VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -    - ĐÀO THÚY MAI A STUDY ON SOME COMMON MISTAKES MADE BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH WHEN PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANTS (Nghiên cứu số lỗi thường gặp học viên Việt Nam phát âm phụ âm cuối tiếng Anh) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 HANOI, 2012 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -    - ĐÀO THÚY MAI A STUDY ON SOME COMMON MISTAKES MADE BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH WHEN PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANTS (Nghiên cứu số lỗi thường gặp học viên Việt Nam phát âm phụ âm cuối tiếng Anh) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 Supervisor: Huỳnh Anh Tuấn, Ph.D HANOI, 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF TABLES v LIST OF FIGURES vi PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 RATIONALE AIMS OF THE RESEARCH RESEARCH METHODOLOGY SCOPE OF THE STUDY DESIGN OF THE STUDY PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW I THEORETICAL BACKGROUND I.1 General descriptions of stop consonants I.2 Phonological characteristics and articulation of the sounds /p/, b/, /t/, /d/, /k/ and /g/ I.3 Vietnamese final stop consonants vs English final stop consonants 10 II LITERATURE REVIEW 11 Chapter 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 19 2.1 Research questions 19 2.2 The informants of the study 19 2.3 Research method 20 Chapter 3: DATA ANALYSIS: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 23 3.1 The recordings 23 3.2 The survey questionnaire 29 PART THREE: CONCLUSION 38 Summary 38 Concluding remarks 38 Pedagogical Implications 41 Limitations and Suggestions for further research 42 REFERENCES 43 APPENDIX I iv APPENDIX IV v LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Stop consonants chart Table 2: Sounds mispronounced by Vietnamese students Table 3: Occurrence of mispronunciation across the 30 informants Table 4: Percentages of informants producing sound omission Table 5: Percentages of informants producing sound deviation Table 6: Number of informants producing mistakes Table 7: Causes of the informants‟ mispronunciation Table 8: Informants‟ frequencies of applying pronunciation improving strategies Table 9: Teachers of informants‟ frequencies of applying strategies to improve learners‟ speaking English vi LIST OF FIRURES Figure 1: Place and manner articulation of the sound /p/ Figure 2: Place and manner articulation of the sound /b/ Figure 3: Place and manner articulation of the sound /t/ Figure 4: Place and manner articulation of the sound /d/ Figure 5: Place and manner articulation of the sound /k/ Figure 6: Place and manner articulation of the sound /g/ Figure 7: Informants‟ years of learning English Figure 8: Informants‟ perception of the role of pronunciation Figure 9: Informants‟ difficulty in speaking English Figure 10: Informants‟ opinion about the causes of mistakes Figure 11: Percentage of informants applying pronunciation strategies Figure 12: Informants‟ ideas about their teachers‟ pronunciation teaching strategies vii PART ONE: INTRODUCTION RATIONALE Our world is developing every hour and international cooperation is one of the important strategies of each country to promote its socio-economic development To integrate successfully into the global economy, foreign language is considered to be indispensable Understanding the importance of foreign languages in general and of English in particular, the Vietnamese government has set up a curriculum for English learning for children from years old onwards The number of English language centers has been remarkably increasing during the past two decades Whereas English is an urgent requirement for young graduates to get a good job, many of them find it difficult to speak English properly to meet this demand It is widely recognized that success in language learning is the ability to communicate with others in a way that makes them fully understand what the speaker says and his intended meaning There are many Vietnamese students who have been learning English for many years but find it rather difficult to sustain a conversation This is because the focus is only on grammar and vocabulary when they are in high school As a result, they have good knowledge of these two components, but their pronunciation is poor Thus, it is easy to understand that pronunciation is one of the most important factors affecting successful communication Also, it is one of the reasons for communication breakdown If the speaker pronounces the words incorrectly, the listener will get confused and find the speaking incomprehensible; or he may understand you in another way assuming something different from what is meant Therefore, pronunciation has great influence on the success of oral communication It is said that the better your pronunciation is, the better you will be treated and the more comfortable people will feel when dealing with you At university level, it is really important to have good pronunciation because it helps students to be confident in taking oral exams Certainly, examiners will be impressed with examinees‟ vocal clarity, and students‟ presentation will sound more professional and persuasive to listeners These premises have urged me into carrying research into the most common mistakes made by senior non- English major students at Thai Nguyen University of Economics and Business Administration (TUEBA) when pronouncing English final consonants The research ultimately aims at finding out solutions and to help Vietnamese learners of English overcome these mistakes AIMS OF THE RESEARCH Making mistakes in pronouncing final consonants is regarded as very common for students when they learn English These difficulties are challenges for Vietnamese learners in general and for senior year non- English major students in particular if they not find the most suitable study method for themselves In this study, the author investigates the most common mistakes made by those learners to:  Identify the most common mistakes in pronouncing English final consonants: /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, and /g/ by senior non-English major students at Thai Nguyen University of Economics and Business Administration;  Find out the causes of these mistakes;  Provide some strategies to help students avoid mispronunciation Hopefully, this research will provide one more reference source for teachers of English as a second language when they teach pronunciation At the same time, this will also be useful to Vietnamese students of English in correcting their mistakes and improving pronunciation skills RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Research questions The study addresses the following four questions: Do Vietnamese learners of English make mistakes when pronouncing English final stop consonants? What are the most common mistakes students often make? What are the causes of the mispronunciation? What are the possible solutions to help learners correct these mistakes? Research context The research was conducted on 150 senior English non- major students of joint training program between Thai Nguyen University of Economics and Business Administration and Daegu Cyber University These students had a lot of chances to improve their English proficiency because most of the courses were taught in English Research method The study was conducted via a survey in which two instruments of data collection were used: recording the informants‟ pronunciation of selected isolated words and words within utterances, sentences and texts to find out the common pronunciation mistakes with stop final consonants and a questionnaire to investigate the causes of the mistakes and the solutions to the problems The data analysis is quantitative SCOPE OF THE STUDY The English alphabet is based on Latin and contains twenty six letters However, the English sound system consists of forty four phonemes: twenty four consonants, twelve pure vowels (monothongs), and eight diphthongs In general, Vietnamese learners have difficulties in pronouncing some of the English sounds only but not all of them It is necessary to make a distinction between errors and mistakes According to “Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics” by Richards J, Platt J and Platt H (1992), errors results from incomplete knowledge but mistakes are made when writing or speaking and caused by lack of attention, fatigue, carelessness or some other aspect of performance Due to time constraints, the length of thesis (minor thesis) and the researcher‟s knowledge, it is impossible for the researcher to study all the mistakes made by students when producing English consonants Therefore, this study only focuses on finding out the most typical mistakes made by some senior non-English major students at TUEBA when pronouncing the six English stop consonants /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/ and /g/ at final position of words with the following reasons:  There has not yet been any research on all the six stop consonants Several authors have studied one or two certain consonants of the six only  Six stop consonants are not so difficult to produce, however students seem to omit these sounds at final position Basing on my teaching experience, I find that most students often make mistakes with some plosive consonants like /t/, /d/, /p, /b/ and the most common mistakes are sound omission and sound deviation The said reasons have motivated me to carry out this study to find out the mistakes as well as to offer strategies to help students to overcome this problem DESIGN OF THE STUDY The thesis comprises three parts: The first part is the introduction which includes the rationale, aims, research methodology, scope and design of the study The second part, development, is divided into three chapters Chapter one provides the theoretical background and literature review of the study The theoretical background presents the general description of stop consonants, the phonological characteristics and articulation of the sounds /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/ and /g/ and a comparison between Vietnamese final consonants and English final consonants The literature review discusses previous works related to consonant pronunciation among second language learners Chapter two is devoted to the methodology of the study in which the research questions are raised, the informants of the study are discussed and the research method is given with the data collection instruments, the data analysis methods and data collection procedure Chapter 3, data analysis: findings and discussion, analyses the data collected from the recordings and the questionnaire and presents the findings and discussion of the study The final part is the conclusion including a summary of the study, concluding remarks, pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research ... Vietnamese learners of English make mistakes when pronouncing English final stop consonants? What are the most common mistakes students often make? What are the causes of the mispronunciation?... VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH WHEN PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANTS (Nghiên cứu số lỗi thường gặp học viên Việt Nam phát âm phụ âm cuối tiếng Anh) M .A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics... theoretical background for the research The general description of stop consonants, the phonological characteristics and articulation of these sounds and a comparison of Vietnamese final stop consonants