Teaching English pronunciation in Vietnam : Problems and possible solutions Table of content Part A. Introduction Part B. Development 1. Pronunciation and its position in learning English 2. English Phonic system versus Vietnamese one 2.1 English sound system 2.2 Vietnamese sound system 3. State of teaching English pronunciation in Vietnam 4. Problems of English pronunciation encountered by Vietnamese 5. Pedagogical implications Part C. Conclusion References Part A – Introduction By Phung Thi Lam- CHK18- Saigon 1 Teaching English pronunciation in Vietnam : Problems and possible solutions English is proved to be a vehicle for international communication. In order to meet the demands of modern society, language teachers should not focus on reciting but should teach from their own understanding of language learning and help learners gain more competence with confidence. However, it is not a easy work, especially teaching pronunciation. It isn't difficult to appreciate the reasons for this: in spoken interaction, pronunciation is often the first barrier to intelligibility, and uncertainty about pronunciation is often a major reason for learners' lack of confidence in speaking. It is obvious that all English language teachers are pronunciation teachers. Nobody can speak a language without pronouncing, and even if teachers ignore pronunciation in the classroom, they give the message that their learners' pronunciation is satisfactory, or that pronunciation doesn't matter. Many teachers would like to offer their learners more help and support with pronunciation, but feel that they lack the necessary knowledge and skill, or that their own pronunciation is not sufficiently good. In other words, pronunciation is an area where teachers as well as learners often suffer from lack of confidence. As a matter of fact, in Vietnam, many English teachers avoid teaching pronunciation, not because it is not necessary, but because they have little or no information on the subject. Proper pronunciation is essential when learning English as a second or foreign language however; the main goal is to be understood, after all, and if ship comes out as sheep, (or worse) this purpose may be quickly defeated. In this humble study, I would like to present an overview of state of teaching and learning English pronunciation in secondary schools in Vietnam and some implications from pedagogical approach Part B – Development 1. Pronunciation and its position in learning English Everybody wants to be able to speak English like a native speaker, but English pronunciation is always a big problem to ESL learners. Bad English pronunciation may confuse people even if you used advanced English grammar. We can use simple words and simple grammar structures that make people understand you but we cannot use "simple pronunciation". On the other hand, good English pronunciation will make people understand you easily and be willing to listen to you! You will say that we learn English just for communication, although we speak English with a strong accent, native speakers can understand us, that's enough. But you know it is not pleased to listen to the bad pronunciation! Also, one will change the channel when a journalist covers a person who speaks English without good pronunciation, because that make him/her feel uncomfortable although he/her can't pronounce English fluently as well. By Phung Thi Lam- CHK18- Saigon 2 Teaching English pronunciation in Vietnam : Problems and possible solutions 2. English Phonic system versus Vietnamese one 2.1 English sound system Certainly, there is a relationship between the English sound system and the English spelling system. However, the relationship between sound and spelling is neither straightforward nor obvious. If it were, many of us would spell more accurately than we do. What is obvious is that the sounds of English are not the same as the letters of English. Although it is obvious in an intellectual sense that sounds and letters are not the same thing, most students will on occasion make errors through mistaking sounds for letters. The patterning found in the sound system of English is a reflection of the physiology of the vocal tract. The patterns of the English sound system make sense in terms of how sounds are made (and, particularly, for vowels, how sounds are perceived). Once the English sound system is understood, it becomes easier to make sense out of the spelling system of English and it becomes possible to make some sense out of the problems all students have learning to spell and out of the problems speakers of other languages have in learning to pronounce English. Consonants are described in terms of three dimensions: whether or not the vocal cords are vibrating—voicing; where the sound is being made—the place of articulation; and how the sound is being made—the manner of articulation. All three are really just descriptions of what happens as to the flow of air as a consonant is produced. Diagram of the vocal tract By Phung Thi Lam- CHK18- Saigon 3 Teaching English pronunciation in Vietnam : Problems and possible solutions showing the places of articulation Voicing. If the vocal cords are vibrating when the air flow passes through the larynx (in the voice box), the sound is described as voiced; if not, the consonant is described as voiceless. It is possible to hear the difference between voiced and voiceless consonants. Cover your ears and pronounce a long, drawn-out /z/; the vibration in your ears, head, and so on results from the vibration of the vocal cords. Now, still covering your ears pronounce a long, drawn-out /s/. There is no parallel vibration; this sound is voiceless. Place of articulation. Consonants are made by constricting the air flow as it moves through the vocal tract—through the throat and mouth. The place of articulation is the place where this constriction of the air flow occurs. The horizontal row of labels across the top of the consonant chart lists the places in the mouth at which the air flow is constricted in forming various English consonants. The labels themselves are just names of the articulators involved in the constriction. The row of labels begins with the lips at the front of the mouth and ends at the voice box. Once the names of parts of the mouth become familiar, the names of most of the terms makes sense. bilabial: bi- 'two' + labi- 'lip' + -al 'adjective marking suffix'. Sounds made with two lips. labiodental: labio- 'lip' + dent- 'tooth' + -al. Sounds made with the upper teeth and the lower lip. interdental: inter- 'between' + dent- 'tooth' + -al. Sounds made between the teeth. alveolar: alveol- + -ar. Sounds made at the alveolar ridge, the bumpy ridge just behind the teeth. palatal: palat- + -al. Sounds made behind the alveolar ridge. velar: vel- + -ar. Sounds made at the velum. glottal: glott- + -al. Sounds made at the voice box, that is, at the glottis. Manner of articulation. The manner of articulation is the way in which the sound is produced. The various labels for manner of articulation describe how the air flow is modified. In most cases, the reason for the term is fairly obvious. stops: If the air flow is totally constricted, that is, stopped, the consonant is described as a stop. fricatives: If the air flow is constricted enough to cause friction, but not completely stopped, the consonant is described as a fricative. By Phung Thi Lam- CHK18- Saigon 4 Teaching English pronunciation in Vietnam : Problems and possible solutions All but two of the fricatives occur both before and after vowels. The /h-/ only occurs before a vowel and the /-z/ only occurs after a vowel. The large number of clusters often presents a problem for learners of English who speak languages which have fewer clusters than English—many languages of the world. Sometimes the learner's language has both sounds in the cluster, but does not have the combination. Learners who have problems pronouncing final consonant clusters will have problems with the words in the last row of the clusters exercise. Although the spelling of the past tense marker -ed misleadingly suggests that all these words end with a vowel plus a consonant, listening quickly to the sounds makes it clear that this is false; they all end in consonant clusters. Notice that difficulty pronouncing these final clusters would interfere with the learner's ability to mark the past tense. Vowels English is fairly rich in vowels, having at least seven short vowels and seven long vowels. The vowel sounds themselves are described in terms of tongue height and front-to- back in the mouth. The high front vowel /iy/ is pronounced about where the /y/ is pronounced, while the high back vowel /uw/ is pronounced about where the /w/ is pronounced. There is a great deal of individual and dialectal variation in the pronunciation of vowels —something that becomes clear once learners begin to do the transcription exercises. front central back high long ('tense') iy, yuw uw short ('lax' ) I (=È) U (=Ë) mid long ('tense') ey ow short ('lax') E ´ O, Oy (long) low long ('tense') Ay, Aw short ('lax') œ A Chart of English vowel phonemes (modified IPA) By Phung Thi Lam- CHK18- Saigon 5 Teaching English pronunciation in Vietnam : Problems and possible solutions Short and long vowels. Short vowels and long vowels are in contrast. For our purposes, this simply means that the long vowels and the short vowels sound different and, as a consequence, are spelled different. The pronunciation of the short (or lax) vowels is essentially the same throughout the length of the vowel. Technically, these are monothongs—one-sound vowels. The seven short vowels are /I, E, A, O, ´, œ and U/. The difference between /A/ and /O/ is ignored in the transcription exercises because this difference has disappeared for many speakers of English, and, in any case, the distinction is limited relevance to English language teachers. The pronunciation of the long (or tense) vowels begins with one pronunciation and ends with another. Technically, these are diphthongs—two-part vowels. The eight long vowels are /Ay, Oy, and aw/ as well as /iy, ey, ow, uw, and yuw/. Notice that /Ay/, for example, begins with the vowel /A/ and then moves in the direction of /y/ (essentially where /iy/ is found); similarly, /Aw/ begins with the vowel /A/ and then moves in the direction of /w/ (essentially in the direction of /uw/). The five vowels /iy, ey, ow, uw, and yuw/ are also long vowels as well as diphthongs. The vowel /-´/, sometimes called a schwa, is an extremely common English vowel. When stress falls somewhere else in the word, other vowels may be reduced to a schwa. For instance, the /œ/ in graph, becomes a /´/ in photography. From a teacher's perspective, what is crucial to learn is which vowel sounds are long and which are short. The difference between the short and the long vowels is central to the English spelling system. In the English spelling system, the short vowel sounds are overwhelmingly spelled with a single letter. Except for /yuw/, the long vowels are usually spelled with two letters. bilabial labio- inter- alveolar palatal velar glottal dental dental stops: voiceless p t k ? voiced b d g affricates: voiceless c& (=ts&) voiced j& (=dz&) fricatives: By Phung Thi Lam- CHK18- Saigon 6 Teaching English pronunciation in Vietnam : Problems and possible solutions voiceless f Q s s& h- voiced v D z -z& nasals: m n -N liquids: lateral l retroflex r semi-vowel/ consonants: w y w (= glides) Chart of English consonant phonemes nasals: nas- 'nose' + -al. Nasals are characterized by air flow through the nose. Although the other two nasals occur both before and after vowels, the /-N/ only occurs after a vowel. affricates: ad- 'to; toward' + fric- cf. 'friction'. On the chart, the affricates have been deliberately placed between the stops and the fricatives. Notice that both the affricates can be transcribed in more than one way; that is, /j/ can also be written as /dz/. The two-symbol representation best shows the phonetics: an affricate starts off as a stop and finishes as a fricative. If you were to tape record one of the affricates and then play it back slowing down the tape recorder, at some point the affricate would impressionistically break into two; that is, at some point it would sound not like one sound but two. The 'stop + fricative' character of affricates helps explain the substitutions that speakers of other languages often make when learning English; for example, the French speaker's frequent substitution of the fricative /z&/ for the English affricate /dz&/. The 'stop + fricative' character of affricates also helps explain the "extra" stops that English speakers add when they first learn to transcribe the sounds of English. For example, beginners sometimes transcribe a word like much as /m´tc&/ rather than as /m´c&/; here, the /t/ is the /t/ in the affricate /c&/ (=/ts&/). In words spelled with a -t- such as witch (transcribed as /wIc&/), the spelling makes the tendency for beginners to add an "extra" /-t-/ even stronger. Stress or Emphasis The syllable is pronounced louder, longer, more strongly than usual. English has two or three degrees of stress – primary, secondary, and tertiary (in some dialects). The word “pràcticálity” has secondary stress on the “à” and primary stress on the “á”. By Phung Thi Lam- CHK18- Saigon 7 Teaching English pronunciation in Vietnam : Problems and possible solutions Tone Tone can be high, low, middle, raising, falling, etc. In English, tone is purely pitch related, and is not necessarily related with stress – although it often is. Unlike Vietnamese which is famous for their tone diversity. Like stress, tone is usually indicated by accents over vowels, so that “à” is low tone, “ǎ” is rising tone, and so on 2.2 Vietnamese sound system In Vietnamese, the spelling-pronunciation correspondence is quite straightforward; that is, apart from a few exceptions, there is a one-to-one correspondence Since learners will encounter both the written and spoken language. From the beginning of the course, they may impose a Vietnamese reading/pronunciation on English words. Any regularities of spelling- pronunciation correspondence will be pointed out and discussed, since the two languages are quite different in that respect. The table below shows the problematic vowel and consonant phonemes of each language, paired as the average Vietnamese speaker would perceive (and consequently produce) them. English phonemes are presented as in Brown (1990: 35), The classification of the Vietnamese language has been disputed for a long time. However, at present it is widely believed that Vietnamese belongs to the Mon-Khmer language family, which is spoken throughout much of Southeast Asia, primarily in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, but also in Thailand, Burma, the Malay Peninsula, and the Nicobar Islands in the Andaman Sea (Ruhlen 1987:148). At present, there are about 156 Mon-Khmer languages (Grimes 1996). In this section, three major systems of sounds, consonants, vowels, and tones in the Vietnamese will be examined. The syllables of Vietnamese are similar to those in English, and they can be generalized as (C1)V(C2) with a distinctive tone on V(C2), as follows: Initial Tone Final (rhyme) Onset Nucleus Coda Figure 1. Syllabic structure in Vietnamese. Consonants By Phung Thi Lam- CHK18- Saigon 8 Teaching English pronunciation in Vietnam : Problems and possible solutions There are 19 consonants in Vietnamese. These consonants were listed in Table 1in IPA format. These consonants were represented slightly different in Vietnamese orthography. In addition to the 19 consonants, other dialects may contain retroflex consonants /tr/, /S/, and /Z/ (Nguyen 1997:20). Table 1. Vietnamese consonants Glottal stop /?/ was not included in the consonant system of Table 1. However, according to Thompson (1987:21), glottal stop could be recognized as a phoneme. The voicing of [b] and [d] are predictable allophones of /p/ and /t/ respectively, following initial /?/ (Thompson 1987:21). For example, [b] occurs in initial only, and [p] in final only. However, Nguyen (1997:20) have pointed out that /p/ nowadays can also occurs at the beginning of several loanwords from French, such as pin ‘battery,’ pan ( hư hỏng ) and po-ke ‘poker.’ Anyway, brief descriptions (based on Thompson 1987) of these 19 consonants will be given in the next paragraphs for readers’ better understanding of the consonant system in Vietnamese. Fortis stops Fortis stops in Vietnamese are voiceless /p t c k /, and voiced /b d/. They are characterized by relatively strong articulation. They are exceedingly fortis when they are at the beginning of syllables. On the other hand, at the end of syllables they are about midway between the By Phung Thi Lam- CHK18- Saigon 9 Teaching English pronunciation in Vietnam : Problems and possible solutions extremes of fortis and lenis. Voiceless stops can occur in initial or final positions, but voiced stops occur only initially. When voiceless stops occur in final positions, they are unreleased. Vietnamese examples of the fortis stops are provided below (tone marks in the following examples are omitted). /p/ bilabial voiceless stop. e.g. pin ‘battery’ tiep ‘welcome’ /b/ bilabial voiced stop, preglottalized and often imploded. This sound is similar to /b/ in English, but not exactly the same; it is “much more larynx lowering” in Vietnamese (Edmondson 2000, personal conversation). /b/ in Vietnamese is always preceded by glottal stop, which is seldom released before the beginning of the /b/, with the result of that a partial vacuum is created between the throat and the lips; when the lip closure is released this vacuum is often still strong enough so that a little air is sucked in at the lips, giving the sound its characteristic strangeness to non-native ears (Thompson 1987:24). e.g. biet ‘know’ ba ‘three’ Vowels Comparing to English, Vietnamese vowels are much more complicated and difficult. The Vietnamese vocalic system was divided into upper and lower vocalics (Thompson 1987:19). The upper vocalics include six vowels, /i µ u e F o/. They are formed relatively high in the mouth and characterized by a three-way position (front, back unrounded, and back rounded). Lower vocalics include five vowels, /E Œ a A/. They are formed relatively low and characterized by a two-way position distinction (front, back). By Phung Thi Lam- CHK18- Saigon 10 [...]... combined with certain other features of voice production (Thompson 1987:20) 3 State of teaching English pronunciation in Vietnam Language learners tend to perceive the sounds of a foreign language “in terms of categories in their native language" (Brown, 1975: 98), and to segment the stream of speech according to their L1 habits Consequently, what the teaching of pronunciation entails is, first, helping... systematic contrastive use of sounds, which sequences of sounds occur in particular languages, how sequences of sounds are modified in connected speech, and which patterns of stress, rhythm and intonation occur in English and other languages 2 Predicting and identifying the aspects of pronunciation which are problematic for particular learners, drawing if possible on contrastive awareness of English and the... and what the movement of the edges of these vowels tells them about the consonants in the vicinity'' (Brown, 1990:161) I did not mention the role of context since learners (particularly beginners) are much less able to use “top-down'' processing when ‘decoding' rapid speech and rely more on “phonetic cues'' Therefore, teaching the pronunciation of isolated sounds or citation forms of words does not seem... not seem enough to ensure effective production and (particularly) comprehension of natural speech Let take the set of English course books published by Educational Publish House into consideration If we breakdown of exercises according to the pronunciation elements they tackle, we will learn the number of exercises dealing with individual sounds - consonants - vowels Stress Intonation Others English... problem Students are often acutely self-aware and are reluctant to experiment with sounds for fear of getting them 'wrong', and have a general lack of fluency Another problem is cultural identity In this case, we do not wish to breach the fortification, but merely to create a path for the flow of information Many people do not want to eradicate their accent; it is a strong indicator of their culture and... the linguistic category of register, which includes most prominently voice quality as a contrastive feature Although Vietnamese is not a classic register language, voice quality as well as pitch phenomena are both important in the tone system of Vietnamese (Edmondson 1997:1) There are six tones in modern northern Vietnamese, i.e sac, nga, ngang, huyen, hoi, and nang They are composed of contours of. .. consonant sounds (excluding 'th' sounds, which are often difficult for learners of English, but unimportant for intelligibility), consonant clusters (except at the ends of words), contrasts between long and short vowels, and tonic stress Features which are less important for intelligibility, such as precise vowel qualities, weak forms, and features of connected speech and pitch movements would not be... and sociolinguistic factors related to the role of English as an international language 4 Distinguishing between aspects of pronunciation which are important for learners to acquire in their own speech, and aspects which are perhaps only important for recognition purposes in facilitating listening comprehension 5 Implementing effective procedures for pronunciation teaching, drawing on the range of low-... native speaker's Discussions of the pronunciation of English as an international language have also emphasised the fact that native-like pronunciation is also unnecessary for many learners, and may indeed not be wanted It has been suggested that intelligibility is a more appropriate objective than conformity to any pre-existing model Proposals have been made for an agenda of high-priority features which... 25% 33.4% 4 Problems of English pronunciation encountered by Vietnamese Mother tongue influence Among a lots of problems, mother tongue influence might be regarded as the primary one in teaching and learning a foreign language in the following ways: 1) When there is a sound in English, which is absent from the Vietnamese sound inventory, or vice versa, learners might be incapable of producing or even . make sense out of the spelling system of English and it becomes possible to make some sense out of the problems all students have learning to spell and out of the problems speakers of other languages. patterning found in the sound system of English is a reflection of the physiology of the vocal tract. The patterns of the English sound system make sense in terms of how sounds are made (and, particularly,. just names of the articulators involved in the constriction. The row of labels begins with the lips at the front of the mouth and ends at the voice box. Once the names of parts of the mouth