VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES - NGUYỄN VĂN TÂN TEACHING PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH CONSONANTS BY USING CONTRASTING AND SUBSTITUTING TECHNIQUES (Dạy phát âm phụ âm tiếng Anh việc sử dụng kỹ thuật đối chiếu thay thế) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Hanoi, 2015 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES - NGUYỄN VĂN TÂN TEACHING PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH CONSONANTS BY USING CONTRASTING AND SUBSTITUTING TECHNIQUES (Dạy phát âm phụ âm tiếng Anh việc sử dụng kỹ thuật đối chiếu thay thế) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Dr NGUYỄN HUY KỶ Hanoi, 2015 DECLARATION I declare that my thesis entitled TEACHING PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH CONSONANTS BY USING CONTRASTING AND SUBSTITUTING TECHNIQUES is the result of my own research of the degree of Master of Arts at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi and this thesis fulfills with the requirements of the degree Master of Arts and has not been published anywhere Nguyễn Văn Tân 2015 Supervisor’s signature Dr NGUYỄN HUY KỶ i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deep gratitude to Dr Nguyễn Huy Kỷ, my supervisor, for his patient guidance, and useful critiques of this research work I would also like to thank Dr Nguyễn Thành Long, and Dr Hoàng Thị Ngọc Điểm for their advice and encouragement My grateful thanks are also extended to Mr Bill McDonald for his great help in collecting data I would also like to extend my thanks to the students of School of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University for participating in the study Finally, I wish to thank my parents and my family for their support and encouragement throughout my study ii ABSTRACT This study aims at testing how some teaching techniques used in the teaching of English consonant pronunciation at the School of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University There are two groups of students participating in the study The second group has access to the teaching techniques while they are learning the pronunciation of the target consonant sounds A test is organized for the two groups after the teaching intervening step has finished This test tells how the students in the two groups pronounce the target consonant sounds The study finds out whether the application of the techniques can improve the students’ pronunciation iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF CHARTS vi LIST OF TABLES vii PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1 Background to the study Objectives of the study Research question Scope of the study: Methodology Significance of the study Organization of the study PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Brief overview of Vietnamese and English consonant sounds 1.1.1 Vietnamese consonant sounds 1.1.2 English consonant sounds 1.1.3 Brief comparison between Vietnamese consonant sounds and English ones 1.2 Review of some pronunciation teaching methods iv 1.3 Introduction of the contrasting and substituting techniques 11 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 16 2.1 Participants 16 2.2 Data collection instruments 17 2.3 Procedures of data collection 17 2.3.1 The placement test 17 2.3.2 The intervention 18 2.3.3 The evaluation test 24 2.4 Procedure of data analysis 25 CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND FINDINGS 26 3.1 Results of the placement test 26 3.2 Discussion of the placement test findings 28 3.3 Results of the evaluation test 31 3.4 Discussion of the results of the evaluation test 34 PART 3: CONCLUSIONS 39 Recapitulation of major findings 39 Concluding remarks 40 Limitations of the study 41 REFERENCES 43 APPENDIX I v LIST OF CHARTS Diagram 1: Pronunciation errors from the results of the placement test Diagram 2: Pronunciation errors in group A in percentage Diagram 3: Pronunciation errors in group B in percentage Diagram 4: Pronunciation errors in the two groups in percentage vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Vietnamese consonant sounds Table 2: English consonant sounds Table 3: Number of errors made by the students in group A Table 4: Number of errors made by the students in group B Table 5: Number of pronunciation errors made by the students in the two groups vii PART 1: INTRODUCTION Background to the study Learning English has been a real need in Vietnam for more than two decades English is a compulsory foreign language subject at most levels of schools in the country Most of the aspects of the language are taught but not equally emphasized Pronunciation seems to receive less consideration in English teaching at secondary schools as well as at high schools than grammar and vocabulary As a result, the teaching of pronunciation sometimes does not reach its goal This study is carried out based on some inspiration found when the researcher taught pronunciation to first year students at Thai Nguyen University Pronunciation plays an important role in learning a language People learn a language for many reasons, but the ultimate goal is to communicate and verbal communication is the most important form A clear pronunciation helps speakers understand one another better with less effort as well as avoid undesirable misunderstanding So, pronunciation acts as a communicational catalyst It is also a motivation for the learner to improve himself in mastering the language when he receives positive feedback from the listener As a teacher teaching pronunciation to first year students, the researcher has experienced a variety of pronunciation errors made by students These mistakes not only form a foreign accent when the students are speaking English, but it also makes them misunderstood sometimes Recognizing the problem, the researcher decided to venture to use some Vietnamese consonant sounds to contrast to the target English consonant sounds which are being taught Vietnamese language can be a good support Group A is the group which the teacher does not use the contrasting and substituting techniques to teach The teacher follows the steps in the textbook Ship or Sheep and uses some techniques derived from the book such as listening and imitating, using drills, etc., other than substituting and contrasting techniques to teach the target sounds There are 20 students in this group, so there are 20 participants in this test The results of the first group are summarized in the following table and figure: Sounds /t/ /ð/ /ʃ / /θ/ /ʤ/ /j/ Occurrences of errors 10 Table 3: Number of errors made by the students in group A Percentage of mispronouncing students 60% 50% 50% 40% 40% 35% 35% 30% 30% 20% 20% 10% 0% /t/ /ð/ /ʃ / /θ/ /ʤ/ Mispronounced sounds Diagram 2: Pronunciation errors in group A in percentage 32 /j/ The test shows that there are 10 students having problems with /ʤ/, counting for 45% of the total students Sound /θ/ and final consonant sound /t/ rank at the second place with mistakes for each sound counting for 40% of the total students Each of the sounds /j/, and /ð/ is mispronounced times, i.e., 35% of the students have problems with the sounds students mispronounced /ʃ/, counting for 25% of the total students b Results of group B Group B is the group that the teacher uses contrasting and substituting methods to teach the target sounds to the students This group also has 20 students, and all these students are tested The results of this test can be illustrated in the following table and diagram: Sounds /t/ /ð/ /ʃ / /θ/ /ʤ/ /j/ Occurrences of errors Table 4: Number of errors made by the students in group B 33 50% 45% 45% 40% 35% 30% 30% 25% 25% 20% 20% 20% 15% 15% 10% 5% 0% /t/ /ð/ /ʃ / /θ/ /ʤ/ /j/ Diagram 3: Pronunciation errors in group B in percentage The results show that /ʤ/ is also the most problematic sound to the students with students mispronouncing it, counting for 45% of the total test takers Sound /θ/ ranks at the second position with times mispronounced It is interesting that the final /t/, occurring times, is the least mispronounced sounds 3.4 Discussion of the results of the evaluation test The pronunciation errors students in the two groups make are contrasted in the following table and diagram /t/ Sounds /ð/ /θ/ /ʃ / /j/ /ʤ/ Total errors Group A 10 42 Group B 31 34 Table 5: Number of pronunciation errors made by the students in the two groups 60% 50% 50% 45% 40% 40% 35% 35% 30% 30% 30% 25% 20% 20% 20% 20% 15% 10% 0% sound /t/ sound /ð/ sound /ʃ / group A sound /θ/ sound /ʤ/ sound /j/ group B Diagram 4: Pronunciation errors in the two groups in percentage The table and the diagram show us how students in each group make pronunciation mistakes, and it also tells which sound is the most problematic In general, group B has a better result with 31 pronunciation errors in comparison with 42 errors made by group A Also, the results show that students make different progress with different sounds The sound /ʤ/ is now the most challenging one to these students of both groups Group A has 10 and group B has students mispronouncing the sound, counting for 50% and 45 % of the total students in each group These numbers implies that the difference in students’ performances in the two groups is not very significant Group B has only student mispronouncing 35 this sound fewer than group A This means the application of the teaching techniques does not help very much in pronunciation of this sound The reason for this is that this sound has some features as discussed in the discussion of the placement test that no Vietnamese consonants share As a result, in teaching this sound pronunciation to group B, the teacher only can mostly focus on the mechanism of producing this sound In contrasting this sound with others, there is no sound in Vietnamese is made with such a sound combination Therefore, the teacher has to seek for alternative sounds like the fricative retroflex /ʐ/ in words like giòn giã The voiceless dental fricative /θ/ used to be the most problematic sound in the placement test; however, after the first intervention, many students can pronounce it correctly 70 percent of the students in group B who have access to the contrasting and substituting techniques can produce the sound, while 60 percent of the student in group A can produce the sound Out of the students in group B who mispronounce the sound, of them have the right tongue position, which is inter-dental, but they have an incorrect way of releasing the airstream which turns the produced sound into a plosive It can be concluded that the techniques have some success in correcting students’ pronunciation in terms of place of articulation The pronunciation of final sound /t/ is a significant difference between the two groups 70 percent of the students in group A can pronounce this final sound, and 85 percent of the students in group B so, while the others simply omit the sound Also, the students in group A still have the habit of omitting the final /t/, which is a typical feature of Vietnamese language The difference of 15 percent successful pronunciation is quite noticeable It seems 36 that the substituting drills help the students in group B form the habit of pronouncing the final sound The voiced dental fricative /ð/ also shows different performances of the students in the two groups 65 percent of the students in group A can produce this sound when 75 percent of the students in group B can The common error made by group A is the confusion of this sound and the sound /z/ The difference of 10 percent in this case may not be as significant as the researcher’s expectation However, it can imply an improvement in the students’ acquisition and performance Furthermore, when observing students in group A taking the test, there is an interesting fact which is that the students who mispronounced this voiced dental sound also made mistake with the voiceless dental one The palatal sound /j/ also shows a difference in the performances of the two groups 20 percent of the students in group B fail to produce this sound, while 35 percent of the students in group A cannot produce this sound correctly This sound is a palatal approximant sound This means that the tongue only approaches the hard palate The major problem with this sound made by the students in the two groups as the discussion of the placement test mentioned was that they let their tongue touch the upper part of the mouth like it does when pronouncing the sound /z/ or /ʒ/ During the teaching, the students of both groups are introduced to the mechanism of producing this sound But only students in group B have access to the contrast and substitution of this sound and the sound /z/, which help them find it easier to have the correct pronunciation of the sound As a result, many of the students in group B correct the prolonged misconception from their past studying 37 As said before, it seems that the students in the experimental group have better results than the students in group A However, the pronunciation of /ʃ / goes against the common trend when students in each group, counting for 20 percent of the total number, mispronounce the sound This seems to be noticeable, because the students in group B are those who get benefit from the teaching techniques Furthermore, the truth is that not all the words consisting of the sound /ʃ/ are mispronounced, which is worth noticing The most common error with this sound happens when it is in the final position of a word, for example “cash” So, there seems to be something relating to pronunciation laziness and habits, rather than pronunciation mechanism in this situation In conclusion, it is implied that the application of the teaching techniques can help students pronounce better, although there are sounds with which the application of the techniques is not always a success, for example /ʤ/, and /ʃ/ 38 PART 3: CONCLUSIONS Recapitulation of major findings This is a study carried out at the School of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University It focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of the substituting and contrasting techniques in teaching pronunciation of some English consonant sounds to find a way to improve English pronunciation teaching The study has two major findings First, the study finds out some consonants which are most frequently mispronounced by the students in the school These sounds are /θ/, /ð/, /ʃ/, /ʤ/, /j/, /t/ and some omitted final consonants This is the result of the placement test in which 100 random freshmen participated Second, the study shows that the students from the experimental group (group B) who have access to the teaching techniques generally pronounce the target sounds better than those from the control group (group A) This conclusion is drawn from the results of the evaluation test In this test, 20 students from group A and 20 students from group B are required to read out loud a wordlist The test results show that group A has totally 42 pronunciation errors while group B has 31 pronunciation errors Also, when considering individual sounds, the students in group B have better improved pronunciation of most of the target sounds than the students in group A To sum up, the study has found out the six most frequently mispronounced consonant sounds It also reveals that the students being taught with the contrasting and substituting techniques can learn better 39 Concluding remarks The study focuses on testing the effectiveness of the contrasting and substituting techniques used in teaching pronunciation Basing on the findings mentioned earlier, some important concluding remarks can be drawn from the study First, the study proves that Vietnamese sounds can be used in teaching pronunciation of English sounds to help students get the essence of the English target sounds Contrasting the English target sounds with Vietnamese sounds can improve students’ learning of the sound as well as reduce the negative transference from learners’ native language to the target foreign language It can be seen from the results of the evaluation test of the experimental group (group B) that the number of pronunciation errors related to the influence of Vietnamese consonant sounds reduces significantly The techniques can be seen as a solution for Vietnamese learners to reduce the Vietnamese accents when they are speaking English Second, the study implies that the techniques can be used in classroom activities to improve both teaching and learning English consonant pronunciation As mentioned in the literature review section, there has not been many teaching methods or techniques making use of the learners’ first language in pronunciation teaching Contrasting the English target sound with the Vietnamese sound and replacing the Vietnamese sound by the English sound in a Vietnamese word is an extremely interesting classroom activity Students find it strange and funny, which is very important to maintain their attention Furthermore, separating the target English sound away from its language is a good way to avoid hindrances from English neighboring sounds Sometimes, students have difficulties pronouncing the vowel sounds or some 40 other consonants of the word containing the target sound, which prevent them from focusing on the target sound As a matter of fact, the students from the experimental group perform better than those from the control group in the evaluation test In conclusion, the contrasting and substituting techniques can be used in pronunciation classroom to improve both teaching and learning Limitations of the study This study is carried out in a local setting, with a group of local students As a result, it has some limitations Firstly, the number of participants in this study may be a little small There are only 20 students in each group, 40 students in total This may somehow limit the effectiveness of the teaching techniques applied in this study As can be seen, due to the limit of population, one individual can take a big percentage This may have negative effect to the test results Second, this study is locally valid, so the effectiveness of the techniques needs to be tested in some other settings In the setting of this study, with the population of this study, the techniques work as they have been presented However, the effectiveness of the techniques when they are applied to different learners is still questionable Therefore, there should be some more studies related to these techniques with different kinds of learners in different settings Finally, there are also factors from the outside which affect the students’ test results These factors may be the time amount that the students use English outside the classroom, or the dialects of English that the students have been 41 following Although the researcher managed to minimize impacts of these factors, they still affect the data collected in the study to some extent In conclusion, this study has some limits, such as the size of population, the factors outside the classroom Therefore, I really recommend that some more studies related to the teaching techniques in this study should be carried out to develop the techniques so that they can help improve learners’ pronunciation Suggestions for further studies The techniques in this study have both strength and weaknesses, which means there can be further studies related to them This study only applies the techniques in teaching pronunciation of some consonants In the future studies, more consonants can be included or even vowel sounds can be taken into consideration Also, the settings of this study can be changed Researchers can seek for students at high school or lower levels to see if the techniques still work 42 REFERENCES Avery, P., & Ehrlich, S (1992) Teaching American English pronunciation Oxford [England: Oxford University Press Banathy, B H., & Madarasz, P H (1969) Contrastive analysis and error analysis Journal of English as a Second LAnguage, 4(3), 77-92 Bloomfield, L (1933) Language New York: Holt Bowen, J D (1972) Contextualizing pronunciation practice in the ESOL classroom TESOL Quaterly, 6(1), 83-94 Bowen, J D (1975) Patterns of English pronunciation Rowley, MA: Newbury House Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D., & Goodwin, J M (1996) Teaching pronunciation: A reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Curran, C A (1976) Counseling-learning in second languages Apple River, IL: Apple River Press Gattegno, C (1972) Teaching foreign languages in schools: The Silent Way New York: Educational Solutions Kenworthy, J (1987) Teaching English pronunciation London: Longman Lado, R (1957) Linguistics across cultures Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press Lukmani, Y (1972) Motivation to learn and learning proficiency Language Learning, 22, 261-273 43 McNerney, M., & Mendelson, D (1992) Suprasegmental in the pronunciation class: Setting priorities In P Avery & S Ehrlich (Eds) Teaching American English Pronunciation (pp 185-196) Oxford: Oxford University Press Penfield, W., & Roberts, L (1959) Speech and brain-mechanism Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press Richards, J C (1971) A non-contrastive approach to error analysis English Language Teaching Journal, 25(3), 204-219 Roach, P (2000) English phonetics and phonology: A practical course Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press Rumelhart, D E., & Norman, D A (1978) Accretion, tuning, and restructuring: Three modes of learning In J Cotton & R Klatzky (Eds), Semantic factors in cognition (pp 37-53) Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Selinker, L (1972) Interlanguage International Review of Applied Linguistics, 10, 209-231 Schumann, J H (1986) Research on the acculturation model for second language acquisition Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, (5), 379-392 Đoàn Thiện Thuật (2004) Ngữ âm tiing Viit, Nhà xuất Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội, Hà Nội 44 APPENDIX I THE PLACEMENT TEST Please read out loud the following words: Examiner’s notes - Tables Fight Weather Shower Goes Young Shoes Baby Sheep Math Five Then Thick June Your Nation People Job Door Key Television Light Zoo Cheat Measure /z/ /t/ /ð/ /ʃ / /z/ /j/ /ʃ / /b/ /ʃ/ /θ/ /v/ /ð/ /θ/ /ʤ/ /j/ /ʃ/ /p/ /ʤ/ /d/ /k/ /ʒ/ /t/ /z/ /tʃ/ /ʒ/ I II THE EVALUATION TEST Please read out loud the following words (Examiner’s notes) - Relationship Bean Cash Summer January Run Religion Want Construct Sympathy One Bath Play Then University Brother Smart Youth Around Yellow /ʃ / /ʃ / /ʤ/ /ʤ/ /t/ /t/ /θ/ /θ/ /ð/ /ð/ /j/ /j/ II [...]... Introduction of the contrasting and substituting techniques Teaching pronunciation to Vietnamese learners is a challenging task In the teaching process, teachers may get different experiences, and they may have different ways of adaptation to the situation Based on researches and studies on pronunciation teaching as well as classroom experiences, the researcher proposes contrasting and substituting techniques. .. the English /t/ and the Vietnamese /t/ so that students can access the true qualities of the English sound and avoid mispronunciation due to the influence of their mother tongue The English /t/ is an aspirated sound, while the Vietnamese sound is not The teacher can ask students to put their hand in front of their mouth to feel the puff of air Also, in teaching the pronunciation of /θ/, the place of. .. ways they are pronounced are different The contrasting and substituting techniques focus on contrasting the different distinctive features of sounds in English and Vietnamese and highlighting the key features of the English target sounds so that learners can have the easiest way to access the desirable pronunciation There are two stages in the application of the techniques In the first stage, the teacher... teaching English pronunciation only when there are pairs of English- Vietnamese equivalent sounds, such as the English /t/ and the Vietnamese /t/, or sounds which have the same written representation in English and Vietnamese, such as the sounds spelled th in Vietnamese and in English These techniques can make use of the strength of some previous approaches, such as listening and repeating of the Direct... to answer the following question: To what extent do the contrasting and substituting techniques help learners improve their pronunciation of consonant sounds? 2 4 Scope of the study: The study was set up at the School of Foreign Languages – Thai Nguyen University It focuses on applying some techniques in teaching pronunciation of some English consonants which are normally problematic to first year... techniques which use Vietnamese consonant sounds in teaching English sounds affect students’ pronunciation 2 Objectives of the study The objectives of this study are to find out the most frequently mispronounced consonant sounds, and to evaluate the effectiveness of the contrasting and substituting techniques in improving students’ pronunciation of consonant sounds 3 Research question In order to reach... Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University Their English studying background may vary, but they all have had at least 5 years of learning English at high schools and secondary schools The studying of English in high school neglected the importance of pronunciation, so they speak English with a lot of pronunciation mistakes, especially the pronunciation of consonant sounds The 40 students are chosen basing... glottal plosive and the alveolar flap Both of the sounds are used as alternatives for the alveolar plosives Most of the consonants can be in the initial, medial, and final position of a syllable 1.1.3 Brief comparison between Vietnamese consonant sounds and English ones After reviewing the consonant sounds in English and Vietnamese, the researcher proposes an overall grouping of English and Vietnamese... part presents conclusions and implications of the study 4 PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW In this chapter, some significant methods and approaches in pronunciation teaching are presented Also, there is a brief overview and comparison of English and Vietnamese consonant sounds Besides, the research framework is also introduced 1.1 Brief overview of Vietnamese and English consonant sounds... solve some problems in pronunciation made by first year students at a specific language school Vietnamese language shares almost the same letters in the English alphabet and the sounds represented by some of the letters sound quite similar to some 11 of the English sounds This causes a misconception in learning pronunciation of the English sounds Some sounds are represented by the same letters but ... UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES - NGUYỄN VĂN TÂN TEACHING PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH CONSONANTS BY USING CONTRASTING AND SUBSTITUTING TECHNIQUES. .. contrasting and substituting techniques can learn better 39 Concluding remarks The study focuses on testing the effectiveness of the contrasting and substituting techniques used in teaching pronunciation. .. CONTRASTING AND SUBSTITUTING TECHNIQUES is the result of my own research of the degree of Master of Arts at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi and