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Nghiên cứu được tiến hành nhằm tìm ra những lỗi phát âm thường gặp khi phát âm phụ âm tiếng Anh của người học tại trung tâm Anh ngữ Worldlink. Kết quả cho thấy học sinh thường mắc các lỗi thay thế âm, bỏ âm và thêm âm vào các âm tiết đầu, giữa và cuối của một từ. Lỗi thường gặp nhất là lỗi thay thế âm xảy ra với các âm tắc xát, âm xát và âm bên: ʃ, ʒ and l. Lỗi thương gặp tiếp theo là lỗi bỏ âm, xảy ra thường xuyên với các âm tiết cuối: p, s, tʃ. Lỗi thường gặp cuối cùng là lỗi thêm âm, khi người học thêm âm s vào âm cuối của các từ. Dựa trên kết quả, tác giả đưa ra một số gợi ý nhằm cải thiện khả năng phát âm của người học tại trung tâm Worldlink.
i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Ha Cam Tam for her great guidance, precious comments and continuous encouragement from the beginning and throughout the study process. Without her help, I could not finish my graduation paper. My sincere thanks go to all of my teachers of Post-Graduate Studies Department in University of Languages and International Studies who have brought me the world of knowledge during my course and helped me complete this important document. I also would like to send my appreciation to all of my students studying at Worldlink English centre for their cooperation and enthusiastic help in recording the tasks. I am indebted to my colleagues there who always supported and stayed by my sides when I was in the most stuck. Last but not least, I wish to send the deepest gratitude to my family for their endless love and support throughout my life. Without the encouragement of my grandmother, parents and brothers, I could not have got this far. I am grateful to all of those who contributed to the completion of this study and it is an honor for me to receive any comments from the readers. ii ABSTRACT The research was conducted to examine the most problematic English consonants facing the students at Worldlink English Centre. Consonantal phoneme pronunciation error data was collected from the recording using two types of tasks, namely reading out loud single words and reading out loud a story and analyzed using narrow IPA phonetic transcription. The findings indicate that learners at the centre have a tendency to substitution, deletion and insertion of sounds in syllable-initial, middle and final positions of the words. Specifically, it was found that the most common error was sound substitution which most often happened to the affricate, fricative and lateral sounds: /ʃ/, /ʒ/ and /l/. The second most popular error is called sound deletion, which frequently occurred to three ending sounds: /p/, /s/, /tʃ/. Last but not least most frequent error named sound insertion appeared when the participants added the sound /s/ at the end of many words in the study. The errors were identified in terms of both the interference of the mother tongue and inadequate knowledge of the articulation of the sounds. From the results, some pedagogical suggestions were offered to improve the English pronunciation of students at Worldlink English Centre. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 1. Rationale 1 2. Aims of the study 1 3. Scope of the study 2 4. Method of the study 2 5. Design of the study 2 PART II: DEVELOPMENT 4 CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 4 1.1. English Pronunciation 4 1.2. The English Consonants 5 1.2.1. General description of consonants 5 1.2.2. Classification of English consonants 6 1.3. The Vietnamese Consonants 11 1.4. A comparison of English consonant and Vietnamese consonant 12 1.5. The interference of the mother tongue to students' English pronunciation 15 1.6. Intelligibility and Intelligibility problems in pronunciation 17 1.7. Preview of Previous studies 18 CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY 21 2.1. Selection of Informants 21 2.2. Data collection instruments 22 2.3. Data collection procedure 24 2.4. Data analysis procedure 24 CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 27 iv 3.1. Sound deletion errors 28 3.2 Sound substitutions 31 3.3. Sound insertion 34 PART III. CONCLUSION 35 1. Conclusion 35 2. Implications 37 3. Limitations and suggestions for further study 38 REFERENCES 40 APPENDIX 1: SINGLE WORDS AND STORY NARROW TRANSCRIPTION I APPENDIX 2: EXERCISES FOR TAPE RECORDING IV v LIST OF TABLE, FIGURES AND ABBREVIATION LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Features of pronunciation Figure 2: The manner of articulation Figure 3: The manner of articulation LIST OF TABLES Table 1: English Consonant Phonemes Table 2: Vietnamese initial consonants Table 3: Vietnamese final consonants Table 4: The initial consonants of the Hanoian variety Table 5: Similarities between English and Vietnamese Table 6: Overview of the consonant errors found in the data Table 7: Types of consonant errors found in the data Table 8: Sound deletion errors Table 9: Sound substitution errors Table 10: Sound insertion errors vi PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale English has become the international language, which is popular all over the world. In Vietnam, there is high demand for the language because more and more requirements about English are established such as University English Outcomes Standard or English Certificate to graduate or apply for a job. That is the reason why learners go to English centers with the hope that they can gain knowledge and get the best grades in the tests; as a result, English centers are getting popular in the big cities in Vietnam. However, it is the fact that the serious problem of Vietnamese English learners is their pronunciation. Not only does this restrict learners in real communication but also reduce their grades in important speaking and listening tests. For such reasons, basic pronunciation courses are provided to students learning at English centers. Over several years of teaching English, especially basic pronunciation courses to Vietnamese learners at some English centers, the researcher of this paper has realized that many Vietnamese learners of English made errors in pronouncing English consonants, which leads them to the failure in comprehension or misunderstanding in communication. The causes of those pronunciation errors are various; however, the influence of mother tongue is of great concern to the researcher. In attempt to find out common errors by students in pronouncing English consonants and figure out whether or not the native language affects students' pronunciation of the second language, the researcher carries out this study. 2. Aims of the study The aim of the study is mainly to figure out common errors in pronouncing English consonants by the learners taking part in English basic pronunciation courses at Worldlink English Centre. Basing on the identified errors, the causes, especially, the influence of mother tongue on learners' pronunciation will be discussed and some pedagogical suggestions will be provided to improve teaching and learning English pronunciation courses at the centre. The study, therefore, answers the following question: What common errors do students at Worldlink English Centre have in pronouncing English consonants? 1 3. Scope of the study The main focus of this study is on investigating common errors made by students in pronouncing twenty four English consonants. Basing on the results, the question of whether or not Vietnamese language influence the English pronunciation of the students at Worldlink English Centre is also discussed and answered. Participants are 20 non-English major students who are learning basic pronunciation courses at Worldlink English centre. Textbook for teaching the course is English Pronunciation in Use – Elementary by Jonathan Marks. 4. Methodology of the study The data was collected by employing the tool of recording the participants' pronunciation of single words and story reading. All the data collected are presented in the form of narrow transcription and then compared to the standard version to find out the errors. Details of methodology applied in the study are discussed in Part III - Methodology 5. Design of the study To achieve the aims of the study, this paper is divided into five chapters. Part I: Introduction: An introduction consists of the rationale, aims of the study, scope of the study, method and organization of the study. Part II: Development Chapter I: Literature Review: This chapter provides the relevant bodies of knowledge and gives a brief overview of the literature on the research topic. This includes key concepts of English pronunciation, intelligibility in pronunciation, English consonants, Vietnamese and English consonant comparison and contrast, English pronunciation errors and related key terms. Besides, the viewpoints on the interference of the first language to the second language pronunciation are also given. The last part is the review of previous related studies. Chapter II: Methodology: This part describes all the steps used to complete the research including in-depth information of participant selection, applying data collection instrument, procedure of data collection and data analysis. 2 Chapter III: Results and discussion: All the results regarding pronunciation errors made by students in pronouncing English consonants are presented. To what extends the native language causing student's difficulty in pronouncing English consonants is also discussed in this part. Part III: Conclusion provides a summary of the significant findings in the paper. The benefits as well as limitations of the study are discussed to draw out precious lessons and suggestions for further studies. Bibliography and Appendices are included after this chapter. In this chapter, the rationale, aims, significant, scope and method of the study are stated. The next chapter will be the literature review on topic related issues. 3 PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW The aim of this chapter is to analyze the relevant bodies of knowledge and give a brief overview of the literature on the research topic. Firstly, key concepts of English pronunciation, intelligibility in pronunciation, English consonants, Vietnamese and English consonant comparison and contrast, English pronunciation errors and related key terms will be explained critically. Secondly, the interference of mother tongue in English pronunciation acquisition will be discussed to indicate the impacts on learners’ pronunciation learning and sound producing. Finally, an overview of studies related to common errors made by learners in pronouncing English consonants will be given. Throughout the review, gaps in the current knowledge will be filled. 1.1. English Pronunciation In order to have an insight into the study, it is necessary to understand the main features of pronunciation. Pronunciation refers to the production of sounds that human use to make meaning. Generally, it includes segmental and suprasegmental aspects. Segmental features are the particular sounds of a language (segments) while suprasegmental features are aspects of speech beyond the level of the individual sound, such as intonation, phrasing, stress, timing, rhythm. These are different aspects of pronunciation but all work in combination when we speak. Regarding the combination of segmental and suprasegmental features in pronunciation, Jenkins and Setter (2005, p.1) provide a clearer definition of pronunciation: “Pronunciation involves the production and perception of segmental (sounds), both alone and in the stream of speech, where they undergo number of modifications and interact with suprasegmental (prosodic) features, particularly stress and intonation”. More particularly, Kelly (2000) presented the main features of English pronunciation in the figure below: 4 [...]... sounds /ʒ, ʤ, ʧ /, especially these sounds are often replaced by /s/ when they occur at the end of words Unlike the two studies above, which research the wide issues of pronunciation problem, Dao Thi My Hanh(2007) only focuses on the six certain consonants: θ/, /ð/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/ in her study named “A study on pronunciation of some English consonants by Vietnamese learners” In order to find out... a word and /θ/ was the most common mistake that all of the subjects made in every position of a word To sum up, all the studies above are meaningful to this study Especially, the study of Dao Thi My Hanh(2007) is a valuable reference for the researcher to carry out this study In terms of causes to the problems, a variety of factors have been investigated and identified in studies about pronunciation . of the students at Worldlink English Centre is also discussed and answered. Participants are 20 non-English major students who are learning basic pronunciation courses at Worldlink English. research was conducted to examine the most problematic English consonants facing the students at Worldlink English Centre. Consonantal phoneme pronunciation error data was collected from the recording. some pedagogical suggestions were offered to improve the English pronunciation of students at Worldlink English Centre. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE