Vũ Th Thanh Huy n ị ề
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................3
1.1. Rationale ...............................................................................................
...3
1.2. Aims of the
study ....................................................................................3
1.3. Scope of the
study ....................................................................................4
2. LITERATURE REVIEW...........................................................................4
2.1. English pronunciation…………………………......................................4
2.2. English consonants ………………………..............................................4
2.3. Final English consonants ………………………....................................5
3. METHODOLOGY .....................................................................................7
3.1. Subjects....................................................................................................7
3.2. Procedures of data collection...................................................................7
3.3. Procedures of data analysis......................................................................8
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ................................................................8
4.1. Omission of single final consonants...................................................9
4.2. Substitution of single final consonants.............................................11
5: CONCLUSION.........................................................................................12
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Vũ Th Thanh Huy n ị ề
REFERENCES .............................................................................................13
APPENCDICES ...........................................................................................14
Appendix 1.......................................................................................14
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, FIGURES AND TABLES
List of abbreviations
ESL: English as a Second Language
EFL: English as a Foreign Language
NTU : Nguyen Trai University
List of figures
Figure 1: The proportion of omission errors in single final consonants
List of tables
Table 1: The classification of English consonants
Table 2: The proportion of types of error in single final consonant
pronunciation
Table 3: The proportion of substitution errors in single final consonants
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Vũ Th Thanh Huy n ị ề
I. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale
It is undeniable that oral communication proficiency is one of the key
targets any Vietnamese ESL learners wish to achieve. However, a big number of
foreigners have commented “many Vietnamese speakers can speaking English, but
only a few have intelligible English pronunciation that they can be understood
easily in direct communication with foreigners” (Ha, 2005, Common
Pronunciation Problems of Vietnamese Learners of English, p.1) As a matter of
fact, Vietnamese learners of ESL encounter considerable pronunciation difficulties
concerned with their own language. Like other languages, Vietnamese sound
system has several phonetic features making Vietnamese people find it hard to
pronounce some English sounds like native speakers. One of the outstanding
problems faced by Vietnamese ESL learners lies in the pronunciation of single
English final consonants. In an attempt to gain insights into the problem in English
single final consonant pronunciation of the first year students at Nguyen Trai
University, the researcher has conducted this study in order to identify some
common errors in their pronouncing single final consonants. Once having been
completed, this study would give decent benefits. On the first place, the research
can draw out some typical pronunciation mistakes made by NTU first year
student. Consequently, it can helpfully contribute to the understanding of the
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Vũ Th Thanh Huy n ị ề
students’ difficulties arising while learning to speak English with appropriate
pronunciation.
1.2. Aims of the study
The research is aimed to investigate typical single final consonant errors in
the pronunciation of NTU students and raise their awareness of their pronunciation
problems.
Research questions:
1. Do NTU students make mistakes when pronouncing English final
consonants?
2. What are the common errors in pronouncing English final
consonants made by first year students at NTU?
1.3. Scope of the study
Within the scope of a small research with the maximum number of 3,000 in
length, the study is conducted with no ambition to cover all the pronunciation
problems encountered by Vietnamese ESL learners in general or even by NTU
students in particular. The main focus of this study is limited to identifying some
common mistakes in single final consonant pronunciation made by first year
students at NTU only.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. English pronunciation
There have been so far various ways of defining the terminology
“pronunciation”. According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Encyclopedia (2004),
pronunciation is considered “the way in which a language is spoken”.
As cited in Nguyen (2008:06), the American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language (2007) defines pronunciation as “a way of speaking a word,
especially a way that is accepted or generally understood”.
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Vũ Th Thanh Huy n ị ề
In the scope of this study, the researcher would like to mention pronunciation
as the production and reception of sounds of speech, especially the final consonant
sounds.
2.2. English consonant sounds
In “Language: Its structure and use” (2004), Edward Finegan offer the
following definition of consonant: “consonants are sounds produced by partially
or completely blocking air in its passage from the lung through the vocal track”
Roach (2000) defines consonants as “sounds in which there is obstruction
to the flow of air as it passes the larynx” Also according to Roach (2000) and
Kelly (2000), English has 24 consonants which are categorized into 6 groups
based on their manner of articulation, that is: stop (plosive), fricative, affricative
nasal, lateral and approximant.
Bilabial
Labio-
dental
Dental Alveolar
Palato-
alveolar
Plata Velar Glottal
Plosive
+b
- p
+d
-t
+g
-k
Fricative
+v
- f
+ ð
- θ
+z
-s
+ ʒ
- ʃ
+h
Affricate
+ dʒ
- tʃ
Nasal +m +n + ŋ
Lateral +l
Approximant +w+r +j
Table 1: The classification of English consonants
2.3. English final consonants
Yule ( 2006: 47) states “ The basic structure of the kind of syllable found in
English words ….is shown in the accompanying diagram”
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