Problems of hatinh learners in pronouncing english final consonants m a thesis linguistics 60 22 15

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIESPHẠM THỊ TÚ HẰNG PROBLEMS OF HATINH LEARNERS IN PRONOUNCING ENGLISH

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

PHẠM THỊ TÚ HẰNG

PROBLEMS OF HATINH LEARNERS IN

PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANTS

(Khó khăn của học viên Hà Tĩnh trong việc phát âm phụ

âm cuối Tiếng Anh)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

HANOI- 2010

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THỊ TÚ HẰNG

PROBLEMS OF HATINH LEARNERS IN

PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANTS

(Khó khăn của học viên Hà Tĩnh trong việc phát âm phụ

âm cuối Tiếng Anh)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: Hà Cẩm Tâm Ph.D.

HANOI- 2010

DECLARATION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES AND ABBREVIATIONS v

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 7 1 Rationale of the study 8

2 The aim of the study 8

3 Hypothesis 8

4 The scope of the study 8

5 Research method 9

6 Organization of the study 9

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT 9 Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 9 1.1 Phonetics 10

1.2 Phonology 10

1.3 Articulatory phonetics 11

1.4 Consonants 13

1.4.1 General description of consonants 13

1.4.1 Classification of consonants 14

1.4.3 English consonants 16

1.4.4 Vietnamese Consonants 19

1.4.5 English vs Vietnamese 20

1.5 Review of previous research 21

Chapter 2: THE STUDY 23 2.1 Research questions 24

2.2 Data collection instruments 24

2.3 Data collection procedures 24

2.4 The subjects 25

2.5 Analytical framework 25

2.5.1 Plosive or stop /p, t/ 25

2.5.2 Affricate /tʃ/ 26

2.5.3 Fricative /ð, s/ 26

2.6 Data analysis 27

2.6.1 /ð/ sound 28

2.6.2 /p/ consonant 29

2.6.3 /tʃ/ consonant 29

2.6.4 /t/ consonant 30

2.6.5 /s/ consonant 30

2.7 Discussion and findings 33

PART THREE: CONCLUSION 36 1 Conclusions 36

2 Implications 37

3 Limitations and suggestions for further study 38

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Consonants of English

Table 2: Number of subject mispronounced the consonants under study

Table 3: Sounds deviations of the consonants under study made by the informantsTable 4: Sound omission made by informants

1 Rationale of the study

English has become one of the most popular languages in the world It is a main toolfor global communication Therefore, correct pronunciation plays a very important part inusing spoken English Mispronunciation may lead to misunderstanding and the process of thecommunication may even be broken down “A learner who consistently mispronounces arange of phonemes can be extremely difficult for a speaker from another languagecommunity to understand” (Kelly, 2000:11) There is a fact that a lot of Vietnamese learnersoften mispronounce English words, especially word-final consonants As a result, theyproduce incomprehensible utterances Hatinh learners are not the exception even though theyhave learnt English since the early age Another reason is that no research has been carried

on this field at Hatinh University (HTU) This leads the author to the thought of making aresearch on “Problems of Hatinh learners in pronouncing English final consonants” with thepurpose of finding out the causes of mispronunciations

2 The aim of the study

The study aims at finding out if HTU learners have difficulties in pronouncing English wordfinal consonants and what the causes of these problems are The results will provide anoverview of learners‟ pronunciation at HTU and give suggestions for teachers to improve thesituation The findings of this research will hopefully help HTU students to raise theirawareness of learning correct pronunciation so as to produce English word-final consonantsproperly

3 Hypothesis

1 HTU learners have difficulties in pronouncing English word-final consonants.

2 Their problems may be caused by mother tongue interference.

4 The scope of the study

This research presents several analyses on the pronunciation of the five consonants

occurring in some selected words using for recording namely /s/, /tʃ/, /ð/, /t/, /p/ in final

position made by the ten English majored students studying at HTU with a hypothesis that

these consonants are pronounced in Vietnamese-like way Basing on the findings, problems

in pronouncing these sounds and the causes of them will be pointed out with solutions

5 Research method

In the study, the author intends to figure out if HTU students have difficulties inpronouncing some English word final consonants and how different their pronunciation ofthese sounds is in comparison with that described in the analytical framework basing onReceived Pronunciation (RP) standard A combination of different data collection methodswas used including recording the participants‟ pronunciation of prepared words andobserving their spoken English in class Details of methodology applied in the study arediscussed in Chapter 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 two chapters Chapter one, Literature Review,

presents the theoretical background relevant to the research The first section describes thebasic concepts of phonetics, phonology and articulatory phonetics The second section offers

a theoretical presentation of consonants, English consonants and the consonants under study.The last section summarizes the review of previous research related to consonant

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

method, the findings and discussion

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

English final pronunciation for HTU students

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter is devoted to the presentation of the theoretical issues related to the study.The first section provides some basic linguistic and phonetic concepts to bring a commonview of the matter studied including phonetics, phonology, and articulatory phonetics Thesecond section describes consonants in general, English and Vietnamese consonants Thefinal section discusses the review of some previous research related to consonantpronunciation

1.1 Phonetics

Phonetics is the study of human speech sounds It is concerned with various aspects relevant

for the physical characteristics of sounds Several branches of phonetics can further bedistinguished, depending on the narrower domain of interest of the respective field There arethree main areas of phonetics: articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and auditoryphonetics, (Jack C.R et al, 1997)

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 themouth 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) Variousinstruments are used to measure the characteristics of these sound waves

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

1.2 Phonology

Phonology is essentially the description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds

in a language, (Ladefoged, 2001:23) It involves studying a language to determine itsdistinctive sounds and to find out which sounds convey a difference in meaning When twosounds can be used to differentiate words, they are said to belong to different phonemes.There must be a phonemic difference if two words (such as “white” and “right” or “cat” and

“bat”) differ in only a single sound

"Phonology deals with the speakers‟ knowledge of the sound system of a language It

is therefore exclusively concerned with langue or competence [ ] Phonology can be divided

into two branches: (1) segmental phonology and (2) suprasegmental phonology" (Skandera

& Burleigh, 2005:5)

Phonology is primarily concerned with how we interpret and systematize sounds Itdeals with the system and pattern of the sounds which exists within particular languages Thestudy of phonology of English looks at the vowels, consonants and superasemental features

of the language Within the disciplines of phonology, when we talk about vowels andconsonants we are referring to the different sounds we make when speaking, and not thevowel and consonants letters we refer to when talking about spelling

When we describe the sound patterns that occur in English, we want to be able to saythat in some sense there are always the same underlying sounds may change depending onthe context in which they occur The phonology of a language is the set of rules that describethe changes in the underlying sounds, the abstract units called phonemes When wetranscribe a word in a way that shows none of the details of the pronunciation that arepredictable by phonological rules, we are making a phonemic transcription, (Ladefoged,2001) The variants of the phonemes that occur in details phonetic transcriptions are known

as allophones They are generated as a result of applying the phonological rule to theunderlying phonemes

This research aims at finding out if HTU students have difficulties in pronouncing thefive chosen English consonants in the final position It takes the problems of theirpronunciation into consideration which concerns with the way they use their organs ofarticulation pronouncing such sounds This is also what articulatory phonetics study, so thetheoretical background of it is presented with more details as follows

divided into the supraglottal and the subglottal tract (as shown in Picture1),(Ladefoged,2001).

In nearly all speech sounds, the basic source of power is the respiratory system pushingair of the lungs Air from the lungs goes up the windpipe and into the larynx at which point itmust pass between two small muscular folds called the vocal folds If the folds are apart, asthey normal are when breathing out, the air from the lungs will have a relatively free passageinto the pharynx and the mouth But the vocal folds are adjusted so that there is only anarrow passage between them, the airstream will cause them to vibrate Sounds producedwhen the vocal folds are vibrating are said to be voiced , as opposed to those in which thevocal folds are apart, which are said to be voiceless The air passages above the larynx areknown as the vocal tract The shape of the vocal tract is very important factor in theproduction of speech

The parts of the vocal tract that can be used to form sounds are called articulators Thearticulators that form the lower surface of the vocal tract often move towards those that formthe upper surface

The names of principal parts of upper surface of the vocal tract are the upper lip, upperteeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate and soft palate or velum The soft palate is a muscular flapthat can be raised to press against the back wall of the pharynx and shut off the nasal tract,preventing air from going out through the nose At the lower end of the soft palate is a smallappendage hanging down that is known as the uvula The part between the uvula and thelarynx is the pharynx

The lower lip and the specific names for different parts of the tongue form the lowersurface of the vocal tract The tip and the blade of the tongue are the most mobile parts.Behind the blade is what technically called the front of the tongue: it is actually the forwardpart of the body of the tongue, and it lies underneath the hard palate when the tongue is atrest The remainder of the body of the tongue may be divided into the center which is partlybeneath the hard palate and partly beneath the soft palate; the back, which is beneath the softpalate; and the root, which is opposite the back wall of the pharynx

Picture 1: The organs of speech

Articulatory phonetics deals with the major aspects of speech production They are the

air stream mechanism, the state of vocal cords, the state of velum, the place and the manner

of articulation, ( Davenport & Hannahs, 1998) On the other hand, this study is paid attention

to consonants, particularly the five studied consonants; therefore, the manner, the place ofarticulation and voicing- the three main features of consonants are discussed with moreinterest later

1.4 Consonants

1.4.1 General description of consonants.

A consonant is a speech sound where the air stream from the lungs is completelyblocked (STOP), partially blocked (LATERAL) or where the opening is so narrow that theair escapes with audible fiction (FRICATIVE) With some consonants (NASALS) the airstream is blocked in the mouth but allowed to escape through the nose (Richard et al, 1997)

A consonant is a speech sound that functions at the margins of syllables, producedwhen the vocal tract is either blocked or so restricted that there is audible friction (Crystal,2003)

From a phonetic point of view, they are articulated in one of two ways: either there is aclosing movement of one of the vocal organs, forming such a narrow constriction that it ispossible to hear the sound of the air passing through; or the closing movement is complete,giving a total blockage The closing movement may involve the lips, the tongue, or thethroat But in each case the overall effect is very different from the relatively open and

unimpeded articulation found in vowels In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound inspoken language that is charactized by closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient tocause audible turbulence, (Crystal, 2003:242).

Consonants, actually, are sounds made with closed or nearly closed articulations As aconsequence, they tend to break up the stream up speech, defining a perceptual andarticulatory edge, or margin, for a unit (word or syllable in a word) that includes one or morevowels

1.4.1 Classification of consonants.

Consonants are formed by interrupting, restricting or diverting the airflow in a variety

of ways They can be divided into different kinds in accordance with three categories, i.e thedegree of vocal cord vibration, the place and the manner of articulation Some consonants

involve the vibration of the vocal cords: these are the voiced consonants Others have no vocal cord vibration: these are the voiceless consonants However, the distinction is not

absolute: depending on where in a word consonant appears, there may be degrees of voicing,( Kelly, 2000 : 5-7)

1.4.1.1 The manner of articulation.

The manner of articulation refers to the interaction between the various articulators act

in such way that the air is temporarily trapped, and then suddenly released Consonants

classified based on the manners of articulation are plosive, affricate, fricative, nasal, lateral,

a complete closure is made somewhere in the mouth, and thesoft palate is raised Air pressure increases behind the closure,and is then released more slowly than in plosives

when two vocal organs come close enough together for themovement of air between them to be heard

a closure is made by the lips, or by the tongue against the palate,

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

Lateral a partial closure is made by the blade of the tongue against the

alveolar ridge Air is able to flow around the sides of the tongue,

ApproximantVocal organs come near to each other, but not so close as to cause

audible friction

1.4.1.2 The place of articulation.

The place of articulation focuses more on what the various articulators actually do The

place of articulation defines both the area of the oral-pharyngeal vocal tract where theconstriction is made and the part of the tongue used to form the constriction The sounds of

this classification include bilabial, labio-dental, dental, alveolar palato-alveolar, palatal,

velar and glottal, (Kelly, 2000).

With regards to the place of articulation, the following table summarizes the mainmovements of the various articulators:

Using closing movement of both lips

Using the lower lip and the upper teeth

The tongue tip is used either between the teeth or close to the upperteeth

The blade of the tongue is used close to the alveolar ridge

The blade (or tip) of the tongue is used just behind the alveolarridge

The front of the tongue is raised close to the palate

The back of the tongue is against the soft palate

The gap between the vocal cords is used to make audible friction,

1.4.1.3 The degree of vocal cord vibration

Voicing is also one the main categories that consonants have to base on when beingdescribed The vocal folds may be held against each other at just the right tension so that theair flowing past them from the lungs will cause them to vibrate against each other Thisprocess is called voicing Sounds that are made with vocal fold vibration are said to be

voiced.

Sounds made without vocal fold vibration are said to be voiceless There are several

pairs of sounds in English which differ only in voicing that is, the two sounds have identicalplaces and manners of articulation, but one has vocal fold vibration and the other doesn't, forexample, /s, z/ or /θ, ð/

Describing the force of articulation, the terms fortis or strong and lenis or weak are

often used In spoken English, fortis happens to equate with unvoiced sounds, which require

a more forcefully expelled airstreams than lenis sounds which in English happen to be

voiced As far as English consonants are concerned, the distinction is most useful when itcomes to distinguishing between sounds that are articulated in essentially the same way, oneusing the voice, the other not An example pair is /p/ (unvoiced, and fortis), and /b/ (voiced,and lenis), (Kelly, 2000)

1.4.3 English consonants

Most dialects of English have about 24 distinctive (phonemic) consonant sounds dividedaccording to three different categories: voicing, place and manner of articulation, as shown inthe table 1 with the rows for places of articulation and the columns for manners ofarticulation (Kelly, 2000)

1.4.2.1 Classification of English consonants

A stop cuts off airflow through either the mouth or the nose so there are oral and nasalstops Oral stops are often called plosives: [p, b], [t, d], [k, g] Nasal stops are usually callednasals: [m], [n] and [l] English fricatives include [f, v], [θ ð], [s, z], [ʃ, ʒ] and [h] Englishapproximants are [j], [w], [.1], and [I] Affricates can be seen as a sequence of a stop and africative which have the same or similar place of articulation, and there are only twoaffricative sounds in English [ tʃ ] [dʒ], (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) The summary ofEnglish consonants is shown in Table 1 below:

Place of articulation

Table 1: Consonants of English, (Kelly, 2000)

(Table 1 shows the places and manners of articulation for consonants Whenever a cell hastwo consonants, the voiceless is placed to the left and the voiced is to the right.)

The studied consonants can be called in different terms: Plosive or stop /p, t/, affricate /tʃ/, fricative /ð/ if basing on the manner of articulation; bilabial /p/, alveolar /t, s/, dental /ð /and post- (palato) alveolar / tʃ/ if basing on place of articulation /p/, /t/, and /tʃ / are strongand long fiction

1.4.2.2 Phonological rules.

When we speak English, we do not only pronounce individual sounds, but the strings ofphonemes which make up utterances In connected speech, sounds are not sometimesproduced as they have to, but some changes happen to them In other words, some of themcan be assimilated, elided or linked For example, the phoneme/t/ can become bilabial

before a bilabial consonant as in He‟s a rather fat boy (/t/ assimilates to /p/) In the sentence: We arrived the next day (/t/ elided between /ks/ and /d/), /p/ or /t/ and /d/ may be

elided when they appear within a consonant cluster (Kelly, 2000)

Assimilation is the change of one sound into another sound because of the influence of

neighboring sounds, as the change of underlying[n] to [m] in „input‟[imput] or ofunderlying[z] to [ʒ] in „does she‟ [dʌ ʒʃ ] (Ladefoged, 2000: 271)

Elision is the leaving out of a sound or sounds in speech For example, in rapid speech in

English, suppose is often pronounced as [spouz], factory ['fæktri],( Richard et all, 1992: 121)

The most common elision in English are/t/ and /d/, when they appear within a consonant

cluster For example, in the phrase next day /t/ is elided between /ks/ and /d/; complex consonant clusters are simplified, for example, acts /ækts/ can be simplified to /æks/, texts

/teksts/ to /teks/

When we say a sentence in English, we join or "link" words to each other Because ofthis linking, the words in a sentence do not always sound the same as when we say them

individually Linking is very important in English Linking r is the most familiar case The

phoneme r cannot occur in syllable-final position in RP, but when a word‟s spelling suggests

a final r, and a word beginning with a vowel follows, the usual pronunciation for RP

speakers is to pronounce with r, for example, hear [hiə] but hear are [hiər ə]

The following section presents a list of rules for English consonant allophones whichare variants of a phoneme The allophones of a phonemes form a set of sounds (1) do notchange the meaning of a word, (2) are all very similar to one another, and (3) occur inphonetic contexts different from one another- for example, syllable initial as opposed tosyllable final The differences among allophones can be stated in terms of phonologicalrules (Ladefoged, 2001: 271) The rules for English consonant allophones are described asfollows:

1 Consonants are longer when at the end of a phrase

2 Voiceless stops /p, k, t/ are aspirated when they are syllable initial

3. Obstruents- stops and fricatives- classified as voiced (that is /b, d, g, v, z, ð, ʒ/) arevoiced through only a small part of the articulation when they occur at the end of an

utterance (as /v/ in “try to improve”) or before a voiceless sound ( as /d/ in “add two”)

4 So called voiced stops and affricates /b, d, g, dʒ/ are voiceless when syllable initial, except when immediately preceded by a voiced sound

5 The approximants /w, r, j, l/ are at least partially voiceless when they occur afterinitial /p, k, t/, as in “play, twin, cue”

6 Voiceless stops /p, k, t/ are not aspirated in such words as “spew, stew, skew”

7. Voiceless stops and affricates /p, k, t, tʃ / are longer than the corresponding voiced

stops and affricates /b, d, g, dʒ/ when at the end of a syllable

8 Stops are unexploded when they occur before another stops in words such as “apt” and “rubbed”

9 In many accents of English, syllable final /p, t, k/ are accompanied by a glottal stop,

as in pronunciation of “tip, pit, kick” However, this rule does not apply to all varieties of English

10 In many accent of English, /t/ is replaced by a glottal stop when it occurs before an alveolar nasal in the same word, as in “beaten”

11 Nasals are syllabic at the end of a word when immediately after an obstruents as in

13a Alveolar stops and alveolar nasal plus stop sequence become voiced taps when they occur between two vowels, the second of which is unstressed

14 Alveolar consonants become dental before dental consonants, as in “eighth, tenth,wealth” This rule applies to all alveolar consonants, not just stops, and it often applies

boundaries, as in “at this” In more rapid style of speech, some of these dental consonants tend to be omitted altogether

15 Alveolar stops are reduced or omitted when between two consonants

16 A consonant is shortened when it is before an identical consonant

17 A homorganic voiceless stop may be inserted after a nasal before a voiceless fricative followed by an unstressed vowel in the same word

18 Velar stops become more front as the following vowel in the same syllable

becomes more front

19 The lateral /l/ is velarized when after a vowel of before a consonant at the end of a word (Ladefoged, 2001: 56-60)

1.4.4 Vietnamese Consonants

There are 19 consonants in the Hanoi dialect of Vietnamese.These consonants were listed in Table 2 below, (Taiffalo, 2001) These consonants were represented slightly

different in Vietnamese orthography In addition to the 19 consonants, other dialects maycontain retroflex consonants /tr/, /S/, and /Z/ (Nguyen 1997:20).

Table 2: Vietnamese consonants of Hanoi dialect

Glottal stop /?/ was not included in the consonant system of Table 1 However,according to Thompson (1987:21), glottal stop could be recognized as a phoneme Thevoicing of [b] and [d] are predictable allophones of /p/ and /t/ respectively, followinginitial /?/ (Thompson 1987:21)

Fortis stops in Vietnamese are voiceless /p t c k /, and voiced /b d/ They arecharacterized by relatively strong articulation They are exceedingly fortis when they are atthe beginning of syllables On the other hand, at the end of syllables they are about midwaybetween the extremes of fortis and lenis Voiceless stops can occur in initial or finalpositions, but voiced stops occur only initially When voiceless stops occur in final positions,they are unreleased

Lenis oral consonants in Vietnamese are /f v th l s z x Ä h/ They are less articulatedthan the fortis stops They occur only in initial position

Nasal consonants in Vietnamese are /m n N/ They are fully voiced and about midway

in relation to the extremes of lenis and fortis They all occur both initially and finally

1.4.5 English vs Vietnamese

It is easy to infer from Table 1 and 2 that there are more similarities than differences

in the manner and the place of articulation of the consonants in the two languages Forinstances, both of the languages share the place and manner in articulating many consonantssuch as /p, b, m, w/ (bilabial- stop, nasal, approximant), /k, η/ (velar- stop, nasal), /f, v/(labiodental- fricative), /j/ (palatal- approximant), /n, l/ (alveolar- nasal, lateral approximant),/s, z/ (alveolar- fricative) and /h/(glottal- fricative)

And it is certain that in the two phonological systems there are foreign sounds to eachother, which make them different languages Typically, in Vietnamese, the dental aspiratedsound /tʰ/ is in letters „th‟ the same way as the dental, fricative English sounds /θ ð/ look inwords However, they are different in the manner of articulation, that is, the former is stop,and the latter is fricatives, which creates problems for learners in trying to learn each other'slanguage Another typical example of the sound in both languages, which make most ofVietnamese learners confused in articulating them They are the /c/ in Vietnamese and /tʃ / inEnglish They seem to sound similar due to the same manner of articulation, but they aredifferent in the place of articulation, that is, the former is alveolar and the latter is palatal /p/and /t/ in both languages have the same place of articulation but different manner ofarticulation In English, /p, t/ have 3 different allophones, i.e they are aspirated in wordinitial, not aspirated in medial position and not completely released in word final, (Vo DaiQuang: 24) Besides confusing sounds, the two languages also have the sounds that the othercompletely does not have in terms of either the place or the, manner of articulation, forexample, the palatal stop /c/, palatal nasal /η/, the velar fricative /γ/ in Vietnamese, and thepost alveolar fricative /ʒ/ and affricative /dʒ/ in English, etc

Research shows that English consonants which have different either place or manner ofarticulation from Vietnamese seem to be often mispronounced by Vietnamese learners

Of five English consonant /s, tʃ, ð, t, p/ which are the subjects of the study /tʃ, ð/ do notexist in Vietnamese , /p, t, s/ have the different manner of articulation from those inVietnamese, thus it is understandable that the subjects mispronounce them most of the timewhen they speak

1.5 Review of previous research

There have been a number of studies about Vietnamese‟ difficulties in pronouncing

English consonants Important findings were drawn and become a valuable basis for thisresearch.

Osburne (1996:164-181) analyzed a case study from her subject - a Vietnamese native

speaker who came to the United States in 1972 - then drew the conclusion that: “Inadditional to cluster reduction, optional deletion of single syllable-final consonants,especially fricatives, which is attested for Vietnamese L1 speakers […] was found”, and

“Consonants omitted, however, were always final consonants not permitted by Vietnamese.She also stated that Vietnamese is non-rhotic so there is no /r/ sound at the end of Englishsyllables spoken by Vietnamese What can be concluded from this study is that Vietnameselearners have a tendency to: firstly move strange English ending sounds towards similarsounds which exist in their mother tongue, secondly omit the sounds that are too difficult forthem and thirdly reduce final clusters

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, sound omission and sound confusion Relating to English final consonant pronunciation,she stated that Vietnamese speakers omitted ending sound most frequently A reason forsound omitting is a negative transference of their L1 due to the habit of “swallowing” theending sound in the mother tongue The following table shows her research results onproblems of mispronunciation of the informants in the study

Thao (2007) in the paper "Difficulties for Vietnamese when pronouncing English: Final

Consonants " proved that English word-final consonants are not pronounced in a native-like

way by Vietnamese speakers And Vietnamese effort to pronounce English word-finalconsonants is towards omitting, adding schwa or replacing them by sounds closer to thoseexisting in their mother-tongue

In the M.A Thesis „A Study on Pronunciation of Some English Consonants by

Vietnamese‟ by Hanh (2007) also concluded that main problem relating to pronunciation by

Vietnamese are either the mispronunciation or sound omission, especially when theconsonants are in the final position

The above studies are all about problems of Vietnamese learners in pronouncing Englishconsonants in general, none of them was done with certain consonants that seem to bedifficult for Vietnamese learners from one of the central provinces in Vietnam Therefore,this research was carried out to find out if HTU students have difficulties when pronouncingthe five chosen consonants /s, tʃ, ð, t, p/ in the final position

Chapter 2: THE STUDY

The literature review has described the basic theory of phonetic matters regarding thestudy They are the background supporting this part of the research This chapter presentsthe methodology, data collection procedures and the subjects of the study The resultsgetting from the data analyses and the discussion of those results are provided later to come

to conclusion of the hypothesis stated in the Introduction