A study on factors affecting english pronunciation learning of hmong students at ham yen high school, ham yen district, tuyen quang province

The researcher, therefore, decides to convey the research with the aim of finding out factors affecting Hmong students’ pronunciation learning,investigating typical pronunciation errors

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-

AT HAM YEN HIGH SCHOOL, HAM YEN DISTRICT,

TUYEN QUANG PROVINCE

Nghiên cứu những nhân tố ảnh hưởng đến việc học phát âm Tiếng Anh của học sinh người H’Mông trường THPT Hàm Yên, huyện Hàm Yên,

tỉnh Tuyên Quang

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-

AT HAM YEN HIGH SCHOOL, HAM YEN DISTRICT,

TUYEN QUANG PROVINCE

Nghiên cứu những nhân tố ảnh hưởng đến việc học phát âm Tiếng Anh của học sinh người H’Mông trường THPT Hàm Yên, huyện Hàm Yên,

tỉnh Tuyên Quang M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111

SUPERVISOR: Dr TRAN THI THU HIEN

I hereby certify that the thesis entitled “A study on factors affectingEnglish pronunciation learning of ethnic students in Ham Yen High School,Ham Yen District, Tuyen Quang province” is my own study in the fulfillment

of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts at the Faculty of PostGraduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies,Vietnam National University, Hanoi

Signature

Đỗ Thị Thu Hằng

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS -***** -

I would like to express my gratitude to all who have helped me in the completion of this thesis

Firstly, I am deeply indebted to my supervisor, Dr Tran Thi Thu Hien,who has given me persistent consideration, enthusiastic encouragement, andinvaluable supervision throughout the writing of the thesis

Secondly, my thanks also go to all lecturers and the staff of Faculty ofPost Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies,Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their useful lectures, materials,guidance and enthusiasm during my course

Thirdly, I also thank my colleagues for their willingness to share theirideas on this study and my students for their cooperation in completing thesurvey questionnaires

Last but not least, I am indebted to my family and all my friends whohave kindly given me assistance and encouragement Without them, thisstudy would have no such great motivation

Ham Yen High School is a mountainous school where most of studentsare ethnic They account for 63 percent of all students in the school, in whichHmong students cover 83 percent Most of them have difficulty in Englishpronunciation learning Until now, no research on English pronunciationlearning of the ethnic learners at Ham Yen High School has been carried out

The researcher, therefore, decides to convey the research with the aim

of finding out factors affecting Hmong students’ pronunciation learning,investigating typical pronunciation errors that Hmong students often commit,and proposing possible suggestions To achieve the objectives of the currentstudy the researcher use both qualitative and quantitative methods The datawere obtained from students’ survey questionnaires, students’ test result, andteachers’ interview The data were then analyzed From the result, it can beconcluded that the first language transfer, language exposure, and attitudesand motivation are among the most significant factors affecting Hmongstudents’ pronunciation learning

It is hoped that this thesis will be useful for teachers at Ham Yen HighSchool to improve Hmong students’ pronunciation

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

Table 1: Hmong students' interest in learning English pronunciationTable 2: The purpose of teaching and learning pronunciation

Table 3: Students' evaluation on difficulty in learning English consonantsTable4: Students’ answers for the test

Table 5: Factors affecting pronunciation learning

Table 6: Frequency of techniques used in teaching pronunciationTable 7: The favourite techniques of learning pronunciation

Chart 1: Students’ time on English pronunciation learning

Chart 2: The language students speak at home

TABLE OF CONTENT

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS v

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Objectives of the study 1

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Methods of the study 2

6 Significance of the study 3

7 Design of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Perceptions of pronunciation 5

1.2 Features of pronunciation 6

1.3 Factors affecting English pronunciation learning 7

1.3.1 Age 7

1.3.2 First language transfer 7

1.3.3 Personality 8

1.3.4 Language exposure 8

1.3.5 Attitude and motivation to learn 9

1.4 Hmong phonology overview 9

1.4.1 Word structure 10

1.4.2 Consonants 10

1.4.3 Tones 11

1.5 Chapter summary 11

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 12

2.1 Context of the study 12

2.2 The participants 12

2.3 Data collection instruments 13

2.3.1 The questionnaires: 13

2.3.2 Test 13

2.3.3 Interview 14

2.4 Data collection procedures 14

2.4.1 For the questionnaire 14

2.4.2 For the interview 14

2.4.3 For the test 15

2.5 Chapter summary 15

CHAPTER 3: DATA PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSIONS 16

3.1 Data analysis 16

3.1.1 The teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards teaching and learning pronunciation 16

3.1.2 Students’ pronunciation errors 18

3.1.3 Factors affecting Hmong students in pronunciation learning 21

3.1.4 Techniques used in teaching pronunciation 24

3.1.5 Students’ expectations and teachers’ recommendations to teaching and learning pronunciation 26

3.2 Findings and discussion 28

3.3 Possible suggestions 28

3.3.1 Teachers’ techniques 29

3.3.2 Motivating students to learn 31

3.3.3 Equipping facilities 31

3.4 Chapter summary 32

PART C: CONCLUSION 33

1 Major findings 33

2 Limitations of the study 35

3 Recommendations for further studies 35

REFERENCES 37 APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 VI APPENDIX 3 VII

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

It cannot be denied that English is by far the most popular language ofall Nowadays, English is popular enough to be spoken at every corner of theworld Therefore, teaching and learning English have become the necessity inevery country Since Vietnam began its open-door policy, the Englishteaching and learning has strongly developed

Pronunciation is an integral part of foreign language learning since itdirectly affects learners' communicative competence as well as performance.Limited pronunciation can decrease learners’ self-confidence and restrictsocial interactions in learning The current focus on communicativeapproaches to EFL pronunciation learning and the concern for buildingcommunication skills are renewing interest in the role that pronunciationplays in EFL learners’ overall communicative competence

Ham Yen High School is a mountainous school where most of studentsare ethnic They account for 63 percent of all students in the school, in whichHmong students cover 83 percent Most of them have difficulty in Englishpronunciation learning Until now, no research on English pronunciationlearning of the ethnic learners at Ham Yen High School has been carried out.The researcher, therefore, decides to convey the research with the hope thatthis study can help improve pronunciation learning of the students at theschool in particular and similar cases at other schools in Vietnam in general

2 Objectives of the study

The inter-related aims of the study are:

- Investigating on typical pronunciation errors that Hmong students oftencommit

- Finding out factors affecting English pronunciation learning of Hmong students at Ham Yen High School.

- Proposing suggestions to improve English pronunciation learning of Hmong students at Ham Yen High School

3 Research questions

In the thesis, the following questions will be answered

i) What kinds of English pronunciation errors do Hmong students at Ham Yen High School usually have?

ii) What are the major factors affecting English pronunciation of Hmong students at Ham Yen High School?

iii) What should be done to improve English pronunciation of Hmong students at Ham Yen High School?

4 Scope of the study

This study is concerned with finding factors that affect learning Englishpronunciation of Hmong students at Ham Yen High School All studiesfocusing on factors that affect the learning of other knowledge of otherstudents at other schools are outside the scope of this study

Data collected for this thesis are mainly from Hmong learners and someteachers of English in this school

5 Methods of the study

In order to fulfill the tasks mentioned above, both qualitative and

quantitative methods are selected for this study The study adopts surveyresearch approach A survey questionnaire is designed for 55 Hmong students

at Ham Yen High School, Tuyen Quang as the main instrument to find out thefactors affecting their English pronunciation learning Using surveyquestionnaire, the researcher is allowed to get answers from a lot of students

in a relatively short space of time Moreover, questionnaires provide lots of

data for analysis, and the more data sets, the more accurate the analysis is.However, there are some problems arising when using survey questionnaires

to collect data First, the researcher use closed - ended questions, so it isdifficult to allow students to expand their answers Second, surveyquestionnaires are impersonal; students, therefore, may be more open face toface discussions Based on these reasons, interviews have been also conducted

to get supplementary information Together with survey questionnaire andinterview, a test is designed with the aim of investigating on typicalpronunciation errors that ethnic students often commit

6 Significance of the study

This study hopes to make contribution to teaching English pronunciationfor Hmong students at high school level in Vietnam and is expected to beuseful reference material for any high school language teachers in Vietnam,especially for those who are in favor of improving their Hmong students'pronunciation in particular and other ethnic minorities in general

7 Design of the study

The study is organized three parts as follows:

Part A-Introduction presents rationale, objectives, research questions,

scope, methods, significance, and design of the study.

Part B-Development is divided into three chapters

Chapter 1 presents a review of literature and theoretical backgroundabout English pronunciation learning, its perceptions and features Thischapter is concentrated on the five factors affecting English pronunciationlearning Then, the chapter ends with an overview of Hmong phonology

Chapter 2 describes the context of the study, the participants, datacollection instruments as well as the data collection procedures

Chapter 3 presents data analysis, findings and discussions, and possiblesuggestions.

Part C-Conclusion provides conclusion, limitations and future research

of the study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter provides the background information about pronunciationand pronunciation learning First, some of the background informationpertaining to pronunciation will be presented Then, an overview of thefeatures of pronunciation and factors affecting English pronunciation learningwill be presented Finally, this chapter will examine what is known about theHmong language, including its origin, word structure, consonants and tones

1.1 Perceptions of pronunciation

The notion of pronunciation has been defined in many different ways

by writers Generally speaking, pronunciation is simply defined as “the way

in which a word is spoken” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Encyclopedic, 1992)

or “the way in which a word is usually pronounced” (Longman Dictionary of

Contemporary English, 1978) Christiane Dalton and Barbara Seidlhofer

(1994:3) consider pronunciation “as the production of significant sound”.

They look at word in two senses First, it is used as part of a code of aparticular language That is the reason why English sounds are distinguishedfrom sounds of other languages In this sense, pronunciation can be told as theproduction and reception of sounds of speech Second, sound is used toachieve meaning in contexts of use Here the code combines with otherfactors to make communication possible In this sense pronunciation isreferred with reference to acts of speaking

In this study, the concept of pronunciation can be described as “a way

of speaking a word, especially a way that is accepted or generally understood” (American Heritage Dictionary, 1992) or “may be said to conclude the sounds of the language or phonology; stress and rhythm; intonation; combination sounds; linkage of sound” (Ur, 1996).

 stress – the length, volume, and pitch applied to syllables in words and sentences

 rhythm – the beat pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (tied with sentence stress)

 adjustments in connected speech – changes in sounds when words blend together in speech

 prominence – vocally highlighting words in speech to express meaning,new vs old information, or intent, by use of loudness, length, pitch and vowelquality

 intonation – the rise and fall of voice pitch in sentences and phrases

According to Meng et al (2009), while perceptual studies indicate thatboth segmental and suprasegmental features impact expert judgments onspeaking proficiency, suprasegmentals have a greater effect for the overall

comprehension of the message Meng (2009:1) states, “suprasegmental

features encode rich information structure that helps the listener locate emphasized words, phrase boundaries, speech acts (e.g statements, questions, continuations, etc.) as well as the speaker’s attitudes and

emotions” In Derwing and Rossiter (2002) survey of 100 ESL students, the

participants perceived segmental issues to be the crux of their pronunciationdifficulties despite the fact that these features have a low functional load Theparticipants’ awareness of suprasegmental features was limited Therefore,negative transfer of suprasegmental features can disrupt clearcomprehensibility of the intended message, and the detrimental effects wouldnaturally be greater when the L1 is more markedly different than the L2

1.3 Factors affecting English pronunciation learning

1.3.1 Age

The first, rather controversial, factor is age The debate over whetherthere is a critical period for language learning has been an arduous one Celce-Murcia et al (1996) and Florez (1998) examine the debate over the impact ofage on pronunciation Some researchers insist that after a learner goes throughpuberty, lateralization of the brain occurs Lateralization, or the assigning oflinguistic functions to specific brain hemispheres, results in learners‟difficulty in acquiring and being able to produce new sounds to the extentpossible by a child Other researchers argue that various sensitive periods for

language learning exist and that “adults need to re-adjust existing neural

networks to accommodate new sounds” (Florez, 1998) However, in general,

research has shown that adults have more difficulty with pronunciation thanchildren when learning a new language

1.3.2 First language transfer

A learner’s first language (L1) can have significant influence on thelevel of accentedness and intelligibility of the new language Negativetransfer, also called interference, means that the features of the L1 are carriedinto the second language (L2) With differences between the two languages,negative transfer can lead to erroneous production of aspiration, rhythm, and

intonation in the new language (Florez, 1998) According to Meng et al.(2009), language transfer occurs at both the segmental and suprasegmentallevels, and these interference effects can become fossilized with age, creatingchallenges for adult L2 learners It is showed in some studies that the moredifferences that the native and target language have, the more difficultpronunciation of target language will be.

1.3.3 Personality

Non-linguistic factors related to an individual’s personality andlearning goals, attitude towards the target language, culture, native speakers,and type of motivation which are beyond the teacher’s control (Miller, 2003)all have their share in the development of pronunciation skills In addition, thedegree of exposure to and use of the target language can support or impedepronunciation skills development For example, learners who are outgoingand confident and get involved in interactions with native speakers are liable

to practice their foreign language pronunciation (Avery & Ehrlich, 1992).Conversely, some learners feel uncomfortable trying out new speech rhythmand melody patterns (Miller, 2003), while others feel stupid pronouncing

“weird” sounds, and with time, they decide that it is futile and impossible tolearn English pronunciation (Laroy, 1995) In this respect, Miller (2003)believes that changing – and not changing – speech patterns is affected byhow much responsibility the student takes, how much the student practicesoutside of class, and how ready the student is

input This comprehensible input can be easily seen when visiting a qualityelementary school where students interact freely in a comfortable setting.Adults, on the other hand, often spend their days working in an environmentwithout a rich source of comprehensible input Socializing often occurs withpeople from their linguistic group In Singer’s (2006), the most definite factordetermining accurate pronunciation was the learners’ daily exposure toEnglish.

1.3.5 Attitude and motivation to learn

While a number of students might take English in school to reach theirscore and future professional goals, others might be feeling forced to learnEnglish In addition, some might feel conflicted about learning a newlanguage if they feel it will result in the eventual loss of their L1 Thedevelopment of pronunciation intelligibility can be positively or negativelyinfluenced by one’s attitude toward the new culture, its language andspeakers Concurrently, personal identity issues and motivation for learningalso can support or impede pronunciation (Florez, 1998) Elliott (1995)showed that a student’s motivation toward achieving the target language’spronunciation was the principal variable in their accuracy of actualpronunciation output

We still found that the students’ motivation is of vital importance in his

or her pronunciation learning And sometimes, some students speak Englishwhen they receive others’ praise for their beautiful English, which might givethem a strong sense of achievement

1.4 Hmong phonology overview

In Chang’s (2005), the basic phonological unit in Hmong is thesyllable, not the word Most morphemes are monosyllabic, and most syllableshave transparent meanings Words, if polymorphemic, are analytic, and for

this reason, they are sometimes called “terms”, with the morphemesthemselves being called “words” Each Hmong syllable has an onset, a rime,and a tone, out of a total possible of 57 onsets, 13 rimes, and 7 tones Whatcomplexity there is in the onset is made up for in the simplicity of syllablecodas, for the rimes are all zero-coda, except for two that end in [ŋ] In alanguage such as Hmong, it is more convenient to speak of onsets and rimesthan of segments Whereas it is quite right to say that an onset such as [mpl],which represents a pre-nasalized bilabial stop with an overlapping lateral, is 3distinct segments, the fact that such clusters are relatively few compared tothe number of segments in the language persuades me to structure my analysisaround onsets and rimes rather than around segments.

1.4.1 Word structure

Most Hmong-Mien words are monosyllabic (Chang, 2005) They startwith one or more consonants followed by a vowel and, sometimes, by a finalconsonant

1.4.2 Consonants

In Chang’s (2005), Hmongic languages have a large number of initialconsonants, including retroflex, uvular and glottal sounds, besides the usuallabial, dental/alveolar, palatal and velar Voiceless stops and affricates aremore common than voiced ones Stops and affricates can be aspirated or pre-nasalized, yielding a 4-way contrast: voiceless unaspirated, voicelessaspirated, voiceless prenasalized, and voiced Those languages that do nothave voiced stops (like Hmong) may pronounce a voiceless stop with bothprenasalization and aspiration yielding a slightly different 4-way contrast inwhich all stops are voiceless: unaspirated, unaspirated prenasalized, aspirated,aspirated prenasalized

Another interesting feature of Hmongic consonant systems is theoccurrence of contrasting pairs of voiceless and voiced nasals (voicelessnasals are comparatively rare in world languages) The only permitted finalconsonants are the dental and velar nasals (n, ŋ) In contrast, the inventory ofMien initial consonants is smaller but more consonants are permitted in finalposition, including three nasals (m, n, ŋ) and three stops (p, t and glottal ʔ).

1.4.3 Tones

All Hmong-Mien languages are tonal (Chang, 2005) Many have anexceptionally large number of tonal contrasts that can reach up to eleven ortwelve They serve to make lexical distinctions As well as pitch contrasts,Hmong-Mien tones may have different voice qualities like 'breathy' or'creaky'

1.5 Chapter summary

To summarize, in this chapter, some theoretical backgrounds relating toteaching and learning pronunciation have been pointed out These are thepronunciation concepts and their features Factors relating to pronunciationteaching and learning have been also given It cannot be denied thatpronunciation and teaching pronunciation is an important part to conduct inany language course

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 2.1 Context of the study

Located in northern of Tuyen Quang, Ham Yen is a mountainousdistrict with three upper secondary schools, in which Ham Yen High School isthe leading choice of parents and students when they finish lower secondaryschools The school has 34 classes and 87 teachers, and 6 classroomsequipped with projectors and LCD screens Ham Yen High School was alsoequipped with a lab for foreign language learning two years ago

However, teaching and learning English at Ham Yen High School havesome difficulties Most of the classes are rather big, about 40 or more than 40students in a class In addition, students hardly have opportunities tocommunicate with native speakers

There are 8 teachers of English at Ham Yen High School All of themare from 30 to 40 years old, in which six graduated from in-service trainingprograms, and the other two finished their tertiary education in ForeignLanguage Department in Thai Nguyen University of Education All theteachers are very enthusiastic with teaching and want to improve the quality

of English teaching and learning

1287 students are studying at Ham Yen Upper Secondary School Most

of them have been learning English since they were at grade 3 Despite thefact that they have at least 7 years to study English as a compulsory subject,most of them find learning and pronouncing English difficult As a result, twothirds of them often get mark below 6 for their forty-five minute tests

2.2 The participants

Data of the study are collected from 5 teachers of English and 55students at Ham Yen High School All of the five teachers are female and agefrom 30 to 40 They have been teaching English for at least 6 years, so it can

be said that all of them are experienced in teaching English They graduatedfrom both regular and in-service training programs.

55 students chosen are Hmong learners, as students from other ethnicminority groups are too few to be considered The fifty-five male and femalestudents have been chosen randomly in which 15 students are form grade 10,

17 students are from grade 1, and the rest are from grade 12

2.3 Data collection instruments

As mentioned in the above section, to collect information and data,three instruments: questionnaire, interview and test were used

2.3.1 The questionnaires:

A survey questionnaire with closed questions was administered tocollect data from 55 Hmong students at the twenty-fifth week of the secondterm

The questionnaire consists of 13 questions which are designed in threeparts with aiming at answering the three research questions mentioned above

To get this aim, the questionnaire is categorized into the following groups:

In order to collect reliable data and information from the subjects,questionnaires for students were designed in Vietnamese and the studentswere given 25 minutes to finish their answers

2.3.2 Test

Based on the interviews of 5 teachers and the researcher’s personalexperience and observation of pronunciation lessons, only sounds that ethnic

students often pronounce wrong are tested The test of 26 questions isdesigned for 55 students with the aim of ensuring typical pronunciation errorsthat students often commit There are three exercises The first one is an odd-one-out exercise The next is the exercise of writing the words basing on thegiven transcriptions In exercise 3, students have to give the phonetictranscriptions of the common words which they have learnt in their Englishprograms at Ham Yen High School.

2.3.3 Interview

The interview with five teachers at Ham Yen High School wasconducted: one graduated from a regular university, and others graduatedfrom in-service training programs There are seven questions proposed to getthe teachers’ ideas of pronunciation teaching and learning reality, factorsaffecting their students’ learning of English pronunciation and somerecommendations to improve learning English pronunciation at the school

2.4 Data collection procedures

2.4.1 For the questionnaire

Firstly, the designed questionnaires were distributed to 55 students atthe twenty-fifth week of the second term Secondly, the students were given

25 minutes to finish their answers Students were provided with anyexplanation if necessary Then, the completed questionnaires were collected

by the writer herself

2.4.2 For the interview

After having been designed, the seven questions were used to interviewfive teachers during their 15-minute break time at the twenty-sixth week ofthe second term The information was taken notes at the place of theinterview The result of the interview would be compared with the result ofthe questionnaire

2.4.3 For the test

The designed tests were distributed to students, and they are asked to

do the test is in 20 minutes The tests were collected and the results wereanalyzed to find out the types of students’ pronunciation errors

After having been collected, data were divided into followingcategories:

 The teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards teaching and learning pronunciation

 Types of errors of students in learning pronunciation

 Factors affecting Hmong students in learning pronunciation

 Techniques used in teaching pronunciation

 Students’ expectations and teachers’ recommendations to teaching and

learning pronunciation

The quantitative data were presented in the form of tables whilequalitative data from the interview were presented by quoting relevantresponses

2.5 Chapter summary

This chapter presented context of the study, the participants, datacollection instruments, and data collection procedures Three different datacollection instruments were used: survey questionnaires, interviews, and tests

In the next chapter, the data analysis, findings and discussions and possiblesuggestions for teaching and learning English pronunciation for Hmongstudents will be discussed

CHAPTER 3: DATA PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSIONS

This chapter presents data analysis both descriptively and interpretively

as well as discussions of the findings

3.1 Data analysis

3.1.1 The teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards teaching and learning pronunciation

Table 1: Hmong students' interest in learning English pronunciation

(52.73%) The percentage of students who consider pronunciation as not

important only accounts for 25.45

Table 2: The purpose of teaching and learning pronunciation

To provide students with the knowledge about English

18.18%language

To help students distinguish the differences between English

23.64%and Vietnamese

As can be seen from the table, most students (89.09%) agree that thepurpose of learning pronunciation is to get high scores Ranked the second isthe purpose of helping students to communicate better (74.55%) Thepercentage of students who think that learning pronunciation is to providestudents with the knowledge about English language is the least (with only18.18%)

When asked whether the teachers were interested in teachingpronunciation lessons or not, most of the respondents said that they did notlike to teach pronunciation very much because of some reasons First, theyhad to prepare many things as teaching aids for pronunciation lessons to maketheir students pronounce new sounds and being active in the class Second, allclasses are oversized, so they had difficulty controlling their students and

school, the number of ethnic students is large This means that there are manyEnglish sounds which do not exist in the language of their group, and viceversa Moreover, ethnic students are often reserved; they feel shy when speak

to others as well as work in groups

From the questionnaire and interview, we see that almost all theteachers and half of students have negative attitudes towards teaching andlearning pronunciation Although many of them do not like learning English,they are aware of the importance of pronunciation in learning English, andthey know the purpose of teaching and learning pronunciation is tocommunicate better

3.1.2 Students’ pronunciation errors

Table 3: Students’ evaluation on difficulty in learning English consonants

18

they are the most difficult for them to pronounce) Among these sounds,laterals are thought to be the least difficult with only 9.09% of the students’agreement on the difficulty levels.

Table 4: Students’ answers for the test

Students’ answersQuestions