An investigation into errors of pronouncing some english consonants and final sounds made by first year students at thuongmai university

These errors include wrong consonant pronunciation, final consonant sounds, omission of consonant cluster and omission of final consonants.. Error of pronouncing some English consonants

Secondly, I want to show my deep thankfulness to the lecturers who helped

me to carry out an interview for this paper I highly appreciate their invaluablesuggestions to my work

I also desire to say thanks to teachers in charge of guiding students to doresearch and evaluating the progress of their works Owing to their lessons andcomments, I knew how to carry out a study and what to improve in my paper.Furthermore, I would love to thank students from K53N of English Faculty atThuongmai University, who have cooperated and given results of questionnaires tofinish my study

Last but not least, my special gratefulness is to my much –loved family At alltimes, they stood by my side and encouraged me to overcome difficulties inconducting this thesis Thanks to their material and spiritual support, I had moretime and motivation to get over the challenge

English has become the most used popular international language in Vietnam

in recent years Despite being spoken by the millions of people, lots of Vietnamese people including students still make mistakes in pronunciation, which makes them embarrassing when speaking This paper, therefore, focuses on some common mistakes in consonant pronunciation made by first- year students of English faculty

at Thuongmai University The paper covers a number of reasons for the mistakes and some tentative suggestions to address those problems are then discussed These errors include wrong consonant pronunciation, final consonant sounds, omission of consonant cluster and omission of final consonants Moreover, it is argued that the mistakes can be explained in terms of inadequate knowledge of the articulation of the sounds and, more importantly, the interference of the mother tongue To end this study, some of key suggestions for pronunciation improvement includes careful instruction in how to pronounce the sounds and more emphasis on drills and practice.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i

ABSTRACT ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

LIST OF TABLES, CHARTS, PICTURES AND ABBREVIATIONS v

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Previous studies 1

1.3 Aims of the study 3

1.4 Research subjects 4

1.5 Scope of the study 4

1.6 Research methodology 4

1.6.1 Observation 4

1.6.2 Recording Test 5

1.6.3 Questionnaire 5

1.7 Organization of the study 6

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 The definition of pronunciation, consonants, and final consonants 7

2.1.1 Pronunciation 7

2.1.2 English consonants 7

2.1.3 Final consonants 8

2.2 Vietnamese consonants and English consonants 9

2.2.1 English consonants 9

2.2.2 Vietnamese consonants 12

2.3 English final consonants and Vietnamese final consonants 14

2.3.1 Vietnamese final consonants 14

2.3.2 English final consonants 15

2.3.3 Contrastive analysis of some English consonants and Vietnamese consonants 15

2.4 Interference of mother tongue on pronouncing English consonants 16

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS 18

3.1 Error of pronouncing some English consonants and final sounds made by first- year students at Thuong Mai University 19

3.1.1 Consonants confusion 20

3.1.2 Omission of consonant cluster 21

3.1.3 Omission of final consonants 22

3.2 Evaluation of the English Faculty’s lecturers on pronouncing some English consonants and final consonants of the first- year students 23

3.3 Reasons for errors of pronouncing some English consonants and final consonants 24

3.3.1 Lack of practices and drills 24

3.3.2 Failure in distinguishing the differences among English consonants 25

3.3.3 Lack of correction from teachers 25

3.3.4 Difference between Vietnamese sound system and English ones 25

3.3.5 The influence of mother tongue in English pronunciation 26

CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 28

4.1 Recommendations for students 28

4.2 Recommendations for teachers of English Faculty 31

CONCLUSION 34

1 Summary of the study 34

2 Limitations of the study 34

3 Recommendation for further study 35 REFERENCES

APPENDIX

LIST OF TABLES, CHARTS, PICTURES AND ABBREVIATIONS

TABLESTable 2.1 English consonants

Table 2.2 Voicing contrast in English fricatives

Table 2.3 Voicing contrast in English stops

Table 2 4 Vietnamese initial sounds

Table 2.5 8 ending Vietnamese consonants

Table 2 6 Vietnamese ending consonants

Table 2.7 English final consonants

Table 3.8 Pronunciation errors of some English consonant cluster

CHARTS

Chart 3.1 Students’ interest towards learning English

Chart 3.2 Student’s perception to importance of learning English

Chart 3.3 Students’ consonant mispronunciation

Chart 3.4 Students’ consonant confusion

Chart 3.5 No of students omits final consonants

Chart 3.6 Reasons for errors of consonant pronunciation

PICTURES

Picture 4.1 International Phonetic Alphabet

Picture 4.2 Listen to the consonant sounds

Picture 4.3 Example words

Picture 4.4 ELSA Speak with artificial intelligence (Source: Edu2)

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale

English is the most commonly used language among foreign languagespeakers in the world In other words, everyone needs to learn the language in order

to get in touch on an international level In Vietnam, English language is considered

as a mean of communication which is widely used for studying or doing research,and for those who are working in various fields such as education, economics,science, and so forth

Despite well awareness of its importance and emphasis on the acquisition anduse of English, little do people pay attention to some common pronunciationmistakes that are made as the consequence of the mother tongue interference or thelack of basic knowledge of articulation of the sounds According to recent researchand from my own experience, it is figured out that most students usually havedifficulty pronouncing a certain number of consonants Moreover, because of thedifference of Vietnamese sounds and English ones, a large number of students makemistakes of the final consonants seriously Coping with these problems, therefore,students need to obtain the basic knowledge background of consonantspronunciation

For all the mentioned reasons, I decided to investigate the subject “An investigation into errors of pronouncing some English consonants and final sounds made by first- year students at Thuongmai University”

Similarly, several studies conducted by Vietnamese researchers showed thatVietnamese learners encounter lots of difficulties in learning English pronunciationand also common errors of mispronunciation Dung (2014) pointed out thatVietnamese speakers have a wider number of problems with the voiced versus thevoiceless stops in word final position, /b/, /p/, /d/, /g/ vs /p/, /t/, /k/ and finalfricative consonants /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /s/, /z/ Omission of a fricative at the end ofwords usually occurs when speaking English as fricatives do not occur in word-finalposition in their mother tongue Because of this, Avery and Ehrlich, emphasized”Vietnamese students tend to omit one or more consonants from a difficult cluster”(1992, p 155)

In addition to the past works, Duong Thi Nu ( 2009, pp 41-50) has studiedpronunciation problems and the influence of the mother tongue She highlightedthat the common pronunciation mistakes of Vietnamese learners are confusion interms of consonant sounds So many sounds such as /s/ and /ʃ/, /z/ and / ʒ/, /dʒ/ and /ʒ/, /tʃ/ and Vietnamese /ć/ are confused e.g (she/ sea), (measure / pleasure), (change/tʃeindʒ/ is pronounced //tʃeinʒ/) For the /tʃ/ and Vietnamese /ć/, the English /ʧ/ in

chair is incorrectly pronounced like Vietnamese /ć/ in Vietnamese che

The mispronunciation of the above sounds is the result of the over practice ofthe first language, a process of fossilization According to (Yule; O’Connor, 1975)reported that the main problem of English pronunciation is to build a new set ofsounds corresponding to the sounds of English, and to break down the arrangement

of sounds which the habits and the systems of the mother tongue have strongly built

up It means that it is too difficult to change such habits which learners hasobtained since their childhood or at least it needs very long years to be changed andafter also very long time and regular practice, and all that is linked to a certain age

of the learner, especially students So the points mentioned above altogether sharethe concept that the learners confuse such sounds and replace each of them withother sounds that are said to be the nearest ones to them (O’Connor, 2003)

Another the result of the study being indicated by Nu was the effect of soundsystem on learning pronunciation She showed that the main problem in teachingand learning English pronunciation result from the differences in the sound system

of English and the system of Vietnamese, so a Vietnamese student is not

accustomed to pronounce for instance θ -sound and ð-sound, because they do notfound in his native language This means that the organs of speech of the learner arenot trained to produce such sound systems because they are unfamiliar to students.Particularly, the differences between two languages are the differences of manner ofarticulation, place of articulation, and voicing in Vietnamese and English.Additionally, learners with different linguistic backgrounds would of course facedifferent difficulties in order to produce English sounds, because of the differencesbetween the two languages (English and Vietnamese).These differences betweenthe sound systems are regarded as a barrier against competence in the pronunciation

of English, because the new sounds still remain strange for their organs of speech.However, this problem is expected to be solved after a long time of regular practiceand hard work

Therefore, most of the Vietnamese students face such problem because inVietnamese, the sound system is not too complex and the learner can speak withoutany confusion, but in English he may pronounce /ʃ/ for /s/ for example /shame/,/same/ Also in English the /r/ is distinctly pronounced only before a vowel e.g the /r/ after a vowel is not pronounced In Vietnamese, however, the /r/-sound issimilarly pronounced in all positions So students have lots of problems withdifferent sounds and are difficult to distinguish those consonants ones

Consequently, the mentioned studies above pointed out the common problemsexist in the consonant pronunciation of most among English learners However,those studies were done outside Thuongmai University in general and students ofthe English Faculty in particular Therefore, that is why the research is intended tofill a certain gap and seek such problems at Thuongmai University based onconducted studies

1.3 Aims of the study

The present study aims at investigating the most common pronunciation errorsmade by first- year students at Thuongmai University The research focuses onanalyzing factors that affect to these errors And as final step, this study suggestssolutions to help to promote learning process of pronunciation in undergraduatestudents

Therefore, it was to answer the two following questions:

What common errors of pronouncing English consonants are made by year students of English faculty at Thuongmai University?

first-What is the reason of making those errors?

1.4 Research subjects

Within the limitation of time and reference materials, the research onlyemphasizes the pronunciation errors and final sounds in terms of consonants made

by first- year students at Thuongmai University

1.5 Scope of the study

Because this study focuses on errors of consonant pronunciation that are made

by first- year students of English faculty, it is conducted on 100 students of K53Nwho are chosen randomly In addition, the researcher will interact with seventeachers of English faculty who are teaching English phonetics and phonology atThuongmai University They also have the ability to answer all problems related tofirst- year students’ pronunciation

1.6 Research methodology

In this research, the data has been collected from 50 first year students of theEnglish Faculty The sample of the study contained 45 female students and 5 maleones who were chosen randomly from the Faculty of English Besides, 7 teachersresponded to the questionnaire on the exact sounds which students mispronounceand the reasons for pronunciation problems

Data was collected through using of three main research instruments,observation, recording test and questionnaire respectively These will be discussed

in details below:

1.6.1 Observation

In order to obtain some information of errors, the researcher started to observethe students inside some English classes that were taught English phonetics andphonology While the students were discussing in English, the researcher was takingdown some particular sounds that students could not pronounce correctly, or whichthey tried to replace with others sounds close to them To verify the pronunciationamong students, some teachers were asked to fill a questionnaire regarding thepronunciation of their students

1.6.2 Recording Test

Recording test regarded as an essential tool of collecting their data by many ofthe researchers in the previous studies, helped the researcher investigate problemswith English pronunciation among English Faculty’s students

The sample of this study was 30 students at the English of Faculty Theresearcher prepared three exercises of pronunciation including consonant sounds,words and sentences written on a paper Each of the students read the whole sounds,words and sentences aloud while the researcher was recording their pronunciations.After each of 30 students recorded their sounds, the researcher listen carefullysamples and repeated this process a lot of times playing the tape at home Bothincorrect and correct pronunciation was written down and analyzed descriptively

In general, for the recording test, all sounds recorded from students werewritten on papers, and the number of correct and incorrect pronunciation wascounted beside each student Consequently, the recording test assisted a lot thenotes and the information, which was also drawn from observation

1.6.3 Questionnaire

The third tool used in this study was a structured questionnaire, which wasused in collaboration with some of students and English teachers at the Englishfaculty

A number of 37 copies of the questionnaire were printed and answered by 30students and 7 Faculty’s teachers within two weeks

Using open- ended and follow- up questionnaires served three main purposes:

-To assess common pronunciation errors made by students

-To find out factors that affect to students’ English pronunciation

-To suggest ways assisting in student’s pronunciation improvement

The questionnaire used in this study had at least four sections:

-The first section is made of questions about the background of therespondents

-The second one comprises two questions in which the researcher enquiresabout the respondents’ attitude towards the English language It is really necessaryfor this study as it can explain the students’ pronunciation performance

-The third section consists of five questions all related to pronunciation,particularly consonant sounds These questions give the details about the students’

difficulties in the pronunciations of English sounds, which are pivotal since thepurpose of the study is to investigate the pronunciation errors made by first- yearstudents.

The fourth and the last section consist of two questions about solution to theirproblems

Moreover, based on the main targets of this study, the questionnaire wasdesigned to ask the teachers to give their opinions about influence of mother tongue

on pronunciation and the reasons that made such pronunciation errors by students.Lastly, the respondents were asked to express their point of view about therecommending solutions for such errors All that helped a lot to obtain very accurateresults and findings to make sure of validity and reliability of the questionnaire.Afterwards, the results and the findings of the questionnaire were analyzeddescriptively The results and the information of both questionnaire and therecordings will be reviewed in further details in the third chapter of the study

1.7 Organization of the study

The study consists of four chapters which will cover errors of consonantspronunciation and reasons for those errors of first- year students at ThuongmaiUniversity Here is an overview of the content of each presented chapter:

Chapter I: This chapter introduces the rationale and significance of study,aims, research subjects, the scope and the organization of the study

Chapter II: This chapter reviews the definition of pronunciation, consonants,final sounds, Vietnamese consonants and final consonants, English consonants andfinal consonants, and interference of mother tongue on pronouncing Englishconsonants

Chapter III: Research finding, this part describes the current situation ofpronouncing consonants of the English faculty students, pronunciation errors made

by them, evaluation of teachers and reasons result from poor pronunciation

Chapter IV: This is an overview of the previous chapter, suggests somesolutions for both teachers and learners, and suggestions for further studies

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 The definition of pronunciation, consonants, and final consonants

2.1.1 Pronunciation

One of definitions of pronunciation was supposed Cook (1996) and cited inPourhosein Gilakjani( 2016), pronunciation is defined as the production of Englishsounds Moreover, pronunciation is the production of a sound system which doesnot interfere with communication either from the speakers’ or the listeners’viewpoint (Paulston & Burder, 1976) As Richard and Schmidt (2002) defined,pronunciation is the method of producing certain sounds

According to Wikipedia, pronunciation is the way in which a word or

a language is spoken It is referred to generally agreed-upon sequences of soundsused in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correctpronunciation"), or simply the way a particular individual speaks a word orlanguage Besides, a word can be spoken in different ways and depending on lots offactors such as the duration of the cultural exposure of their childhood, the location

of their current residence, speech or voice disorders, their ethnic group, their socialclass, or their education

Therefore, pronunciation is the act or manner of pronouncing words; utterance

of speech, a way of speaking a word, especially a way that is accepted or generallyunderstood, and a graphic representation of the way a word spoken, using phoneticsymbols

2.1.2 English consonants

As Wikipedia showed, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated withcomplete or partial closure of the vocal tract Notably, a consonant is a letter of thealphabet which represents a basic speech sound produced by obstructing the breath

in the vocal tract For example:

T is pronounced using the tongue (front part)

K is pronounced using the tongue (back part)

B is pronounced with the lips

H is pronounced in the throat

F is pronounced by forcing air through a narrow gap

M is pronounced using the nasal passage

The English consonants can be judged from the three main characteristicswhich enable each individual describe the concrete consonants and distinguish themfrom each other

- The voicing: The first way in which consonants can be different from eachother is in terms of voicing The English consonants can be “voiced or voiceless.”(Rogers, 2000, p.47) For instance, The sounds /t/ and /k/ are voiceless and thesounds / d/ and /g/ are voiced in English

- Manner of Articulation: The manner of articulation is the way in whichspeech sounds are produced by the speech organs such as oral stops, fricatives,affricates, nasal stops, a lateral and approximants (Fromkin, Rodman, Collins &Blair, 1988, p.58) The two English fricatives /ʃ/, /ʒ/ and the two affricates /tʃ/, /dʒ/are examples demonstrating this point

- The place: where the block of air occurs (lips, teeth, alveolar, ridge, palateand so on)

2.1.3 Final consonants

To ESL (English as a Second Language) learners, “ending sounds” arefamiliar as it refers to those ultimate sounds in a word More particularly, it refers tothe consonant sound(s) as the word can end with one or more consonant sounds(consonant clusters) Thus “ending sounds” in English pronunciation can be defined

as those consonant sounds which appear at the very end of words

Additionally, English has a “limited number of permitted combinations ofconsonants in initial and final clusters.” (Avery and Ehlich, 1995, p.54) Some of thefollowing consonant clusters are taken from Avery and Ehlich (1995, p.55) such

as /-ʃl/, /-lʃ/, /-rʃ/, /-ltʃt/, /-rtʃt/, and /-ndʃd/

Consonant Clusters Consist of /ʃ/: shrink, shrine, shroud, crucial, essential,Welsh, mention, nation, etc

Consonant Clusters Consist of /ʒ/: garaged, sabotaged, vision, division

Consonant Clusters Consist of /tʃ/: belched, hitched, watched, arched

Consonant Clusters Consist of /dʒ/: bulged, changed, exchanged

2.2 Vietnamese consonants and English consonants

2.2.1 English consonants

There are 24 consonants in English They are classified according to 3 aspects:

 Place of articulation: The place of articulation bilabial (bothlips), alveolar (tongue against the gum ridge), and velar (tongue against softpalate)

 Manner of articulation: Manners include stops, fricatives, and nasals

 The voicing: voiced or voiceless

Those consonants are classified based on the following table:

Manner of

articulation

Place of articulation Bilabial Labiodental Dent

al Alveolar

alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal

Alveolars are consonants that are produced “with the tongue touching the part

of the mouth behind the upper front teeth” and include 7 alveolar sounds in English

/t, d, s, z, n, l, r/.

Palato-alveolars are consonants that “are produced by the contact of the front

part of the tongue with the hard palate just behind the alveolar “ridge” according tothe definition of palate- alveolar on the website http://www.unikassel.de English

palato- alveolars include 4 consonants /ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ/.

Palatal/j/ is a consonant produced by “raising the tongue body against the

Plosive consonants are consonants made by “completely stopping the flow of

air coming out of the mouth and then suddenly releasing it” (OALD) Six plosive

consonants in English are /p, b, t, d, k, g/.

Fricative consonants are consonants articulated by forcing air through a

“narrow space in the mouth with the lips, teeth or tongue in a particular position”(OALD) English fricatives include 9 consonants /f, v, θ, ð, s, z, ∫, ʒ, h/

Affricates are consonants made up of a plosive followed immediately by a fricative (OALD) Two affricate consonants are / tʃ, dʒ /.

Nasal are consonants produced by “allowing the air to escape freely through the nose” (OALD) There are 3 nasal sounds They are /m, n, ŋ/

Lateral are consonants “produced by placing a part of the tongue against the

palate so that air flows around on both sides of the tongue” (OALD) There is onlyone lateral sound in English That is /l/

Approximant are consonants made by bringing the parts of the mouth which

produce speech close together but not actually touching (OALD) There are 3

approximant consonants /w, j, r/.

In English, consonant phonemes are classified as either voiced or voicelesseven though it is not the primary distinctive feature between them Still, theclassification is used as a stand-in for phonological processes, such as vowellengthening that occurs before voiced consonants but not before unvoicedconsonants or vowel quality changes (the sound of the vowel) in some dialects ofEnglish that occur before unvoiced but not voiced consonants Such processes allowEnglish speakers to continue to perceive difference between voiced and voicelessconsonants when the devoicing of the former would otherwise make them soundidentical to the latter In other words, voicing plays a vital role in distinguishconsonant sounds

Voiceless consonants include /p, t, k, f, θ, s, ∫, h, tʃ/

Voiced consonants: /b, d, g, v, ð, z, ʒ, dʒ, m, n, ᶇ, l, w, r, j/

English has four pairs of fricative phonemes that can be divided into a table

by place of articulation and voicing The voiced fricatives can readily be felt to havevoicing throughout the duration of the phone especially when they occur betweenvowels

Here is an example of the voicing in English fricatives:

Pronouncing with the lower lips against the teeth /f/ fan /v/ vanPronouncing with the tongue against the teeth /θ/ thin /ð/ thenPronouncing with the tongue near the gums /s/ sip /z/ zipPronouncing with the tongue bunched up /ʃ/ Confucian /ʒ/ confusion

Table 2.2: Voicing contrast in English fricatives (Source: Wikipedia)

Additionally, English voiceless stops are generally aspirated at the beginning of astressed syllable, and in the same context, their voiced counterparts are voiced onlypartway through In more narrow phonetic transcription, the voiced symbols aremaybe used only to represent the presence of articulatory voicing, and aspiration isrepresented with a superscript h This is illustrated in the following table:

Pronouncing with the lips closed /p/ pin /b/ bin

Pronouncing with the tongue near the gums /t/ ten /d/ den

Pronouncing with the tongue bunched up /tʃ/ chin /dʒ/ ginPronouncing with the back of the tongue

Table 2.3: Voicing contrast in English stops (Source: Wikipedia)

2.2.2 Vietnamese consonants

While English has 24 consonants, Vietnamese has 22 initial consonants and 8final consonants They are also classified according to place of articulation, manner

of articulation and voicing

Manner of articulation Place of articulation

Labial Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal

Stop

un-aspirated

voiceless

Labial: Vietnamese has 5 labial consonants They are /b, m, f, v/.

Alveolar: There are 7 alveolar consonants in Vietnamese They are

/t’, t, d, n, s, z, l/.

Retroflex: Retroflex consonants includes 3 sounds /ʈ, ş, ʐ/.

Palatal: There are 2 palatal sounds in Vietnamese They are /c, ɲ/

Velar: Vietnamese velar consonants consist of 4 sounds They are /k, ŋ, x, ɣ/ Glottal: There are 2 glottal consonants in Vietnamese They are /ʔ, h/

There are also different kinds of stop consonants in Vietnamese

Aspirated stop consonant includes /t’/

Voiceless stop consonants include /t, ʈ, c, k, ʔ/

Voiced stop consonants include /b, d, ɲ,ŋ/

Nasal stop consonants include /m, n/

The fricative

Voiceless fricative consonants include /f, s, ş, x, h/

Voiced fricative consonants include /v, z, ʐ, ɣ/

Lateral fricative consonant includes /l/

Based on mentioned analysis of the consonants in English and Vietnamese,there are some distinctive similarities and differences between them:

- Both consonant systems have fricatives /s/ /z/, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/

- Unlike English, Vietnamese consonant system does not include anyaffricates

- Vietnamese consonants are found in the initial or final positions of a word,but the final consonants are never heard while English consonants are pronounced

in three positions: initial, medial and final

2.3 English final consonants and Vietnamese final consonants

2.3.1 Vietnamese final consonants

In Vietnamese, there are only six consonants and two semi- consonants whichcan be pronounced in the final position It is indicated in the following table:

Manner of articulation Place of articulation

Labial Alveolar Velar

Table 2.5: 8 ending Vietnamese consonants( Source: Le Quang Thiem, p.101)

- 6 consonants: p, t, k, m, n, ŋ For example : /n/ chan, /k/ ngoc, /t/ buot

- 2 semi- consonants : u̯, i̭̯ ( which have both feature of not only vowels butalso consonants)

For instance: / u̯/ mau, / i̭̯/ mai

According to Thiem, p 106, the following table also has writings which areequivalent to Vietnamese ending sounds

7 u̯ ou Tao, vào, baoĐau, ngủ, thiu

Table 2.6 Vietnamese ending consonants

2.3.2 English final consonants

Based on the features of English consonants system, when there are two ormore consonants standing at the end of the word, the term “final consonant”, “ pre-final” and “post-final” consonants are used

Here is the table of English final consonants:

/p/: map, nap /v/: live, leave /m/: Mom, room

/b/: rib /θ/: tooth, breath /n/: noon

/t/: cat, right / ð /: breathe /ᶇ/: sing, spring

/d/: did, bad /ʒ/: beige /l/: school, cool

/k/: like, Mike /ʃ/: cash

/g/: big, pig /d ʒ/: change, huge

/f/: laugh, life /t ʃ/: watch

Table 2.7 English final consonants

Additionally, English final consonants include pre-final (/m/ /n/, /η/, /l/, /s/)and post- final (/s/, /z/, /t/, /d/, /θ/)

For example:

Pre-final plus final plus post-final (e.g helped, banks, bonds, twelfth)

Final plus post-final plus post final: s, z, t, d, θ (e.g fifths, next)

2.3.3 Contrastive analysis of some English consonants and Vietnamese consonants

It is indicated that there are some differences between two English consonantsand Vietnamese consonants

Firstly, there are more detailed and categorizing criteria for manner ofarticulation in Vietnamese than in English For example, manner of articulation

is divided into two manner of articulation for stop and fricative, and then stopand fricative are divided into nasal stop and oral stop Moreover, in Vietnamese,there is oral stop/t’/, oral voiceless stop/ / ţ , t, c, k /, oral voiced stop/b, d/, nasalstop / m, n , ɲ, n / in the manner of articulation for stop Meanwhile, Englishplosive consonants combine between oral stop and / p, b, t, d, k, g, m, n/ andaffricate/ tʃ, dʒ/

Secondly, in the manner of articulation for fricative, English consonants aredifferent from Vietnamese consonants such as / θ, ð, ʃ, ʒ, dʒ, tʃ, s, z/ Furthermore,there are some English consonants that have no in Vietnamese such as/w, r, j/

Finally, Vietnamese does not have consonants clusters like in English Forexample, in English, the groups/spl/ and /ts/ are consonant clusters in the word

splits (Wikipedia, p.1)

2.4 Interference of mother tongue on pronouncing English consonants

Through a contrastive view into Vietnamese and English consonants, it isillustrated that English learners are having difficulties in pronunciation

Firstly, English also has a lot of sounds that cannot be found in Vietnamesesuch as /ð/, /θ/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, / tʃ/, /dʒ/ or pronounced differently /z/, /s/ Consequently,learners have difficulty in exercising their mouth in the particular way required topronounce the English sounds correctly Moreover, Vietnamese learners tend tosubstitute the Vietnamese sound for the English For example, students tend tosubstitute the Vietnamese sound /b/ for the English /p/ or / θ/ for /d/

Secondly, in conversational situations, the /s/ sound may present two types ofproblem The first problem is that in the spelling of some words, the /s/ sound isomitted For example, the word “ bikes” often pronounced as /baik / The secondproblem that many speakers encounter is the redundancy of the /s/ sound In fact,the /s/ and /z/ sounds do not occur at the final position in Vietnamese words, but forEnglish words, they do Consequently, when speaking, Vietnamese learners ofEnglish are over aware of these sounds and the over-awareness leads them to makepronunciation mistakes Vietnamese often add the /s/ sound in both adjectives andnon- count nouns For example, instead of saying “very good”, many speakerssay very “goods”

Sometimes, Vietnamese speakers tend to omit both /t/ and /d/ sound in thefinal sounds of words As, Nguyen (2007) stated, "clusters ending with voiceless /s/and /t/ cause quite lot of problems for informants" (p 23) Some other finalconsonant clusters such as /kt/ as in walked, / t/ as in washed, / d/ as in judged,and /ld/ as in filled are very difficult for Vietnamese learners to pronounce

Thirdly, Vietnamese learners often have problems with sound confusionbetween /s/ and /z/ They replace /s/ for /z/, so that a word such as “advise” is

pronounced as “advice” As a result, this leads to misunderstanding incommunication among learners and between Vietnamese and foreigners.

Fourthly, English also has many consonants clusters at the beginning and atthe end of the words while Vietnamese sound system does not Vietnamese studentsoften left one or two sounds in the consonant clusters For example, instead of

pronouncing world /wə:rld/, Vietnamese students pronounce /wə:rl/ without the

sound /d/ at the end

According to Nguyen (2007), "two-consonant cluster that contain /l/ in /lz/,/lt/, /ld/, or /lf/ are observed to be really difficult for all speakers since the sound

itself never appears in the first language" (p 22) For instance, myself may be

pronounced as /maisel/ Therefore, these common mistakes can be very difficult forVietnamese learners, especially students to overcome

In conclusion, through a contrastive view into English and Vietnameseconsonants, it highlights a very important point concerning the influence of thenative language It is if learners hear the second language though a ‘filter’, the filterbeing the sound system of the native language” (Avery and Ehrlich, 1995, p.xv) Inother words, the learners’ errors such as consonants omission, mispronunciationmay be the predictable and potential difficulties that the student subjects facebecause of the influences of Vietnamese

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS

The data were collected from the questionnaires, interviews and recording testduring lessons and discussion, which were analyzed to answer the researchquestions, from which the findings are presented in accordance with the discussion

of the relating studies in the field

Very much

A lot

So so Not like

Very important Important

Chart 3.1: Students’ interest towards

of English in our daily basis Particularly, over 70% students know how importantEnglish is towards their life and future job while some think that learning English isnot too significant

Similarly, when being asked to evaluate the importance of Englishpronunciation, most students strongly agree that correct pronunciation is absolutelycrucial in communication (68%) The rest of students argue that pronunciation is not

as important as other skills

In fact, first-year students who have got the basic knowledge of pronunciationadmit the difficulty of pronunciation over the past semester One haft of students(over 50%) often have trouble with pronunciation, especially consonants whilstsome students are able to pronounce correctly and confident with their ability