Improving english pronunciation for the first year students of english major at hanoi open university

The title: Improving English pronunciation for the 1 st year students of English major at Hanoi Open University... 30 Figure 3 English pronunciation ability of the 1st year students of E

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF ENGLISH

- -

GRADUATION THESIS B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDIES

IMPROVING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION FOR THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH MAJOR AT HANOI OPEN

UNIVERSITY

Supervisor : Nguyen Thi Kim Chi,M.A Student : Vu Van Huy

Date of birth : 06/11/1994 Course : 1271A04 (2012-2016)

Hanoi, 2016

Code : 18

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it are my own and has been generated by me as the result of my own original written and under strict guidance of my supervisor

The title: Improving English pronunciation for the 1 st year students of English major at Hanoi Open University

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This graduation thesis would never have been able to finish without the guidance of my lovely supervisor, help from friends and support from my parents Firstly, I would love to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, MA Nguyen Thi Kim Chi, for her excellent guidance, caring and patience, and providing me with a good condition for doing research, from whom I have received valuable comments and suggestions I would also like to thank M.A Vu Tuan Anh, Who gave me some excellent ideas, and lent me some useful books to help me finish this graduation thesis

Secondly, I would like to thank to faculty of English, Hanoi Open University for giving me permission to commence this thesis in the first instance and to do the necessary research work

Thirdly, I want to show my appreciation to participants, including K22, the first year students of English major at Hanoi Open University, who provided me with valuable assistance in collecting data

Last but not least, my gratefulness goes to my parents, who have been supporting me, especially my mother, She was always cheering me up and stand

by me through the good and bad times

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v

LIST OF TABLES AND FIRGURES vi

PART A:INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Research questions 2

5 Method of the study 3

6 Design of the study 3

PART B DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1- LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Introduction 4

1.2 Pronunciation 6

1.2.1What is the definition of pronunciation 6

1.2.2 Main features of English pronunciation 8

1.2.2.1 Consonants 12

1.2.2.2 Vowels 14

1.2.2.3 Intonation 17

1.2.2.4 Word stress 19

1.3 The importance of English pronunciation 23

1.3.1 Teachers’ perception about the importance of pronunciation 23

1.3.2 Students’ perception about the importance of pronunciation learning 24

1.4 Difficulty for Vietnamese learners when pronouncing English 25

1.5 Summary 27

CHAPTER 2: PROBLEMS MET BY THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH MAJOR IN PRACTICING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 28

2.1 Data collection 28

2.1.1 Data analysis 28

2.1.1.1 Participant’s attitude towards English pronunciation 29

2.1.1.2 Pronunciation problems of the first year students 31

2.1.1.2.1 English pronunciation ability of the 1st year English majors at HOU 31

2.1.1.2.2 Word stress 32

2.1.1.2.3 Intonation 33

2.1.1.2.4 English final consonant 34

2.1.1.2.5 Linking sounds 35

2.1.1.3 Causes leading to the first year English majors’ problems about English pronunciation 36

2.1.1.3.1 Wrong methods of self-study 37

2.1.1.3.2 Big differences between English and Vietnamese language 37

2.1.1.3.3 Influence of Vietnamese mother tongue 40

2.1.1.3.4 Psychology factor of shyness 41

2.1.1.3.5 Teaching methods 41

2.1.1.3.6 Lacking of time practicing pronunciation at home 42

2.2 Summary 43

CHAPTER 3 SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS HELP THE FIRST YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS IMPROVE THEIR ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 44 3.1 Practice hearing the sounds of English 44

3.2 Pay attention to word and sentence stress 45

3.3 Be aware of intonation 48

3.4 Practice linking sounds together and connected speech 50

3.5 Work out which sounds cause most difficult in pronouncing 54

3.6 Read out loud and recording 56

3.7 Summary 57

PART C:CONCLUSION 58

REFERENCES 60

APPENDIX 62

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ESL : English as a second language

EFL : English is spoken as a second language

LIST OF TABLES AND FIRGURES TABLES

Table 1 Expression of emotions when speaking English 33 Table 2 Student’s ability of linking sounds in English 35

FIGURES

Figure 1: The importance of having good English pronunciation 29 Figure 2: The participants concern about English pronunciation and try to reach it 30 Figure 3 English pronunciation ability of the 1st year students of English major 31 Figure 4 Frequency of paying attention to word stress of the first year students 32 Figure 5 Ability of pronouncing English final consonant sounds 34 Figure 6 Reasons leading to the student’s incorrect pronunciation 36 Figure 7 Habit of pronouncing English like Vietnamese sounds 40 Figure 8 Amount of time students practice their English pronunciation at home 42

PART A INTRODUCTION

Students of English as a second language know so well how important pronunciation is Nevertheless, sometimes it has been obvious that a student has been paid little attention to their English pronunciation in the process of second language learning Celce & Goodain (1991) states that over the past years, there have been different views about the value of teaching pronunciation in language teaching and they reported that the cognitive approach and grammar translation reading based method which used by teachers attach no importance to pronunciation

Many people learning English language often do not pay much attention to their pronunciation Even worse, some of them underestimate it They think that pronunciation is less important than grammar and vocabulary In fact, Pronunciation reflects your English speaking ability Many cases of misunderstanding in communication were caused by the mispronouncing of words or the improper intonation

It has been realized the fact that most of English students who study English at Hanoi Open University have different background, they come from another provinces where their high school did not really teach them English pronunciation except for English grammar As a senior English major student, I realized how the first year student try their best to reach their specific goal to speak English better and to sound more naturally and more like native English speaker In addition, the first year student should be a perfect time to train their

pronunciation Experts argue that pronunciation should be introduced by teachers

in all their lessons, and teachers themselves should make learners aware of its importance (Gilakjani,2011) Yates and Zielinski (2009) found that pronunciation

is a very difficult aspect of English to learn, but it seems that teaching pronunciation from the very beginning helps learners to be intelligible Therefore,

I would like to do a research with a wish to improve the freshman’s English pronunciation that they can speak English natural, confident and like a native

speaker The research entitled “Improving English pronunciation for the first year students of English major at Hanoi Open University”

2 Aims of the study

This study is an attempt to:

 Investigate the attitudes of the first year student at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University towards the importance of English pronunciation

 Figure out some problems faced by the freshman during their studying English pronunciation, their habits to study English pronunciation

 Give some solutions and suggestions to help them step by step learning English pronunciation so that they can improve their speaking skills

3 Scope of the study

In this research, I would like to focus on the problems of the first year English majors might meet when they learn English pronunciation, finding out the reality

of learning English pronunciation to them Although I am well aware that the survey statistics are not fully representative of all English major students at other universities in Vietnam, I hope to propose some of the most popular facts that occurring in study

4 Research questions

The research has been following these questions below:

 What are attitudes of the first year English major students toward to English pronunciation?

 What are the problems faced by the first year students faculty of English at Hanoi Open University?

 What are some practical solutions and suggestions to help them overcome their problems?

5 Method of the study

To achieve the main aim and objectives of the study, Survey questionnaire and interview methods have been applied The information from questionnaires can help to draw a picture about the reality of learning English pronunciation I am allowed to be in a class of K22 (the first year students) to interview the attitudes

of the students while they are studying in an English pronunciation lesson Also, Analysis method is used to finalize the difficulties faced by the freshman at faculty of English in terms of their attitudes, language and cultural knowledge when joining in everyday conversation Statistic technique is also applied to calculate the results collected from survey questionnaire in order to figure out some specific problems and solutions to the students

6 Design of the study

The study is divided into three main parts as follows:

 Part A: Introduction, which reveals the rationales, the objectives, the research

questions, the method and the design of the study It also expresses reason why I decided to choose this subject

 Part B: Development

+ Chapter 1 is intended to give theoretical background related to English

pronunciation, the definition of pronunciation, some main features of pronunciation and the importance of English pronunciation

+ Chapter 2 provides an analysis on the situation of learning English pronunciation of the first year students of English major at faculty of English, HOU Therefore, the author could find out some specific difficulties and problems of the students faced during learning English pronunciation

+ Chapter 3 focuses on the solutions and suggestions to help the students overcome their problems

 Part C: Conclusion gives a brief summary of the whole study

PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reveals the theoretical background of English pronunciation which is

of great importance to study, the importance of pronunciation learning, and the difficulty for Vietnamese learners pronouncing English

1.1 Introduction

English as a Second Language (ESL) the necessity for, and method of, teach English pronunciation has become a controversial topic Many second language learners have varied opinions on the importance of including pronunciation practice within their lesson plans

The most important part of learning a second language rests on pronunciation (Pennington, 1996); thus speaking is so important in acquiring and using a language (Dan, 2006) Dan claims that language competence covers many aspects Phonetics both in theory and practice constitute the basis of speaking above all other aspects of language and pronunciation is the foundation of speaking Good pronunciation may make the communication easier, more relaxed and more useful

Pronunciation is the foundation of speaking English, both written and spoken, has been accepted as the dominant means of communication for most of the world but some misunderstandings have been caused by inappropriate pronunciation (Yong, 2004) Poor pronunciation can condemn learners to less social, academic and work advancement than they deserved (Fraser, 1999, 2000) Good pronunciation can make the communication easier and more relaxed and thus more successful (Dan, 2006).Almost all learners rate pronunciation as priority and an area in which they need more guidance (Willing, 1993), (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1997) Although the study of foreign accents has always been a fascination for some researchers, the teaching of pronunciation and oral skills in general in foreign and second language classrooms has often been low on the list of priorities (Peterson, 2000)

In search Language Center concerning Productive Skills in the Academic English Curriculum showed that the main focus of the current academic English curriculum leaves little room for pronunciation work There are two reasons for

this First of all, the importance of good writing ability in academic English, the students learn that writing is considered more important than other skills as it is weighted more in most tertiary institutions in Australia Teachers spend more time working on students’ grammar and writing skills in order that students are best prepared for examinations The time factor is the second important factor which causes students to leave little time for pronunciation in the classroom (Germana ECKERT, 2003)

Pronunciation is a very important factor in the speech process, when the speaker achieves the goal to communicate effectively by being understood The speech process is a process that involves several stages, beginning with speaker’s ideas and ending with the understanding of those ideas by the listener (Dauer, 1993)

Dauer (1993:8) states that the speaker thinks decides what he or she is going

to say and puts the ideas into words and sentences of a particular language The speaker’s brain the transforms the words and sentences into nerve impulses that it sends to the muscles in the speech organs The speaker’s speech organ moves The lungs push air up through the larynx and into mouth and nose The air is shaped by the tongue and lips and comes out of the speaker’s mouth as sound waves The sound travels through the air Sometimes, the sound is changed back into sound waves by an electronic speaker The listener hears the sounds when the sound waves hit his or her ear The ear changes the sound waves into nerve impulses and sends them to the brain The listener understands the message The listener’s brain identifies specific speech sounds, interprets them as words and sentences of a particular language, and figures out their meaning The importance

of good pronunciation starts from the process of the speech organs move (pronunciation) which is related to the proficiency of the speakers until the sounds travels through the air

Learners with good English pronunciation are likely to be understood even if they make errors in other areas, whereas learners with bad pronunciation will not

be understood, even if their grammar is perfect Such learners may avoid speaking in English, and experience social isolation, employment difficulties and limited opportunities for further study We judge people by the way they speak, and so learners with poor pronunciation may be judged as incompetent,

uneducated or lacking in knowledge Yet many learners find pronunciation one of the most difficult aspects of English to acquire, and need explicit help from the teacher Therefore, some sort of pronunciation instruction in class is necessary The goals of this paper are to define English pronunciation, review the history of English pronunciation instruction, explain the aim of English pronunciation instruction, elaborate pronunciation and communication, review the previous research about the effectiveness of pronunciation instruction on learners' achievement, and discuss the English pronunciation and the target of comfortable intelligibility

1.2 Pronunciation

1.2.1What is the definition of pronunciation

Pronunciation is the most important thing that we have to master Otherwise, people cannot receive the message we say According to Penny Ur (2001), Jack C Richard (2002), Pronunciation is the sound of the language, or phonology; stress and rhythm; and intonation and includes the role of individual sounds and segmental and supra segmental sounds Moreover, Otlowski (2004:1) stated that Pronunciation is a way that is accepted or generally understood From those statements above, we can conclude that pronunciation is the way of someone produces segmental and supra segmental sound that is accepted or generally understood

Pronunciation refers to the production of sounds that we use to make meaning It includes attention to the particular sounds of a language (segments), aspects of speech beyond the level of the individual sound, such as intonation, phrasing, stress, timing, rhythm (suprasegmental aspects), how the voice is projected (voice quality) and, in its broadest definition, attention to gestures and expressions that are closely related to the way we speak a language

A broad definition of pronunciation includes both suprasegmental and segmental features Although these different aspects of pronunciation are treated

in isolation here, it is important to remember that they all work in combination when we speak, and are therefore usually best learned as an integral part of spoken language

Traditional approaches to pronunciation have often focused on segmental aspects, largely because these relate in some way to letters in writing, and are

therefore the easiest to notice and work on More recent approaches to pronunciation, however, have suggested that the suprasegmental aspects of pronunciation may have the most effect on intelligibility for some speakers Usually learners benefit from attention to both aspects, and some learners may need help in some areas more than in others This overview starts with suprasegmental features One considerable practical advantage of focusing on suprasegmental is that learners from mixed L1 backgrounds in the same class will benefit, and will often find that their segmental difficulties improve at the same time

Pronunciation training includes micro-level skill (accuracy-based learning), macro-level skill (fluency-based learning) and awareness-raising classroom activities At the micro-level skill, learners should be trained both in segmental (a study of sounds) and suprasegmental features (training in stress, intonation, rhythm, linking) (Morley, 1979, 1991; Gilbert 1984 and Wong, 1987) Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin (1996), Gilbert (1990), and Morley (1991) describe segmentals as the basic inventory of distinctive sounds and show the way that they combine to form a spoken language In the case of North American English, this inventory comprises 40 phonemes (15 vowels and 25 consonants), which are the basic sounds that serve to distinguish words from one another Pronunciation instruction has often concentrated on the mastery of segmentals through discrimination and production of target sounds via drills consisting of minimal pairs

Segmentals and suprasegmentals transcend the level of individual sound production and are produced unconsciously by native speakers But suprasegmentals extend across segmentals Since suprasegmental elements provide crucial context and support (they determine meaning) for segmental production, they are given a more prominent place in pronunciation instruction Suprasegmentals include stress, rhythm, adjustments in connected speech, prominence, and intonation Stress is a combination of length, loudness, and pitch

applied to syllables in a word e.g HAPpy, FOOTball Rhythm is the regular,

patterned beat of stressed and unstressed syllables and pauses e.g with weak syllables in lower case and stressed syllables in upper case: they WANT to GO later

Adjustment in connected speech is modification of sounds within and

between words in streams of speech

-For example : I will ask her / ai wil ask hər/ becomes /ai wil aes hər/

Prominence is the speaker’s act of highlighting words to emphasise meaning or intend

-For example: Can I have a look the BLACK one (not the white one)

Intonation is the rising and falling of voice pitch across phrases and sentences -For example: Are you REAdy?

There are, also, strong differences in inflection, stress and intonation among the various regional varieties of English e.g American, Australian, Indian, and local UK dialects Internationally, English teachers refer in their teaching to the sounds, stress and intonation of The International Phonetic Association (IPA) Speech can be broken down into pronunciation and intonation, accuracy and fluency or can be categorised in terms of strategies or it can be regarded as a form

of interaction and analysed using the methods of pragmatics or discourse analysis This means that the accurate speaker may communicate effectively (Skehan, 1998) It should include all aspects of English pronunciation and the goal of pronunciation teaching is to foster communicative effectiveness (Wong, 1987)

1.2.2 Main features of English pronunciation

English pronunciation involves far more than individual sounds Word stress, sentence stress, intonation, and word linking all influence the sound of spoken English, not to mention the way we often slur words and phrases together in

casual speech “What are you going to do?” becomes “ Whatddaya gonna do?”

English pronunciation involves a lot of complexities for learners to strive for a complete elimination of accent, but improving pronunciation will boost self esteem, facilitate communication, and possibly lead to a better job or at least more respect in the workplace Effective communication is of greatest importance, so choose first to work on problems that significantly hinder communication and let the rest go Remember that your students also need to learn strategies for dealing with misunderstandings, since native pronunciation is for most an unrealistic goal

A student's first language often interferes with English pronunciation For example, /p/ is aspirated in English but not in Spanish, so when a Spanish speaker

pronounces 'pig' without a puff of air on the /p/, an American may hear 'big'

instead Sometimes the students will be able to identify specific problem sounds and sometimes they won't You can ask them for suggestions, but you will also need to observe them over time and make note of problem sounds Another challenge resulting from differences in the first language is the inability to hear certain English sounds that the native language does not contain Often these are

vowels, as in 'ship' and 'sheep,' which many learners cannot distinguish The

Japanese are known for confusing /r/ and /l/, as their language contains neither of these but instead has one sound somewhere between the two For problems such

as these, listening is crucial because students can't produce a sound they can't hear Descriptions of the sound and mouth position can help students increase their awareness of subtle sound differences

- Some specific pronunciation features :

Voicing

Voiced sounds will make the throat vibrate For example, /g/ is a voiced sound while /k/ is not, even though the mouth is in the same position for both sounds Have your students touch their throats while pronouncing voiced and voiceless sounds They should feel vibration with the voiced sounds only

Aspiration

Aspiration refers to a puff of air when a sound is produced Many languages have far fewer aspirated sounds than English, and students may have trouble hearing the aspiration The English /p/, /t/, /k/, and /ch/ are some of the more commonly aspirated sounds Although these are not always aspirated, at the beginning of a word they usually are

Mouth Position

Draw simple diagrams of tongue and lip positions Make sure all students can clearly see your mouth while you model sounds

Intonation

Word or sentence intonation can be mimicked with a kazoo, or alternatively by humming Intonation is variation of spoken pitch that is not used to distinguish words; instead it is used for a range of functions such as indicating the attitudes and emotions of the speaker, signaling the difference between statements and questions, and between different types of questions, focusing attention on important elements of the spoken message and also helping to regulate conversational interaction

Linking

We pronounce phrases and even whole sentences as one smooth sound instead of

a series of separate words 'Will Amy go away,' is rendered 'Willaymeegowaway.'

To help learners link words, try starting at the end of a sentence and have them repeat a phrase, adding more of the sentence as they can master it For example, 'gowaway,' then 'aymeegowaway,' and finally 'Willaymeegowaway' without any pauses between words

Vowel length

You can demonstrate varying vowel lengths within a word by stretching rubber bands on the longer vowels and letting them contract on shorter ones Then let the students try it For example, the word 'fifteen' would have the rubber band stretched for the 'ee' vowel, but the word 'fifty' would not have the band stretched

because both of its vowels are spoken quickly

Syllables

Illustrate syllable stress by clapping softly and loudly corresponding to the syllables of a word For example, the word 'beautiful' would be loud-soft-soft Practice with short lists of words with the same syllabic stress pattern ('beautiful,' 'telephone,' 'Florida') and then see if learners can list other words with that pattern

Specific Sounds

Minimal pairs, or words such as 'bit/bat' that differ by only one sound, are useful for helping students distinguish similar sounds They can be used to illustrate

voicing ('curl/girl') or commonly confused sounds ('play/pray') Remember that it's the sound and not the spelling you are focusing on

Tongue twisters are useful for practicing specific target sounds, plus they're fun Make sure the vocabulary isn't too difficult

According to Gerald Kelly on How to teach pronunciation (2007), he mentioned the main features of English pronunciation as follow:

Phonemes are the different sounds within a language Although there are slight different in how individuals articulate sounds When considering meaning,

we see how using one sound rather than another can change the meaning of word

It is this principle which gives us the total number of phonemes in a particular

language For example, the word hat has the phonemes /hæt/ If we change the middle phoneme, it will become / hɒt/, which is different word

Sounds may be voiced or unvoiced Voiced sounds occur when the vocal cords in the larynx are vibrated It is easy to tell whether a sound is voiced or not

by placing one or two fingers on your Adam’s apple If you are producing a voiced sound, you will not The different between /f/ and /v/, can be heard by putting your top teeth on your bottom lip, breathing out in a continuous stream to

produce /f/, then adding your voice to make /v/ Hold your Adam’s apple while doing this, and you will feel the vibration

Phonemes consist of two categories: Vowel sounds and consonant sounds However, these do not necessarily correspond to the vowels and consonants we are familiar with in the alphabet Vowel sounds are all voiced, and may be single,

or a combination, involving a movement from one vowel sound to another; such combination are known as diphthongs An additional term used is tripthongs which describes the combination of three vowel sounds (/ˈaʊər/in our) Single vowel sounds may be short (/lɪft/ as in lift) or long (/hiːt/ as in heat)

1.2.2.1 Consonants

According to Wikipedia, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated

with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract Examples are [p], pronounced with the lips; [t], pronounced with the front of the tongue; [k], pronounced with the back of the tongue; [h], pronounced in the throat; [f] and [s], pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives); and [m] and [n], which have air flowing through the nose (nasals) Contrasting with consonants are vowels

Since the number of possible sounds in all of the world's languages is much greater than the number of letters in any one alphabet, linguists have devised systems such as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to assign a unique and unambiguous symbol to each attested consonant In fact, the English alphabet has fewer consonant letters than English has consonant sounds, so digraphs like "ch",

"sh", "th", and "zh" are used to extend the alphabet, and some letters and digraphs represent more than one consonant For example, the sound spelled "th" in "this"

is a different consonant than the "th" sound in "thin" (In the IPA they are transcribed [ð] and [θ], respectively.)

The word consonant is also used to refer to a letter of an alphabet that denotes a consonant sound The 21 consonant letters in the English alphabet are

B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X, Z, and usually W and Y The letter Y stands for the consonant /j/ in yoke, the vowel /ɪ/ in myth, the vowel /i/ in funny, and the diphthong /aɪ/ in my W always represents a consonant except in combination with a vowel letter, as in growth, raw, and how, and in a few

loanwords from Welsh, like crwth or cwm

Consonants can be described in terms if the manner and place of articulation The articulation of /p/ or /b/ is effectively the same, the only difference being that the latter is voiced and the former is unvoiced With regard to the place of articulation, the following table summaries the main movements of the various articulation:

To the manner of articulation, the vocal tract may be completely closed so that the air is temporarily unable to pass through Alternatively there may be a closing movement of the lips, tongue or throat, so that it is possible to hear the sound made by air passing through Or, as in the case of nasal sounds, the air is diverted through the nasal passages The various terms used are explained in the following table:

1.2.2.2 Vowels

Like most unfamiliar features of a new language, vowels and vowels contrasts that do not occur in the student’s native language are likely to be difficult However, both perception and English pronunciation vowels improve as proficiency, exposure to English, and use of English increase (Bohn Flege 1992, Ingram and Park 1997, Flege and Mackay 2004)

Since accurate perception of vowels is linked to more accurate pronunciation, work with vowel perception is important However, vowel perception develops gradually Work with pronunciation can still be effective even when the vowel (contrast) is not clearly perceived Many students who cannot hear a vowel well can nevertheless learn to pronounce it more accurately once they understand how

it is made, and more accurate pronunciation may lead to more accurate perception

A vowel is a sound in spoken language, with two competing definitions In the more common phonetic definition, a vowel is a sound pronounced with an open vocal tract, so that the tongue does not touch the lips, teeth, or roof of the mouth, such as the English "ah" /ɑː/ or "oh" /oʊ/ There is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis This contrasts with consonants, such as the English "sh" [ʃː], which have a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract In the other, phonological definition, a vowel is defined as syllabic,

the sound that forms the peak of a syllable A phonetically equivalent but syllabic sound is a semivowel

A vowel is a speech sound made by the vocal cords It is also a type of letter

in the alphabet

The letters of the English alphabet are either vowels or consonants or both A vowel sound comes from the lungs, through the vocal cords, and is not blocked,

so there is no friction All English words have vowels

These letters are vowels in English: A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y

The letter Y can be a vowel (as in the words "cry", "sky", "fly" or "why"), or

it can be a consonant (as in "yellow", "yacht", "yam" or "yesterday")

These five or six letters stand for about 20 vowel sounds in most English accents This important fact helps to explain why pronunciation can be difficult for both native speakers and learners of English

The articulation of vowel sounds was introduced to show learners how those sounds are produced so they would correctly pronounce them, especially, the voicing (Celce-Murcia & Goodwin, 1996) The mouth shape will control the deviation of voice production to be clearly pronounced (Dauer, 1993)

Vowels are articulated when a voiced airstream is shaped using the tongue and the lips to modify the overall shape of the mouth English speakers generally use twelve pure vowels and eight diphthongs

It is important to keep in mind what is exactly which makes a phoneme valid

as a unit for analysis; the distinctions between phonemes hold, in that they are units which differentiate between words meaning

The phonetic definition of "vowel" (a sound produced with no constriction in the vocal tract) does not always match the phonological definition (a sound that forms the peak of a syllable) The approximants [j] and [w] illustrate this: both are produced without much of a constriction in the vocal tract (so phonetically they seem to be vowel-like), but they occur at the onset of syllables (e.g in "yet" and

"wet") (which suggests that phonologically they are consonants) A similar debate arises over whether a word like bird in a rhotic dialect has an r-colored vowel /ɝ/

or a syllabic consonant /ɹ̩ / The American linguist Kenneth Pike (1943) suggested the terms "vocoid" for a phonetic vowel and "vowel" for a phonological vowel, so using this terminology, [j] and [w] are classified as vocoids but not vowels However, Maddieson and Emmory (1985) demonstrated from a range of languages that semivowels are produced with a narrower constriction of the vocal

tract than vowels, and so may be considered consonants on that basis Nonetheless, the phonetic and phonemic definitions would still conflict for the syllabic el in table, or the syllabic nasals in button and rhythm

Vowels are usually described in terms of:

• length, although remember that length depends on stress, and that even short vowels in English may seem rather long when stressed;

• the position in the mouth in which they are made (in terms of their position from high to low and front to back);

• the degree to which the lips are rounded, spread or neutral

(Vowels are also often described as either lax or tense, but this information is not always helpful for learners.) The vowels in the phonemic chart are ordered according to where they are made in the mouth Thus the top rows of vowels are made high in the mouth, the middle row are made in the centre, and the bottom row are made low in the mouth Similarly, the vowels on the left side of the chart are made in the front of the mouth, the right-hand rows of the vowel section are made in the back of the mouth, and those in between are made in between Thus the chart can serve as a useful reminder for both teacher and learner! A fuller description of the vowels in English can be found in Roach (1991), Underhill (1994) and Yallop (1995) English may have many more vowel sounds or longer vowels than learners are used to in their first languages, and so learners may need

a lot of careful listening to vowel sounds, and to think about how to distinguish them, as well as where in the mouth they should make them An important issue which is not always treated in the reference texts is that adult learners will already have ‘drawn the boundary’ of what counts as a particular sound in a slightly different place or manner in their first language An example of this would be the characteristic French /r/ compared with the English sound Sometimes there are two separate sounds capable of distinguishing differences in meaning in English, but not in the learner’s first language An example would be the distinction that is made in English between /l/ and /r/, which is not made in the same way in Chinese The converse may also be true – that is, English may only have one sound, where their first language has two, as in the so-called light /l/ (in ‘leaf’) and dark / l/ (as in ‘feel’) in English Russian distinguishes these as two separate phonemes Another difficulty may arise when learners do not have the English phoneme at all in their first language and they need to learn it from scratch, although this seems to present less of a problem for learners in the long term

1.2.2.3 Intonation

The term ‘intonation’ has been defined in at least two different ways in the literature A narrow definition equates intonation with ‘speech melody’, restricting it to the “ensemble of pitch variations in the course of an utterance” (‘t Hart et al 1990: 10)

In many languages, including English, intonation can show which parts of utterances are regarded as being background, given, common-ground material, and which parts carry the information focus Given material in a clause typically has some kind of rising intonation contour, indicating incompleteness there is something still to come while the new information that is added is more likely to carry a falling contour, indicating completion This helps to make speech less dependent than writing on ordering

In spoken language, intonation serves diverse linguistic and paralinguistic functions, ranging from the marking of sentence modality to the expression of emotional and attitudinal nuances It is important to identify how they are expressed in the learner's native language, so that differences between the native and target languages are identified It is particularly important to point out that many aspects of information structure and indirect speech acts are expressed differently across languages Making learners aware of the existence of these functions will not only help them learn to express them, but will also help them to interpret what they hear in a more analytic way, thus reducing the danger of attributing unexpected intonation patterns as (solely) a function of the attitude or emotional state of the speaker

Brazil (1997:1, 1998:48) points out the defect in one of the traditional concepts of intonation as variations in the pitch of the voice, and proposes an innovative approach to production and reception of speech called Discourse Intonation theory, which considers intonation to be the means to help us to grasp the difference in meaning of perceived speech Intonation is traditionally regarded

as variations in the pitch of the speaking voice However, pitch can be perceived

in almost everything we utter and can continuously vary moment by moment The pitch variation can be extremely complex to describe accurately and would not reveal anything of the significant pattern because not all the variation has the same type of communicative significance Thus Brazil (1998:48) suggests that within the wide range of the pitch variation, those features that show certain binary choices, or certain either/or choices should be focused upon and

understood how these choices from a set of opposites affect the way an utterance can be interpreted Not so much pitch variation itself as the meaning differences that some of that variation helps us to perceive should be focused upon Therefore, although Cauldwell and Allen (1999:12) and Brazil (1994, Teacher’s Book: 7) report that there is no agreement about what sound features intonation has and the definitions of intonation provided by Cauldwell and Allen (1999:13) vary, general agreement on intonation is introduced as follows:

a The form of intonation centres on pitch and variation in pitch

b The existence of a system

c Intonation has meaning, although the nature of that meaning is in dispute

British descriptions of English intonation can be traced back to the 16th century Early in the 20th century the dominant approach in the description of English and French intonation was based on a small number of basic "tunes" associated with intonation units: in a typical description, Tune 1 is falling, with final fall, while Tune 2 has a final rise Phoneticians such as H.E Palmer broke

up the intonation of such units into smaller components, the most important of which was the nucleus, which corresponds to the main accented syllable of the intonation unit, usually in the last lexical word of the intonation unit Each nucleus carries one of a small number of nuclear tones, usually including fall, rise, fall-rise, rise-fall, and possibly others The nucleus may be preceded by a head containing stressed syllables preceding the nucleus, and a tail consisting of syllables following the nucleus within the tone unit Unstressed syllables preceding the head (if present) or nucleus (if there is no head) constitute a pre-head This approach was further developed by Halliday and by O'Connor and Arnold, though with considerable variation in terminology This "Standard British" treatment of intonation in its present-day form is explained in detail by Wells and in a simplified version by Roach Halliday saw the functions of intonation as depending on choices in three main variables: Tonality (division of speech into intonation units), Tonicity (the placement of the tonic syllable or nucleus) and Tone (choice of nuclear tone); these terms (sometimes referred to as

"the three T's") have been used more recently

Research by Crystal emphasized the importance of making generalizations about intonation based on authentic, unscripted speech, and the roles played by prosodic features such as tempo, pitch range, loudness and rhythmicality in communicative functions usually attributed to intonation

The transcription of intonation in such approaches is normally incorporated into the line of text A typical example would be:

We ˌlooked at the ↗sky | and ˈsaw the ↘clouds

in this example, the | mark indicates a division between intonation units

1.2.2.4 Word stress

Word stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in

a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence Stress is typically signaled by such properties as increased loudness and vowel length, full articulation of the vowel, and changes in pitch The terms stress and accent are often used synonymously, but they are sometimes distinguished, with certain specific kinds

of prominence (such as pitch accent, variously defined) being considered to fall under accent but not under stress In this case, stress specifically may be called stress accent or dynamic accent

The stress placed on syllables within words is called word stress or lexical stress Some languages have fixed stress, meaning that the stress on virtually any multi-syllable word falls on a particular syllable, such as the first or the penultimate Other languages, like English, have variable stress, where the position of stress in a word is not predictable in that way Sometimes more than one level of stress, such as primary stress and secondary stress, may be identified However, some languages are considered to lack lexical stress entirely

The stress placed on words within sentences is called sentence stress or prosodic stress This is one of the three components of prosody, along with rhythm and intonation It includes phrasal stress (the default emphasis of certain words within phrases or clauses), and contrastive stress (used to highlight an item

− a word, or occasionally just part of a word − that is given particular focus) Stress refers to the prominence given to certain syllables within words, and to certain syllables or words within utterances It is signalled by volume, force, pitch change and syllable length, and is often the place where we notice hand movements and other gestures when we are watching someone talking One noticeable feature of English is the reduced nature of unstressed syllables Thus, not only are stressed syllables longer, louder, more forceful and at a different pitch, but unstressed ones are often different in quality

Stress is important at three different levels:

• word level – multisyllabic words have one or more syllables that are stressed

• sentence level – the most important words tend to be stressed

• contrastive stress – the most important words carry greater stress

Consider the example below:

LYNda shouldn’t TAKE the STUDents to the PARty.The stressed syllables are marked with capital letters Each two-syllable word in this utterance must have one syllable that is stressed This is word level stress, and it is fixed for any word, although there are some variations between different varieties of English Those words which are more important for communicating the speaker’s meaning, usually the content words, tend to be stressed (these are underlined in the example), while those which are less important, usually the grammatical words, are unstressed In addition, one of these stressed syllables or words is usually more important than the others, and this is called the ‘tonic’ When we speak, we tend to group words together in chunks that make sense, called ‘sense groups’ or

‘tone groups’ Thus the example above would normally be said as one sense group Sense groups are often bounded by short pauses, and are said under a single intonation contour or tune Within each of these, there is usually one tonic, although there may be a second tonic syllable at the end which also carries significant pitch change (see Clennell 1997)

The tonic is important because it carries not only the major stress, but also the major pitch change, and it changes according to the speaker’s intended meaning So if the speaker wanted to emphasise that fact that it is Lynda rather than some other person who should not take the students, then the LYN of Lynda would be more strongly stressed than other stressed syllables in the utterance If, however, the speaker wanted to emphasise that Lynda should not take them but could perhaps bring them back, then take would be the most strongly stressed syllable in the utterance This is sometimes called contrastive stress, and is marked with italics in the example

As noted above, however, an important aspect of teaching stress is its converse – an absence of stress It is often failure to unstress syllables appropriately that makes learners’ pronunciation difficult to understand because, unlike other languages, English tends to maintain a rhythm from stressed syllable to stressed syllable by unstressing and therefore reducing the syllables in between This rhythm gives English its characteristic pattern The reduced vowel ‘schwa’ /ɘ/ is

very common in English and deserves special attention The ‘a’ at the end of

‘LYNda’, the ‘ents’ at the end of ‘STUDents’ and the words ‘to’ and ‘the’ in the above example would all be pronounced with a schwa

Learning English word stress help students become more aware of syllable stress rules and understand that syllable stress rules are unreliable

The best way to learn syllable stress is by paying attention to the syllable stress that native speakers use Learning by listening is better than trying to follow rules because: there are many rules and many exceptions to each rules

 Here are some English stress rules:

 Rules that are often true but not always

 When a multi-syllable word has a long vowel, usually this is stressed Exceptions include the words ‘colleague’ and ‘suburb’

 Stress is usually on the first syllable of 2 syllable nouns:

and 2 syllable adjectives

 Stress is usually on the last syllable of 2 syllable verbs

Exceptions include ‘to answer’, ‘to borrow’

 Stress is on the penultimate syllable (penultimate means ‘second from end’) for words with the endings below:

ex/'cur/sion, dis/'cu/ssion Words ending in

-ious

de/'li/cious, 'glo/rious, 'con/scious,

 Stress on ante-penultimate syllable (ante-penultimate means ‘third from end’) for words with the endings below:

'class / room 'post / o / "ce 'air / port

'Char/tered/A/ccoun/tant 'le / gal / ad / vice 'bus/ness / re / port

 Phrasal verbs usually have the most stress on the stressed syllable of the second word:

 Compound adjectives usually have the most stress is on the stressed syllable of the second word

bright / 'red old / 'fa / shioned well / 'dressed

ea / sy / 'go / ing light / 'green bad / 'tem / pered

1.3 The importance of English pronunciation

1.3.1 Teachers’ perception about the importance of pronunciation

Despite the fact that the communicative approach rose as the dominant factor in language teaching settings and more attention was paid to pronunciation instruction and its significance started to be accepted by the scholars, pronunciation instruction is still not considered crucial (Rajadurai, 2006) Additionally, within the communicative approach skills other than pronunciation were more central; there is limited research that has focused on pronunciation instruction and the perspectives of teachers about it (Gilbert 1993; Jenkins 2005; Macdonald, 2002)

Even in this limited literature, however, it is clear that language teachers are reluctant to teach pronunciation (Fraser, 2000) As an example, in the study whose subjects were eight Australian English teachers, Macdonald (2002), concluded that most of the teachers showed reluctance to teach pronunciation because of their sense of inadequacy or lack of motivation According to Elliot (1995b), teachers’ reluctance to teach pronunciation stems from their perception that pronunciation is a waste of time, since it is not as important as other skills Elliot (1995b) claimed that the lack of appropriate tools or knowledge might lie under the language teachers’ attitudes towards teaching pronunciation In a similar vein, Al-Najjar’s (2012) study concluded that Palestinian English teachers are not adequately equipped with pronunciation instruction skills to teach pronunciation effectively

A study in Turkey found teachers’ attitudes towards pronunciation instruction to be similar Bekleyen (2011) noted that “it is thought that students should make individual efforts to improve their pronunciation, and so class hours are spent for subjects deemed more valuable by teachers”

The history of foreign language teaching discloses that there have been different points of view over the years about the importance of teaching pronunciation and the most effective techniques used to teach it(Celce-Murcia 1987) In methods such as the grammar translation method, pronunciation was not considered at all However, in contrast, nowadays, teaching pronunciation seems to have started to gain importance Fraser (2000), Gilakjani (2011), Yates and Zielinski (2009) agree that pronunciation should be considered because it is part of a language and it needs to be taught as soon as learners begin to learn a

foreign or second language In a recent study, Yates and Zielinski (2009) found that pronunciation is a very difficult aspect of English to learn, but it seems that teaching pronunciation from the very beginning helps learners to be intelligible According to Morley (1991:488), “Intelligible pronunciation is an essential component of communication competence”, in other words, being intelligible means being understood For this reason, pronunciation in English courses should

be a priority

1.3.2 Students’ perception about the importance of pronunciation learning

There is a common understanding in the current literature that what learners

of English need are skills to assure intelligibility It is argued that they do not have to speak like a native speaker does, since English has become a lingua franca and no longer belongs to a specific group of people or countries, but to the whole world (Derwing & Munro, 2005; Jenkins, 2003; Kachru, 1992; Kirkpatrick, 2010) Despite that, there is a tendency among the learners of English to desire to have a native-like way of speaking (pronunciation) (He & Li, 2009) Kachru (1992) categorizes English spoken in different areas in the world into three “circles” “the inner circle (IC) for countries where English is spoken as

a native (first) language, the outer circle (OC) for countries where English is spoken as a second language (ESL), and the expanding circle (EC) for countries where English is spoken as a foreign language (EFL)” It can be deduced from the categorization above that only one-third of English speakers are native speakers and the rest learn English later in their life either as a second or foreign language That is to say, even if one is not a native speaker, he or she is able to communicate with people on condition that he or she uses language in a clear, desired way

In his study, Kang (2015) looks at learners’ perceptions among the three circles of English spoken all around the world The results revealed that

“participants in all three circles of World English somewhat agreed that studying pronunciation was confusing because of varieties of accents available to them” Another study conducted by Couper (2003) on the perspectives of learners reveals that students believe that there should be formal instruction of pronunciation since it offers obvious benefits to the learners in terms of learning how to speak a language

In their study, Scales, Wennerstrom, Richard & Wu (2006) analyze 37 English language learners’ and 10 American undergraduate students’ perceptions of accents The study also shed light on the pronunciation goals of the learners Most

of the participants of the study indicated that they would prefer to have a like pronunciation However, the study reveals an inconsistency between students’ pronunciation preferences and their current states of pronunciation According to Scales et al., (2006) “Although a majority wanted to have a native accent, few were able to identify the accent they claimed to want to internalize”

native-1.4 Difficulty for Vietnamese learners when pronouncing English

Trần (2005) stated that “Vietnamese phonology seems to be more complicated than English, but in the long run, this system becomes simpler and more acquisitive than English” He added “it may take a non-native speaker of Vietnamese two months to learn Vietnamese phonology profoundly, and then he will surely be able to pronounce ant Vietnamese word; British and American people during their whole life have to learn how to pronounce new words continuously with a lot of support from dictionaries” Vietnamese is supposed to

be easy to phonetically acquire when speakers have an efficient input, especially

of the tones That is one of the reasons why Vietnamese native speakers have to deal with many obstacles to learn foreign languages which are not relatively close

to and as easy as their language, for instance, Russian, French, English or Spanish

There has been quite a number of studies about Vietnamese’ difficulties in pronouncing English consonants and clusters These have led to important findings, which become a valuable basis for further studies, most visibly, for this paper Ha (2005: 35-46) after analyzing her data finally came to these conclusions

on the left, in comparison with the table formed by Center for Applied Linguistics (Neumann, 2007)

Research by Ha (2005), though data were from numerous informants, is

unilateral, containing only problems of people from the North by the confusion

most obviously between /s/ and /S/, /tr/ and /tS/, /Z/ and /z/ Those findings,

which were mentioned in the table by Center of Applied Linguistics (Neumann,

2007), are applicable for every Vietnamese learner as it contains all the errors that

Vietnamese speakers of any regions of the country can make They are also

persuasive to linguists who have certain knowledge about Vietnamese dialects

Taking final consonants into consideration, for example, /T/ and /D/ at

word-finally are commonly confused with /t/ and /d/ everywhere, whereas /p/ sound in

/pOp/ pop is often mispronounced as /bOp/ Bob by Southern people and /S/

sound in /puS/ push becomes /pus/ puss by northerners

Like learners elsewhere in the world, Vietnamese learners encounter great

difficulties in learning English pronunciation for several reasons Firstly, the

English sound system has several sounds foreign to Vietnamese speakers

Secondly, the way English speakers pronounce the ending sounds is completely

different from the one deeply rooted in Vietnamese speakers, making it more

difficult for them to achieve appropriate English pronunciation Consequently,

Vietnamese learners have been reported to make phonetic errors leading to

incomprehensible speech in English In an attempt to deal with the pronunciation

problem of the students at the English department I have carried out this study to

find out their common pronunciation errors

1.5 Summary

Pronunciation is one of the most important things that students have to master

in order to communicate appropriately and fluently According to Fangzhi (1998:39), that it is important to pay attention to pronunciation since it results in whether or not someone's message can be passed or not by other people Moreover, Gilbert (cited in Otlowsky, 2004:3) stated that if someone cannot hear English well, she or he is cut off from the language

In this chapter, the author would like to cover the theoretical background of English pronunciation, and reveal the importance of learning English pronunciation, and difficulty for Vietnamese learners when pronouncing English used as the basic foundation for conducting the whole research

CHAPTER 2 PROBLEMS MET BY THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH

MAJOR IN PRACTICING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

2.1 Data collection

In Chapter I, the theoretical background about English pronunciation has been covered However, In order to gather the desired information for answering the research questions, 100 first-year English majors at Faculty of English of Hanoi Open University have been selected as target population of the study They were invited to take part in a survey by completing questionnaires The research underwent the following steps:

 Designing survey questionnaires

 Delivering questionnaires to the first year students

 Collecting the results

 Analyzing collected data

 Proposing some remarks and comments from the results and giving some suggestions

To supply more reliable data for the results collected from the questionnaires, interviews were also employed In this chapter, only first four steps will be mentioned The last step will be presented in the next chapter

2.1.1 Data analysis

The questionnaires (see appendix) designed with three main parts, consisting

of 10 questions The questionnaires then were given to one hundred first year English majors group from K22B1 and K22B2 at Hanoi Open University These students are almost at the age of 19 They all have the different ability of speaking English because they come from all parts of the country: big cities, provinces, remote areas and mountainous, where their English teacher at high school did not focus on pronunciation skills of students

The questionnaire includes specific multiple choice questions In the first part, whose purpose is to determine the participants’s background information as well

as their general attitude toward practicing English pronunciation And second part

of the questionnaire is to finding out some specific problems of the students met when they study English pronunciation And finally, which is aimed at finding out the causes leading to their incorrect pronunciation

The results from 100 valid collected copies were analyzed in form of statistic tabulation and graphics and charts