ recording

- Quantitative analysis: Analyzed the results of the questionnaire

It‟s hoped that the data analysis would lead to valuable findings

2.3 Procedures for the study

The survey questionnaire was distributed to 88 first-year students at N-Power, HUT The purpose and different terms of the questionnaire were explained before the distribution During the completion process of the questionnaire, the teacher helped the respondents understand all parts Students were informed that the information they gave would be kept confidential and be used for research purposes only It took students fifteen minutes to answer all the questions All the questionnaires were returned from participants, representing a response rate of 100% They were all valid and subsequently used for data analysis At the same time, tape recording process was conducted with ten students randomly chosen from the three classes by asking them to read the sounds /dʒ/ and /tʃ/ (appearing in some words, some phrases and some sentences) loudly to find out the mistakes making with these sounds Responses were analyzed following procedures for both qualitative and quantitative analysis

2.4 Summary of the chapter

This chapter presents the definition as well as the conducting steps of a survey research in the light of which the study is carried out Furthermore, it also refers to two techniques employed in this minor thesis, questionnaire and tape recording, including the aims of the techniques Finally, the two last parts point out the methods of analyzing data as well as the procedures of collecting data

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 3.1 Findings

3.1.1 Findings from the questionnaire

SECTION 1: Sample Profile

Table 6: Summary of Sample Profile