A contrastive analysis of professional titles in legal systems in english and vietnamese

Vietnam national university, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIESNguyÔn THỊv©n anh Common mistakes made by 10-grade students at me li

Vietnam national university, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF

M.A MINOR THESIS

Major: English Teaching Methodology Code : 60 14 10

HANOI, 9/2011

Vietnam national university, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NguyÔn THỊv©n anh

Common mistakes made by 10-grade students at me linh high school in producing English vowel and consonant sounds

(Nh÷ng lçi phæ biÕn cña häc sinh khèi 10 tr-êng THPT Mª Linh trong viÖc ph¸t ©m c¸c nguyªn ©m vµ c¸c phô ©m TiÕng Anh)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Major: English Teaching Methodology Code : 60 14 10

Supervisor: KIM v¨n tÊt, M.A

HANOI, 9/2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION………i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……….………….ii

ABSTRACT……… iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS……… iv

LIST OF TABLES……… vii

PART I: INTRODUCTION………1

1 Rationale of the study……….1

2 The aims of the study……… ……… 2

3 Research questions……… 2

4 The scope of the study……….……… 3

5 Research method………3

6 Organization of the study……… 3

PART II: DEVELOPMENT ……….………….4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW ……… …………4

1.1 Phonetics and phonology ……….………4

1.1.1 English vowels……… 5

1.1.2 English consonants……… 8

1.2 The main differences between English and Vietnamese sounds …… ………….11

1.2.1 Consonants ……… 11

1.2.2 Vowels ……… 12

1.3 The importance of teaching and learning pronunciation ………12

1.4 Review of previous research ……… 13

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY……….15

2.1 Context of the study ……… 15

2.1.1 Teaching staff and teaching methods ……… 15

2.1.2 Students and their background ……….15

2.1.3 The teaching materials and facilities……….16

2.2 Research questions ……… ……… 17

2.3 The subjects ……… ……… 18

2.4 Data collection instruments ………18

2.4.1 Class observations ……….……… 18

2.4.2 Questionnaire ……… 18

2.5 Data collection procedures……… 18

2.6 Data analysis process ……… 19

2.7 Summary………20

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ……….21

3.1 Classroom observation and discussion ………… 21

3.2 Findings and discussion from the questionnaire ………24

3.2.1 Findings about the students’ attitudes towards pronunciation……… 24

3.2.2 Findings about the common problems with English sounds and the main causes………25

3.2.2.1 Findings about the common problems with English sounds…………25

3.2.2.2 The causes of consonant and vowel mistakes……… 26

3.2.3 The solutions to the problems……… 27

3.2.3.1 Students’ self correction……… 27

3.2.3.2 Teachers’ methods in teaching pronunciation……… 28

3.2.3.3 Students’ expectation from their teachers’ methods in teaching pronunciation ……….29

CHAPTER 4: SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS FOR 10 TH GRADE STUDENTS AT ME LINH HIGH SCHOOL TO PRODUCE ENGLISH SOUNDS CORRECTLY………31

4.1 Using visual aids………31

4.2 Solutions for English sounds practice …… ………31

4.2.1 Drilling (Listen and repeat)……….32

4.2.2 Tongue twisters……… 32

4.2.3 Do the listening exercises:……… 33

4.2.4 Playing games: ………34

4.2.4.1 Pronunciation maze……….34

4.2.4.2 Bingo……… 35

PART III: CONCLUSION ……… ………38

1 Conclusions ……… ……….………38

2 Limitations and suggestions for further study ……….……… 38

REFERENCES ……… ………… 40 APPENDICES……… I

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1: Diagram of Vowels

Table 1: Pronunciation matters mentioned in Tieng Anh 10

Table 2: students’ attitude toward pronunciation

Table3: students’ opinion on the level of difficulties of English vowels

Table4: students’ opinion on the level of difficulties of English consonants

Table5: Causes of students’ mistakes in producing English sounds

Table 6: Students’ opinions about their self- correction

Table 7: Teaching English pronunciation methods

Table 8: Students’ expectation from their teachers’ methods in teaching pronunciation

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

In the process of integration and globalization, English is rapidly becoming anindispensable instrument in community communication It is being used world-wide as the mainlanguage in business, trading, communication, etc Therefore, more and more people learnEnglish as foreign language and wish to be able to master it as native speakers However,learners cannot success in studying English without mastering English pronunciation becausepronunciation is one of the most important components of a language It is really very importantfor learners to have communication of the target language as correct possible right from the start.There have been a great deal of notable works about pronunciation and pronunciation teachingsince the dawn of language teaching such as ones written by, Gimson (1962), Kenworthy (1987),Avery &Ehrlich (1992), Jerkins (2000) However, few studies have been done on commonmistakes in pronouncing English sounds alone The most popular one is the study by Avery

&Ahrlich (1992) in which the problems of selected language group are discussed In their workthey have confirmed that ―Vietnamese speakers do not experience too much difficulty with theEnglish vowels‖ In reality, Vietnamese learners often mispronounce the sound / æ / and /e/.Moreover, their explanations about the problems which Vietnamese learners have with Englishconsonants are not really appropriate

It is said that Vietnamese learners have not so many difficulties when producing Englishsounds because English and Vietnamese have the same Latin alphabets However, there is a bigdifference in the phonetics alphabets between the two languages and the ways to pronouncethem Thus, the most common cause is the default misunderstanding of the way these sounds areproduced and the effect of some sounds of the mother tongue

In Vietnam, English is the core foreign language that is taught as a compulsory subject atall school levels The need to acquire this so popular language proves to be constant withsocioeconomic changes in Vietnam in recent years However, it is undeniable that manyVietnamese students receiving the English teaching from their teachers at schools can’tpronounce English words correctly This is one of the first language influences on the secondlanguage acquisition in the way that some features of pronouncing words in English do not exist

in Vietnamese

In fact, Vietnamese learners of English have many difficulties in pronouncing English Forhigh school students, especially students at Me Linh high school are not the exception even

though they have learnt English since the early age Another reason is that no research has beencarried on this field at Me Linh high school in Hanoi This leads the researcher to the thought ofmaking a research on ―Common mistakes made by tenth grade students at Me Linh high school

in producing English vowel and consonant sounds‖ with the purpose of finding out the causes ofmispronunciations It is hoped that this study will contribute to the goal of enhancing students’performances in the teaching and learning foreign language

2 Aims of the study

The study aims at finding out common mistakes made by tenth grade students at Me Linhhigh school in pronouncing English words and the causes of these problems The results willprovide an overview of learners’ pronunciation at Me Linh high school and give suggestions forteachers to improve the situation The findings of this research will hopefully help Me Linh highschool students to raise their awareness of learning correct pronunciation so as to produceEnglish vowel and consonant sound properly

3 Research questions

grade students at Me Linh high school?

2 What are the causes of those mistakes?

3 What are solutions to the problem?

4 Scope of the study

The study limited itself to the investigation of common mistakes in English pronunciation

of the 10th grade students at Me Linh high school in Hanoi The researcher of the thesis pays

attention to find out students’ common mistakes in the lessons Language focus with the section Pronunciation of Tieng Anh 10- textbook Solutions are also provided to help improve

sub-teaching and learning English pronunciation in general, sub-teaching and learning Englishpronunciation for the 10th grade students at Me Linh high school in particular

5 Research method

A combination of different data collection methods was used including class observationsand questionnaires for students Details of the methodology applied in the study are discussed inChapter 2 of Part two.

6 Organization of the study

The study composes of three parts:

Part one, Introduction, includes the rationale, aims, research question, scope, method and

organization of the study

Part two, Development, consists of four chapters Chapter one, Literature Review, presents

the theoretical background relevant to the research The first section presents the basic concepts

of phonetics, phonology articulatory phonetics The second section shows the main differencesbetween English and Vietnamese sounds The next section presents the importance of teachingpronunciation The last section summarizes the review of previous research related to vowel and

consonant pronunciation Chapter two, the Study, describes the context of the study, the

participants, and the method Chapter three is the findings and discussion from classroomobservations and questionnaire The last chapter is some suggested solutions for 10 gradestudents at Me Linh high school to produce English sounds correctly

Part three, Conclusion, summarizes the findings and gives limitations and suggestions for

first section provides some basic linguistic and phonetic concepts to bring a common view of thematter studied including phonetics, phonology, English consonants and vowels The secondsection describes the differences between English and Vietnamese The next section presents theimportance of pronunciation teaching and learning The final section discusses the review ofsome previous research related to English consonant and vowel sounds.

1.1 Phonetics and phonology

This section starts with a distinction between two related terms (often loosely) used to refer

to linguistic disciplines studying the linguistic sign which Ferdinand de Saussure in Course of

General Linguistics called the acoustic image: phonetics and phonology.

Phonetics deals with how speech sounds are actually produced, transmitted and received inactual spoken language, while phonology deals with especially with the ways those sounds areorganized into the individual languages, hence dealing with abstractions on a virtual basis

―Phonetics first of all divides, or segments, concrete utterances into individual speechsounds It is therefore exclusively concerned with parole or performance Phonetics can bedivided into three distinct phases: (1) articualtory phonetics, (2) acoustic phonetics and (3)auditory phonetics‖ (Skandera& Burleigh, 2005:3)

Articulatory phonetics deals with the way in which speech sounds are produced Sound are

usually classified according to the position of lips and the tongue, how far open the mouth is,whether or not the vocal cords are vibrating and so on

Acoustic phonetics deals with the transmission of speech sounds through the air When a

speech sound is produced it causes minor air disturbances (sound waves) Various instrumentsare used to measure the characteristics of these sound waves

Auditory phonetics deals with how speech sounds are perceived by the listener,

From the practical phonetic standpoint, it is convenient to distinguish two types of speechsound, simply because the majority of sounds may be described and classified most appropriatelyaccording to one of the two techniques

1 The types of sounds which is most easily described in terms of articulation, since we cangenerally feel the contacts and movements involved Such sounds may be produced with orwithout vocal cords vibration (voice) and very often have a noise component in the acousticsense; these sounds fall generally into the traditional category of consonants

2 The type of sound, depending largely on very light variations of tongue position, which

is most easily described in terms of auditory relationships, since there not contacts or strictureswhich we can feel with any precision Such sounds are generally voiced, having no noisecomponent; these sounds fall generally into the traditional category of vowels and will be known

as vowels

"Phonology deals with the speakers’ knowledge of the sound system of a language It istherefore exclusively concerned with langue or competence [ ] Phonology can be divided intotwo branches: (1) segmental phonology and (2) suprasegmental phonology" (Skandera &Burleigh, 2005:5)

Phonology is primarily concerned with how we interpret and systematize sounds It dealswith the system and pattern of the sounds which exists within particular languages The study ofphonology of English looks at the vowels, consonants and superasemental features of thelanguage Within the disciplines of phonology, when we talk about vowels and consonants weare referring to the different sounds we make when speaking, and not the vowel and consonantsletters we refer to when talking about spelling

1.1.1 English vowels

Vowels are defined as ―sounds in which there is continual vibration of the vocal cords and theair stream is allowed to escape from the mouth in an obstructed manner, without anyinterruption‖ (Celce-Murcia M, Briton D, Goodwin J 1996)

Figure 1: Diagram of Vowels

Vowel sounds can be described in the following details according to the RP vowel phonemes

/i:/: the front of the tongue is raised to a height slightly below and behind the close front position;the lips are spread; the tongue is tense, with the side rims making a firm contact with the uppermolars This is a long vowel

/I/ - The short RP /I/ is pronounced with a part of the tongue nearer to centre than to front raisedjust above the half close position; the lips are loosely spread; the tongue is lax, with the side rimsmaking a light contact with the upper molars

/e/ - For the short RP /e/, the front of the tongue is raised between the half-open and half-closeposition; the lips are loosely spread and are slightly wider apart than for /I/; the tongue may havemore tension than the case for /I/, the side rims making a light contact with the upper molars

/æ/- The mouth is slightly more open than/e/, the front of the tongue is raisedbetween the half-open positions, with the side rims making a very slightcontact with the back upper molars; the lips are neutrally open This is ashort vowel

/ʌ/ - The short RP /ʌ/ is articulated with a considerable separation of the

jaws and with the lips neutrally open; the centre of the tongue is raised justabove the fully open position, no contact being made between the tongueand the upper molar.

/a:/- This normally long vowel is articulated with a considerable separation ofthe jaws and the lips neutrally open; a part of the tongue between the centreand back is in the fully open position, no contact being made between therims of the tongue and the upper molars

/ ɒ/ - This short vowel is articulated with wide open jaws and light, open rounding; the back of the tongue is in the fully open position, no contactbeing made between the tongue and the upper molars

lip-/ ɔ:lip-/ This relatively long RP vowel is articulated with medium lip-rounding; the back of thetongue is raised between the half-open and half-close positions, no contact being made betweenthe tongue and the upper molars

/ ʊ/ - The short vowel / ʊ/ is pronounced with a part of the tongue nearer to centre than to backraised just above the half-close position; it has, therefore, a symmetrical back relationship withthe front vowel /i:/; the tongue is laxly held, no firm contact being made between the tongue andthe upper molars

/u: / - RP long /u:/ is a back close vowel, but the tongue raising is relaxed from the closetposition and is somewhat advanced from true back; its relationship with /u/ is similar to thatbetween /i:/ and /I/, the articulation of /u:/ being compared with that of / ʊ/ , though no firmcontact is made between the tongue and the upper molars

/ ɜ:/ - RP / ɜ:/ is articulated with the centre of the tongue raised between close and open, no firm contact being made between the tongue and the upper molars; the lips are neutrallyspread

half-1.1.2 English consonants

―Consonants are formed by interrupting, restricting or diverting the airflow in a variety of ways‖ (Kelly G, 2003:24)

There are three ways of describing the consonant sounds: the manner of articulation, the place of articulation, the force of the articulation

air-• Alveolar Plosives: /t, d/

The soft palate being raised and the nasal resonator shut off, the primary obstacle to the stream is formed by a closure made between the tip and rims of the tongue and the upper alveolarridge and side teeth Lung air is compressed behind this closure, during which stage the vocal

air-cords are wide apart for /t/, but may vibrate for all or part of the compression stage for /d/according to its situation in the utterance The air escapes with noise upon the sudden separation

of the alveolar closure

• Labio-dental Fricatives: /f, v/

The soft palate being raised and the nasal resonator shut off, the inner surface of the lower lipmakes a light contact with the edge of the upper teeth, so that the escaping air produces friction.For /f/, the friction is voiceless, whereas there may be some vocal cord vibration accompanying /v/, according to its situation

• Dental Fricatives: /ð, θ/

(Examples words: thumb, thus, either, father, breath, breathe)

The soft palate being raised and the nasal resonator shut off, the tip and rims of the tongue make

a light contact with the edge and inner surface of the upper incisors and a firmer contact with theupper side teeth, so that the air escaping between the forward surface of the tongue and theincisors causes friction For / θ / the friction is voiceless, whereas for / ð/ there may be somevocal cord vibration

• Alveolar Fricatives: /s, z/

(Examples words: sip, zip, facing, rise, rice)

The soft palate being raised and the nasal resonator shut off, the tip and blade of the tongue make

a light contact with the upper alveolar ridge, and the side rims of the tongue a close contact withthe upper side teeth The air-stream escapes through the narrow groove in the centre of thetongue and causes friction between the tongue and the alveolar ridge In other words, in thearticulation of these sounds the air escapes through a narrow passage along the centre of thetongue, and the sound produces is comparatively intense

• Palato-alveolar Fricatives: / ʃ; ʒ /

(Example words: ship, Russia, measure, Irish, garage)

The fricatives are so called palato-alveolar, which can be taken to mean that their place ofarticulation is partly palatal, partly alveolar The tongue is in contact with an area slightly furtherback than that for /s/, /z/ If you make /s/ then / ʃ /, you should be able to feel your tongue movebackwards The air escapes through a passage along the centre of the tongue, as in /s/ and /z/, butthe passage is a little wider Most speakers of RP have rounded lips for / ʃ / and / ʒ /, and this is

an important difference between these consonants and /s/ and /z/ In addition, the escape of air isdiffuse (compared with that of /s, z/), the friction occurring between a more extensive area of thetongue and the roof of the mouth In the case of / ʃ /, the friction is voiceless, whereas for

/ ʒ / there may be some vocal cord vibration according to its situation All the fricativesdescribed so far can be found in initial, medial and final positions In the case of / ʒ/, however,the distribution is much more limited Very few English words begin with / ʒ/ (most of themhave come into the language comparatively recently from French) and not many end with thisconsonant Only medially, in words such as ―measure‖, ―usually‖ is it found at all commonly

1.2 The main differences between English and Vietnamese sounds

1.2.1 Consonants

First, English has 24 consonants but there are only 21 in Vietnamese Some phonemes exist inEnglish but not in Vietnamese and vice versa For instance, according to §oµn ThiÖn ThuËt,following English sounds are absent in Vietnamese dialect

Second, in Vietnamese, a letter is often presented by the same phoneme Whereas in English,some phonemes seem to be presented by identical letters but different in pronunciation Forexample,

―stepped‖ /stept/ /, Vietnamese does not have sequences of consonants at all Although some

orthographic combinations of letters in Vietnamese look like consonant clusters such as th Ch,

ng, ngh, tr, ph in fact they present only simple consonants phonologically such as ng / ŋ /, ph /f

/,etc This feature causes both perceptive and productive problems; especially final consonantclusters cause the greatest difficulties for Vietnamese students

1.2.2 Vowels

There are three out of seven short English vowels that are absent in Vietnamese / æ /, /ʌ/and / ɜ: / Vietnamese does not have vowel contrasts (minimal pairs) which means there is nodiscrimination between the short and long E.g /i: / and /I / This is really a matter to Vietnamesestudents because they cannot pronounce some words correctly without looking at itspronunciation transcription in the dictionary

1.3 The importance of teaching and learning pronunciation

―A learner who constantly mispronounces a range of phonemes can be extremely difficultfor a speaker from another language community to understand A consideration of learners’pronunciation errors and of how these can inhibit successful communication is a useful basis onwhich to assess why it is important to deal with pronunciation in the class‖ Kelly (2000:11).While saying why it is important to teach pronunciation, Hewings (2004:10) ―Difficultieswith pronunciation might mean that students fail to get their message across, even when thecorrect words are being used, or they might fail to understand what is said to them.‖

Sound is the core of the language so that is the reason why when teaching a language thefirst thing the teacher should do is to let the learners have chances to explore the sounds of thatlanguage Moreover, communicative approach is considered as the major language teaching inthe twenty first century as what the learners really need after graduating is that they cancommunicate successfully in their work and their life That is the reason why pronunciationteaching has been paid more and more attention by all the teachers

Pronunciation is as important as any other aspects of language like syntax and vocabulary.Speech is much more than pronunciation of course, but speech is impossible without it Correctpronunciation, in fact, is considered to be a prerequisite to develop the speaking skill That iswhy teaching pronunciation should occupy an important place in the study of any language

Nowadays, communicative approach is considered as the major language teaching in thistwenty first century English is being used world-wide as the main language Therefore, teachers

of English have paid more and more attention in teaching pronunciation Pronunciation is alsodesigned in textbook for high school students in each lesson for each grade

1.4 Review of previous research

There have been a number of studies about Vietnamese learners’ difficulties or problems inany aspects of English pronunciation Important findings were drawn and become a valuablebasis for this research

Avery &Ehrlich (1992) are the two people mentioning problems Vietnamese learners may face

when studying English: ―As the sound systems of English and Vietnamese differ greatly,

Vietnamese speakers can have quite severe pronunciation problems In their work, the mostcommon problem for the Vietnamese learners have is the problem with the word final

consonants including voiceless stop consonants/p/, /t/, /k/, fricative consonants /f/, /v/, / θ/, /ð/

Besides, they also presented Vietnamese learners’ problems in pronouncing vowels such as/iy/vs /i/ /ey/ vs/ ɜ:/ or /e/ vs // æ/

In the article “Common pronunciation problems of Vietnamese learners of English” Tam

(2005) pointed out the two main problems in pronunciation of Vietnamese learners, that is, soundomission and sound confusion Relating to English final consonant pronunciation, she stated thatVietnamese speakers omitted ending sound most frequently A reason for sound omitting is anegative transference of their L1 due to the habit of ―swallowing‖ the ending sound in themother tongue

The article ―Teaching English to speakers of Vietnamese Refugee Education Guide:

General Information‖ that highlights problems Vietnamese speakers are likely to have in learning

English and suggests ways of helping Vietnamese students of English over difficulties caused by

these differences Or ―9 Essential English Pronunciations in the Vietnamese Context” by Tran

Thi Lan found that English sounds not found in Vietnamese, for example, the interdentals / ð/,/ θ/

can be mixed up /f/ or Vietnamese /th/ though this may not influence comprehensibility

The above studies are all about problems of Vietnamese learners in pronouncing English ingeneral; in addition, this research was carried out to find out common mistakes made by 10 gradestudents at Me Linh high school in producing English vowel and consonant sounds inspecifically

Chapter 2: THE STUDY

The literature review has described the basic theory of phonetic matters regarding the study.They are the background supporting this part of the research This chapter presents themethodology, context of the study, data collection procedures and the subjects of the study Theresults getting from the data analyses and the discussion of those results are provided

2.1 Context of the study

2.1.1 Teaching staff and teaching methods

The teaching staff at Me Linh high school consists of 10 teachers of English at the age from

26 to 33 They graduated from College of Foreign Languages- Vietnam National University,Hanoi; Thai Nguyen University; Vinh Phuc Teachers Training College and have been teachingEnglish for at least 5 years Most of them have to teach in large classes with about 45 studentseach Each teacher has to teach more than 3 classes of this kind It means that they must beresponsible for the learning results of more than 120 students In addition, teaching materials arenot always available; so many teachers have to buy textbooks and use them as their mainmaterial Although the teachers are always aware of the new trend in teaching methods andaware of the importance of the communicative approach when teaching English to their students

in general and pronunciation in particular, classes are usually conducted in the form of lectures:Most of the time the teachers are the main speakers working through the text

2.1.2 Students and their background

Me Linh high school is located in Me Linh, a rural district of Hanoi It is one of the sixschools in Me Linh and the second oldest one in this district At tenth grade, there are 455students They have been learning English for at least four or five years at secondary schools.Most of the students come from poor families but they are very hardworking and have anacceptable level of English knowledge However, they cannot communicate with each othereffectively and cannot pronounce some sounds correctly In order to communicate well in aforeign language, they know that the first thing they should do is to pronounce correctly thewords and know how to use them accurately However, some students said that they couldn’tread the transcription in dictionary, and only know the words which teachers had taught themhow to pronounce, others said that they imitated the sounds in the cassette tapes but it was verydifficult for them to pronounce the words they heard, others said that they often found it hard tocommunicate with native speakers, etc Some students know that their speaking is not accurate,but they do not know what errors they have made or how to correct them Generally the targetstudents’ English fluency is still at a low level because the purpose of students learning is to passthe general education examination

2.1.3 The teaching materials and facilities

The teaching material for this study is the textbook Tieng Anh 10 It is the basic curriculum for

general students with 16 units of different themes which cover two semesters Each unit consists

of 5 sections: reading, speaking, listening and language focus and each section is supposed to betaught in 45 minutes The classes have 3 periods a week There is a test after every 3 units andtwo final tests at the end of each semester Teaching pronunciation is the first part of the

Language focus, the second one is Grammar Because the time is limited for this section (only 45

minutes for 2 parts: pronunciation and Grammar), so the pronunciation is often practiced in 7 or

10 minutes that is not enough The details of Pronunciation sub-section in Tieng Anh 10 are

shown in the table below

Table 1: Pronunciation matters mentioned in Tieng Anh 10

From the table, we can come to a conclusion that in Tieng Anh 10, pronunciation matters

are complicated, including diphthongs, minimal pairs of both vowels and consonants

Teaching facilities also play an important part in teaching English and may affect theteaching positively or negatively All teachers can use cassette recorders in their class whennecessary but the recorders are too old and often out of order There are some modern devicessuch as overhead projector and projector, but seldom can teachers and students use them because

it is inconvenient for them to fetch it to the classroom It is obvious that teaching facilities at MeLinh High School are poorly supplied This certainly has negative effects on English teachingand learning

2.2 Research questions

The research focuses on analyzing the pronunciation problems of tenth grade students at

Me Linh high school to find out their common mistakes in producing English sounds The studyraised the following questions

grade students at Me Linh high school?

2 What are the causes of those mistakes?

3 What are solutions to the problem?

2.3 The subjects

The subjects of the study consist of 100 ten grade students from ten classes at Me Linh highschool They are chosen at random basing on their ordinal number in the attendance register.They are from 15 to 16 years old All of them have learned English since 6th grade (about 12years old) The learning aid is only a cassette player Most of them can do written English tasksquite well, but they speak English with a lot of mispronounced words

2.4 Data collection instruments

To get the findings for research questions, these means of data collection were administered:

2.4.1 Class observations

Classroom observations are applied in order to find out common mistakes in producingEnglish consonant and vowel sounds among students at grade ten The observations were carried

out before the time the questionnaires were conducted in three Language Focus periods of three

different classes taught by three different teachers at grade 10 Hopefully, the results from theclassroom observations will contribute much to finding out the solutions to the problems

2.4.2 Questionnaire

The questionnaire was designed with 11questions to get information about the students’attitude, their difficulties in producing English sounds and the causes of those difficulties as well

as the teachers’ methods to help students to produce English correctly

2.5 Data collection procedures

As mentioned in the above section, to collect information and data, two instruments: theobservation and questionnaire were used All the participants were informed of the purpose ofthe study and willing to help the researcher to fulfill the task

The study was conducted in two steps as follows:

Firstly, the class observation was done when the subjects learning English pronunciationlessons naturally without awareness of being observed in the classroom The researcher attendedteaching periods of other colleagues and observed the students of her own class During theobservation, the researcher took notes immediately in her notebook These notes were thentranscribed and analyzed to evaluate pronunciation teaching and learning in the classroom Then,the result of the observation would be compared with the result of the questionnaire

Secondly, the questionnaires were administered to 100 students of grade 10 at the end ofthe second- semester of the school year The questionnaire consists of 11questions Five firstquestions are aimed at finding out the attitudes of students towards the pronunciation lessons.The next three questions are aimed at finding out the levels of difficulties in producing vowels

and consonants and the causes of difficulties The three last questions are aimed at finding outthe solutions to produce English sounds correctly in teaching and learning pronunciation Theresearcher clearly explained the purpose of doing research before the participants answered thequestions They were also encouraged to raise questions if there was something in thequestionnaire they did not understand They were instructed to take as much time as they needed

to complete it

2.6 Data analysis process

Data collected from two different sources were categorized into (a) the tenth gradestudents' attitudes towards pronunciation at Me Linh high school, (b) the difficulties in producingEnglish vowel and consonant sounds and the causes of mistakes (c) the suggestions made by theresearcher for both teachers and students in learning and teaching pronunciation correctly Thedata were categorized this way is easy for the researcher to find the answers for the researchquestions The quantitative data were presented in the form of tables while qualitative data fromthe class observation was presented by quoting relevant responses from the respondents

2.7 Summary

This chapter presented the context of the study at Me Linh high school, the researchquestions, the research methodology and instruments of data collection The researcher used twodifferent instruments: class observation and questionnaires with the purpose of achieving reliableand valid data In the next chapter, chapter 3, the author will present the data analysis,discussion The last chapter is the implications for teaching and learning English pronunciation

in Tieng Anh 10.

Chapter 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, the results are in turn elaborated and discussed in two sections The first part isthe findings from classroom observations The second part presents the data from thequestionnaires by means of tables

3 1 Classroom observation and discussion

During the academic year 2010- 2011, the researcher observed 3 grade 10 teachers in class

10A1, 10A4, 10A8, at Me Linh high school when they taught Language focus which has the section: Pronunciation During the process of observations, the researcher focused on some

sub-aspects such as: teaching and learning materials used in class, students’ activities and their

mistakes in producing sounds, and teachers’ approaches and techniques used in teachingpronunciation.

In class 10A1

The lesson that the researcher was allowed to observe was Language Focus period of unit

3 in Tieng Anh 10 which focuses on minimal pair / e / - / æ / After settling down the students

(there were 40 students in this class), the teacher asked them to look at the two columns of words/ e / - / æ /, then listened to the cassette player Students had a chance to get all the sounds fromthe cassette twice, and then they had to repeat after the teacher Then problems appeared thatstudents sitting at the back of the room could not hear the cassette clearly, as a consequence,some read words in the way they thought right, some tried to imitate the sounds the teacher hadjust pronounced The most significant mistakes were that students could not produce the sounds /

æ /in words man, sad, bad, sand, some pronounced / æ / like /e/ and some pronounced it

like /a/ After one minute practicing reading the words, the teacher asked four students to readaloud individually and checked immediately The teacher found that all four students makemistakes with the sound / æ/, so she let the whole class listen again that sound and thenrequired the

whole class to repeat after the cassette twice It took 7 minutes for those activities The next 3minutes were spent on practicing sentences The teacher read all 6 sentences and studentslistened After that, she called 6 students in turn read aloud 6 sentences in the textbook andchecked All six students made mistakes in producing the sound / æ/ in the words: fat (sentence

1), handbag (sentence 2), apples (sentence 3), pans (sentence 4), cat (sentence 5), bad (sentence 6) There appeared other problems like some students just sat and listened to his/ her partner;

some just read sentences as required only when the teacher came near him or her Then theteacher asked students to practice more at home and said that she would check it in the nextlesson

From the observation, we can see that pronunciation teaching and learning in class 10A1still followed the traditional path of imitating and drilling which causes boredom for students.Even though there was listening activity at the beginning, it did not help much because the roomwas too large for the students sitting at the back All of the students make mistakes in producing

the sound / æ/ in words and sentences The lesson was far from satisfaction for both teacher and students.

In class 10A4

The teacher taught this section as warm up activities that makes students learn both

vocabulary and pronunciation of unit 12 with two sounds: /s/ - /z/ Students were eager to learn

because she gave them some picture and asked them to find the words for those pictures andpronounce those words She checked immediately Then, the teacher introduced these two

sounds /s/ - /z/ It seemed that they are easy sounds that students can pronounce them correctly

after listening to the teacher’s instruction and imitating her pronunciation When asked, studentswere able to read the isolated words and sentences correctly After 7 minutes students coulddistinguish these sounds without any difficulty They seemed to be very happy When checked, 5out of 6 students read sentences correctly The researcher saw that this minimal pair was notdifficult for students to pronounce

In class 10A8

The researcher had a chance to observe a Language Focus period in class 10A8 (A

remarkable characteristic in this class is that there were 47 students) when they had been taughtunit 15 which deals with /θ/ - /ð/ The steps carried out by the teacher were not very differentfrom which the teacher teaching class 10A1 chose to introduce the sounds and then give time forstudents to practice The different points were the challenges that the teacher had to deal withduring the lesson The emerging problem was that most students had difficulty in producingthese sounds because they were not in Vietnamese sound system and they often confused withthe sound /th/ in Vietnamese The teacher let students listen to her introduction of the two soundstwice, and then the teacher read aloud and asked students to repeat However, when students readaloud, most of them could not produce these sounds correctly The teacher had to read aloud thewords which have the sounds/θ/ - /ð/ again slowly and clearly and asked students to read inchorus twice She let students 1 minute practice individually However, students’ practicing wasstill unsatisfactory When three students were asked to read aloud this minimal pair, theypronounce two sounds similarly; therefore, all three students made mistakes in producing thisminimal pair The teacher checked immediately for only these students Then she moved to the

part practice the sentences First the teacher read all the five sentences, then she had 2 minutes

for students to practice reading them individually, next she called in turn 5 students to read aloudthe five sentences However, all five students make mistakes in these sounds Each of fivestudents was checked and made correction Those activities took nearly 30 minutes that is why

the teacher asked students to practice more at home, and moved to Grammar section After the

lesson, the researcher had informal talk with the teacher She said that she herself was notsatisfied with the result of her students’ practice; however, if she had continued checking andcorrecting students’ mistakes, there would have been no time for grammatical points which weresupposed to be taught in the same lesson

From the situation of class 10A8, the researcher is more aware of class size, time spent onpronunciation lessons, and the confusing sounds between Vietnamese and English All thesefactors hinder students’ learning

In conclusion, the present situation of teaching and learning pronunciation at Me Linh highschool is not positive as expected The researcher found that teaching and learning materials andequipment, limited teaching and learning time, unvaried teaching techniques and few chances forstudents to practice in class bring about trouble in teaching and learning pronunciation

3.2 Findings and discussion from the questionnaire

According to the structure of the questionnaires, the findings and discussion in this part is

divided into three main parts The first part is students’ attitude towards pronunciation in Tieng

Anh 10 The second part presents the common problems with pronunciation that students usually

face The last part give more details about the correction made by their teachers and themselves in producing English sounds

students-3.2.1 Findings about the students’ attitudes towards pronunciation

Question

Question 2 0 100

Table 2: students’ attitude toward pronunciation

The data reveals that most of the students are highly aware of the vital role of properpronunciation of English All of the students started to learn English atgrade 6 at their secondaryschools as English is a compulsory subject from this grade to higher ones 73 participatedstudents have a modest aim to attain intelligible pronunciation of English (a reasonable andunderstandable pronunciation) and the rest was the number of students desired to have nearnative like and near- native like pronunciation When students were asked about the importance

of pronunciation, most of them (85 students) agreed that it was very important to learn English.This proves that only by mastering a good pronunciation can the students speak Englishaccurately and fluently and make others understand Similarly, 83 students thought that Englishpronunciation was difficult or even very difficult, while only 2 students thought that it was notdifficult at all Those numbers reveal the fact that producing English pronunciation correctly isnecessary in communicating It is needed for the students to achieve the goal of intelligiblepronunciation

3.2.2 Findings about the common problems with English sounds and the main causes 3.2.2.1 Findings about the common problems with English sounds

As the answer for the question 4, 83 out of 100 students at the grade 10 thought thatEnglish pronunciation was difficult and even very difficult The textbook was designed with 12units involving the minimal vowel and consonant pairs To find out the common mistakes inproducing English sounds of 10 grade students, the researcher raised questions 6 and 7 whichasked students to rank the pairs according to their levels of difficulty

Vowel sounds Number of students chose

most difficult vowel pair

B //ʌ/ / - /a:/ subject -father 12

With the minimal vowel pairs in question 6, the pair /e/ - //æ/ was chosen for the mostdifficult pair by 68 students, while only 5, 3 or 2 students chose for the pair/I/ -/i:/, / ʊ/ / - /u: /and / ə / - / ɜ:/ for the most difficult one respectively 12 students put number one for the pair /ʌ/ / - /a:/ Therefore, it is clear that most of the students considered the pair /e/ - //æ/ is difficultfor them to distinguish and to practice

most difficult consonant pair

G / ʒ / / - / ʃ / / Asia - English 38

Table4: students’ opinion on the level of difficulties of English consonants

Similarly, with the minimal pairs on Tieng Anh 10 , the pair / θ/ -/ ð/ ranked the first place

as it was the most difficult chosen by 42 students 38 students chose the pair / ʒ / - / ʃ / The rest 5

minimal consonant pairs were chosen by l 20 students To conclude, the pairs / θ/ -/ ð/ and / ʒ / - /

ʃ/ were the most difficult pairs for Me Linh tenth grade students

3.2.2.2 The causes of consonant and vowel mistakes

It is important to find out the causes of consonant and vowel mistakes Therefore, question

8 was designed to mention all aspects of the problem, for example: the sound system, students’practice or the feedback

students students

1 there are some sounds that do not exist in Vietnamese 86 14

2 I haven’t been familiarized with the sounds in English 7 93

3 I think that English sounds and Vietnamese are the same 3 97

4 I do not practice the sounds taught outside class 95 5

6 I do not dare to ask my teachers or friends for help 8 92

Table5: Causes of students’ mistakes in producing English sounds

According to the data provided, 86 students recognize the cause of their difficulty inpronunciation lies in the fact that there are some English sounds that do not exist in Vietnamese.Only 7 of them think they haven’t been familiarized with the sound in English And 3 studentsagree that English sound s and Vietnamese are the same This is understandable because theyhave quite sufficient input of English inside and outside classroom as mentioned above Incontrast, 95 students agree that they do not practice the sounds taught outside class Therefore,

the students’ practice plays an important role in producing English sounds correctly; the maincause of having problems with some sounds was the lack of practicing Only 4 students say thatnobody corrects their pronunciation because the others are often received the help from theirteachers and friends Most of the students (92 students) agree that they dare to ask their teachersand friends for help when they have problems It is clear that students are aware of theirproblems and confident to ask for the help and eager to achieve better pronunciation.

3.2.3 The solutions to the problem

3.2.3.1 Students’ self correction

When asked about what they should do to produce English sounds correctly, 100 studentsagreed that they should practice as much as possible It is understandable because practice isperfect In addition, most of the students agreed with the ways such as asking teachers andfriends for help, practicing when possible, and learning Pronunciation on Internet In contrast,students did not agree with recording for self-correcting and attending English extrapronunciation courses because these two ways are time-consuming and expensive as well Thefollowing figures were presented in the table below

Number ofNumber of student

1 record for self- correcting

Table 6: Students’ opinions about their self- correction

3.2.3.2 Teachers’ methods in teaching pronunciation

Question 10 mentioned students’ opinions about the ways their teachers taught

pronunciation The data was collected in the following table

Table 7: Teaching English pronunciation methods

It can be seen that all the teachers use such way as listening and imitating, minimal pairdrilling, and reading aloud It proves that these are popular ways to teach pronunciation Studentslearned to produce sounds by listening to the tape or the teacher’s voice and imitating by reading

in chorus or individually The minimal pairs were designed in the textbook in each unit.Therefore, minimal pair drills were chosen by all students 57 students agreed that their teacherused tongue twister to teach pronunciation Students practiced by reading the sentences in thetextbook However, 96, 97, even 98 students say ―no‖ with listening activities, visual aids, andplaying games

3.2.3.3 Students’ expectation from their teachers’ methods in teaching pronunciation

Question 11 is about students’ expectation from their teachers’ methods that help toimprove their pronunciation

students agree students disagree

Table 8: Students’ expectation from their teachers’ methods in teaching pronunciation

It can be seen that the methods of listening and repeating, minimal pair drilling and readingaloud were applied in teaching pronunciation and all students agreed that they were good andcommon methods The teachers can use them when teaching pronunciation as they do not requireany teaching facilities Students only listen to teacher’s pronunciation and practice 85 studentsexpected to be taught pronunciation with visual aids such as pictures and VCD which help them

to practice English sounds accurately in producing sounds It is clearly that most of the studentswould be fascinated by the images as well as the sounds of visual aids In addition, 86, 88 andeven 95 students liked learning pronunciation from tongue twister, playing games, and listeningactivities Therefore, teachers should pay more attention to activities in pronunciation lessons sothat the lesson would be more interesting and students would be encouraged to learn better