AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE PRONUNCIATION ERRORS IN ENGLISH EXPERIENCED BY THE LAOTIAN STUDENTS AT

However, from my own experience and observation, students of English at National University of Laos have experienced big problems with their English pronunciation, such as vowels, conson

Chapter One INTRODUCTION

1 1 RATIONALE

One of the most important purposes of foreign learners of English is to pronounce English sounds correctly and persuasively as well as speak English well for the sake of comprehensive communication We all try as much as possible to reach a nearly native like pronunciation so as to be easily understood and make others get at what we are saying That means while our lexis has reached proficiency level, our speaking, which is often without the correct pronunciation of English sounds, still falls short of our own expectations Comprehension problem is likely to result and communication could never been successful This makes the mastery of English pronunciation more and more important than ever and draws much teachers’ and students’ attention on the subject as though it is quite a boring, tough, and less interesting subject in comparison with other ones

For students of English at National University of Laos, good English pronunciation is of greater importance as most of them will later be models of English teacher for their own future students as long as pedagogical matters have been concerned

However, from my own experience and observation, students of English at National University of Laos have experienced big problems with their English pronunciation, such as vowels, consonants, stress, intonation, and linking… These problems undoubtedly impair the process of students’

developing speaking skills, especially their pronunciation, their communicative competence and also, these shortcomings in pronunciation will inevitably have negative effects on their future students’ language acquisition and performance

With this knowledge in mind, we boldly conduct an investigation into the problems or difficulties that Laotian students may experience in pronouncing English sounds We also try to make the problem come to light with its causes and set forward some helpful teaching activities with a view to helping these students overcome their problems

1 2 AIMS, OBJECTIVES AND QUESTIONS OF THE STUDY

1.2.1 Aim

This study aims at helping Laotian students improve their pronunciation, especially their performance of English consonants by suggesting some effective teaching activities for teachers to apply in classroom environment

1.2.2 Objectives

The study is intended to fulfil the following objectives:

1 To make a preliminary contrastive analysis between English and Lao consonant system in terms of phonetic features in the two languages;

2 To detect and identify the common pronunciation errors and problems that Laotian students may experience in pronouncing English;

3 To suggest effective solutions for the speech improvement of Laotian students in English

1.2.3 Questions of the study

In this research paper, we focus on the following questions:

1 What are the potential pronunciation errors that Laotian students may experience when they speak English?

2 What are the causes of the problem?

3 How can Laotian students overcome these possible errors in the pronunciation of English?

1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

Due to the constraint of time, our study is restricted to common pronunciation errors that Laotian students at the English Department at the National University of Laos may have in pronouncing English consonant sounds and sound clusters

1.4 ORGANIZATION OF STUDY

Our study will be presented in five chapters as follows

Chapter one, “Introduction”, includes the rationale, the justification for

the study, the aims and objectives, research questions and the scope of the study

Chapter Two, “Literature Review”, is an introduction about the

previous studies on vowels, consonants, syllables The theoretical knowledge will consist of a brief review on consonant system of English and Laos in view of articulatory phonetics This chapter also discusses the difference between the phonetic realization of the consonant in the onset and coda of the syllable structure in English and Laos

Chapter Three, “Research Design and Methodology”, presents the

hypotheses as well as research method, and procedure of data collection and analysis

Chapter Four, “Results and Discussion”, is written to describe the

results drawn from the data collected to define what the common errors and problems in pronunciation that Laotian students may experience are Besides,

in this chapter the reasons for all the problems will be presented and discussed

in detail

Chapter Five, “Conclusion and Implications”, draws some conclusions

and the implications related to the study Finally, the study puts forwards some limitations and unsolved problems

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 PRIOR RESEARCH

Historically speaking, Dr Xayavong (2005) explained that the currently used Lao language nowadays is derived from the Tai language family, which was originated in the Altai Mountain Range in the ancient Mongolia over a thousand years ago [8, p.39]

During the period of 1960s, members of the Lao Committee embodied for the purpose of surveying and researching associated with the Lao language This committee had compiled the first Lao-Lao dictionary of Viravong in 1961 and the Lao grammar books (Part I (1963) and Part II (1970)) of the Lao Morphology [cited in 2, p.9-12] In parallel with using the Lao language as a medium of instructions in schools, colleges and other higher educational institutes in both public and private sectors in the Lao PDR

at the present time, the Government has opened up their policies in cooperation with international communities As a matter of fact, the demands

on using foreign languages; namely, French, English, German, Russian, etc., for communication and cooperation with foreign countries have increasingly been required in the Lao PDR; especially, in the National University of Laos Currently, many foreign languages; especially, the English language is mainly used in various fields of professions locally and internationally In this respect, Faculty of Letters under the direct domination of the National University of Laos; especially, Department of English has been assigned to use the English language into a variety of teaching and learning tasks In other words, syllabi within Department of English have been divided into different

academic subjects and programmes; namely, BA Programme, Special Programmes, School of Foundation Studies Course, English for other

Faculties, and the MA Programme (Teaching English as a Foreign Language)

As it is known, the great majority of the Lao BA Programme students frequently claimed that English is recognised as the second foreign language for most Lao students Consequently, the vast majority of the Lao learners of English have mainly confronted with problems in their learning processes and the use within their real-life situation Some of the most significant problems frequently addressed by the great many teachers and students are commonly concerned with pronunciation in comparison with the English consonant

sound systems To exemplify, Dr Muenmany (2002) argued that most Lao

people have faced problems in pronouncing some European consonant phonemes; namely, /p/, /f/, /r/, /d/, /l/, /T/ and /D/, among others [3, p.1-3] Consequently, the above-mentioned difficulties in pronouncing English consonant phonemes will be linguistically identified into the diagnostically contrastive analysis of English and Lao consonant sound systems as shown in section 2.2

2.2 THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLISH AND LAO PHONETIC SYSTEMS

The rule of English phonetic system is totally different from that of Laos English phonetic system is characterized in word stress, sentence stress, rising and falling intonations, and sounds articulated at the end of the words; particularly, the final English consonants

As it is known, the Lao phonetic system is based on the pitch of the sequence tones Normally, there are no specific emphasis on the utterances;

namely, (1) word stresses and (2) the scarcity of the utterance of the final consonant sounds, such as the pronunciation of the ‘s’ /s/ occurring in the

final position of any words in the Lao language According to the Lao

Grammar Book of Vongvichit (1967), there are six tones; namely, mai ek ( '),

mai to ( É ), mai dti ( ÊÊ ) and mai chattawa ( Ë ) [cited in 4, p.19] In this respect, the aforementioned Lao Tone Mark aspect is well supported by the Lao Tone Pitch Chart written by Hoshino and Marcus (1981), which classified that there are six tones, consisting of three consonant groups [1, p.158-161] The chart also shows the code combination of an initial consonant

(i.e., 3 types (kang, tam, sung)) and a final consonant (3 types (stops, nasals and others)), which describes the code for tone determination when

pronouncing the words [1, p.158-161]

2.2.1 Consonant system in English and Laos

However, according to our observation, it is not tone that causes problems for Lao students of English The problem is based on the difference

in the system of consonants in the two languages To start the comparison between English consonants and Lao consonants, we would like to sketch a picture about the consonant chart in each language

Table 2.1 English consonant chart

Place

dental Alveolar

Labio- alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal Stops vd

Lao Consonant Phonemes

Phonologically speaking, 20 Lao consonant phonemes may be classified as follows:

The Lao Consonant System

Table 2.2 The Lao Consonant Chart

Place of articulation Manner of

articulation Bilabial Labio

Dentals Dentals Palatal Velar Glottal Voiceless

The relation between spelling and pronunciation is also a problem to take into consideration First, the letter "a" is pronounced “ah” as in “father”,

so the word for “village”, ban, is pronounced “bahn” Secondly, words with

“o” like “hot” are pronounced “hote” Lot ("vehicle") is “lote”, and “mot” ("used up") is “mote” Next, "ph" isn’t “f” but “p” as in English, and finally

"th" is pronounced “t”, not as “th” in English The single letters "t" and "p" are used to represent hard consonant sounds that aren’t common in English

As for the consonants of Lao, the following have the same pronunciation as in English: [b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, s ]

The following letters have different sounds from English Two of them may be difficult for English speakers These are the hard /p/ sound and the hard /t/ sound The first is a cross between "p" and "b" while the second is a cross between "t" and "d" (like the "t" in "sixty")

Table 2.3 Spelling-Pronunciation relationship in Laos vs English

P a hard p/b sound

Ph pronounced as "p" in English

T a hard t/d sound

Th pronounced as "t" in English

G Has a harder sound, a cross between "g" and "k"

J Has a harder sound than in English

Ng used at the beginning as well as at the end of words

W sometimes has a "v" sound

Moreover, there are various pronouncing styles of the regional dialects from each part of the Lao country as shown below

In the Vientiane dialect, [c] (like [c] as in “chin” in Vietnamese) and [k] are sometimes in free variation This occurs only in informal speech For example:

k - c = /kin/ vs /cin/ ( eat)

c - k = /cia / vs /kia/ ( paper)

The phoneme /f/ is substituted for the phoneme /p/ in the Savannakhet dialect For example:

f - p = /fai / /pai / ( fire)

=/fan/ /pan/ (cut) The same variation also occurs in the Pakse dialect

Furthermore, in the Pakse dialect, / l / and / d / are sometimes in free variation For example:

l - d = / lao/ /dao/ (star) (Like /đ/ in Vietnamese)

In some areas [wa] may be pronounced [ua] For example, [gwa] (“more than”) may be pronounced [gua], [kwa] (“right side”) may be [kua], and [gwang] (“wide”) may be pronounced [guang]

The word used in Laos for “province” - [kwaeng] - may be pronounced [kaeng] (without the “w”) colloquially

The second point that should be noted in the contrastive analysis of English and Lao consonants is the presence of the consonant clusters in the former and the absence of consonant clusters in the latter It is argued that there is no consonant cluster in Lao for the linguistic fact that the product from the combination of two or more consonants should be the synthetic sound from the individual componential sounds, as in [tS] of English This combinative sound is not a mere sum of the two componential sounds [t] and [j] The same thing cannot be said to Lao where the quality of the combinative sounds or consonant clusters is the same as the second individual component with a little low level of pitch Thus it can be said that “consonant cluster” in Lao is just a name that refers to a quantitative combination of two consonants rather than a qualitative one In this sense, we understand that there can be two

kinds of consonant clusters: the genuine one, which is perceived as an integrated unit, and the pseudo one, which is perceived as two or three

consecutive sounds The English consonant clusters are treated as the former and those in Lao the latter

2.2.2 The syllable structure of English and Laos

One more thing that should be taken into consideration is the phonetic realization of the components in the syllable structure in English and Laos

2.2.2.1 The nature of the syllables

The syllable is a very important unit, is usually described as consisting

of a centre which has little or no obstruction to airflow and which sounds comparatively loud; before and after this centre, there will be greater obstructive to airflow and/or less loud sound as in the following types:

a) A minimum syllables would be a single vowel in isolation, e.g the words ‘are’ [a:], ‘or’ [O:], ‘err’ [Z;]

b) Some syllables have an onset, e.g ‘bar’ [bA;], ‘key’ [ki;]

c) Syllables may have no onset but have a coda, e.g ‘am’ [&m], ‘ease’ [i;z]

d) Some syllables have onset and coda, e.g ‘run’ [rVn], ‘sad’ [s&t]

There are still problems with this phonetic description of the syllable, particularly in the matter of deciding on the division between syllables One problem is that by some definitions the‘s’ in the middle, between ‘k’ and‘t’, would be counted as a syllable, which most English speakers would reject However, opinions usually differ as to where the two syllables are to be divided; the possibilities are (using the symbol + to signify a syllable

boundary): e + kstr@, ek + str@, eks + tr@, ekst + r@, ekstr + @

Usually the second or third possibilities are chosen; it is not possible to say which of these the correct choice is

The structure of the English syllables consists of an onset If the first syllable of the word in question begins with a vowel (any vowel may occur, though U is rare) that is called initial syllable, if the syllable begins with one consonant, that initial consonant may be any consonant phoneme except [N], [Z] is rare It is noted that syllable have two or more consonants together that called a consonant cluster

Initial two-consonant clusters consist of two sorts in English as the‘s’ followed by one of a small set of consonant, e.g in words ‘sting’ [stIN],

‘sway’[sweI], ‘smoke’[sm@Uk] is called the pre-initial consonant and the other consonant(t,w,m in the above examples) the initial consonant These clusters are shown in Table 2.4

Table 2.4 Two- consonant clusters with pre-initial‘s’

The other sort begins with one of a set of about 13 consonants,

followed by one of the set l, r, w, j, as in, e.g ‘play’[pleI ], ‘try’ [trAI],

‘quick’[kwIk], ‘few’[fju;] is called the initial consonant and the second the post-initial There are some restrictions on which consonants can occur together This can best be shown in Table 2.5 below

Table 2.5 the Post consonant clusters with initial ‘s’

(Extracted from Roach (2000), English Phonetics and Phonology:A practice course,Cambridge University Press.[27,p.59] )

Further, any consonant may be a final consonant except h, r, w, j there

are two sorts of two-consonant final cluster, one being a final consonant preceded by a pre-final consonant (such as m, n, N, l, s), e.g in words ‘bump’ [bVmp], ‘ask’ [A;sk] and the other a final consonant followed by a post-final consonant (such as s, z, t, d, T), e.g in words ‘bets’ [bets], ‘beds’ [bedz] These post-final consonant can often be identified as separate morphemes (although not always, e.g ‘axe’ [&ks] is a single morpheme and its final‘s’ has no separate meaning)

There are two types of final three-consonant clusters; the first is

pre-final plus post-pre-final, as in table below:

Table 2.6 final three-consonant clusters: the first is pre-final plus post-final

Pre-final Final Post-final

(Extracted from Roach (2000), English Phonetics and Phonology:A practice course,Cambridge University Press.[27,p.60] )

The second type shows that more than one post-final consonant can occur in a final cluster: final plus post-final 1 plus post final 2 Post- final 2 is again one of s, z, t, d, T

Table 2.7 final three-consonant clusters:

final plus post-final 1 plus post final 2

Pre-final Final Post-final 1 Post-final 2

Table 2.8 four-consonant clusters

Pre-final Final Post-final 1 Post-final 2

(Extracted from Roach (2000), English Phonetics and Phonology:A practice course,Cambridge University Press.[27,p.61] )

A small number of cases seem to require a different analysis, as

consisting of a final consonant with no pre-final but three post-finals:

Table 2.9 Four-consonant clusters: zero pre-final + 3 post-finals

Pre-final Final Post-final 1 Post-final 2 Post-final 2

(Extracted from Roach (2000), English Phonetics and Phonology:A practice

course,Cambridge University Press.[27,p.60] )

A concept of syllable structure as well as phonetic realization of this

structure is a subject of considerable interest to phonologists and foreign

learners of English In the following section, we will present how English

syllable structure is realized as compared with that of Laos

2.2.2.2 Remarks on the syllable structure of English and Laos

In general, there are more similarities in the syllable structure in

English and Lao than the differences Like English, Lao also has open and

closed syllable, light and heavy syllable with the onset (O), the Nucleus (N),

the Rhyme (R), the Coda (C)

‘ -§¾©’ [sa:t] (sạt) ⇒ syllable in Lao

Figure 2.2 The internal structure of the syllable in Lao

As we have mentioned, the components in the syllable structure are phonetically realized differently in each language English syllable is characterized with the articulation of the final consonant in the coda The voiceless alveolar stop [t] is usually released in speech with normal speed In Lao, the final consonants are not heard and such phonetic features as final release are not realized The coda in the syllable structure of Lao is treated as the component to contribute to the modification or shaping of the quality of the Rhyme and it is never heard as an individual sound

Last but not least important is the phonetic realization of the phonemes

of the stop and plosive class / p, t, k, b, d, g / which can have such phonetic features as [+ aspiration ] or [ - voicing ] in different phonetic contexts The presence of the fortis members or lenis members in the Rhyme may contribute

to the modification of the quality of the Nucleus as far as the length of articulation is concerned

In the previous studies of the differences in English and Lao phonetic system, the problems that the Laotian students may encounter have been mentioned However, the motivation of the errors that Laotian students may make as well as how these mistakes are distributed among Laotian learners who speak different dialects of Lao are still unsolved problems

2.3 SUMMARY

As we have mentioned, due to the fact that English and Lao are different languages as far as their typology is concerned, it is predicted that Laotian students of English may make mistakes in pronunciation of English These suggested mistakes may come from the differences in system of consonants in English and Lao as well as the phonetic features that members

of classes of consonants may have in pronunciation Also, the phonetic features of the subsyllabic elements in the internal structure of the syllable in English and Lao can be taken into consideration for a contrastive analysis with which our assumptions are made about the potential errors that Laotian students may have in performing their pronunciation of English words Finally, the inventory of phonemes in some dialects in Lao is also treated as the source for the pronunciation mistakes

Chapter Three RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY

3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHOD

This study is a qualitative and quantitative research using predictive contrastive analysis With this kind of research and method, the study starts with a preliminary contrastive analysis of sound system in English and Lao, and then some hypotheses are drawn from the preliminary assumptions about students’ pronunciation competence These hypotheses are tested with qualitative and quantitative result from the data collected from questionnaires and direct recording

3.2 HYPOTHESES

With the preliminary information from the comparison between phonetic system of English and that of Laotian language presented in chapter Two, the study generates the following hypotheses:

• Due to the fact that there are no Lao counterparts for the English sounds /z/, /Z/, /v/, /S/, /T/, /D/, /Ù/, /Í/, students may make errors in pronouncing the individual sounds at both word-initial and final position;

• Due to the absence of consonant clusters in Laos, Laotian students may make errors in producing English consonants concerning the clusters of sound;

• There would be somewhat a logical distribution of common pronunciation errors made by Laotian students according to their regional dialects

3.3 METHOD AND PROCEDURE

1 The first step of this research was to review relevant documents, books, theses, and researches concerning our topic published in Lao, and other languages

2 The second step is to make a preliminary contrastive analysis between English sound system and Lao sound system concerning the inventory of phonemes and the syllable structure in these two languages

3 The third step is to identify the similarities and differences between English pronunciation and Lao pronunciation in terms of segmental units as individual consonants and consonant clusters in individual words and in sentences

4 The fourth step is to generate hypotheses about the errors and problems that Laotian students may experience in performing English

5 The fifth step is to collect data from Laotian students This consists

of two stages conducted as follows

- At the first stage, Laotian students were required to take part in the survey with questionnaires They were given questionnaires with questions about their province, their level, their attitude about the subjects of their course and their problems in pronunciation

- At the second stage, Laotian students as informants were asked to read or say the words, phrases, sentences that contain problematic sounds Their performance was recorded and transcribed normally for the analysis The similar sounds and the exotic sounds in the Laotian students’ performance of English were recorded as empirical evidence for further contrastive analysis

6 The data analysis is expected to yield information about errors and problems that are mentioned in the hypotheses They are analysed qualitatively and quantitatively to yield the evidence for testing the hypotheses The occurrence of error of various types are calculated and tabulated with their frequency in percentage

3.4 SUBJECT SELECTION AND DESCRIPTION

The subjects involved in the research are the tertiary students of five levels studying at the English Department at the National University of Lao The selection of the informants in this context should include the representatives of the distinctive dialects in Laos These subjects are selected for the study due to the following reasons

Firstly, there is a suggested distinction between the students who have studied the phonetics lessons and those have not At the second years of the syllabus, Laotian students at BA Programme is required to attend a phonetic course with the allocation of 45 periods

Secondly, as the freshmen, the first year students need to get an awareness of their mistakes from pronunciation teachers from the early year

to get free from shaping these mistakes into potential “errors” This is beneficial for their learning and practicing of English pronunciation in later years

Thirdly, the subject chosen from the first year to the fourth year in the three areas of Laos should serve the purpose of the study: to find out qualitative and quantitative information about the commitment of pronunciation mistakes which are distributed among those students who speak different dialects of Laos

Last but not least, this kind of subject also helps provide some necessary information about students’ background and attitudes towards learning and practicing pronunciation, which contributes to the building of the corpus of study

3.5 THE SAMPLE

The recordings were administered to a sample of 45 Laotian students

As mentioned above, the population from which the sample was drawn was the tertiary students from freshmen to senior level To get the information about the distribution of errors of different kinds, we chose students in different provinces of Laos and these informants were treated as the ones that provided the representative samples of pronunciation performance The students were chosen with convenience, thus this sampling somewhat failed

to maintain the coverage of students of different criteria of evaluation in each levels of learning such as Excellent, Very good, Good, Quite good and Fair For the description of the sampling, please see table 3.1 below:

Table 3.1 The representative informants selected for the diagnostic test

From

No Student’s name

City Region

Class / year

12 Mr Phouxay Huaphanh North 5

36 Ms.Chitanaphone Savannakheth South 1

38 Ms.Sompadthana Champasack South 3

39 Ms.Phousavan Champasack South 3

3.6 METHOD OF DATA COLLECTION

The data was obtained using 2 measurement instruments: survey with questionnaires and diagnostic test

The questionnaires were issued to the population of 100 students in the English Department of National University of Laos To facilitate the survey, the researcher made clear all the questions posed to students to get rid of students’ confusion with the instructions in the questionnaires The students were also allotted some time to make up their mind on the choice of options

or to give their feedback to open-ended questions (See Appendix A for the design of the questionnaire.)

The diagnostic test consisted of 2 parts Part 1 was designed for testing the students’ perception of the consonants and consonants clusters in question This part consisted 11 pairs of sentences, each of which contained consonants in initial and final position in words, which were intended to cause potential problems

Part 2 of the diagnostic test consisted of 3 sections designed for testing the students’ actual performance of producing sounds Section 1 contained a word list to test students’ performance of English consonants in syllable-initial position or in syllable-final position in isolated words Section 2 contained a word list to test their performance in consonant clusters at different positions in monosyllabic words and polysyllabic words Section 3 contained a sentence list to test their performance of the consonants and consonant clusters in question in connected speech 45 students as representative informants of the three regions of Laos concerning their distinctive style of dialect were chosen to involve in the diagnostic test

The word list in Section 1 Part 2 consists of 52 words with 26 words

containing consonants at initial position and 26 others containing consonants

at final position The word list in Section 2 itself consists of 22 words that

came in 11 pairs containing consonant clusters The fact that words came in

pairs with the same consonant cluster was considered as to make sure that the

students made the same mistake The sentence list in section 3 consists of 13

sentences containing the consonants and consonant clusters in question

The procedure of word selection was as follows All the words were

collected from the book Sound English which is reliable for the inventory of

words containing the sounds in question and which is available for the

students at Laos For each part of the test, the students were asked to read

aloud the words and sentences so that the recording could be made

The problems that were issued in the two parts of the diagnostic test are

presented here in table 3.2 below:

Table 3.2 Problems of English consonants in Laotian students’ performance

Problems Members Context Number

Palato-alveolar fricative [tS, dZ, Z] initial, final

2-consonant cluster [tr, dr, kr, Tr , kw, kl, sp] initial, W-medial

3-consonant cluster [skr, str, spr, spl] initial, W-medial

The corpus building was carried out in four stages:

Stage 1: The students were asked to pronounce the words in the word list after having a couple of minutes to read through it;

Stage 2: The students were asked to read through the sentences in the sentence list after having a couple of minutes to read through it;

Stage 3: The students were asked to listen to the tape and circle the word(s) they heard on the hand-outs delivered

The diagnostic test was all tape-recorded The recordings would make

it possible for the students’ performance to be transcribed, and then be collated with the version produced by the English model tape as the baseline data In addition, the study took advantage of effective software “Goldwave” which can measure the production of students The test and transcription were completed at the end of April 2006

3.8 DATA ANALYSIS

Data analysis was carried out using the procedure of tallying frequencies, recording the results, presenting the data in frequency and percentage distribution tables, and analyzing and interpreting the data in the light of the research objectives

The first part of the survey has been done with the aim of eliciting information about the current situation of the students’ pronunciation of English at Laos National University The data collected from this part were

counted to give both qualitative and quantitative information about the length

of their English learning process and their background (questions 1-3); their interest and attention to the areas of subjects or macro skills of English as well

as the opportunity to practice each of these skills (questions 4-8) The data collected from respondents to questions 9-13 were interpreted with the intention to identify the students’ attitude to the pronunciation practice and the difficulties in pronunciation of English Information from questions 14-16 were analyzed to pool up evidence about the teacher role in the teaching and learning English pronunciation Also, the students’ feedbacks to these open-ended questions were used as the preliminary information from which our arguments about the causes of students’ difficulties and solutions to overcome the problems were made

The second part of the survey has been done to gather the information about the students’ actual performance of pronunciation in English The first component of this task dealt with the detecting of pronunciation mistakes in students’ perception and understanding of the English words in sentences Information collected was judged to identify the mistakes in recognizing the phonetic features of consonants in initial and final position in the syllable The results were intended to detect the students’ knowledge about the presence of the consonants in the syllable with their influence on the vowel as well as the neighbouring segments in the consonant clusters

The second component of the diagnostic test was made to check the students’ actual performance in pronouncing the consonants in isolated words and sentences with different positions in the syllable structure We did not take such mistakes in mispronouncing the vowels of the words into consideration Mistakes of this kind were ignored for the assumption that to some students, the words in questions were not familiar and quite new, which

caused their failure in pronouncing the vowels correctly Instead, the degree

of their failure in pronouncing the consonants in words and sentences were accounted as far as the accuracy and intelligibility were concerned Accordingly, how far the students’ actual performance diverted from the standard one (those made by the native speakers) was judged with qualitative and quantitative dimensions This was done with our careful listening to the students’ performance in comparison with the native speaker’s ones Along with this observation, the demonstration of the performance with the help of computer software like Goldwave was made to support our decisions on students’ errors (as shown in figure 3.1 below)

Native speaker’s performance

Student’s performance

Figure 3.1 The demonstration of sound wave of the sentence “We took a ship”

made by the native English speaker as compared with that of Laotian student

3.9 VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY

The data collection was done with 100 students taking part in the questionnaires and 45 students in performing their pronunciation perceptive and productive skill The selection of the informants was restricted to the subjects available with convenience and accordingly, failed to satisfy the demand of establishing the representative samples at different levels of evaluation as far as their academic achievement was concerned Also, we failed to get information about the students’ actual performance in free talks and conversation, which was supposed to provide more reliable empirical evidence for detecting various kinds or pronunciation errors in connected speech In this sense, what has been done for the survey is virtually controlled rather than yielding a corpus with authentic sources

Chapter Four RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

In this chapter, the researcher will present at length the results of the statistical analysis in order of the questions and hypotheses relating to the objectives mentioned The current situation of the BA-Programme students’ pronunciation at Department of English, Faculty of Letters, the National University of Laos, some perspectives towards their learning and their actual performance of English will be illustrated in details through the information collected from the questionnaires and the diagnostic test

4.1 RESULT PRESENTATION

4.1.1 Data collected from students’ questionnaires

4.1.1.1 Students’ background

Table 4.1 Information about students’ background

Northern provinces 29 (29%) Vientiane Capital 43 (43%) Dwelling places

provinces of Laos and 43 students are from the central part of the country, i.e Vientiane Capital From the data collected, the BA-Programme students have got to know English with their prior different learning background due to their different living locations 43% of students live in Vientiane Capital, while the rest live and study in the northern and the southern provinces for a long time and therefore, cannot get advantages of the facilities there Besides, the length

of their study at school somehow would constitute to the productivity of the research In fact, the Laotian students as the informants have undergone different maturity of English learning 45% of the students involved in the questionnaires are in the forth year, constituting the highest number; while, 15% of them in the third year, and 5% in the fifth The rest are those among the first and the second years (14% and 13 % respectively) With students’ different levels of English as a foreign language, it is predicted that these students would confront with many different problems in their second language learning and acquisition

4.1.1.2 Overview about the practice of teaching and learning at National University of Laos (NUOL)

From the questionnaires, the researcher can get a general description of the practice of teaching and learning at Department of English, Faculty of Letters, National University of Laos (NUOL)

Table 4.2 Information about the practice of teaching and learning at NUOL

Listening 17% Reading 13% Speaking 56%

Skills of the most

Language items teacher

pays much attention to

teach

Others: 0%

Actually, when the students get to answer the question of which

language skill ranks first in terms of importance, a relatively large majority of

them argue that speaking skill is the most important of all (56%), followed by

listening (17%) and writing (14%), while only 13% choose reading as the

subject that has a central place in the learning of second language Moreover,

as revealed from the questionnaires, teachers at Department of English appear

to pay much attention to teaching such items as grammar and reading

comprehension as the percentage of these items are comparatively high (52%

and 17% respectively), whereas listening skill held the smallest percentage

(7%) of all Although pronunciation is also included in the syllabus, the time

spent on it is not as high as the practising of grammar and any other written

structures

4.1.1.3 Students’ actual situation of pronunciation learning

Table 4.3 Students’ actual situation of pronunciation learning

Frequency of using

English as a means of

communication

Never 3%

Remarkably seen from Table 4.3 is the fact that BA-Programme students

of the first year to the fifth year mostly show their awareness of the role of

speech training in language learning That can be explained why over half of

them think pronunciation practising is very important (67%), and the rest

think it is important

Much as the students all realize the importance of pronunciation in

language learning, their frequency of using English as a means of

communication is various and differs from this to that individual 62% of the

students just sometimes practise pronunciation, keeping the highest

percentage of all Few of them (3%) show the smallest frequency of using

English as a means of communication; actually this minor number never ever

speak English for the sake of exchanging information 28% have often used it

in their communication Whereas, 7% confess that they very often use it for

daily practice with their classmates and frequently involve themselves in

conversations in which English is used thoroughly as the main language tool

4.1.1.4 Students’ problems in pronunciation in oral communication

Table 4.4 Students’ problems of communicating orally and

pronunciation practising

Often 47% Sometimes 38%

Problems of orally communicating

with foreigners or friends

Never 4% Yes 59%

No 1%

Problems of pronunciation in oral

communication

As stated by most of the Laotian students in Department of English,

they have to encounter a great deal of difficulties in their oral communication

with foreigners or classmates 47% of the students admit this fact while 38%

among them confess they just sometimes find any problems in using and

speaking a foreign language for communicative purposes Concerning about

this respect, 4% proudly admit that no problem would ever be found in their

oral second language use, irrespective of talking to friends or foreigners

Speaking a foreign language is not an easy task at all, especially this is not the

matter of speaking but one of articulating the language whose sound

inventory is quite different from the learners’ mother tongue and one of

communicating The fact students find no difficulty in using the foreign

language either reveals that they truly have a command of performing that

language or indicates their attitude of being so proud and even self-satisfied

with their own ability

Much as students all realise the importance of pronunciation in language

learning, the recognition of difficulties associated with pronunciation in oral

communication is various and differs from student to student 59% of the students state that problems with conducting communication by using the foreign language frequently happen while 33 among them confidently deny the overwhelmed influence of any communicative difficulties However, still are some students who do not get themselves really involved in any conversations in which English is the main thread facilitating the process of exchanging information, that they are not aware of any existent difficulties in their oral communication

4.1.1.5 Students’ difficulties in practising pronunciation

The results in Table 4.5 show that the BA-Programme studentsface many different difficulties in pronunciation due to different sound systems of English and Laotian languages The most significant point to notice is that 19% and 42%

of the participants respectively claim that they often face a great deal of problems in their articulation, which constitutes the highest percentage Another significant point to note is that 35% of the respondents argue that they sometimes confront with problems in their pronunciation Only 4% among them bravely state they have never ever found any difficulties in their pronunciation practising However, there may be a variety of factors, which can be put down to the reasons for all the problems as stated by the majority of the participants One

of the big difficulties is the limited opportunities to speak English in such authentic contexts in which students can communicate and got accustomed to the native speakers’ voice On the other hand, 50% admit that they really have little chance to speak English with native speakers while 18% put the obstacles down

to the lack of suitable facilities It is interesting to note that both factors related with difficulties faced by Lao students when practising pronunciation; especially, the lack of materials and chance to practise English with friends, constituting