Mother tongue interference in vietnamese learners perception and production of english initial consonants m a 60 14 10

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify my authorship of the Master’s Thesis submitted today entitled MOTHER TONGUE INTERFERENCE IN VIETNAMESE LEARNERS’ PERCEPTION AND PRODUCTION O

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE

A thesis submitted to the Department of English Linguistics & Literature

in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in TESOL

By

CAO THIEN AI NUONG

Supervised by

DOAN HUE DUNG, Ph D

HO CHI MINH CITY, DECEMBER 2011

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I hereby certify my authorship of the Master’s Thesis submitted today entitled

MOTHER TONGUE INTERFERENCE

IN VIETNAMESE LEARNERS’ PERCEPTION AND PRODUCTION

OF ENGLISH INITIAL CONSONANTS

in terms of the statements of requirements for Theses in Master’s Program issued

by the Higher Degree Committee

This thesis has not previously been submitted for the award of any degree

or diploma in any other institution

Ho Chi Minh City, December 2011

CAO THIEN AI NUONG

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, CAO THIEN AI NUONG, being the candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL), accept the requirements of the university relating to the retention and use of Master’s Thesis deposited in the University Library

I agree that the original of my Master’s Thesis deposited in the University Library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan and reproduction for theses

Ho Chi Minh City, December 2011

Signature: ………

CAO THIEN AI NUONG

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Certificate of originality i

Retention and use of the thesis ii

Table of contents iii

List of abbreviations vi

List of tables vii

List of figures and charts viii

Acknowledgements ix

Abstract x

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to the study 1

1.1.1 English consonants: the role and the problems in acquisition 1

1.1.2 English consonants in the syllabus for EFL learners at high schools 2

1.1.3 Non-English majored students and their problems with English consonants at NTTC 2

1.2 Rationale for the study 5

1.3 Aims of the thesis 6

1.4 Definitions of related terms 7

1.5 Limitation 9

1.6 Delimitation 9

1.7 Structure of the thesis 10

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 11

2.1 English and Vietnamese initial consonant systems in comparison 11

2.1.1 English initial consonants 11

2.1.2 Vietnamese initial consonants 12

2.1.3 English and Vietnamese initial consonants in comparison 13

2.2 Theories of speech perception and phonological acquisition 20

2.2.1 Previous researches on speech perception and phonological acquisition 20

2.2.2 Models of speech perception and phonological acquisition 22

2.2.2.1 Perceptual Assimilation Model 22

2.2.2.2 Speech Learning Model 26

2.3 Error Analysis 27

2.3.1 The significance of error analysis 27

2.3.2 Error Analysis 27

2.3.3 Sources of language learning errors 28

2.3.3.1 Mother tongue interference 29

2.3.3.2 Overgeneralization 30

2.3.4 Steps in the process of error analysis 30

2.4 Summary 31

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 32

3.1 Research questions 32

3.2 Participants 32

3.2.1 The student subjects 32

3.2.2 The judges 33

3.3 Instruments 33

3.3.1 The questionnaire 33

3.3.2 Tests 34

3.3.2.1 Listening Test 34

3.3.2.2 Reading test for recordings 36

3.4 Data collection procedures 36

3.5 Summary 38

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS 39

4.1 Students’ responses to questionnaire 39

4.1.1 Syllabus for pronunciation at previous high schools 40

4.1.2 The pronunciation teaching at high schools 41

4.1.3 Students’ learning strategies 43

4.2 The most misperceived contrast pairs of English initial consonants 45

4.3 Errors made by the student subjects in the production of English initial consonants 49

4.3.1 MTI errors 51

4.3.2 Overgeneralization errors 60

4.3.3 The comparison between MTI and overgeneralization errors in production of English initial consonants 63

4.4 Summary of findings 65

4.5 Summary 66

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR

TEACHING ENGLISH INITIAL CONSONANTS 67

5.1 Conclusions 67

5.2 Implications for teaching 69

5.2.1 Syllabus design 69

5.2.2 Materials 71

5.2.3 Techniques in teaching pronunciation 71

5.2.3.1 Some recommendations for helping the students distinguish the difference between Vietnamese and English initial consonants 72

5.2.3.2 Minimal pairs 78

5.3 Recommendations for further researches 79

BIBLIOGRAPHY 80

APPENDICES 81

APPENDIX 1: HUMAN VOCAL APPARATUS 86

APPENDIX 2: STUDENTS’ QUESTIONNAIRE (VIETNAMESE VERSION) 87

APPENDIX 3: STUDENTS’QUESTIONNAIRE (ENGLISH VERSION) 91

APPENDIX 4: LISTENING TEST 95

APPENDIX 5: READING TEST 97

APPENDIX 6: CHECKLIST FOR RECORDINGS 98

APPENDIX 7: FEEDBACK SHEET 99

APPENDIX 8: DISTINCTION BETWEEN ENGLISH /d/ & VIETNAMESE /d/ 100

APPENDIX 9: DISTINCTION BETWEEN ENGLISH /ð/ & VIETNAMESE /d/ 101

APPENDIX 10: DISTINCTION BETWEEN ENGLISH /θ/ & VIETNAMESE /tʰ/ 102

APPENDIX 11: DISTINCTION BETWEEN ENGLISH /ʃ/ & VIETNAMESE /s/ 103

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EFL English as a foreign language

MTI Mother tongue interference

SC Single-Category

TC Two-category

LISTS OF TABLES

Table 1.1 Proportions of pronunciation aspects in Elementary New Cutting Edge 4

Table 2.1 The system of English initial consonants 12

Table 2.2 The system of Vietnamese initial consonants 13

Table 2.3 English and Vietnamese initial consonants in comparison 15

Table 2.4 English and Vietnamese initial consonants and their spellings 16

Table 2.5 Differences between English and Vietnamese initial consonants 19

Table 2.6 Assimilation types and discrimination predictions according to the PAM 23

Table 3.1 Tested contrast pairs of English initial consonants 35

Table 4.1 Types of misperceived contrast pairs and their frequency 45

Table 4.2 Errors made in the production of English initial consonants 50

Table 4.3 Types of MTI errors and their descriptions 57

Table 4.4 Summary of frequency percentage of overgeneralization errors 63

Table 4.5 Frequency percentages of MTI errors and overgeneralization errors 64

Table 5.1 Suggested apportionment of pronunciation aspects for the first semester 70

Table 5.2 ‘Learner – friendly’ explanations suggested by Kelly (2000: 55) 74

Table 5.3 Ideas to help students articulate sounds 76

Table 5.4 Correspondences between the English writing system and the English

sound system 77

LIST OF FIGURES AND CHARTS

Figure 2.1 Interrelation between speech perception, phonological acquisition and

the mature phonological system 20

Figure 2.2 Transfer, overgeneralization, and interference 29

Chart 4.1 Students’ birthplaces 39

Chart 4.2 English used by the teachers in high school classrooms 41

Chart 4.3 Students’ habit of using Vietnamese letters to make up English sounds 43

Chart 4.4 Frequency percentage of misperceived contrast pairs of English initial consonants 46

Chart 4.5 Frequency percentage of misperceived CG contrast pairs 47

Chart 4.6 Frequency percentages of types of MTI errors 59

Chart 4.7 Frequency percentages of errors due to MTI and overgeneralization in production of English initial consonants 65

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Above all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Doan Hue Dung, Ph.D., who read my manuscript with great care and devotion, gave me thoughtful and insightful comments and provided me with valuable support and relevant materials in the preparation and completion of this thesis, asserting her indispensable role as a wholehearted supervisor I would not have finished my thesis without her enthusiastic guidance and constructive critical questions to help me think over the problems

My thanks also go to the authors for the ideas quoted in the thesis Their books are a great source for me to produce my M.A thesis

I am also grateful to Ms Gemma Rachael Williams, Ms Hoang Thi Hong Lien, my helpful colleagues and also my best friends, who enthusiastically helped

me judge the reading test and gave useful ideas for me to find out the way to develop my thesis

I owe my thanks to 104 students of Classes 09CQT01, 09CQT03 and 09CQT06 at Nguyen Tat Thanh College for their enthusiastic participation

Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Bui Tien Dung, for the loving support and encouragements he gave me during the time I attended the course and did the thesis

an item to be learned, which leads to an error or inappropriate form in the target language Besides, concerning perception of pairs of English initial consonants, the L1 learners perceptually assimilate and discriminate English consonants with respect to their phonetic similarity, to their L1 contrasts

This research, therefore, was conducted to investigate contrast pairs of English initial consonants most misperceived and errors made by non-English majored students at NTTC in production of English initial consonants with the hope that it will give Vietnamese teachers of English a deeper insight into mother tongue interference in Vietnamese students’ perception and production of English initial consonants, then give some suggestions to syllabus and materials, recommend some effective and applicable techniques to limit mother tongue interference and improve the learning and teaching of English initial consonants

To achieve the aims of the study, a questionnaire was first distributed to 104 non-English majored students in the first year at NTTC, investigating how English initial consonants were taught and learnt at their previous high schools Then, 50

of the 104 above-mentioned students were randomly selected to take the listening test and reading test for recording, especially for data on the students’ problems concerning perception and production of English initial consonants

The results show that in terms of perception, Vietnamese students found the easiest to discriminate English contrast pairs whose members assimilate to two different sounds in Vietnamese To the pairs whose members assimilate to a single Vietnamese category, but unequally, showing a category goodness difference in their fit to the Vietnamese category, the discrimination was difficult Also, the level of difficulty in discrimination of those contrast pairs also depended on the

similarities between English ones to Vietnamese ones Specifically, if the English ones are similar to each other or more similar to the Vietnamese ones, the discrimination was more difficult In terms of production, three fourths of errors made were due to mother tongue interference, which means that the most noticeable source of errors among Vietnamese students in production of English initial consonants is mother tongue interference

Based on the findings, recommendations related to the syllabus, materials and techniques to limit mother tongue interference and to improve the teaching and learning of English initial consonants were put forward

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

This introductory chapter presents the problems leading to the study, asserts the rationale for the study, states the aims of the thesis, introduces the research questions, draws a brief look of the definitions of related terms and the study’s limitation as well as delimitation, finally provides the structure of the thesis

1.1 Background to the study

1.1.1 English consonants: the role and problems in the acquisition

English consonants play a significant role in English pronunciation Without a good command of them, the learners of English likely have considerable difficulty understanding and being understood by a native speaker In other words,

“a learner who consistently mispronounces a range of phonemes can be extremely difficult for a speaker from another language community to understand” (Kelly, 2000: 11) Since learners use wrong pronunciation of words, they always misunderstand others’ speech and even do not recognize the words they have known, which results in communication hindrance

It is strongly believed that biological, social-cultural, personality and linguistic factors are known to affect the acquisition of the sound system of a second language (Avery & Ehrlich, 1992: 13) Among them, Brown (2000: 67) found that second language acquisition is strongly influenced by the learner’s first language He also indicated that native language interference is surely the most immediately noticeable source of errors among second language learners In terms

of sounds, the role of learners’ native language is considered the very important factor that affects their ability to produce English ones Because “this problem clearly stems from the fact that the target language makes distinction between two sounds where the first language does not, or where there is a ‘gap’ in the first language system where the target language has a phoneme” (Dalton & Seidlhofer, 1994: 14) In terms of speech perception, classic non-native speech perception

findings suggested that adults have difficulty discriminating segmental distinctions that are not employed contrastively in their own language However, recent reports indicate a gradient of performance across non-native contrasts, ranging from near-chance to near-ceiling (Best, 2001: 775) Remarkably, such variations reflect systematic effects of experience with phonetic properties of native speech

1.1.2 English consonants in the syllabus for EFL1 learners at high schools

At high schools, the learners’ time on learning English mostly depends on the schedules of each school they enrolled in The fact is that many schools still apply the Grammar Translation method in which Grammar and Reading for Comprehension are much focused in the classrooms Besides, the requirements of the end-of-semester examinations and graduation ones strongly focus on grammar, vocabulary, and reading comprehension, whereas listening, speaking and especially pronunciation play a little role in the content of the tests2 As a result, teachers and students do not pay much attention to pronunciation and, of course, pronunciation teaching seems to be ignored in the syllabus In fact, a real chance for the learners to deal with the practice of English sounds in particular and pronunciation in general in the classrooms is in the presentation of vocabulary, in which, the teachers often have the learners read the words after their rendition for several times Of course, in this context, there is no time for teachers to deal with the descriptions of sounds or more practice From this perspective, it is not surprising that Vietnamese learners do not have the ability to perceive and produce English sounds after leaving high schools

1.1.3 Non-English majored students and their problems with English

consonants at NTTC

At universities and colleges, one differs from another in the focus on English pronunciation practice In fact, pronunciation is considered fairly important compared with listening, speaking and reading at NTTC This is due to the requirements for non-English majored students who are requested to not only achieve TOEIC scores of 350 and above but also be good at English

communication after graduation Therefore, in the three-year curriculum at NTTC, besides TOEIC course books3, the textbook New Cutting Edge is enclosed during

the 6-semester learning process

During 120 periods of the first two semesters, 10 modules of the

Elementary New Cutting Edge and 20 units of the TOEIC course book are

scheduled to be covered In fact, pronunciation is considered quite an important part and teachers are supposed to spend 15 to 20 minutes dealing with pronunciation in each class However, the pronunciation syllabus does not seem to meet the students’ demand of pronunciation practice for some reasons As shown

in Table 1.1 below, it does not provide the students much with sound practice since English sounds in general and consonants in particular are very thinly enclosed The following table gives more details on how different aspects of pronunciation in the two semesters4 of the first schoolyear are apportioned in the

Elementary New Cutting Edge

Table 1.1 Apportionment of pronunciation aspects in Elementary

New Cutting Edge 5

Modules Pronunciation syllabus

1 - Short forms

- Sentence stress in questions and short answers

2 - This, that, these, those

3 - Sentence stress in questions

4 - Third person verb forms

5 - Can and can’t

6 - Linking, sentence stress

7 - Past forms of be

- Regular past simple forms

8 - Sentence stress

9 - Stressed and weak syllables

10 - The sound (ing)

Also, in addition to the main course books, no supplementary material on pronunciation, in general, is included in the course syllabus

Besides, as a matter of fact, many students at NTTC do not really succeed

in mastering English initial consonants Having taught English Communication and TOEIC Course at NTTC for more than three years, the writer has noticed that her students in the first year make a lot of errors in pronouncing English consonants in general and initial consonants in particular, which leads them to misunderstand and to be misunderstood in communication The first reason may lie on the fact that they were not acquired to pronounce them accurately at their previous high schools The second one can be some sources influencing their performance of English consonants in which mother tongue interference seems to

be a noticeably influential one

5

written by Cunningham, Moor & Eales (2005)

1.2 Rationale for the study

Hewings (2004: 20) noted that one important step which teachers should deal with before teaching English pronunciation is to be aware of the possible difficulties for learners with particular aspects of pronunciation in order to prepare activities focusing on these problems In terms of English consonants, he had a conclusion that though we might generally give work on consonants a top priority,

it is also significant to investigate which consonants are problematic and which are not for the particular first language6 groups, so that we can focus on those sounds

in class According to Brown (2000: 95), it has been common in second language teaching to stress the role of interference because it is surely the most immediately noticeable source of errors among second language learners Therefore, it is important for English teachers to investigate English initial consonants misperceived and mispronounced due to mother tongue interference because this helps the teachers obtain information on common difficulties in language learning,

as an aid to teaching or in the preparation of teaching materials Owing to a clear acknowledgement of problems often facing Vietnamese students in perception and production of English initial consonants, the teachers find it easier in the decisions

on the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of teaching English initial consonants It is particularly

more necessary for Vietnamese teachers who teach English consonants and English pronunciation in general However, no studies have been done on mother tongue interference in Vietnamese students’ perception and production of English initial consonants, which is also another reason for the conduction of the study Hopefully, its findings concerning pronunciation problems and its recommendations may serve as a reference to English teachers who are interested

in dealing with problems of teaching pronunciation in general and teaching English consonants in particular

6

The first language in this study refers to Vietnamese abbreviated to L1, and the second language refers to English abbreviated to L2

1.3 Aims of the thesis

The research generally aims at investigating English initial consonants most misperceived and mispronounced by Vietnamese students due to mother tongue interference Basing on the descriptions and analysis of those errors, it then suggests some techniques for limiting mother tongue interference and improving the teaching and learning of English initial consonants The main focus of the thesis is to answer the following research questions:

1 What contrast pairs of English initial consonants are most

misperceived by non-English majored students at NTTC?

2 What are mother tongue interference errors made in the students’

production of English initial consonants?

3 What techniques should be adopted to limit mother tongue

interference and to improve the teaching and learning of English initial consonants?

To find out the answers to the above-mentioned research questions, the study simultaneously tests the following null hypothesis:

There is no significant difference between the errors made by Vietnamese students in production of English initial consonants due to mother tongue interference and those due to overgeneralization

1.4 Definitions of related terms

 Consonants

“Consonants are sounds produced by partially or completely blocking air in its passage from the lungs through the vocal tract” (Finegan, 1994: 34)

 Errors & Mistakes

According to Corder (1981), an ‘error’ is a deviation in learner language which results from lack of knowledge of the correct rule (cited in Ellis, 1998: 700)

A ‘mistake’ refers to a performance error that is either a random guess or a

‘slip’ in that it is a failure to utilize a known system correctly (Brown, 2000: 90)

 Interference

Interference is “the use of the native- language pattern or rule which leads

to an error or inappropriate form in the target language.” (Richards et al, 1992: 205)

The negative transfer can be referred to as interference, in that previously learner material interferes with subsequent material - a previous item is incorrectly transferred or incorrectly associated with an item to be learned (Brown, 2000: 90)

 Speech sounds

“Vocal sounds are produced in the human body by the organs of what is called the vocal tract Vocal sounds which are organized to communicate information are called speech sounds.” (Buchanan, 1963: 18)

 Transfer

“Transfer is a general term describing the carryover of previous performance or knowledge to subsequent learning Positive transfer occurs when the prior knowledge benefits the learning task – that is, when a previous item is correctly applied to present subject matter Negative transfer occurs when the previous performance disrupts the performance on a second task” (Brown, 2000: 90)

 Voiced sounds and voiceless sounds

“The air stream from the lungs moves up through the trachea, or windpipe, and through the opening between the vocal cords, which is called the glottis

7

See Appendix 1

If the vocal cords are apart, the air stream is not obstructed at the glottis and

it passes freely into the supraglottal cavities (the parts of the vocal tract above the glottis) The sound produced in this way is voiceless sounds

If the vocal cords are together, the air stream forces its way through and causes them to vibrate Such sounds are called voiced sounds …” (Fromkin & Rodman, 1993: 187)

1.5 Limitation

Due to the time constraints within which the study was carried out, the study’s questionnaire was conducted with 104 first-year non-English majored students at NTTC Next, the recordings and listening test were carried out with only 50 students among the 104 above-mentioned ones Since the study’s responsive population is quite limited, its results can hardly be generalized to many other circumstances

1.6 Delimitation

Properly modified, mother tongue interference in Vietnamese students’ perception and production of English initial consonants examined in the study was

in initial position, but those in initial consonant clusters were disregarded

Although the study has some interesting findings in that there is a hierarchy

of difficulty among the contrast pairs of English initial consonants investigated and that the relative difficulty of the pairs of sounds can be mostly explained by the PAM It is recommended that other approaches of problems in perception focusing

on the linguistically relevant acoustic properties of speech sounds such as

spetrograms8 be taken into account, giving the clearer analysis of those

In addition, the study only specified the mother tongue interference in Vietnamese students’ perception and production of English initial consonants at NTTC in the South of Vietnam, so some Southern initial consonants were used for

8

In order to see and analyze the kinds of properties of sounds, phoneticians most often use a machine called

a spetrograph, which allows measurement and analysis of frequency, duration, transitions between speech sounds, and the like The output of a spetrograph is a spetrogram, either printed on paper or displayed on a computer screen (Davenport: 1998, 59)

the analysis and discussion in the study Therefore, this study may not be applicable to Northern and Central Vietnamese students That is why the results drawn from this research, if flexibly applied, can hopefully work with other students in other institutions in the South of Vietnam

1.7 Structure of the thesis

The thesis is presented in five chapters

Chapter 1 introduces the background to the study as the start of the thesis, states the rationale for the study, the aims of the study, the definitions of related terms, the limitation, the delimitation and provides the structure of the thesis Chapter 2, Literature Review, presents the view of English and Vietnamese initial consonant systems in comparison Also included in this chapter is a look at theories of speech perception and phonological acquisition and Error Analysis which provide the foundation of accounting for analytic framework of the study

Chapter 3 focuses on the research methodology employed in the thesis,

including the presentation of the research questions, participants, instruments and the data collection procedures

Chapter 4 presents the data analysis in which contrast pairs of English initial consonants misperceived by the Vietnamese students are presented and discussed on the basis of the PAM proposed by Best (1995) Next, the production errors are analyzed to identify which ones are due to mother tongue interference and which ones are attributable to overgeneralization, which simultaneously tests the hypothesis

Chapter 5 presents the conclusion of the study and presents some recommendations to the administrators at NTTC on redesigning Pronunciation Part

in the syllabus with the adaptation of the suggested supplemental material Some suggestions for teaching techniques to limit mother tongue interference and improve the teaching of English initial consonants which can be applied at NTTC are also included in this chapter

Chapter 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

The present study is an attempt to investigate contrast pairs9 of English initial consonants most perceived by Vietnamese students and identify mother tongue interference errors made in their production of English initial consonants The purpose of the Literature Review therefore, is to present the summary of English and Vietnamese initial consonant systems in comparison Also included in this chapter is a brief look at theories of speech perception and phonological acquisition and Error Analysis which provide the foundation of accounting for analytic framework of the study

2.1 English and Vietnamese initial consonant systems in comparison

There are three ways of describing the consonant sounds: the manner of articulation, the place of articulation and voicing For the purpose of the study, both languages would employ the characteristics of English initial consonants regarding manner to articulation and place of articulation, voicing

2.1.1 English initial consonants

For ease of reference, a classification of the initial consonants of English in terms of place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing provided by

Avery and Erhlich (1992: 26) is presented below in Table 2.1

9 Gimson (1989), Nunan (1991) and Spencer (1997) share the similar view that a phonological system (i.e

sound system) of a language is built upon the idea of sound contrasts By selecting one type of sound as

opposed to another, one can distinguish one word from the other In other words, sound contrasts serve to

distinguish meanings in a language For instance, in English, one can distinguish the words "pin " and "bin

" by choosing the first consonant either as /p/ or /b/ and such distinction between the sounds /p-b/

contributes to a contrast, /p-b/ is thus known as a "contrast-pair” (Cited in Chan Pik Ha (1999: 8))

Table 2.1 The system of English initial consonants 10

2.1.2 Vietnamese initial consonants

According to Cao Xuan Hao (2002: 155), there has not been a standard consonant system for Vietnamese since dialects in three main areas of Vietnamese are very different, especially, in aspects of initial consonants In agreement with Dinh Le Thư (1998); Doan Thien Thuat (2007); Hoang Thi Chau (2002: 129) assured that there are three dialects in Vietnamese: the northern, the central and the southern ones which seem not much different in grammar and spelling, but in certain aspects of pronunciation in which the articulation of Vietnamese initial consonants is not totally unified in different dialects Concerning the present study, the Vietnamese initial consonant system suggested by Hoang Thi Chau (2002: 130) is taken into consideration and for further analysis in the following chapters

Besides, it is assumed that the majority of Vietnamese students at NTTC are from the South13 Therefore, some Southern Vietnamese consonants regarded as typically standard ones14 are also included in the system presented below in Table 2.2

Table 2.2 The system of Vietnamese initial consonants 15

2.1.3 English and Vietnamese initial consonants in comparison

Odlin (1989: 28) asserted that owing to native-target language comparison, researchers can better determine any effects of negative transfer For the aim of this study, the comparison between English and Vietnamese initial consonant

Palatal

systems will serve as theoretical background for the further analysis in the following chapters English and Vietnamese initial consonants in comparison are summarized below in Table 2.3

Table 2.3 English and Vietnamese initial consonants in comparison

Consonants Bilabial

Labio-dental

Dental Alveolar

Pre-palatal

palatal

Alveo-Palatal Velar Glottal

Also included in this section is the comparison between English and Vietnamese spellings

Table 2.4 English and Vietnamese initial consonants and their spellings 20

Manner of

articulation

English initial consonants

Examples Vietnamese

initial consonants

k (k, c, qu) kêu (call), cá

(fish), qua (cross

s (s, x) sữa (milk), xa (far)

ʐ (gi) giá (price)

ʃ (sh, s, ch) ship,

sugar, chef

job, ginger, general

về (return), da (skin), giờ (hour)

For the purpose of study, as indicated in the Speech Learning Model21proposed by Flege (1995), relying on the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese initial consonants in terms of manner to articulation, place

of articulation and voicing, English initial consonants are categorized as existent (new), identical, similar to Vietnamese as follows:

non- Non-existent consonants to Vietnamese

 Identical consonants to Vietnamese

22

Some English initial consonants non-existent in the Vietnamese initial consonant system sharing one or two similar characteristics to Vietnamese ones are also included in this section

Table 2.5 Differences between English and Vietnamese initial consonants

English Vietnamese Similarities Differences

Stops /t/ /t/ place, manner,

voice

English /t/ is aspirated whereas Vietnamese /t/ is not

/tʰ/ place, manner,

voice, aspiration

English /t/ is fortis23(strong) Vietnamese /tʰ/ is lenis (weak)

/d/ /d/ manner, voice Vietnamese /d/ is a little

apico-alveolar24

voice

English /k/ is aspirated whereas Vietnamese /k/ is not

/χ/ place, voice English /k/ is a plosive

whereas /χ/ is a fricative /g/ /ɣ/ place, voice English /g/ is a plosive

whereas /ɣ/ is a fricative

Fricatives /θ/ /t/ voice English /θ/ is a dental

fricative whereas Vietnamese /t/ is an alveolar plosive

/tʰ/ voice English /θ/ is a dental

fricative whereas Vietnamese /tʰ/ is an alveolar plosive

fricative whereas Vietnamese /d/ is an apico-alveolar plosive

/ʃ/ /s/ manner, voice English /ʃ/ is alveo-palatal

2.2 Theories of speech perception and phonological acquisition

2.2.1 Previous researches on speech perception and phonological acquisition

Brown (1994: 6) stated that the successful L2 acquisition of phonological

representations requires accurate perception of phonemic contrasts in the input It

is meant that the L2 phoneme acquisition must integrate not only a theory of

second language acquisition and a theory of phonological representation, but also a

theory of speech perception illustrated in the following figure

Figure 2.1 Interrelation between speech perception, phonological

acquisition and the mature phonological system

Mature phonological system

Speech perception Phonological acquisition

Cited in Brown (2000: 207), the Contrast Analysis Hypothesis25(abbreviated to CAH) was considered the earliest systematic study on the acquisition of L2 segments However; it faced some criticisms, the most dominating of which was offered by Whitman and Jackson (1972) Specifically, they noted that CAH incorrectly predicted that an L2 learner would have the same degree of difficulty with any and all of the L2 sounds not present in the L1 inventory While it was proved that learners do not actually make all the errors that contrastive analysis predicted they should, and that learners from disparate language backgrounds tend to make similar errors in learning one target language (Brown, 1994: 8)

The next approaches on L2 phoneme acquisition focused their analyses on the differences and similarities in distinctive features between the L1 and L2 (Brown, 1994: 9) According to this line of research, difficulty with particular L2 sounds could be explained in terms of feature differences between the L1 and L2, combined with the learners’ perceptual biases This line was considered constituting an advance over the previous contrastive analysis approach since its focus on the distinctive feature as the relevant unit for comparing the L1 and L2 provided language-internal evidence for differential substitutions Moreover, it represented the first attempt to address the issue how the mature phonological system might affect speech perception and how that, in turn, might affect phonological acquisition; however, it did not attempt to explain clearly why L2 errors were made in perception and phonological acquisition

Until 1980s, several perceptual studies conducted with native speakers and language learners provided the necessary experimental evidence, demonstrating that phonemes are indeed generally perceived in terms of the speaker’s native categories (Jenkins, 1975; Williams, 1977, cited in Brown (1994: 9)) Since that time, models have been proposed to explain how L2 sounds are mapped onto L1

25

CAH claimed that the principal barrier to second language acquisition is the interference of the first language system with the second language system, and that a scientific, structural analysis of the two languages in question would yield a taxonomy of linguistic contrasts between them which in turn would enable the linguist to predict the difficulties a learner would encounter (Brown, 2000: 208)

sounds Two of those models used as theoretical background for the study are presented in the following section

2.2.2 Models of speech perception and phonological acquisition

Deriving from the experimental evidence, L2 researchers have begun to construct models and hypotheses of the corresponding mechanism in L2 speech perception and production Among such proposals, models by Best (1995) and Flege (1995) have been the most influential and widely cited frameworks which also provide the foundation of accounting for the findings of the present study reported in the coming chapters

2.2.2.1 Perceptual Assimilation Model

According to Best et al (2001: 778), non-native speech perception is based

on detection of similarities to the phonological units and contrasts of the native language Discrimination performance levels are strongly linked to listeners’ assimilations of non-native phones within their native phonological system To a large extent, assimilation and discrimination of non-native consonants reflects listeners’ sensitivity to phonetic and phonological similarities to native consonants While certain findings may be consistent with other views of non-native speech perception, the Perceptual Assimilation Model alone provided the motivation for the present cross-language comparisons, and it appears to offer the most coherent account

The Perceptual Assimilation Model developed by Best (1994: 167) essentially claims that the difficulty encountered by L2 learners in learning L2 speech is determined by perceptual limitations The PAM proposes that L2 listeners classify L2 sound contrast pairs 26 into different categories depending on the degree of similarity and at the same time discrepancy perceived between the native and non-native sounds According to the PAM, the L2 contrast pairs can

26

Gimson (1989), Nunan (1991) and Spencer (1997) share the similar view that a phonological system (i.e sound system) of a language is built upon the idea of sound contrasts By selecting one type of sound as opposed to another, one can distinguish one word from the other In other words, sound contrasts serve to distinguish meanings in a language For instance, in English, one can distinguish the words “pin”’ and “bin”

by choosing the first consonant either as /p/ or /b/ and such distinction between the sounds /p-b/ contributes

to a contrast, /p-b/ is thus known as a “contrast pair”(cited in Chan Pik Ha : 1999)

assimilate to native phonemes they are classified as a Two Category, Category Goodness or Single Category contrast depending on the similarities and

discrepancy between the L2 contrasts and between the L2 sounds and L1 sounds The present study focuses on those contrasts involving only English phonemes that may be perceptually categorized to Vietnamese ones, as defined above, that is, the

TC, CG assimilation types postulated by the PAM as follows:

 Two-Category (TC): members of the L2 contrast pair assimilate to two

different native categories, that is, one member assimilates to one native category and the other one to another native category

 Category Goodness (CG): Both might assimilate to a single native

phoneme, but one may fit better than the other, termed a Category Goodness difference

Importantly, the model makes specific discrimination predictions for each assimilation type presented below in Table 2.6

Table 2.6 Assimilation types and discrimination predictions according to

the PAM Assimilation types Discrimination predictions

Category Goodness (CG) Moderate to poor

In the case of CG contrast pairs, discrimination of those can range from moderate to poor depending on the perceived contrast between the two sounds and the goodness-of-fit between the L2 and the L1 sound If the L2 sounds clearly differ from each other and from the native sound or sounds, discrimination of the two L2 sounds is expected to be moderate If the sounds are similar to each other

or to the native sound, discrimination is predicted to be poor (Best, 1995: 780) The PAM’s predictions about each of these assimilation types have been supported by a number of cross-language perception studies Specifically, in the

study of English listeners’ perception of four Hindi dental-retroflex stop contrasts differing in voicing type, Polka (1991: 2963) reported that, based on listeners’ descriptions of the contrasts, CG-pair assimilations were associated with lower discrimination performance than TC-pair assimilations, as the PAM predicts Besides, according to Best et al (2001: 169) in cross-language studies of adults’ non-native speech perception, Japanese listeners displayed CG assimilation of English /r/-/l/ and TC assimilation of English /w/-/r/, with better discrimination of the latter, as predicted by the PAM Similarly, French listeners categorized and discriminated English /w/-/r/ in a CG pattern, consistent with French and English /r/ articulatory differences Best et al (2001: 170) also assured that studies from Zulu listeners are consistent with certain PAM predictions

However, no findings have yet been published on the application of the PAM for investigating mother tongue interference in Vietnamese listeners’ perception of English initial consonants It is also doubted that if Vietnamese listeners acquire contrast pairs of English initial consonants following gradient of discrimination levels: TC>CG, as expected according to the PAM To evaluate this possibility, the study systematically compares discrimination levels among English contrast pairs that were expected to yield TC, CG assimilation patterns

To optimize comparisons of performance among CG, and TC assimilations, two types of contrast pairs of English initial consonants whose members are predicted to assimilate to Vietnamese consonants must be definitely mentioned The goal is, therefore, to include one English contrast pair that Vietnamese listeners are likely to assimilate to two contrasting Vietnamese phonemes (TC), another that they should assimilate as a noticeable category goodness difference within a single Vietnamese phoneme (CG) Basing on their articulatory-phonetic characteristics relative to Vietnamese27, contrast pairs 28of each type were selected

 Two-Category (TC):

- /p/-/b/: /p/ exists in Vietnamese; English /b/ is identical to Vietnamese /b/

- /f/-/v/: Both /f/ and /v/ exist in the Vietnamese phonemic inventory /f/ and /v/ can each assimilate to the respective category in Vietnamese

- /t/-/d/: Both /t/ and /d/ exist in the Vietnamese phonemic inventory /t/ and /d/ can each assimilate to the respective category in Vietnamese

- /k/-/g/: /k/ exists in Vietnamese; English /g/ is partly similar to Vietnamese /ɣ/ It is reasonable to assume that that /g/ would also assimilate to / ɣ/, not

to any other Vietnamese categories

- /s/-/z/: Both /s/ and /z/ exist in the Vietnamese phonemic inventory /s/ and /z/ can each assimilate to the respective category in Vietnamese

- /l/-/r/: Both /l/ and /r/ exist in the Vietnamese phonemic inventory /l/ and /r/ can each assimilate to the respective category in Vietnamese

 Category goodness (CG):

- /d/-/ð/: This is most probably a CG contrast Both might assimilate to the

Vietnamese /d/, but /d/ fits better than /ð/

- /s/-/ʃ/: most probably, this is a CG contrast Both would assimilate to the

Vietnamese /s/

- /θ/-/t/: most likely, this is a CG contrast English /t/ is initially aspirated so it

is articulatory and phonologically similar to the Vietnamese /tʰ/, of course would be assimilated to the Vietnamese /tʰ/; English /θ/ is also the most similar to Vietnamese /tʰ/29 It is reasonable to assume that /θ/ and /t/ would

also assimilate to the Vietnamese /tʰ/

- /ʃ/-/ʧ/: This is most probably a CG contrast Both might assimilate to the Vietnamese /c/, but /ʧ/ may fit better than /ʃ/

- /ʧ/-/ʤ/: This is a CG contrast Like /ʃ/-/ʧ/, these sounds might assimilate to

the Vietnamese /c/; also /ʧ/ may fit better than /ʤ/

- /j/-/ʤ/: This is a CG contrast Like /ʃ/-/ʧ/, these sounds might assimilate to

the Vietnamese /j/; also /j/ fits better than /ʤ/

29

See Part 2.1

The relative difficulty faced by Vietnamese students in discriminating these pairs of English initial consonants can then be also predicted according to the PAM The pairs of sounds under study can be categorized as TC and CG contrast pairs As TC contrast pairs, /p/-/b/, /f/-/v/, /t/-/d/, /k/-/g/, /s/-/z/ and /l/-/r/ are predicted to be well-discriminated by Vietnamese students As CG contrast pairs, d/-/ð/, /s/-/ʃ/, /θ/-/t/, /ʃ/-/ʧ/, /ʧ/-/ʤ/, /ʃ/-/ʧ/ and /j/-/ʤ/ are predicted to be more difficult to discriminate than TC ones mentioned above Besides, in the case of

CG contrast pairs, discrimination of those can range from moderate to poor depending on the perceived contrast between the two sounds and the goodness-of-fit between the L2 and the L1 sound

2.2.2.2 Speech Learning Model

Another model that does address the issue of L2 segment acquisition is the Speech Learning Model (SLM), developed by Flege (1995: 239) He argued that the formation of phonological categories in a learner’s L2 phonology is largely dependent on his capacity to accurately perceive (and produce) non-native sound contrasts Flege’s SLM focuses on how the perception and production of sounds in

a L2 are influenced by the L1 A central claim of the model is that as the phonetic space becomes increasingly devoted or committed to the L1, L2 speech learning becomes more difficult In particular, L2 learners have trouble establishing new categories, especially for sounds that are similar to those in the L1 Specifically, he

made the following claims:

 When the incoming L2 speech sounds are new ones to their L1 categories,

new phonetic categories can be established from the closest L1 sounds

 When the speech sounds are similar but not identical (or relatively similar) to the L1 categories, L2 learners would classify these similar

sounds into the most similar L1 sound categories

 When the new L2 sounds are identical to their LI sounds, the L2 speakers

perceive them easily because they "fit" their LI sound categories

Concerning the present study the three claims in the SLM serve as direction which helps the researcher predict problematic English initial consonants30 relying

on the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese initial consonants in terms of manner to articulation and place of articulation, voicing

2.3 Error Analysis

2.3.1 The significance of error analysis

This thesis aims at investigating contrast pairs of English initial consonants most misperceived as well as identifying and describing MTI errors31 made by non-English majored students in the production of those sounds Therefore, the term ‘errors’ will be frequently used in this thesis

Researchers and teachers of L2 soon recognized that the errors a person made in this process of constructing a new system of language need to be carefully analyzed so that they may have the understanding of the process of L2 acquisition Supporting for that idea, Brown (2000: 217) also noted that “a learner’s errors… are significant in that they provide to the researcher evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in the discovery of the language.” More specifically, those errors can be observed, analyzed, and classified to reveal something of the system operating within the learners to serve for three following purposes pointed out by Richards et al (1992: 127):

a to identify strategies which learners use in language learning;

b to try to identify the uses of learner errors;

c to obtain information on common difficulties in language learning, as an aid to teaching or in the preparation of teaching materials

2.3.2 Error Analysis

Early critics of Contrastive Analysis have argued for the need to complement contrastive analysis with Error Analysis which can tell us the

intensity of the difficulty or the size of the problem (Brown, 2000: 218) He noted that learners do make errors, and that these errors can be observed, analyzed, and classified to reveal something of the system operating within the learner, led to a

surge of study of learners’ error called error analysis

Error analysis became distinguished from contrastive analysis by its examination

of errors attributable to all possible sources not just those resulting from negative transfer

of the native language Error analysis easily superseded contrastive analysis, as we

discovered that only some of the errors a learner makes are attributable to the mother

tongue, that learners do not actually make all the errors that contrastive analysis predicted they should, and that learners from disparate language backgrounds tend to make similar errors in learning one target language (Brown, 2000: 218)

However, it is not without its own problems The major challenge for error analysis is deciding what category to determine a particular error to Therefore, concerning the present study, the researcher will categorize errors made by Vietnamese students basing on the sources of errors presented in the following section

2.3.3 Sources of language learning errors

Although Brown (2000: 223) pointed out possible general sources of language learning errors including mother tongue interference32, overgeneralization33, the context of learning, communication strategies, and no doubt countless affective variables, in agreement with Littlewood (1984: 27), he assured that the context of learning, communication strategies sometimes overlap both types of transfer It is meant that two most noticeable sources of errors among second language learners referred in the L2 learning processes are mother tongue interference and overgeneralization In fact,

Interference and overgeneralization are the negative counterparts of the facilitating processes of transfer and generalization Also, interference of the first language in the second is simply a form of generalizing that takes prior first language experiences and applies them incorrectly Overgeneralization is the incorrect application _ negative transfer _ of previously learned second language material to a present second language context (Brown, 2000: 96) (See Figure 2.2)