English pronunciation errors of final consonants by 10th graders at tran phu high school, tay ninh province

ABSTRACT The current study investigates English pronunciation errors of final consonants made by Vietnamese students.. The native language is considered greatly affecting the production

THE PEOPLE‟S COMMITTEE OF BINH DUONG PROVINCE

THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY

LE MINH DAT

ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION ERRORS OF FINAL

HIGH SCHOOL, TAY NINH PROVINCE

MASTER THESIS MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE

CODE: 8220201

BINH DUONG - 2020

THE PEOPLE‟S COMMITTEE OF BINH DUONG PROVINCE

THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY

LE MINH DAT

ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION ERRORS OF FINAL

HIGH SCHOOL, TAY NINH PROVINCE

MASTER THESIS MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE

CODE: 8220201

SUPERVISOR:

LE THANH HOA, PhD

BINH DUONG - 2020

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I certify that this thesis, entitled “English pronunciation errors of final

work Except where references are made in the text of the thesis, it does not

contain materials published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis

by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma No other

person‟s work has been used without acknowledgment in the main text of this thesis

LE MINH DAT

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to those who have supported, encouraged and assisted me in my thesis completion

First of all, I would like to express my special appreciation and thanks to Mr

Le Thanh Hoa (Ph.D), my supervisor, for his great patience, careful guidance, insightful advice, and constant encouragement through the whole research process Without his support and guidance, this thesis would never have been completed Secondly, I would like to express my thanks to Mr Tran Quoc Thao (Ph.D) and Mr Tran Thanh Du (Ph.D) who proofread my final I thank all of the research participants, my students, who contributed to this study

Thirdly, I am grateful for the assistance and support of Prof.Dr Nguyen Van Khang, the Editor - In - Chief of Journal of Linguistic Society of Viet Nam, who has helped me greatly to edit my paper in the magazine “Journal of Language and Life” and given me important materials for the study

Last but not least, my deepest and sincerest gratitude goes to my family, including my wife, my mother, my daughter, my son and my sister for their love I would like to dedicate this thesis to my beloved wife for her enthusiastic support for the thesis

INDEX

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to the study 1

1.1.1 Theoretical background 3

1.1.2 Practical background 3

1.2 Statement of the problem 4

1.3 Aims and objectives of the study 6

1.3.1 Aims 6

1.3.2 Objectives 6

1.4 Research questions 6

1.5 Scope of the study 7

1.6 Significance of the study 7

1.7 Summary 7

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 9

2.1 Definition of related terms 9

2.1.1 Pronunciation 9

2.1.2 Consonant 9

2.1.3 Pronunciation norm 9

2.1.4 Pronunciation errors 9

2.1.4.1 Definition of error 9

2.1.4.2 Error analysis 10

2.1.4.3 Types of phonetic interference errors 11

2.1.4.4 Significance of error and error analysis 13

2.1.5 Pronunciation mistakes 15

2.1.6 The difference between an error and a mistake 15

2.2 Review of previous study 16

2.3 Theoretical background 20

2.3.1 Background to English final consonants 20

2.3.1.1 Final single consonants 20

2.3.1.2 Final clusters of two consonants 22

2.3.1.3 Final clusters of three consonants 23

2.3.1.4 Final clusters of four consonants 23

2.3.2 Background to Vietnamese final consonants 23

2.3.3 Similarities and differences in English and Vietnamese final consonant systems… 24

2.3.3.1 Manner of articulation 25

2.3.3.2 Place of articulation 25

2.3.3.3 Voice quality 25

2.3.3.4 Similarities 26

2.3.3.5 Differences 27

2.3.4 Waveform and spectrogram analysis 28

2.4 Conceptual framework 28

2.5 Summary 29

CHAPTER 3 METHOD AND PROCEDURE 30

3.1 Introduction 30

3.2 Research design 30

3.3 Sample and sampling 31

3.3.1 Sample 31

3.3.2 Sampling procedures 31

3.4 Data collection procedures 31

3.4.1 Date collection instruments 32

3.4.2 Voice recording wordlists 33

3.5 Data analysis procedures 34

3.5.1 Final one-consonants 34

3.5.2 Clusters of the final two-consonants 35

3.5.3 Clusters of the final three-consonants 38

3.5.4 Clusters of the final four-consonants 40

3.5.5 General evaluation 40

3.5.6 Group classification 41

3.6 Validity and reliability 41

3.7 Summary …… 42

CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 43

4.1 Introduction 43

4.2 Findings………… 43

4.2.1 Data analysis findings 43

4.2.1.1 Errors of final single consonants 43

4.2.1.2.Errors of final two consonant clusters 56

4.2.1.3 Errors of three final consonant clusters 58

4.2.1.4 Errors of four final consonant clusters 60

4.3 Discussion 62

4.3.1 Participants’ attitudes about English final consonants… 62

4.3.2 Overview of the participants’ records 62

4.3.3 Factor of participants’ difficulties in English pronunciation 62

4.3.4 Participants’ knowledge about English final consonants 63

4.3.5 Difficulties faced by by participants in producing English sounds 63 4.3.6 English pronunciation errors of final consonants by the participants 65

4.4 Summary ……… 66

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 67

5.1 Conclusion 67

5.2 Pedagogical implications 68

5.2.1 Recommendations for teaching the pronunciation of English final consonants 68

5.2.1.1 Pronunciation training for teachers 69

5.2.1.2 Pronunciation training for students 69

5.2.2 Recommendations for further pronunciation activities 70

5.2.2.1 Activities 1: Pronunciation diagnosis 70

5.2.2.2 Activities 2: My favourite songs 71

5.2.2.3 Activities 3: Misunderstanding conversation 72

5.2.2.4 Activities 4: Describing activities 73

5.2.2.5 Activities 5: How much do you know about English and Vietnamese final consonants? 73

5.3 Limitations 74

5.4 Suggestions for further study 74

THE AUTHOR’S RELATED ARTICLE 75

REFERENCES 76

APPENDICES 77

ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviations Full forms

EFL English as a foreign language

ESL English as a second language

EVFCS English and Vietnamese final consonant system

LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.16 Errors of final two-consonant cluster /-nd/ 57 Table 4.17 Errors of final two-consonant cluster /-st/ 58 Table 4.18 Errors of final three-consonant cluster /-lmd/ 59 Table 4.19 Errors of final three-consonant cluster /-mpt/ 60 Table 4.20 Errors of final four-consonant cluster /-ksts/ 61 Table 4.21 Errors of final four-consonant cluster /-lkts/ 61

ABSTRACT

The current study investigates English pronunciation errors of final consonants made by Vietnamese students The native language is considered greatly affecting the production of the English final consonants among Vietnamese learners The subjects of the study, 120 students are studying at the 10th grade at Tran Phu High School in Tan Bien District, Tay Ninh Province They are representative of over

450 of the 10th graders and were provided a wordlist to read loudly and the sounds were recorded These recordings were analysed by the researcher The results show that when reading from the wordlist, most of the subjects often replace or omit the final consonant sounds and these common errors found in the reading of the wordlist are so difficult to be corrected by the Vietnamese teachers during the process of teaching and learning English

Keywords: English; pronunciation; errors; final consonants; Vietnamese;

high school students

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the study

Though nowadays human beings have writing systems to present their languages and numerous digital machines to help them save time to transmit and receive information but oral communication is a more popular means than any others Therefore, much attention should be paid to pronunciation, which contributes to conveying the right message in oral communication If the message

is articulated with wrong pronunciations, it might sometimes hinder people from

communicating or lead the listeners to receive wrong comprehensions

The production of oral discourse is very crucial for people who learn English as

a foreign language Brown (2000), maintained that no one would deny the importance of pronunciation as a key element of the learning oral skill in an FL Referring to the importance of pronunciation, Celce-Murcia et al, (2010), stated that pronunciation is the most obvious and unavoidable marker of the language learners‟ proficiency This viewpoint is supported by Ladefoged and Peter (2001), who described pronunciation as the learning key element of oral skills in an FL Finally, Ball and Muller (2011), stressed out the place and role of pronunciation in

the context of learning FL as an integral aspect of communicative competence

These are major problems urged the researcher to concentrate on learner‟s English pronunciation errors, especially errors of final consonant made by Vietnamese high school students in general and the 10th graders at TPHS in particular while they are conversing, delivering speeches or giving presentations Paying constant attention to these errors and attempting to find why they occur

could benefit learners significantly

1.1.1 Theoretical background

Despite their crucial role in the English language, not many Vietnamese learners of English are aware of this Therefore most students fail to

pronounce English final sounds accurately in their speech

Before 1980‟s, pronunciation was the most neglected area not only in language teaching but also in the literature Brown (2000) indicated that out of 1420 articles

in four leading English teaching journals, only the 95 of them investigated

pronunciation matter Accordingly, between 1975 and 1988, the articles related to pronunciation accounted for only 7.6 %

Along with the methodological variations during the history of language teaching, the place of pronunciation has differed dramatically, like „the swings of pendulum‟ Prator (1991) After Grammar-Translation method where there is almost no attention for pronunciation, the era of Direct Method started and the students listened and repeated the teacher‟s models In Audio-lingual period, pronunciation was emphasized clearly Until the late 1960s, the pronunciation was taught explicitly with place and manner of articulation of sounds, visual transcriptions and all the suprasegmental features (Celce-Murcia et al., 2010 and Morley 1991) However, in the early 1970s, the place, importance, teaching method and effectiveness of pronunciation in ESL and EFL curriculums have been interrogated and it has lost its value and even became the only language skill that was completely abandoned entirely from many language programs (Morley, 1991)

From 1980 onward, Morley (1991) stated that communicative approach made the pronunciation prerequisite skill since the “Intelligible pronunciation is an essential component of communicative competence” (p.488) Therefore the researchers started to search different factors that influence second language acquisition of pronunciation (Moyer, 1999)

Furthermore, while studies were densely conducted about the segmental aspects such as consonants and vowels, they have realized how crucial the suprasegmental features such as stress, rhythm, intonation to maintain the healthy conversations According to Celce-Murcia et al, (2010) finally, the research was conducted with a pragmatic aim These studies investigate the pronunciation errors

of the EFL learners in order to portray the current situations of the students in terms of pronunciation development, to what extent the curriculum serves the aim

of pronunciation teaching with the chosen materials like coursebooks Therefore, they aid teachers in preventing these errors from becoming being fossilized and the lessons are designed according to the needs of the learners stated by Hismanoglu (2013)

1.1.2 Practical background

Located in a remote area in Tan Bien District, Tay Ninh Province TPHS is an old one in the district with 31 years of foundation but it does not have enough facilities for teaching English It was founded in 1988 and at that time English was not taught at Tan Bien district The FL that students studied were Russian and French Only two women teachers could teach Russian and a male teacher taught French It was not until 2000 that English introduced to the school and students began learning it as a new FL

Additionally, the students in the area mostly came from large and poor families They did not have good learning environment to study English Consequently, TPHS students‟ English competence is somewhat lower than other schools in the province, which leads to teaching and learning English at the school for certain is not as good as in other places

Although English has been a compulsory subject for many years, students have still not paid enough attention to the subject They invest their time in studying English mainly for the exams not for real-life Low marks obtained in the national examination for the general certificate of high education by the majority of the students might account for the statement

For the time being, students are concentrating on the English subject However, besides other skills, the objective of the test makes teachers and students in this field focus more on grammar, than other skills especially listening and speaking, Very few students likes studying the pronunciation sections That is why pronunciation seems to be very difficult for most of the students because the teachers here virtually ignored teaching pronunciation to the students and perhaps some teachers do not know how to teach this skill correctly Moreover, classes at the school are crowded (from 40 to 44 students per class) and poorly equipped, which makes speaking lessons more difficult and correcting students‟ pronunciation is impossible Therefore, students at TPHS are not good at speaking English, and they often have the wrong pronunciation

Besides that, teachers do not pay much attention to teaching pronunciations because the high school old English textbooks do not involve teaching

pronunciation parts, either When training students in new words, most of them are unwilling to digest pronunciation lessons in part Language Focus, because they find it hard to produce as good and correct pronunciation as the standard English in dictionaries For the teachers and students at the school, pronunciation is a big problem

For these above reasons, the researcher tries his best to identify students‟ English pronunciation errors, particularly final consonant in final positions Some techniques are applied to help students overcome these errors

1.2 Statement of the problem

As evidenced in a growing body of research worldwide, English pronunciation (EP) teaching and learning is largely neglected in English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts (Hismanoglu, 2013) Indeed, EP is not only avoided by teachers (Brown 2000) but also by learners (Gilakjani, 2012), many of whom believe EP to be “so difficult to learn”, and to present many difficulties in learning

In Vietnam, EP shares the same humble status it has in various nations the world over Like other countries in East Asia, Vietnam has historically used

“teacher-centred, book-centred, and grammar translation methods” to teach EFL, where learners showed “a great deal of dependence on the teacher” (Tomlinson 2004), and were positioned to receive knowledge, mainly from their teachers Learning and teaching activities put great emphasis on grammar, reading and writing, while oral skills was ignored by both teachers and learners EP, therefore, became an aspect of language learning that was not important and little time was devoted to it The main aim of learning and teaching at that time was to pass examinations or get certificates The result of this approach was that students might achieve the highest scores in the exams but fail to show their excellence in real life performance

In contemporary EFL in Vietnam, many teachers no longer rely exclusively on grammar translation methods, they apply with other teaching methods and oral communication is being recognized to play an increasingly important role in English speaking world EP has now received more attention as Vietnamese people

know it is a crucial factor that can help contribute to their success in communicating well in English However, EP is not easy to learn, especially by Vietnamese people (Cunningham 2009) Scholars have shown that though Vietnamese learners spend many years learning English in school domestically (or overseas), they still find it hard to be understood by their partners

In an attempt to clarify what makes EP so difficult for Vietnamese people to master, many studies have been conducted, and most of them focus on the phonological differences between English and Vietnamese Nguyen (2006) investigated Vietnamese learners and their difficulties in pronouncing English final consonants; Le (2014c) discovered that Vietnamese learners of English have three common errors when pronouncing English: sound omission (medial and final sounds), sound confusion (e.g t=/ʧ/, tr = /ʧ/ or z/d = /ð/) and sound redundancy (e.g s, z); and Nguyen (2012) found that Vietnamese learners have troubles with both English vowels and consonants Findings from these studies are valuable to all types of Vietnamese learners, whose dreams are to be better at EP, in providing them knowledge about phonological aspects of English Unfortunately, despite the availability of this knowledge, Vietnamese learners of English still record little improvement in learning EP; and, in some recent research, scholars still note that Vietnamese learners encounter problems with it (Le, 2014c) Thus, it raises the question of what exactly hinders Vietnamese learners in learning EP if it is not only EP knowledge that matters

This study therefore aims to investigate difficulties that learners have when producing the English final consonants It is inspired by the argument made by Saraceni (2015) that takes a critical approach to the central dilemma of reconciling language as system with language as social practice The EP errors of final consonant teaching approach in Vietnam has largely focused on English as a system of sounds to be deconstructed and mastered individually, whereas communicative English demands a focus on socially purposeful uses of English in Vietnam Ultimately, the study hopes to shed light on aspects of final sonsonants that could be enable better facilitation in learning and teaching practice

1.3 Aims and objectives of the study

1.3.1 Aims

The study aims to investigate what English pronunciation errors of final consonants are performed by 10th graders at TPHS in Tay Ninh Province and to offer suggestions of solution to obstacles in pronunciation

1.3.2 Objectives

The objectives of the study are:

● to identify how and why students produce errors of English final consonant sounds

● to suggest some implications for teaching the problematic final consonant sounds

1 What English pronunciation errors of final consonants are made by 10thgraders at Tran Phu high school?

2 What are the causes of students‟ errors in pronouncing English final consonants?

1.5 Scope of the study

The study examines the English final consonant sounds experienced in speaking of students in Tay Ninh Province However, due to the limited time and resources, the investigation would be restricted to the tenth graders studying at TPHS, and only to the final consonant sounds in four concrete ways:

(1) Final one-consonant

(2) Final two-consonants cluster

(3) Final three-consonants cluster

(4) Final four-consonants cluster

1.6 Significance of the study

On the contrary to other elements of language (vocabulary, grammar, reading and listening skills etc.), the pronunciation errors of final consonants and the evaluation can be subjective and subject to many factors such as accents, dialects etc Furthermore, testing of pronunciation requires one-to-one interaction between the subject and the tester and testing the pronunciation of a large number of students is a hard task Finding the common errors of students under the effect of various subjective factors and with large number of samples is a challenging task The evaluation of the pronunciation quality of the students requires the elimination

of the effects arising from the evaluator himself Therefore, a single evaluator is not sufficient to evaluate the pronunciation performance of the students Increasing the number of the evaluators is not practical since the evaluator has to evaluate each student one by one and the evaluation of even a small number of students could take several hours Therefore, in general studies about the pronunciation are limited in number and content When it is about the young learners, such studies are much more limited since the material that could be used for evaluation is much more limited

The study presents through the test word list which was intensively seclected from the text book English 10 Specifically, 119 sentences uttered by 120 tenth grade students were digitally recorded and the researcher used the Cambridge Pronouncing Dictionary (18th edition) to rate a total of more than 14,280 audio records in four different categories The testing rubric is carefully designed regarding the official curriculum, official textbook and the proficiency level of the 10th grade students The study presents the most comprehensive survey of the pronunciation performance of high school students in Tan Bien District, Tay Ninh Province

1.7 Summary

The first chapter of the research provides general background, aims and objectives, significance, and scope of the study for investigating common final consonant errors in pronunciations committed by the 10 graders at TPHS in Tay Ninh The general background introduces the overview of the place where the

research is taken place and points out the findings of some previous theses in

Vietnam and the world and finds out the gaps for the thesis

The study identified common errors in four ways of pronouncing English final consonant clusters made by the tenth graders and to find out possible causes of these errors The significance and scope of this research are introduced in this

chapter

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Definitions of related terms

In the field of language teaching, Kreidler (1972), defines pronunciation as the way that language learners pronounce English by imitating sound and rhythm spoken by English native speakers As for Richard and Schmidt (2002), he stated that pronunciation is how sound is created and concerned with and how listeners receive it

The researcher is sure that pronunciation involves producing and receiving the speech of a certain language In the thesis, the researcher only examined English pronunciation errors of final consonants

2.1.2 Consonant

According to Crystal (2008), a consonant is a speech sound where the airstream from the lung is completely blocked (stop), partially blocked (lateral) or where the opening is so narrow that the air escapes with audible friction (fricative) With some consonants (nasals) the airstream is blocked in the mouth but allowed to escape through the nose

2.1.3 Pronunciation norm

Pronunciation norm is the language produced by native speakers of a certain language In this study, English pronunciation norm is of the British English The sounds selected from the Cambridge Pronouncing Dictionary (18th edition) by Cambridge University Press are considered pronunciation norms in analysing the participants‟ pronunciation errors

2.1.4 Pronunciation errors

2.1.4.1 Definition of error

According to Richards et al., (2002), an error is the use of a word, speech act or

grammatical items in such a way it seems imperfect and insignificant which express an incomplete learning of learners Or an error is the use of a linguistic item in a way that native speakers show faults or incomplete learning It is considered by Norrish (1983), error is as a systematic deviation that happens when

a learner has not learned something and consistently gets it wrong

However, the attempts putting the error into context have always gone hand in hand with either language learning and foreign language acquisition processes, Hendrickson (1987), mentions that error is the signal that indicates an actual learning process taken place and that the learner has not mastered yet or shown an unwell-structured competence in the target language

There are two types of error “productive and receptive” Productive errors occur in the language learner's utterances and receptive error is the result of the listener's misunderstanding and the speaker's intentions Competence in a language can be regarded as productive and receptive competence These two competencies

do not develop at the same rate It is not uncommon to hear that students understand a language better than they can speak it or vice versa

Therefore, the researcher defines the pronunciation errors as follows: pronunciation errors are the difficulties that foreign language learners encounter in sensing and creating deviant phonetic units with the standard language

Normally in language teaching, teachers often pay attention to these types of errors In this study, the researcher only shows the way to correct productive errors

2.1.4.2 Error analysis

In the process of development, contrastive linguistics encounters two problems: First, there is no satisfactory explanation for why all the predicted errors do not occur Second, many predicted errors are not found in the actual study Since then, the contrastive linguistics no longer occupies the top position such as the strong version at the beginning but is transformed into a second version, a weak version The second version only acknowledges the abilities to explain some errors due to the impact of the native language by comparison with foreign languages This is the premise for the official introduction of applied linguistics, error analysis in the 1970s, to overcome the limitations of contrastive analysis During the implementation of the study, the researcher used Corder's error analysis model According to Corder (1981), the error analysis process consists of five steps as follows:

(1) Choosing analytical linguistic data: considering the consistency of linguistic data, for example, level, age, gender, mother tongue, the experience of a language learning environment

(2) Defining errors: considering four basic issues Firstly, determining the standard as the basis for identifying errors Secondly, distinguishing competence errors and performance errors Corder thinks that it is only necessary to study competence errors Thirdly, determining whether the errors and overt errors (having a clear deviant standard of surface structure), or covert errors (having the standard form, but the structure meanings are not appropriate in the context) Finally, considering errors according to the standard of language rules or

pragmatics

(3) Error description: Classifying and describing errors according to research

criteria and purposes

(4) Error explanation: The error after being classified, can continue to be compared, contrasted in detail with the standard sound as a basis for finding the

cause of these errors

(5) Error assessment: Considering the seriousness of the error and the effect of

the error on the content of the speech

2.1.4.3 Types of phonetic interference errors

The researcher affirms that it is possible to get single final consonant or final consonant clusters as the endpoint of a word to contrast the levels of incompatibility between the English and Vietnamese systems Since the ending unit for comparison is consonant, there can theoretically be four possible results The researcher tests these four theoretical possibilities and uses them as a framework to classify phonetic interferential types in English-speaking by the tenth graders at TPHS The interferential phenomenon occurs when students identify the final consonant sounds of the target language with the sounds of the source language, and that consonant is created according to the principles of the source language Studying final consonant interference to show how students produce the final consonants of source language according to the principle of the

target language From the phonological perspective Nguyen (2012), classified phonetic interference of the two languages

(1) L1 and L2 have the same final consonants In this case, it is very convenient for students to pronounce

(2) L1 and L2 have similar final consonants In this case, it is very dufficult for both teachers and students to find out the differences between two consonant systems

(3) L1 has the final consonants but L2 does not have In this case, students can distinguish them easily when pronouncing They pronounce correctly or incorrectly the final consonants because the use the similar sound to read

As a teacher of English, the researcher has listed the English pronunciation errors of final consonants by the tenth graders at TPHS into the following four

types of interferences:

(1) Under-differentiation interference

Interference occurs when bilingual individuals confuse the phonemes of the target language, which is different in the source language For example, since Vietnamese does not have English final consonants /-ð/, so students pronounce this

consonant as Vietnamese variants /-ɗ/ or /-r/

(2) Over-differentiation interference

Interference occurs when bilingual individuals point out differential criteria to the source language into the target language In terms of the phonology of a phonetic structure, the English final consonant /-ʧ/ is voiceless palato-alveolar affricate During the process of acquiring English, students pronounced this final

consonant as a voiceless palatal plosive /-k/ in Vietnamese

(3) Re-interpretation interference

Interference occurs when bilingual individuals distinguish phonemes in the target language according to the criteria for the source language phonemic system Vietnamese students do not have the ability to distinguish short - long criteria of the English final consonants For example, they cannot distinguish /-s/ and /-ʃ/ in two words sits /sits/ and wash /wɒ/

(4) Phone substitution interference

Interference occurs when the bilingual individuals replace the target phoneme with a source phoneme The two syllables of the source language and target language may be similar but in practical communication, these words do not allow learners to directly replace a phoneme in the target language with a phoneme in the

source language because two sounds have different distinctions

For example, in terms of phonology, Vietnamese consonant /-ɗ/ and English consonant /-d/ have similar characteristics in phoneme structure which are pronounced with a voiced alveolar plosive While the Vietnamese consonant /-ɗ/ is pronounced with a voiced alveolar implosive Phonetically, the different distinction here is plosive (English) and implosive (Vietnamese) Therefore, when acquiring English, students often tend to perceive and create implosive consonants

as /-ɗ/ in Vietnamese, instead of /-d/ in the English pronunciation consonant

quality

2.1.4.4 Significance of error and error analysis

Understanding the nature of errors and the process of error analysis provide

both theoretical and practical in language teaching

The results obtained during the study and error analysis can confirm or negate

the correctness of the hypothesis that has been proposed

The results obtained through the study and analysis of errors can be used to help the theoretic linguists, anthropologists, sociologists and applied linguists to see more closely the close relationship between languages, literatures and thoughts

in the process of communicating languages and the interactions between them in the process of learning and acquiring languages in general, foreign languages in particular On the other hand, the study and analysis of errors show how different when learning the mother tongue and foreign languages What difficulties would

learners have and how much levels could the applied and theoretic researchers can

help the language learners

The results of studying and analyzing errors of learners before, during and after learning process also help psychological, contrastive linguists verify the theory of movement, the ability to predict those learners' difficulties and errors due to the differences between their mother tongue and the languages they are learning Error analysis also helps researchers better understand and have more evidence about human abilities to acquire languages in conditions where there is no foreign

language environment

Practically

Error analysis is very important for language teachers The learners‟ errors provide teachers with feedback signals on the effectiveness of the programs, curriculum teaching methods and the forms of assessment and evaluation The learner's error is one of the most important pieces of evidence showing the inappropriate points and the knowledge that needs to be corrected and adjusted in

teaching activities

The result of error analyses does not only allow teachers to predict the difficulties of the learners, but also facilitate teachers to see the causes of the error and find possible solutions to help the learners handle the errors and overcome the

difficulties in the language learning process

The errors are very useful sources of information to help textbook authors have

a basis for compiling the programs, curriculums, a system of exercises, contents of appropriate assessment and assessment for each type of student The error of studying results also tell researchers about the learning methods and the foreign language learning strategy of the learners, so that based on promoting the activeness of students, making them able to change actively the creating learning

process into the self-training process

The study of errors and the causes of errors also show that not only the teachers and students need to work hard in teaching and learning foreign languages, but also the educational managers must have appropriate and synchronous policies,

otherwise the error corrections of learners aim at improving the quality of teaching and learning foreign languages meet difficulties in achieving the desired results

2.1.5.Pronunciation mistakes

According to Richard et al., (2002), an error made by a learner when writing or

speaking and which is caused by lack of attention, fatigue, carelessness or some

other aspect of performances A mistake is not systematic

2.1.6 The difference between an error and a mistake

According to Corder (1981), in linguistic terms, informed us that the difference between error and mistake Errors are systematic while mistakes are not It means that those who learn to acquire a language, especially as an FL, make errors as a rule even errors in pronunciation, spelling, grammar, punctuation and so forth In other words, these errors systematically occur since they are part of the process of acquiring the language

Errors may not occur to the advanced and confident students in the process of producing It can be easy to claim that why the students make errors when comparing the students‟ mother tongue to the one being produced, the evidence is that the influence of their pronunciation is the cause of the errors

Theoretically, error and mistake concepts are distinguished as follows:

(1) An error is made by a learner who has incomplete knowledge of the target language while a mistake is made by a learner when writing or speaking but lack

of attention, fatigue, and carelessness

(2) Errors often appear systematically whilst mistakes appear randomly or systematic

non-(3) Errors are related to competence but mistakes are related to performance Learners can find and fix their own mistakes, but they can not identify and correct their errors immediately by themselves For example, when students say

“Nam does his homework every day” Learners do not recognize their

pronunciation errors of the final consonants in the above sentence (/dʌz/ - /h z/ - /'həʊmwɜ:k/) After a period of practicing pronouncing with the help of the

instructor, they can correct these final consonants correctly Thus, first, the learners make mistakes and corrected by the instructor These mistakes often

appear during the communication process, but they can not pronounce them correctly, they become errors If the errors occurred with high frequency the researcher still called it errors, but it appeared less often is called mistakes Distinguishing between error and mistake is only theoretical and no one can create

an absolute boundary between these two concepts For practical purposes, the researcher only focuses on the frequent occurrence and calls it the error Littlewood (1999), suggested that the most reliable criterion is the regular appearance; the best evidence that an error reflected the depth system of learners is difficult to appear regularly in the learner's words When studying the error of a foreign language learner Ellis (2001), stated that learners make not only comprehension errors but also production errors This is an example of the receiving error as follows: a student who was late for school wanted to get permission from the teacher to enter the class Following was the example conversation:

- Student: Teacher! I am sorry for coming late May I come in?

+ Teacher: You are fined

- Student: Thank you so much

Student misread the final consonant “fined” in "You are fined /fand/" and the

final consonant “fine” in "You are fine /fan/" so he answers "Thank you so

much" These types of errors are rarely noticed in the research works of linguistics

It is Corder (1981), who also gave an explanation about this "it's hard to say that the reason why people misread a statement is due to incomplete knowledge of semantic aspects"

2.2 Review of previous studies

Books on phonetics and phonology have been written by many famous linguists in English as well as in Vietnamese “Pronunciation Contrasts in English” was written by Nilsens (1973), showed minimal pairs of final consonants were clearly discussed This book helps teachers of English teaching pronunciations of the words that confuse students when producing “An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English” by Gimson (1980), clearly describes English final consonants and deals with phonetic developments and variants in terms of

transcription of consonants, especially the descriptive consonants of acoustic features In the book “Ngữ Âm Tiếng Việt”, Doan (1998), describes the sound system of Vietnamese final consonants and some rules of final sound distributions There has been a great deal of research on the interference between the first language and the foreign language Lado (1957), presents the contrastive analysis approach, especially the second chapter in his book “Linguistics Across Cultures”, how to compare two-sound systems providing useful information on many aspects

to be considered when comparing the sound systems of two languages In recent years, a great deal of research on English pronunciation has been carried out by students and post-students of English Contrastive analysis of different aspects of pronunciation between English and Vietnamese has been shown such as Vietnamese English learners with assimilation, elision and linkage problems by Huynh and Le (1999) They find the students‟ errors and give a solution to help

them overcome these obstacles

However, these studies do not tackle the problems of the pronunciation of the final consonants by Vietnamese students and do not offer solutions for problems related to connected speech in speaking skills either In an attempt to fill this gap, this thesis is designed to explore these problems In this study, Vietnamese is

chosen as L1 and English is L2 to make it easy to do the research

To be able to speak a foreign language, language learners need to have both

linguistic and sociolinguistic competence, according to Celce-Murcia, et al, (2010) People are from many different language backgrounds can acquire a near-

native pronunciation in English

The most important purpose of pronunciation teaching is to eradicate the traces

of accentS in L1 through pronunciation drills In other words, the teaching of pronunciation is to help learners to develop their abilities in their pronunciation to

be similar to native speakers in L2 In the past, the grammar-translation method was used to teach foreign languages, therefore, the pronunciation was almost neglected and rarely taught Nowadays, the methods of teaching and learning a foreign language in a communicative approach enable the students to communicate more fluently than accurately and master the necessary information Therefore,

pronunciation is an inevitable component in developing listening and speaking skills There is no doubt that all learners, teachers or even methodologists recognize the importance of pronunciation and how to teach and what to teach in

an effective way like other aspects of language teaching According to Fraser (2001), the communicative approach of teaching pronunciation follows in four ways:

(1) Teaching materials are useful for real communication outside the

classroom

(2) The order of teaching is based on what is most important to listeners in communication

(3) Learners are taught to think of communicable speech and pay attention to

the needs of listeners

(4) Focus on good communication between teachers and learners about

pronunciation only

Since the communicative approach has been used in teaching language, the teaching of pronunciation is an integral part of learning and teaching language Avery and Erhlich (1995), showed that the sound system of the native language

can be influenced by learners‟ pronunciation of English:

We will point out that both of the views is completely accurate by considering biological, social-cultural, personality, and linguistic factors which are known to affect the acquisition of the sound system of a second language This will lead to the understanding that while practice in pronunciation may not make perfect, ignoring pronunciation can be a great disservice to the EFL students

In addition to this, the teacher‟s role is very important for learners The teachers help them to perceive the sounds in terms of their native language and guide them to imitate the new sounds The teachers must be aware of the students‟

pronunciation difficulties to help them to improve their speaking skills

The important aspects of the teacher‟s role in pronunciation teaching were mentioned by Kenworthy (1993) He stated that if teachers have good pronunciation, they can persuade learners to consider the importance of

pronunciation in communication and demonstrate concern for their progress in it

Having a good pronunciation skill is very important in the communicative approach for teaching English as a foreign language because pronunciation belongs to the core of a communicative approach If the learners need to have the standard of spoken English language, they must acquire the standard English sound system Besides, the teachers of English should equip themselves a sufficient knowledge of pronunciation It is clear that the teachers of pronunciation address students how to produce meaningfully the authentic-sounding intonation, stress, pitch, phonetic and phonological terms Learning and teaching English, speaking like native speakers or near-native speakers are very difficult and what accent to teach for learners is even more difficult Kenworthy (1993), insists that the great majority of learners can have a very practical purpose for learning English and derive no particular benefit from acquiring a native-like

pronunciation

For nonnative speakers of English, teaching pronunciation should be taught Much of the concern about teaching pronunciation has centered on especially the exact pronunciation of final consonant sounds However, if the goal of teaching learners is to enable them to communicate in English, the researcher can see that communicative effectiveness depends not only on the pronunciation of these final consonant sounds but on being intelligible speakers Being able to use the rhythm and intonation of English will enable speakers to be much more intelligible than being able to pronounce final consonants perfectly While it is not unusual for teachers who are not native speakers of English to feel apprehensive about

teaching pronunciation, this apprehension can be diminished and eliminated

To be educated about teaching pronunciation in its broader scope can make a big difference in a teacher‟s feeling of confidence Besides, nonnative speakers of English typically have an advantage over native speakers in that they can learn to perceive and manipulate rhythm and intonation more easily than native speakers,

for whom these are unconscious features, (Wrong, 1993)

Droff (1998), the model for pronunciation should be from standard educated English is spoken in southern Britain or BBC pronunciation is the best choice because of its prevalence in course books It is clear that teaching pronunciation

may cause many problems for the learners He points out some common problems

that are likely to occur:

Difficulty in pronouncing sounds that do not exist in the student‟s own

language

Confusion of similar sounds

Difficulty in pronouncing final consonant clusters

Another aspect of teaching pronunciation is that the teachers should pay more attention to the accuracy and then the fluency Tench (1993) claims that the main aim of teaching English pronunciation is the degree of accuracy and fluency which

is appropriate to the level of intelligibility that the teacher has set for his learners Accuracy is very important for learners to listen to or speak to someone in the same way as fluency is Lack of fluency and accuracy can place quite a strain on the listener Fluent pronunciation is the smooth joining of the phonemes and larger

elements at an acceptable speed of delivery

2.3 Theoretical background

2.3.1 Background to English final consonants

According to Roach (2010), the English final consonant system is arranged as

follows:

2.3.1.1 Final single consonants

There are 25 consonants in the English system, except these five consonants:

/w/, /r/, /ʔ/, /j/ và /h/ because these ones do not appear in final places in the British

standard English, so we have only 20 consonants are shown in Table 1 /p/, b/,

m/, f/, v/, θ/, ð/, t/, d/, n/, ʧ/, ʤ/, /s/, z/, l/, ʃ/, ʒ/, k/, g/ and ŋ/

/-Table 2.1 English final consonants

Bilabial Labio

dental Dental Alveolar

Palato alveolar Velar

- Consonant /-b/: /-b/ is shown in the same pronunciation as the consonant /-p/,

but it is voiced For example: club /klʌb/, job /ʤəʊb/ or crab /kræb/

(2) Consonant /-t/: /-t/ is voiceless alveolar plosive, for example: cute /kju:t/, hat /hæt/ or boot /but/

- Consonant /-d/: /-d/ is shown in the same pronunciation as the consonant /-t/, but it is voiced, for example: mad /mæd/, bed /bed/ or head /hed/

(3) Consonant /-k/: /-k/ is voiceless velar plosive, for example: rack /ræk/, bike /baik/ or cake /kek/

- Consonant /-g/: /-g/ is shown in the same pronunciation as the consonant /-k/,

but it is voiced, for example: flag /flæg/, bag /bæg/ or frog /frɒg/

(4) Consonant /-f/: /-f/ is voiceless labiodental fricative, for example: leaf /lif/, calf /kɑf/ or chief /ʧif/

- Consonant /-v/: /-v/ is shown in the same pronunciation as the consonant /-f/, but it is voiced, for example: live /lv/, love /lʌv/ or prove /pruv/

(5) Consonant /-θ/: /-θ/ is voiceless dental fricative, for example: bath /bɑ:θ/, cloth /kɒθ/ or math /mæθ/

- Consonant /-ð/: /-ð/ has the same pronunciation as the consonant /-θ/, but it is voiced, for example: breathe /brið/, loathe /ləʊð/ or seethe /sið/

(6) Consonant /-s/: /-s/ is voiceless alveolar fricative, for example: peace /pis/, sentence /sentəns/ or produce /prədju:s/

- Consonant /-z/: /-z/ has the same pronunciation as the consonant /-s/ but it is voiced, for example: rise /raz/, buzz /bʌz/ or quiz /kwz/

(7) Consonant /-ʃ/: /-ʃ/ is voiceless post-alveolar fricative, for example: wish

- Consonant /-ʤ/: /-ʤ/ has the same pronunciation as the consonant /-ʧ/, but it

is voiced, for example: bridge /briʤ/, cage /keʤ/ or edge /eʤ/

(9) Consonant /-m/: /-m/ is voiced bilabial nasal, for example: name /nem/, dream /drim/ or bloom /blum/

(10) Consonant /-n/: /-n/ is voiced alveolar nasal, for example: man /mæn/, can

2.3.1.2 Final clusters of two consonants

English syllables can also end with a cluster of two consonants There are 53 of two-final consonant clusters: /-pθ/, /-pt/, /-ps/, /-bd/, /-bz/, /-mp/, /-mf/, /-mt/, /-md/, /-mz/, /-fθ/, /-ft/, /-fs/, /-vd/, /-vz/, /-θs/, /-θd/, /-ðd/, /-ðz/, /-tθ/, /-ts/, /-dz/, /-nθ/, /-nt/, /-nd/, /-ns/, /-nz/, /-nʧ/, /-nʤ/, /- ʧt/, /-ʒd/, /-sk/, /-sp/, /-st/, /-zd/, /-lp/, /-

lf/, lθ/, lt/, ld/, ls/, lz/, lk/, ʃt/, kt/, ks/, gd/, gz/, ŋθ/, ŋt/, ŋd/, ŋz/, /-ŋk/ For examples, depth /depθ/, except /ksept/, robbed /rɒbd/

/-2.3.1.3 Final clusters of three consonants

English syllables can also end with a cluster of three consonants There are 39

of three-final consonant clusters: pθs/, pts/ pst/, mps/, mft/, mfs/, mpt/, mst/, /-fθs/, /-fts/, /-tθs/, /-dst/, /dθs/, /-nts/, /-ndz/, /-nʧt/, /-nʤd/, /-sts/, /-lmd/, /-lmz/, /-lpt/, /-lps/, /-lbz/, /-lfθ/, /-lvd/, /-lθs/, /-lnz/, /-ldz/, /-lʧt/, /-lʤd/, /-l∫t/, /-lks/, /- lkt/, /-ksθ/, /-kts/, /-kst/, /-ŋks/, /-ŋθs/, /-ŋts/ For examples, scripts /skrpts/, lamps /læmps/, gifts /gifts/

/-2.3.1.4 Final clusters of four consonants

English syllables can also end with a cluster of four consonants There are 7 of four-final consonant clusters in English: /-mpts/, /-ntst/, /-lfθs/, /-ltst/, /-lkts/, /-ksθs/, /-ksts/ For examples, twelfths /twelfs/, waltzed /wltst/, mulcts /mlkts/

2.3.2 Background to Vietnamese final consonants

According to Doan (1998), the Vietnamese final consonant system has 6 final consonants: /-p/, /-t/, /-k/, /-m/, /-n/, /-ŋ/ and 2 semi-consonants: /-w/, /-j/, which are arranged as follows:

Table 2.2 Vietnamese final consonants

bilabial Alveolar palatal velar

(1) Consonant /-p/: /-p/ is voiceless bilabial plosive, for example: lớp

(2) Consonant /-t/: /-t/ is voiceless alveolar plosive, for example: tốt

(3) Consonant /-k/: /-k/ is voiceless velar plosive, for example: húc

(4) Consonant /-m/: /-m/ is voiced bilabial nasal, for example: tâm

(5) Consonant /-n/: /-n/ is voiced alveolar nasal, for example: cần

(6) Consonant /-ŋ/: /-ŋ/ is voiced velar nasal, for example: thang

(7) Semi-consonant /-w/: /-w/ is voiced velar lateral approximant, for example: hầu

(8) Semi-consonant /-j/: /-j/ is voiced palatal approximant, for example: hái According to Doan (1998), Vietnamese has 8 final consonants The group of voiceless plosive consonants includes: /-p/, /-t/, /-k/, phonetic symbols presented [-

p], [-t] and [-k] respectively The group of voiced nasal consonants includes: m/, /-n/, /-/, phonetic symbols presented [-m], [-n] and [-] respectively From the viewpoint of phonological analysis, two approximant consonants /-w/ and /-j/ are considered semi-consonant because they cannot stand before any other consonants in Vietnamese syllable structure On the other hand, the two approximant consonants /-w/ and /-j/ When standing at the final place they are pronounced less closing than at the initial syllable, so they are also considered the two semi-vowels and are denoted by respectively /u/ and /i/ We also agree to use the first way to facilitate during the research These two final consonants are linked very boundedly to the main vowels The final consonant /-j/ never combines with the preceding line vowels /i/, /ɪə/, /e/ and //, while the final consonant /-w/ never combines with the round lip vowels /u/, /ʊə/, /o/ and /ɔ/

/-2.3.3 Similarities and differences in English and Vietnamese final consonant systems

Consonants can be defined from the phonetic and phonological point of view

In terms of phonetics, according to Crystal (2008), consonants are sounds created

by closing completely or part of the articulate component, making the air going out

is completely hindered or partially obstructed From the phonological point of view, he states that consonants are units that function as the final sounds, including for single consonants and consonant clusters The articulation of consonants can be described based on three characteristics: the manner of

articulation, the place of articulation and the voice quality to identify and

distinguish different consonant units

2.3.3.1 Manner of articulation

The manner of articulation refers to the vertical relationship between the active articulator and the passive articulator The active articulator is the active part that reaches nearly the passive part to prevent air from escaping and then expands to

allow air to escape Based on the manner of articulation, people use the articulation

to pronounce a certain sound correctly and final consonants are classified as follows: the plosive, nasal, affricate, fricative, approximant and lateral

approximant consonants

2.3.3.2 Place of articulation

The place of articulation refers to a horizontal relationship among the articulate components It determines the specific place between the highest point of the active articulate component (usually somewhere of the part of the tongue, and

sometimes the lower lip) with the passive articulate component Based on the

articulate components, the place of the final consonant articulations are divided

into categories: bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, palato-alveolar and velar

2.3.3.3.Voice quality

In the International Phonetic Table, the voice quality of final consonants is shown directly Accordingly, a pair of consonants appear in the same manner and place of articulations but they are different in the voice quality: the vocal cord on the left has voicelessness while the right vocal cord has a voice When

pronouncing a voiceless consonant, the vocal cord does not vibrate and vice versa

To facilitate contrastive analysis, we describe the English and Vietnamese final consonant system on the same table as follows:

Table 2.3 English and Vietnamese final consonants

Bilabial Labio

dental Dental Alveolar

Palato alveolar Velar

Depending on the Table 2.3 bout the characteristics of the EVFCS, we find

that between these two systems there are some similarities in the manner of articulation as well as the place of articulation

(1) Similarities in the manner of articulation

The EVFCS both have final voiceless plosive consonants such as /-p/, /-t/, /-k/, and voiced nasal consonants such as /-m/, /-n/ và /-ŋ/

(2) Similarities in the place of articulation

Both English and Vietnamese have the final consonants that are distinguished from each other according to the relevant criteria: bilabial, alveolar and velar Thus, in terms of phonology, the students at TPHS have the advantage of pronouncing English syllables with one of the following six consonants taking up the final syllable role: /-p/, /-t/, /-k/, /-m/, /-n/ and /-ŋ/

(3) Similarities in the voice of quality

Both Vietnamese and English students have the similar way to pronounce these final consonants /-p/, /-t/, /-k/, /-m/, /-n/ and /-ŋ/

2.3.3.5 Differences

(1) The differences in quantity

Depending on the Table 2.3 The English final consonant system has 20 and

Vietnamese has 6 final consonants Thus, in English has 14 more final consonants than in Vietnamese Besides that, in English has final consonants clusters as the

researcher presents in the section (2.3.1.2, 2.3.1.3, 2.3.1.4)

(2) The differences in the place of articulation

The manner of articulations between EVFCS, there is no similarity in its own criteria system as well as the degree of participation of different criteria These differences can be indicated as follows:

The English final consonants system has plosive consonants, opposing each other according to the voiced and voiceless criteria such as: /-p/ and /-b/, /-t/ and /-d/ On the contrary, the Vietnamese final consonants system does not have this opposition because it does not have voiced plosive consonants /-b/, /-d/ and /-g/ The Vietnamese final consonant system does not have any groups of phonemes, which are distinguished according to the criteria of palato-alveolar affricate consonants, opposing to the criteria of voiced and voiceless palato-alveolar affricate consonants such as /-ʧ/ and /-ʤ/

The Vietnamese final consonant system has absolutely no series of phonemes that are distinguished according to the criteria of labiodental fricative consonants /-f/ and /-v/, dental fricative consonants /-θ/ and /-ð/, alveolar fricative sounds /-s/ and /-z/, palato-alveolar fricative consonants /-ʃ/ and /-ʒ/

(3) Differences in the manner of articulation

The place of articulation between EVFCS, there is no similarity in its own criteria system as well as the degree of participation of different criteria These differences can be shown as follows:

The English final consonant system has the groups of dental sound /-θ/ and /-ð/, palato-alveolar sound /-ʃ/ and /-ʒ/, while the Vietnamese language does not have these consonants Additionally, the English final consonant system has clusters from 2 to 4 consonants In contrast, the Vietnamese final consonant system does not have consonant clusters

Thus, the EVFCS are very different in both quantity, the manner of articulation and the place of articulation We predict that students have difficulties when pronouncing English, especially final consonants

2.3.4 Waveform and spectrogram analysis

According to Paul and David (2013), a waveform is an image that represents an audio signal or recording It shows the changes in amplitude over a certain amount

of time The amplitude of the signal is measured on the y-axis (vertically), while time is measured on the x-axis (horizontally)

A spectrogram is a visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies in a sound

or other signal as they vary with time or some other variable Spectrograms are sometimes called spectral waterfalls, voiceprints, or voicegrams

In this study, students' recording programs display waveforms and spectrogram to give us a visual pictures of what has been recorded The syllables of the final English consonants emitted are analyzed in great detail on the illustrations in the appendices The researcher only uses this software to illustrate the pictures of the sounds start and finish, not the in-depth analysis of the features of the Speech analyzer software

2.4 Conceptual framework

Nguyen (2012), interference is a consequence of direct contact between languages In other words, interference is a phenomenon that arises in a polyglot society

In this thesis, the researcher has used the following analytical models

a The final consonants of the source and target languages are exactly the same

In this case, the source language can be utilized and it is very easy for learners to produce

b The final consonants of the source and target languages are only the same in some parts This is the hard part to find the subtle differences between the two languages

For example, both English and Vietnamese have the final consonant /k/ but English is plosive and Vietnamese is implosive

c On the other hand, this thesis also analyzes the influence of Vietnamese pronunciation of dialects of students in Tay Ninh Province

2.4 Summary

This chapter has been reviewed including prior research, the background to the pronunciation teaching as well as theoretical backgrounds related to the thesis Although there are many books and studies of final consonant error fields, each book and study has special and different qualities There has been a summary of the main points of pronunciation teaching The teaching of pronunciation in the final consonants has played a crucial role in learning and teaching language since the communicative approach was applied The basic foundation of phonetic and phonology knowledge has helped the learners to acquire a new language more easily Once learners want to master a new language, they need to have a well-equipped knowledge of pronunciation This makes teachers of English pay more attention to teaching pronunciation