Improving english pronunciation for vietnamese adult learners at elementary level – articulatory phonetics

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* TẠ PHƯƠNG LIÊN IMPROVING ENGLISH PRONUNCIAT

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

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

TẠ PHƯƠNG LIÊN

IMPROVING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION FOR VIETNAMESE

ADULT LEARNERS AT ELEMENTARY LEVEL –

ARTICULATORY PHONETICS

CẢI THIỆN KỸ NĂNG PHÁT ÂM TIẾNG ANH CHO HỌC VIÊN VIỆT NAM Ở TRÌNH ĐỘ CƠ BẢN THÔNG QUA VIỆC

ĐIỀU CHỈNH BỘ PHẬN CẤU THÀNH ÂM

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

HANOI - 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

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

TẠ PHƯƠNG LIÊN

IMPROVING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION FOR VIETNAMESE

ADULT LEARNERS AT ELEMENTARY LEVEL –

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm

HANOI - 2017

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this thesis “Improving English pronunciation for

Vietnamese adult learners at elementary level – Articulatory phonetic” is my

own work and effort has not been submitted anywhere for any purpose In addition, the contributions of my colleagues and students are involved Other sources of information have been used and acknowledged I cede copyright of the thesis in favor of Post-graduate Department – Vietnam National University

Hanoi, 2017

Signature

Tạ Phương Liên

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis would not be fulfilled without the help of many people, and I would like to show my heartfelt thanks to everyone who has taught me, inspired me, challenged me, and supported me throughout the realization of this thesis

I would like to express my deepest thanks to my supervisor, Dr Ha Cam Tam, for her whole-hearted assistance, encouragement as well as profound guidance she gave me while I was doing my research

My gratitude also goes to all the instructors in my M.A course and staffs at the Faculty of Postgraduate Studies, the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University of Hanoi whose support and consideration have enabled me to pursue the course

I am also very grateful to my colleagues for their valuable help and students

of Step Up English center for their willingness to participate in the research Without their assist, this thesis could not be fulfilled

Last but not least, I owe my sincere thanks to my family and my kind-hearted classmates who are always by my side and encourage me to complete this study

ABSTRACT

The present study was intended to check the effectiveness of articulatory phonetic instructions on improving the English consonant pronunciation of 10 adult learners at the level of elementary of an “Step Up” English center Initially, an entry test was carried out to investigate the remarkable errors made by the subjects regarding consonant sounds Then, they received the conventional classroom instructions on pronunciation skills which were based on articulatory phonetics During the course, the subjects were examined 4 times in total to see the studying progress After 7 weeks, a final test was implemented to evaluate the participants‟ pronunciation after receiving the instructions Since this study focused on the pronunciation, all the tests were in the form of oral test which requires audio-recording as a crucial instrument to collect the data Apart from that, observation was another tool to obtain the data as the subjects practiced with their partners The findings from the research revealed that articulatory phonetics did have positive effects on the English consonant pronunciation of elementary adult learners at Step

Up, however, there still existed some limitations which were hardly avoidable Suggestions were also given with the hope that the next researcher could overcome the limited issues to conduct a more successful research

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

Table of contents iv

List of tables and figures vii

PART ONE INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Research questions 3

5 Method of the study 3

6 Design of the study 3

PART TWO DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER ONE LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Approaches to pronunciation teaching 5

1.2 Phonetics and Phonology 6

1.2.1 Phonetics 6

1.2.2 Phonology 7

1.3 Articulatory phonetics 7

1.4 English consonants 9

1.4.1 The place of articulation 10

1.4.2 The manner of articulation 11

1.4.3 English consonants 11

1.4.4 Phonological rules 12

1.5 Action research 13

CHAPTER TWO METHODOLOGY 15

2.1 Setting of the study 15

2.1.1 Step Up English center 15

2.1.2 Pronunciation course 15

2.2 Participants 17

2.3 Research methods 17

2.3.1 Problem identification 17

2.3.2 Planning 18

2.3.3 Actions 21

2.3.3.1 Fricatives /θ, ð/ 23

2.3.3.2 Fricatives /ʃ, ʒ/ 23

2.3.3.3 Affricatives /tʃ, dʒ/ 23

2.3.3.4 Initial consonant clusters 24

2.4 Research instruments 25

CHAPTER THREE DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 27

3.1 Observations 27

3.1.1 Teaching observations 27

3.1.1.1 /θ, ð/ 27

3.1.1.2 /ʃ, ʒ/ 28

3.1.1.3 /tʃ, dʒ/ 28

3.1.1.4 Initial consonant clusters 29

3.1.2 Mini-tests 31

3.1.3 Final tests 34

3.2 Reflection 37

3.2.1 Informants‟ pronunciation ability 37

3.2.2 Factors contributing to the development of the informants‟ s pronunciation competence 39

PART THREE CONCLUSION 40

1 Recapitulation 40

3 Limitations of the study 42

4 Suggestions for further study 42 REFERENCES 44 APPENDIX 1: ENTRY – TEST I APPENDIX 2: MINI – TEST II APPENDIX 3: MATERIALS FOR OBSERVATION IX APPENDIX 4: FINAL – TEST XII APPENDIX 5: LESSON PLAN XIV

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Page

Table 3.1: Mispronunciation across the subjects in teaching observation 30

Table 3.2: Mispronunciation across the subjects in mini-tests 33

Table 3.3: Mispronunciation across the subjects in final test 35

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

The chapter plays as an introduction part of the study which presents an overview of the research report including rationale, aims, scope, research questions, methods and design of the study

1 Rationale of the study

During the period of globalization, nations have been coming closer to each other more than ever In this process, the need of expressing and exchanging ideas has given English an excellent opportunity to claim its vital role in every communication attempt Vietnam, in order to develop the national economy, industries or in any area, has to blend into the global communication and meet its requirements However, in fact, adults who are directly involved in the influence of globalization tend to have many difficulties in communicating with foreigners due

to their limited speaking and listening skills In a certain proficiency standard, the fault which diminishes the communication process in EFL/ESL learners severely is pronunciation, rather than vocabulary or grammar (Hinofitis & Baily, 1980, pp.124-125) Pronunciation errors were suggested as the decisive element which causes the communication breakdowns according to Derwing Munro and Weibe (1998, p.407) as cited in Derwing and Munro (2005) and Jenkins (2000) In the related issue, Fraser (2000) states that apart from other sub-skills which involve vocabulary, grammar, pragmatics and so on, the most crucial element is pronunciation It is confirmed that with good pronunciation, the message between interlocutors is much easier to understand and in the case the speaker and/or the listener has poor pronunciation, it is very difficult for them to understand each other despite accuracy in other areas Hence, the pronunciation should be paid sufficient attention since it is the aspect that affects how the speaker is judged by the others

Pronunciation is an integral part of foreign language learning since it directly affects the learners' communicative competence as well as performance Thus, limited pronunciation might decrease learners‟ self-confidence and adversely affect speaker‟s communicative skills Vietnam, in this context, with the purpose of communicating with foreigners effectively, speaking and listening skills are

strongly focused, but the pronunciation has not been paid sufficient attention in many years However, the process of teaching and learning pronunciation recently has been changing Indeed, it is being integrated into the textbook of schools and tertiary colleges widely Moreover, since private educational institutions nationwide acknowledge the importance of pronunciation teaching and learning, it has been designed and adapting as an independent course which mainly focuses on segmentals and suprasegmentals Step Up English Center is not an exception; pronunciation course is the program in which forty-four sounds of English are deeply focused on and it is suitable for students and adult learners who are at the level of elementary due to its contents and feasibility The course is mainly allocated to help learners acknowledge the differences between English and Vietnamese sounds, and know how to use the articulators properly in the process of making the intelligible sounds

In the process of acquiring the second language, it is found out that learners encounter a few problems concerning to some certain foreign sounds which do not exist in the first language They seem confused about how to use and control their articulators to produce the proper sounds as well as to pronounce intelligibly The situation is urged and needed strategies to help learners to overcome such problems, which leads the author to the thought of making a research on “Improving English pronunciation for Vietnamese adult learners at elementary level”

2 Aims of the study

The study aims at:

- Finding the typical errors that Vietnamese adult learners at the elementary level often makes regarding pronunciation in a particular context

- Uncovering the impact of articulatory phonetics instructions on adult learners‟ pronunciation

3 Scope of the study

The research focused on the pronunciation problems in terms of consonants made by ten adult learners at Step Up English center, and their English are at

elementary level The remarkable errors will be figured out after implementing the entry test The teaching methods applied in the research was articulatory phonetics

4 Research questions

What are the remarkable errors in consonant pronunciation that adult learners

in Step Up English center have and how to improve them?

5 Methods of the study

The method employed in this study is an Action Research followed the model of Kemmis and Mc Taggart (1988) which is composed of four phases:

- Planning: a problem or issue is identified and a plan of action is developed to bring about improvements in specific areas of the research context

- Action: the plan is to put into action over an agree period of time

- Observation: the effects of the action are observed and data are collected

- Reflection: the effects of the action are evaluated become the basis for further cycles of research

6 Design of the study

The study consists of three main parts as follows:

- Part one: Introduction This part discussed the rationale of the study, aims,

scope, research questions and methods and design of the study

- Part two: Development

+ Chapter 1: Literature review This chapter provides the theoretical knowledge relevant to the field under investigated A brief introduction of segmental and suprasegmental teaching will be presented Later, English phonetics and phonology will be stated Articulatory phonetics will be the main issue which is following by the phonological rules And the final part is the theory of action research

+ Chapter 2: Methodology This chapter describes the setting of the study, the participants, research methods, instruments to collect data

+ Chapter 3: Findings and discussion Findings and analysis of the research are provided in response to the research question

- Part three: Conclusion This part summarizes the findings of the action

research, pedagogical implications, limitations and offers suggestions for further research

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter is devoted to the presentation of the theoretical issues related to the study Firstly, a brief of pronunciation teaching trends will be presented Later, some basic concepts including phonetics, phonology and articulatory phonetics will

be given English consonant part will be the next issue and the final part is the action research model which will be applied in this study

1.1 Approaches to pronunciation teaching

Pronunciation teaching consists of two parts named segmentals (vowels and consonant sounds) and suprasegmentals or prosody (i.e., stress, rhythms, intonation, etc.) (Morley, 1991) and the question of which part should be taught first in the pronunciation class still has not been answered With this controversial idea, several scholars and linguistics suggested two ways of teaching pronunciation: bottom-up and top-down approach (Dalton and Seidhofer, 1994), Pennington (1989)

In bottom-up method, it begins with the production of individual vowels and consonants and intonation will be mentioned later It is assumed that if the segmentals are taught first, the suprasegmental will take care of themselves (Dalton and Seidhofer, 1994: 69-70) This approach has been considered as traditional way since its structure is parallel with grammar and lexical teaching method On the other hand, being more relevant to communicative perspectives, in top-down method, the segmentals are followed by the suprasegmental features which are considered as the main trend in pronunciation teaching (Celce-Murcia, 2001) Indeed, over the last 25 years, suprasegmentals are being emphasized in pronunciation teaching and learning (Morley, 1991) Anderson Hsieh and Koehler (1988) as cited in Field (2005) stated in their findings that suprasegmentals might be the main factor adversely affecting comprehension rather than segmentals So far, language teachers are strongly encouraged to prioritize the prosodic features in pronunciation teaching and learning Nevertheless, according to McNerney and Mendelsohn (1992: 186) as cited in Celce-Murcia (1996:10), suprasegmentals should be focused first and foremost for the short-term pronunciation course instead

of segmentals, but the authors did not mention which level of learners should be suitable for such method As it is said before, the subject in this study is adult learners whose level is elementary – the first stage in the process of acquiring foreign language and it is also said that the initial step in learning English speech should be focused on individual vowel and consonant sounds (Yule, Hoffman and Damico, 1987 as cited in Shankar, 2010) Additionally, Saito (2007:20) firmly emphasized the significance of sound awareness In his assumption, the messages in communication might still be conveyed even speakers make mistake of prosodic features, however, if certain sounds such as in minimal pairs are mispronounced, it might cause the misunderstanding between interlocutors and lead to communication disruption later Shared the ideas of Riney (2005), Saito also points out that in her study, phonetics is their major medium to evaluate students‟ speaking ability and individual sounds is the core that should be focused mostly He further stated that segmentals should be prioritized in teaching English pronunciation in the case of Japan – a nation that local dialect is a dominant language Likewise, in Vietnam, English is still the foreign language which in fact is not used on daily basis, learners

do not have many chances to practice English in the real-life situations So, it is believed that segmental features would be suitable for teaching pronunciation in Vietnamese context due to the similarity of predominant mother tongue between Vietnam and Japan Moreover, the in the context of this study, the subjects are at the level of elementary are assumed to be suitable with segmental teaching

1.2 Phonetics and Phonology

1.2.1 Phonetics

Phonetics is a study of human speech sounds which is concerned with various aspects relevant to the physical characteristics of sounds Typically, (1) physiological production is the main concern of the Articulatory phonetics area – the study of the production of speech sounds by the articulators and vocal tract by the speaker (2) Acoustic properties, the major characteristic of Acoustic phonetics, deals with the transmission of speech sounds from the speaker to the listener (3) Auditory perception, relevant to the process of reception and perception of speech

sounds by the listener is the remarkable feature of the study Auditory phonetics (Richard et al, 2013 p.398)

“tip” and “dip” differ only in their initial sound, “cab” and “cap” differ only in their final sound In general, it can be said that when talking about how phonemes function in language, and the relationships among the different phonemes – when,

in other words, it is studied the abstract side of the sounds of language, it is studied

a related but different subject that it is called phonology (Roach, 2010)

Regarding the phonemes, it cannot be excluded the allophones notion

An allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds (or phones) or signs

] (as in “speak”) are allophones for the phoneme /p/ in English It also can be said that allophones are the concept when a phoneme is conditioned by the sounds around it or by its position in the word That is also the reason why students should be aware of some certain allophone rules in order to have an intelligibly pronunciation Nevertheless, before investigating in more details about allophone rules, it is necessary to figure out the articulatory phonetics concept since this study aims at finding how articulatory phonetics teaching and learning influences on learners‟ pronunciation skills For that reason, articulatory phonetics will be presented as the following part

1.3 Articulatory phonetics

As mentioned above, articulatory phonetics is one of three main branches of phonetics, it is the study of the organs of speech and their use in producing speech sounds In other words, articulatory phonetics investigates how the sounds are

physically produced Speech organs or articulators (as shown in Figure 1) included lips, teeth, tongue, alveolar ridge (the bony ridge behind the upper teeth), hard palate (the bony dome constituting the roof of the mouth), velum, or soft palate (the soft tissue immediately behind the tongue; when raised, it forces all air through the mouth; lowered, it allows air through the nose), uvula (the soft appendage hanging from the velum), pharynx (the back wall of the throat behind the tongue), larynx (containing the vocal cords) and glottis (the part of the throat that contains the vocal cords and the narrow opening between them)

Figure 1 The organs of speech

According to Dalton and Seidhofer (1994, pp.128-129), the knowledge of the sound productions (phonetics) and the imperative sounds in relevant languages (phonology) should be taught clearly and explicitly Regarding the phonetics area, awareness-building activities are used to help learners acknowledge the articulation

as well as the movements of articulators in the process of making English sounds Catford (1987, p.99) emphasized the significance of “precisely teaching” of students‟ vocal organs in the process of producing the intelligible sounds Nevertheless, Kenworthy (1987, p.69) also reminds teachers and students that perceiving directions about what to do with articulators is completely strange and weird to people Hence, in her book, she stated that there are some postures and

movements of the vocal cords that learners could easily recognize and control These are:

Lip position: whether the lips are pursed (like whistling) or spread (like smiling) or wide apart (like yawning)

Contact between the tongue and teeth: whether the sides of the tongue are touching the upper back teeth or the tip of the tongue is touching the top or bottom front teeth

Contact between the tongue and the roof of the mouth: whether the tip of the tongue

is touching a part of the roof of the mouth, or whether the back of the tongue is

(Kenworth, 1987; Dalton & Seidhofer, 1989)

The fundamental issues above is suitable for the teaching and learning context of the study whose subjects are adult learners with the level of elementary

By showing them the diagrams of lips shapes, the tongue movements and the combinations with other speech organs, learner might aware of the way how to control their articulators and pronounce English more intelligibly afterwards

In the view of phonetics, in fact, both foreign consonants and vowels might render language learners confused but in terms of learning and teaching pronunciation, consonants are often paid more attention than vowels Indeed, one of the reasons why learners pronounce unintelligibly is the way they put their tongue not in the right place, the shape of lips or other speech organs combinations they make incorrectly causing the misunderstanding between interlocutors Moreover, articulatory phonetics is much relevant to place and manner of articulations which is referred fairly in consonants comprehension rather than vowels Hence, in the scope

of this study, the author will focus on the consonants issues and its main features will be discussed later

1.4 English Consonants

Consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial

Richard (1997), a consonant is the sound where the air stream from the lungs is completely blocked (STOP), or partially blocked (LATERAL) or where the opening

is so narrow that the air escapes with audible fiction (FRICATIVE) Another kind

of consonants (NASALS) the air stream is blocked in the mouth but allowed to escape through the nose

Consonants are formed by interrupting, restricting or diverting the airflow in many ways They can be divided into different kinds in accordance with three categories, i.e the degree of vocal cord vibration, the place and the manner of articulation In terms of vibration of vocal cords, if certain consonants involve, which will be called voiced and the others are voiceless (Kelly, 2000, pp.5-7)

1.4.1 The place of articulation

The place of articulation focuses on the interaction between articulators It defines both the area of the oral-pharyngeal vocal tract where the constriction is made and the part of the tongue used to form the constriction Consonants in terms

of this classification are bilabial, labio-dental, dental, alveolar, palato-alveolar,

palatal, velar and glottal (Kelly, 2000)

lower lips pressed together or coming together

upper front teeth

tongue touching the upper teeth

tongue touching or approaching the alveolar ridge

tongue coming close to the area between the back of the alveolar ridge and the front of the hard palate

coming close to the hard palate

touching the soft palate

use of the tongue and other parts of the mouth

1.4.2 The manner of articulation

The manner of articulation refers to the interaction between the articulator‟s act in the way that the air is temporarily trapped, and then suddenly released

Consonants classified based on the manners of articulation are plosive, fricative,

affricate, nasal, lateral and approximant (Kelly, 2000)

vocal tract, and the soft palate is raised Air pressure increases behind the closure, and is then released

“explosively”

close together but there is still a small opening between them so the air-stream is partially obstructed and an audible friction noise (a hissing sound) is produced

immediately followed by a fricative The soft palate is also raised Air pressure increases behind the closure, and is then released more slowly than in plosives

the palate, the soft palate is lowered, and air escapes through the nose

obstructed at a point along the center of the oral tract, with incomplete closure between one or both sides of the tongue and the roof of the mouth

articulators come close together but without the vocal tract being narrowed to such an extent that a friction noise is produced

1.4.3 The degree of vocal cord vibration

Voicing is also one of the main categories when describing consonants The vocal folds may be held against each other at just the right tension so that the air

flowing past them from the lungs will cause them to vibrate against each other The process is called voicing Sounds that are made with vocal fold vibration are said to

be voiced

Sound made without vocal fold vibration are said to be voiceless There are several pairs of sounds in English which differ only in voicing that is, the two sounds have identical places and manners of articulation, but one has vocal fold vibration and the other does not, for instance: /p, b / or /k, g/ The table below showed the English consonants in terms of the three characteristics

Table 1 English consonants 1.4.4 Phonological rules

Most dialects of English have about 24 distinctive (phonemic) consonant sounds divided by three categories: place of articulation, manner of articulation and voicing

However, sounds do not stand individually, sound system is a sequence of phonemes which make up utterances Sounds sometimes must “blend” itself in the aggregate of surroundings Take the example above: “pop” /pɒp/ Based on the theories, the phoneme /p/ at the initial and final position should be pronounced by using both lips and being aspirated strongly, however, in the real situation, only the

the theoretical fundamentals, language teachers should provide other practical

knowledge in order to help students aware of the phonetic issues in the real conversations

Allophones, as mentioned above, are phonetic variants of a phoneme in a language, which do not make any changes of the word meaning Yet, they play crucial roles making the conversation smoothly and intelligibly Therefore, students should be provided this part of the knowledge to have a better pronunciation competence Since this study focuses on the fricative, affricative and initial clusters, the students would be perceived the relevant allophones rules which were based on Ladefoged (2001, p.56)

voiced through only a small part of the articulation when they occur at the end of an utterance (as /v/ in “try to improve”) or before a voiceless sound (as /d/ in “add two”)

except when immediately preceded by a voiced sound

- The approximant /w, r, j, l/ are a least partially voiceless when they occur

after initial /p, t, k/ Eg: pray, cute, class

- Voiceless stops /p, t, k/ are not aspirated after /s/ at the beginning of a

syllable Eg: spy, stay, sky

According to Nunan, D (1992, p.18), action research is “a descriptive case study of a particular classroom, groups of learners or even a single learner counts as

action research if it is initiated by a question, is supported by data and interpretation, and is carried out by a practitioner investigating aspects of his or her own context and situations” This definition shows that in order to carry out an action research, the teacher must be a practitioner who must identify the problem that her/his class encounter, and then carry out a plan to solve the problem

Another definition given by Kemmis & McTaggart (1982): “action research can be defined as a combination of „action‟ and „research‟ Action research puts ideas into practice for self-improvement and increasing knowledge about curriculum, teaching and learning The ultimate result is improvement in what happens in the classroom and school” In other words, the research or the teacher must do the research – find out what the problem of the class and then take an action to overcome such difficulties

“Action research is a strategy for teacher to make changes and develop professionally by reflecting on their own everyday teaching” (Wallace, 1998: 16) Wallace believed that via action research conducted by teachers, they will become expert gradually in their teaching area Although each expert has their own definition about action research, it can be concluded that action research is carried out with the aim of solving the practical problems in a classroom which will be suitable for this study

In this study, the methodology of the research will follow the model of Kemmis and Mc Taggart (1988) which is composed of four phases:

- Planning: a problem or issue is identified and a plan of action is developed in order to bring about improvements in specific areas of the research context

- Action: the plan is to put into action over an agree period of time

- Observation: the effects of the action are observed and data are collected

- Reflection: the effects of the action are evaluated become the basis for further cycles of research

CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY

This chapter provides a detailed discussion of methodological design of the study including: the setting of the study, participants, research methods and research instruments

2.1 Setting of the study

2.1.1 Step Up English center

The research project was conducted in Step Up English Center which was founded in 2011 and is specialized with Pronunciation, Communication and TOEIC course Being a teacher at Step Up, the researcher has been working there since

2014 and her specialization is teaching Pronunciation

2.1.2 Pronunciation course

The pronunciation course is designed for beginners as well as learners at the elementary level The duration for the course was 11 weeks, 2 lessons for each week and 2 hours for each lesson which included the entry test and the final test (the first and the final session in the course were used to exam and evaluate students‟ pronunciation competences) The schedule of the course will be implemented as the followings: the first 7 weeks are about consonants, 2 weeks later are for vowels and the rest are for suprasegmental features as Stress, Linking & Elision and Intonation However, because this study is focused on the consonant issues only, so the duration for the research will be conducted within the first 7 weeks of the course Studying about the consonant, the learners will be taught how to use their articulators in order to pronounce the intelligible consonant sounds

Articulatory phonetics teaching will be the major theme for the whole stage

of teaching and learning consonants Each session, students were taught from two to four sounds, usually the pair of voiced and voiceless sounds The teacher gave the articulatory descriptions of each sound first, helped learners to control their articulators to produce intelligible sounds Students had time to practice by themselves and teacher corrected the mistakes for each of them if necessary

The syllabus that the teacher used simultaneously are “Pronunciation in Use”, elementary level by Jonathan Marks (2007) and “Pronunciation Workshop Training Program” by Paul S Gruber, MS, CCC – SLP” (2005) Although

“Pronunciation in Use” were for British accent while the latter was for American accent, the research chose the two material for two reasons: first, the theoretical descriptions about the phonology, articulatory phonetics or the related orthography

in the “Pronunciation in Use” were quite explicit and easy to understand but for the practicing, “Pronunciation workshop” had a number of practical benefits The syllabus included the visual description regarding how to use the tongue, shape of the lips and other articulators performed by the author himself The contents in the tutorial videos were firmly related with the syllabus, the teacher used the videos as a supplementary material in order to explain the sound production mechanism In addition, to minimize the abstract notions, the teacher used a website published by the University of Iowa, USA showing the lively animation of oral anatomy and it

http://soundsofspeech.uiowa.edu/english/english.html

Figure 2 Sounds of speech animation application

The American sounds were illustrated apparently in this website in both

„animation with sound‟ and „step-by-step description‟, examples and a visual model were attached either It is said that in the process of acquiring the foreign language regarding articulatory phonetics, experiencing the visual materials are easy to approach rather than reading the theories only Other supporting activities like:

2.2 Participants

There were 10 participants in the group under study They were aged from

19 to 30 and their English was at elementary level Seven of them were students from different universities in Ha Noi in which major subjects at their school were not related to the English language while the rest was working people who sometimes had to use English to work with their foreign colleagues These informants were coded as from A1 to A10 and they could be called as the false beginners – the learners have already studied some English in the past, mostly at school for a number of years since English is an obligatory subject in the Vietnamese educational system from the elementary to the tertiary level Although these learners have usually had some contact with English since their school years, but feel that they have little command of the language and therefore want to begin

“from the top”

Pronunciation is the first stage in their process of acquiring English which will be the fundamental for further study After Pronunciation course, depending on each learner‟s purpose, s/he might be willing to improve the oral or literal skills but

no matter which skill they want to enhance, pronunciation is the very first initial step that any language learners should master beforehand

of the passage was used as the standard tool for the analysis of the students‟ performance Student‟ reading was recorded and then compared to the model patterns

The purpose of the reading passage was to find out students‟ common mistake in producing individual sounds and the results had shown that the subjects

had difficulties in fricative as in /θ, ð, ʃ, ʒ/ and affricative sounds /tʃ, dʒ/ Some cases of clusters in the entry test as “student”, “from”, “study”, “problem”,

“private”, “spend”, “studying”, “speak” were mispronounced by some of the subjects

2.3.2 Planning

The research was carried out within seven weeks in total There were two pronunciation sessions for each week Each session lasted two hours The research also included the entry test and final test which were conducted at the beginning and

at the end of the course Four mini tests were also added to check students‟ progress Each mini test was conducted after every two sessions The researcher chose clusters as the matter which was under investigated in mini tests since the scarcity of practicing time in class

introduction

& Entry test

- Brief introduction regarding the purposes and aims of the course

- Entry test: each student was requested to check individually with teacher in a separated room The task was reading out loud a passage taken from the text book of the course

the target sounds

- Words: “read, carrot, car, write; lion, golden, pull”,

- Sentences: “Brown is very rich; Clara is clever but Lulu is a little silly”

- Cluster introduction: students were given 18 examples of consonant combined with the /r/ sound For example, “bring, break; cry, create; draw, drive; free

- Exercise practice: students were requested to practice 8 sentences related to the 6 studied sounds and 2 consonant cluster groups (appendix 3)

/k/, /g/

Clusters: /kr/, /kl/, /gr/, /gl/

the target sounds and clusters

- Words: “will, away, kick, ago, create, cream, clock, clap, great, green, globe, glad”

- Sentences: “Kate will make a cake for Mike;

Go to get my glasses”

- Exercise practice: (appendix 3)

/kr/, /gr/, /kl/, /gl/, /sk/, /sp/, /st/

- Students were provided a handout with clusters related to consonants they had learned

in the previous sessions with the sound /r/, /l/ Each issue had 6 words and 2 sentences For example, “cry, cream, grade, group”, “The cradle has cracked; Great hopes make great man” (see more in appendix 2)

- The cluster group “s + stop” was also under investigation with the same number of words and sentences (appendix 2) For example,

“school, score, sky”, “You shouldn‟t wear a long scarf when skiing; He goes to school by scooter” (see more in appendix 2)

- Sentences: “I saw a small snake in the sea;

“Buzz” is sounds of bees”

- Exercise practice: (appendix 3)

- Exercise practice: (appendix 3)

/θr/, /kl/, /gl/, /sk/, /sp/, /st/

- Words: “three, throne, clone, clerk, special, spam, stop, stork”

- Sentences: “This thrilling novel was based on the series: “Game of throne”; Thirty-three is bigger than three; Can you eat spinach salad with a spoon?; She was reading bedtime story

for her little stepson” (see more in appendix 2)

/v/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/

Clusters: /fr/, /fl/, /ʃr/

- Helped students how to be able to pronounce the target sounds and clusters

- Words: “five, symphony, voice, oven, mission, dish, vision, beige”

- Sentences: “Five funny frogs were fighting; Sharon shouldn‟t wash her shoes in the showers”

- A listening drill with the content of minimal pairs was applied to help students distinguish the sound /ʃ/ and /s/ 8 pairs of words in which /s/ and /ʃ/ were in initial, middle and end of words presented Students were asked to listen

to the video twice and then checked by the teacher: /mes/ - /meʃ/, /sɔːr/ - /ʃɔːr/, /su:/ - /ʃu:/, /sɪp/ - /ʃɪp/, /fɪst/ - /fɪʃt/, /ɡæs/ - /ɡæʃ/, /ɡʌst/ - /ɡʌʃt/, /siːp/

- /ʃiːp/ (the material were taken from “The sound of American English” by Rachell English)

- Exercise practice: (appendix 3)

the target sounds

- Words: “mom, not, thank”

- Sentences: “Mom made me move; Nancy needs a needle and some noodle”

- Exercise practice: (appendix 3)

/fr/, /fl/, /ʃr/, /sk/, /sp/, /st/

- Words: “freeze, fraction, sport, spend, spilt”

- Sentences: “Fruit are free on Friday; Flashed cards is an effective way to study new words; Are there speed limits in Spain?; She likes to put lots of spices on top of the spaghetti” (see more in appendix 2)

/tr/, /sp/, /st/ brilliant, blue, tree, space, stick”

- Sentences: “Pat put purple paint in the pool; Tom and Tim are twins”

- Exercise practice: (appendix 3)

- Exercise practice: (appendix 3)

/pr/, /br/, /pl/, /bl/, /tr/, /dr/, /sk/, /sp/, /st/

- Words: “price, breaking, please, Blackberry, true, driving, skin, scar, spa, stitch”

- Sentences: “My brother often brings a big breakfast into bed; Pluto is the farthest planet from the Sun; Most students often stay up late; It‟s hard to see stars in the storm” (see more in appendix 2)

/θ/: “things, with (appeared two times), thank, everything”; nine cases of the sound /ð/: “other (appeared two times), these, the, they (appeared four times), then”; seven cases of the sound /ʃ/:

“British (appeared four times), patient, shop (appeared two times)”; three cases of the sound /tʃ/: “change, cappuccino, chocolate”; four cases of the sound /dʒ/: “journalist, just (appeared two times), change”; twenty six cases

of cluster group: “consonant + -r/-l”; six cases

of cluster group “s + stop” Since there were no cases related to the sound /ʒ/, the teacher added four sentences including that sound in the test (appendix 4)

Table 2 Teaching plans 2.3.3 Actions

In the phase of action, the planning was put into practice The teacher used articulatory phonetics instructions to teach pronunciation in seven weeks During those seven weeks, order of steps in every session was the same The specific order was described as follows:

Firstly, the target sounds of the session were given The teacher instructed students how to use articulators to produce the sounds properly For example, in session 6, the target sounds were /θ/ and /ð/ The instructions were: the tongue tip made light contact with the back of the top, front teeth and the soft palate were raised When producing /θ/, the air could be pushed through the gap between the tongue tip and the front teeth, which created audible frictional turbulence While /ð/ was voiced, there was no clear air forced coming out from the mouth as /θ/ sound –

a voiceless sound

Secondly, students were given a number of words and sentences containing the target sounds They were requested to check the phonetic transcription and practice by themselves After 15 minutes, the teacher checked for each of the students to understand each of their problems Teaching material aids such as sound diagrams, videos, games and songs were applied in some sessions For example, in session 2, to help students to pronounce the word “girl”, the teacher played a music video named “Kiss the girl” In the video, the singer showed her mouth position very clearly, so the students could understand more easily

Finally, in the last 15 minute of each lesson, the teacher gave a handout containing nine sentences of six studied sounds and two groups of clusters Student worked in pairs, each student in each pair took turn to read out loud the contents During their practice, the teacher noted down each student‟s errors and mistakes The students were checked by each other and the teacher only corrected the errors for the part of knowledge that they had been taught, others the teacher have not mentioned yet

Regarding the tests in the research There were six tests in total in which two for the entry and final test, four for mini-tests All the tests are implemented with the same method: informants were asked to checked individually with the teacher in

down the errors and recorded the data by using audio recorder It took approximately about 10 minutes for the informant to finish the task After that, teacher spent about 7 minutes to explained the errors for the student

Since the study focused on the 3 pairs of sounds and initial consonant clusters The following section will give a detailed description about the articulatory phonetic instructions applied in the course:

2.3.3.1 Fricatives /θ, ð/

Students were requested to stick the tongue out between the teeth and slightly bite down The only contacting point between the tongue and the front teeth must be the tip of the tongue; then blew the air friction and maintained the status for

a while The trick was “holding the sound for a long time”, it helped learners get familiar with putting the tongue out of the mouth, which was utterly different from the Vietnamese sounds students must avoid touching the roof of the mouth with the front or center of the tongue For example, thank /θæŋk/ Instead of pronouncing the /θ/ and coming to the latter sound right away, students should produce and maintain

a long air friction in about five seconds before coming to the vowel Actions for producing the sound /ð/ were the same, the only different thing was the vocal cords were vibrated when producing that sound

2.3.3.2 Fricatives /ʃ, ʒ/

The tongue tip pointed upwards towards the roof of the mouth but not touched it The air was forced to push out through the gap between the tongue and the teeth, which created audible frictional turbulence The lips should be rounded /ʒ/ had the same production pattern The vocal cords were vibrated which made the

sound was voiced while the former was voiceless

2.3.3.3 Affricatives /tʃ, dʒ/

The front of the tongue contacted the alveolar ridge building up an obstruction to the air to come out The lips slightly come forward Air pressure built

up behind the obstruction was released by lowering the tongue and it was followed

by frictional noise which associated with fricative portion of the sound Teacher gave each student a thin card put in front of their mouth In the process of producing

the sound, if the card was moved by the air friction, the sound was made accurately

vibrated

2.3.3.4 Initial consonant clusters

Initial consonant clusters under investigated in this study were the two big groups: (1) “consonant + -r/-l” and (2): “s + stop”

Regarding the cluster group (1), the students were told to decrease the strength of the former consonant articulation and quickly move to the latter one The degree of the strength of the latter consonant must be remained or even exaggerated a little

About cluster group (2) The quick glide from the /s/ to the stop was used to But it was noticed that the stop in this cluster was an unaspirated sound For example, “speak” /spi:k/, /p/ was a stop which was aspirated strongly in the initial and final position, however, when it was the sound after the initial /s/ in a cluster,

i:k]

In session 2, in the part of consonant cluster introduction, the teacher gave students a number of cluster words including the cluster “tr” as in “tree” To pronounce the cluster, a trick was applied as following: teacher changed the transcription [tri:] into [tʃri:] It now contained three parts as (a): /tʃ/, (b): /r/ and (c): /i:/ Firstly, students were requested to aspirate /tʃ/ strongly In order to ease the situation, the subjects were taught that to produce the /tʃ/ sound, the method was the same as the one to produce the sound /tʂ/ in Vietnamese but with a strong air friction When students got used to pronounce the strong aspiration /tʃ/, in the next stage, the students were taught to pronounce (a) less strongly but they had to glide

to articulate (b) strongly and clearly It should be liked [tʃr] And then they just added (c) with the combination By this trick, the students could pronounce the /r/ clearly which was thoroughly different with the sounds in northern Vietnam This

also helped them to pronounce the /tʃ/ sound more intelligibly right in the beginning

of the course

Cluster “dr” as in “dream” had the same pattern However, it was fine if it could be pronounced as [dri:m] or [dʒri:m] The teacher introduced that as the reference for the students

2.4 Research instruments

The most significant instrument to collect the data in this research was tests Concerning the mini-tests, they were designed with the same structure There were six words and two sentences for each cluster Normally it were six clusters and the group (2) was always being examined Students had one or two minutes to have a quick look at the handout and were checked right after Final test was quite different

as the task was reading out loud a passage taken from the reference book of the

chosen with the reason: it contained a large number of initial consonant clusters which was suitable for checking the informants‟ pronunciation on this area It also included the most of the studied sounds except the sound /ʒ/ In that case, the research added four sentences including the target sound to have the data for analysis later

More specifically, to collect and analyze the data in the entry test, final test and other mini-tests precisely, audio-recording was used It was barely possible to remember all the information and data retrieved from the research so the researcher chose audio-recording as a supportive tool to collect the data Data analysis in this study relied on the pronunciation ability of each informant so the quality of data needed high precision Moreover, it was believed using audio-recording was more effective rather than using video-recording because the “hand-held” for a long time

to record the data was quite inconvenient (Wallace, 2001, p.107) Students sometimes had a bad reaction while being filmed which might influence the nature

of the research This caused the inaccurate results of the data Like any kind of recording, audio-recording helped the research to store the “alive” data which

means that it was always available for the researcher whenever she wanted to access

the data

Observation was another tool to collect the data in the whole research However, it was utilized strongly in the practicing time – students were practicing six sentences including the six studied sounds and three sentences for the two clusters groups (two for each issue in “consonant + -r/-l”, and one for “s + stop”) in the last 15 minutes in each session There was an observation sheet for each of students, and the teacher observed and noted down all the errors and mistakes made

by them

To do these above techniques, note-taking was certainly used to acknowledge the learners‟ studying process Although audio-recording was a worth tool to collect the data, to ease the analysis, instant note-taking played a significant role to help the researcher remind the crucial feature And in the final phase of the research, the data were easily generated to see the studying development of the subjects