A STUDY ON PRONUNCIATION OF SOME ENGLISH CONSONANTS BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS

i

Acknowledgement
I am, first of all, particularly indebted to my supervisor, Ms. Ha Cam Tam, of the
Faculty of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for her valuable
instructions, criticism, comments, correction and for her kindly encouragement during the
development of this Study.
I also wish to express my gratitude to the two teachers and also my friends: Imogen
from England and Tania from Russia for their assistance on the recordings and especially
for their valuable comments and suggestions in the data collection procedures.
My appreciation and gratitude are also extended to my students studying at Haiphong
Medical University for their enthusiastic help in recording and my colleagues there for
their encouragement and support.
The last but not the least, I would like to convey my thanks to my family, all my
friends and the one I love who encouraged me to take this task and to many others who
have assisted. All have enabled me to expand my area of expertise and to complete my
study.
And I would take a full responsibility for this paper, and would appreciate all
comments made on it.
Haiphong, September 2007,
Dao Thi My Hanh


ii

Abstract
This is a quasi- experimental research on the pronunciation of six English
consonants/Τ ∆ Σ Ζ τΣ δΖ/ which are believed to impede Vietnamese learners much
from speaking. The study aimed at finding out Vietnamese learners’ problems in
pronouncing the six sounds basing on their articulatory descriptions, in other words,
articulatory phonetics and the causes of the problems. The study was conducted by

recording the participants’ pronunciation of some certain words and sentences using these
word and observing the subjects’ real speech in class. After that three different teachers
listened to the recordings to note down the problematic sounds made by the subjects of the
study in order to figure out their difficulties in articulating these sounds and the causes of
these difficulties.
From the results, some pedagogical suggestions are offered to improve the English
pronunciation of students at Haiphong Medical University.


iii

Table of contents
Acknowledgement ..................................................................................................................i
Abstract..................................................................................................................................ii
Table of contents ..................................................................................................................iii
List of tables ..........................................................................................................................v
Part 1: INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................1
1. Rationale ........................................................................................................................1
2. Aims of the study...........................................................................................................1
3. Scope of the study..........................................................................................................1
4. Methods of the study......................................................................................................2
5. Organization of the study...............................................................................................2
Part 2: DEVELOPMENT ...................................................................................................3
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................3
1.1 - Phonetics...............................................................................................................3
1.2. Articulatory phonetics ..........................................................................................4
1.3. Consonants ............................................................................................................7
1.3.1. General descriptions of consonants.................................................................7
1.3.2. English consonants ..........................................................................................7
1.3.2 1. Fricatives /Τ, ∆/ and / Ζ, Σ/.......................................................................8

Τ
1.3.2.2. Affricatives/τΣ, δΖ/...................................................................................9
/
1.3.3. Vietnamese consonants ....................................................................................9
1.3.4. English vs. Vietnamese ..................................................................................11
1.4. Review of previous research on pronunciation. ...............................................12
Chapter 2: THE STUDY..................................................................................................14
2.1. Methodology ........................................................................................................14
2.1.1. Research questions ........................................................................................14
2.1.2. Data collection instruments ...........................................................................14
2.1.3. Data collection procedures............................................................................16
2.1.4. Subjects of the study.......................................................................................17
2.2. Data results ..........................................................................................................17
2.2.1. Data collected from the recordings ...............................................................17


iv

2.2.1.1. Mispronunciations across the examiners ................................................18
2.2.1.2. Mispronunciations across subjects..........................................................19
2.2.1.3. Mispronunciations across the positions of sounds..................................20
2.2.1.4. Mispronunciations across the positions of individual sounds ................21
2.2.1.5. Mispronunciations across the exercises..................................................24
2.2.1.6. Mispronunciations by deviation types ....................................................27
2.2.1.7. Mispronunciations across omission ........................................................28
2.2.2- Data collected through class .........................................................................29
2.3. Discussion.............................................................................................................30
Part 3: CONCLUSION .....................................................................................................33
1. Major findings..............................................................................................................33
2. Implications .................................................................................................................34

3. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................36
4. Suggestions for further study.......................................................................................36
References:..........................................................................................................................37


v

Abbreviation
HPMU: Haiphong Medical University
ESP: English for Specific Purpose
ESL: English as Second Language

List of tables
Table 1: Consonants in the English language
Table 2: 21 Consonants in Northern Vietnamese dialect
Table 3: 22 Consonants in Southern Vietnamese dialect
Table 4: Mispronunciations across the examiners
Table 5: Mispronunciations across subjects
Table 6: Mispronunciations across the positions of sound
Table 7: Mispronunciations across the positions of individual sounds
Table 8: Mispronunciations across the exercises
Table 9: Mispronunciations across deviation types
Table 10: Mispronunciations across omission types
Table 11: Mispronunciations classroom interaction


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Part 1: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale

English, the most popular foreign language in Vietnam, has been taught from the early
age (at the age of 8 or even younger) in most of schools and universities throughout the
country as a compulsory subject. Thus, many Vietnamese, especially the young people, can
speak English; however, not many of them "have intelligible English pronunciation so that
they can be understood easily in direct communication with foreigners." It is the exact fact
happening in Haiphong Medical University (HPMU) while it is widely believed that good
communications skills are essential for pharmacy school graduates, an increasingly
culturally and linguistically diverse group. Wherever their career paths lead, they will be
talking with others — patients, physicians and colleagues — about drugs. An unintelligible
word or a mispronunciation could lead to a dangerous error. That leads the author to the
thought of making a study on the pronunciation of English consonants that most
Vietnamese learners meet difficulties in pronouncing correctly, so as to see how differently
they pronounce from that the native speakers do. The results of the research can infer some
suggestions basing on the reasons of this phenomenon to improve the students'
pronunciation in general and of those sounds in particular.

2. Aims of the study
This research aims at figuring out if the Vietnamese students under the study have
difficulties in pronouncing English consonants and the causes of those difficulties. The
results will provide insights and assist ESL teachers as they strive to reduce or eliminate
problems regarding pronunciation of those consonants as well as raising the awareness of
learners during their learning process. Therefore, the research focuses on problems that
learners of HPMU encounter in pronouncing English consonants.

3. Scope of the study
This study, basing on articulatory phonetics, presents several analyses on the
pronunciations of the six consonant sounds/∆, Τ, Σ, Ζ, δΖ, τΣ/, which occur in some
selected words and sentences used for recording, made by the ten non- English majored
students learning in HPMU with a hypothesis that the learners in HPMU produce these

2

sounds differently from the native speakers in terms of articulation. After affirming the
truth, some of the subjects' problems in pronouncing those sounds are pointed out with the
reasons causing them and suggested solutions for such problems.

4. Methods of the study
Since the study attempts to find out if the learners at HPMU have problems in
pronouncing the six studied consonants and how different it is in the pronunciation of those
sounds between the students at HPMU and native speakers, a combination of different data
collection methods were used including recording the participants’ pronunciations of
prepared scripts, observing their performance in class and note- taking. Details of
methodology applied in the study are discussed in part 2, chapter 2.

5. Organization of the study
To achieve the aims of the study, this paper is divided into three main parts. They are
INTRODUCTION, DEVELOPMENT, and CONCLUSION.
INTRODUCTION includes the reasons of choosing the thesis, the aims, the scope, the
methods and the organization of the study.
DEVELOPMENT, the most important part of the study, consists of two chapters.
Chapter 1 is devoted to the presentation of the theoretical background relevant to the
research. Firstly, some basic concepts of phonetics, articulatory phonetics and consonants
are introduced. Then the general review of English teaching in HPMU is described.
Chapter 2 includes methodology applied in the study in which the questions of the research
are raised, then the data instruments and the procedures and methodology used for data
collection along with detailed descriptions of the participants are presented. In this chapter,
the results obtained are then analysed to find out the differences in the pronunciation
between the native and the subjects'.
CONCLUSION contains a summary of the major findings under investigation given

along with the concluding remarks established in the study and some suggestions for
further study as well as some possible suggestions basing on the origin of the problems to
English language teaching as regards pronunciation in general and of the consonants in
particular to elementary students at HPMU.


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Part 2: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
In this chapter, the first section provides some basic linguistical and phonetical
concepts to bring a common view of the matter studied. Then an overview on consonant
system in English and Vietnamese is presented in order to give a proof that English has six
consonants that are blur and even do not exist in the Vietnamese language. Finally, a
general review of English teaching generally and English pronunciation teaching in
particular at HPMU is offered to see what happened to students' competence of English.
1.1 - Phonetics
This section starts with a distinction between the two related terms (often loosely)
used to refer to linguistic disciplines studying the linguistic sign which de Saussure called
the acoustic image: phonetics and phonology.
While phonetics deals with how speech sounds are actually produced, transmitted and
received in actual spoken language, phonology deals specifically with the ways those
sounds are organized into the individual languages, hence dealing with abstractions on a
virtual basis.
Here see two useful definitions for phonetics and phonology:
"Phonology deals with the speakers' knowledge of the sound system of a language. It
is therefore exclusively concerned with langue or competence. [...] Phonology can be
divided into two branches: (1) segmental phonology and (2) suprasegmental phonology"
(Skandera & Burleigh, 2005:5).
"Phonetics first of all divides, or segments, concrete utterances into individual speech

sounds. It is therefore exclusively concerned with parole or performance. Phonetics can
then be divided into three distinct phases: (1) articulatory phonetics, (2) acoustic phonetics,
and (3) auditory phonetics" (Skandera & Burleigh, 2005:3).
Phonetics will be almost unanimously acknowledged to be the linguistic science,
which studies speech sounds: the way in which they are produced (uttered, articulated), the
way in which they are perceived, their physical characteristics, etc. Therefore, it is these
more “palpable”, measurable aspects of the phonic aspects of language that constitute the
domain of phonetics. (Katamba, 1996)


4

Phonetics is concerned with various aspects relevant for the physical characteristics of
sounds. Several branches of phonetics can further be distinguished, depending on the
narrower domain of interest of the respective field. Thus, one of the most important
branches of phonetics is articulatory phonetics which studies the way in which human
beings articulate or utter the sounds they make use of in verbal communication. Another
branch of phonetics that studies the physical parameters of speech sounds is called acoustic
phonetics. It is the most “technical” of all disciplines that are concerned with the study of
verbal communication. And the last branch is auditory phonetics which studies the way
people perceive speech sounds.
However, the research takes the Vietnamese learners' problems of pronouncing six
English consonants into considerations regarding to the way they use their organs of
articulations pronouncing such sounds. This is also what articulatory phonetics study and
the theoretical background of it is presented with more details in the following section.
1.2. Articulatory phonetics
Articulatory phonetics, one of the three main branches of phonetics, is the study of the
organs of speech and their use in producing speech sounds. The term 'organs of speech'
refers to those parts of the human body that are concerned in various ways with the
production of speech. A lot of them are only secondarily concerned with the production of

speech – their primary functions have to do with eating, chewing, and swallowing food,
and respiration. Those parts of the body below (not the lungs) belong to the vocal tract.
The vocal tract is divided into the supraglottal and the subglottal tract (as shown in Picture
1).
• lips

• larynx

• teeth

• vocal folds/cords

• nasal cavity

• trachea

• tongue

• lungs

• hard palate

• uvula

• soft palate

• diaphragm

• pharynx

• jaw bone


5

Pic. 1: Articulators
Articulatory phonetics deals with the major aspects of speech production. They are the
air stream mechanism, the state of vocal cords, the state of velum, the place and the
manner of articulation (Davenport & Hannahs, 1998). On the other hand, this study is paid
attention to consonants, particularly the six studied ones, therefore, the manner and the
place of articulation and voicing, the three main features of consonants, are discussed with
more interest, as followed.
Clark and Yallop use two features to describe the manner of articulation of
consonants: constriction and articulation. The degree of constriction decreases from total
closure via partial constriction to a fully open vowel like manner. Articulation divides into
dynamic and stable. Altogether, there are seven recognized manners of articulation: stop,
fricative, approximant, nasal, flap, tap and trill.
The manners of articulation are described as followed:
Manner
Stop

Fricative

Description
a complete closure at any point in the vocal tract and sudden release of
the closure.
potentially stable articulation produced by a constriction in the vocal
tract that is narrow enough to create a turbulent airflow.
potentially stable articulation in which the constriction is normally

Approximant

greater than in a vowel but not great enough to produce turbulence at the
point of constriction.


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stoppage at some point in the oral cavity, velum is lowered to allow

Nasal

airflow through the nasal cavity, stable articulation.
dynamic articulation where there is a brief occlusion in the vocal tract, a

Tap

single deliberate movement to create a closure, equivalent to a very
short stop.
dynamic articulation where there is a brief occlusion in the vocal tract,

Flap

one articulator strikes the other in passing not so much to create a brief
closure but more as the incidental effect of the articulatory gesture.
a dynamic articulation produced by the vibration of any articulator, a

Trill

series of vibrations.

The place of articulation defines both the area of the oral-pharyngeal vocal tract where
the constriction is made and the part of the tongue used to form the constriction. This gives
us the following places of articulation, which is shown clearly in the picture 2.
• bilabial: the two lips.
• dental: the tongue tip or (usually) the tongue blade with the upper teeth.
• alveolar: the tongue blade or (usually) the tongue tip with the alveolar ridge
• palatal: the tongue body and the hard palate.
• velar: the tongue body and the soft palate.
• uvular: between the back of the tongue and the uvula (which hangs down in
the back of the mouth)
• pharyngeal: between the root of the tongue and the back of the throat (the
pharynx)
• glottal: This isn't strictly a place of articulation. Glottal sounds are made in
the larynx.
(Davenport & Hannahs, 1998)
Voicing is also one the main categories that consonants have to base on when being
described. The vocal folds may be held against each other at just the right tension so that
the air flowing past them from the lungs will cause them to vibrate against each other. This
process is called voicing. Sounds that are made with vocal fold vibration are said to be
voiced. Sounds made without vocal fold vibration are said to be voiceless. There are


7

several pairs of sounds in English which differ only in voicing -- that is, the two sounds
have identical places and manners of articulation, but one has vocal fold vibration and the
other doesn't. The six chosen consonants are such exact examples in pairs, /Τ, ∆/; /Σ, Ζ/;
/τΣ, δΖ/.
1.3. Consonants

1.3.1. General descriptions of consonants
From a phonetic point of view, consonants are articulated in one of two ways: either
there is a closing movement of one of the vocal organs, forming such a narrow constriction
that it is possible to hear the sound of the air passing through; or the closing movement is
complete, giving a total blockage. The closing movement may involve lips, tongue, or
throat, but in each case the overall effect is very different from the relatively open and
unimpeded articulation found in vowels. (Crystal, 2003). In articulatory phonetics, a
consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of
the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence.*
Consonants, actually, are sounds made with closed or nearly closed articulations. As a
consequence, they tend to break up the stream up speech, defining a perceptual and
articulatory edge, or margin, for a unit (word or syllable in a word) that includes one or
more vowels.
Consonants can be divided into different kinds in accordance with three categories,
i.e., the degree of vocal cord vibration, the place of articulation and the manner of
articulation.
1.3.2. English consonants
Most dialects of English have about 24 distinctive (phonemic) consonant sounds
divided according to three different categories: voicing, place and manner of articulation,
as shown in the following table with the rows for places of articulation and the columns for
manners of articulation.

*

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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bilabial labiodental dental alveolar postalveolar retroflex palatal velar glottal

plosive
nasal

p

b
m

fricative
approximant

t

d

k

n
f

v

s

z

(w)

h
j

lateral
approximant

(w)

l

affricate
Table 1- Consonants in the English language
A stop cuts off airflow through either the mouth or the nose so there are oral and nasal
stops. Oral stops are often called plosives: [p, b], [t, d], [k,γ]. Nasal stops are usually called
nasals: [m], [n] and [Ν]. English fricatives include [f, v], [Τ, ∆], [s, z], [Σ, Ζ] and [h].
English approximants include [j], [w], [ ], and [l]. Affricates can be seen as a sequence of
a stop and a fricative which have the same or similar places of articulation, and there are
only two affricative sounds in English [τΣ], [δΖ].
The studied consonants can be called in different terms: fricatives/ affricatives if
basing on the manner of articulation; dental sounds/Τ, ∆/, post- (palato) alveolar sounds/Σ,
Ζ, τΣ, δΖ/ if basing on the place of articulation. /Σ, Τ, τΣ/ are strong and long fiction
sounds, the others are weak and short ones. They are similar at this point but different at
another point due to their own characteristics in the language, thus, it is much easier when
we take them into consideration in pairs, that is, /Τ, ∆/; /Σ, Ζ/; /τΣ, δΖ/.
1.3.2 1. Fricatives /Τ, ∆/ and / Ζ, Σ/
According to the manner of articulation, Katamba (1996) describes FRICATIVE: the
articulators are brought very close together leaving only a very narrow channel through
which the air squeezes on its way out, producing turbulence in the process, such as / f, v, Τ,
∆, Ζ, Σ/
Then Kelly (2000) provided the detailed descriptions of consonants in his books
including dental sounds /Τ, ∆/ (as in think, the, bath, bathe, mathematics, father). "The
tongue tip makes light contact with the back of the top, front teeth. Or, tongue tip may

9

protrude between upper and lower teeth. The soft palate is raised. /Τ/is unvoiced and fortis.
/∆/ is voiced and lenis. /∆/ is devoiced at the end of a word."
Also, he wrote "/Σ, Ζ/ (as in she, fish, beige, nation, measure) are post- alveolar
sounds. But when pronouncing them, the tongue blade makes light contact with the
alveolar ridge, and the front of the tongue is raised. /Σ/ is unvoiced and fortis. /Ζ/ is voiced
and lenis. It also devoiced at the end of a word. /Ζ/ does not occur as an initial sound in
English, and is rare as a final sound."
1.3.2.2. Affricatives/τΣ, δΖ/
And Cruttenden (2001) gives the description of AFFRICATIVE: a complete closure at
some point in the mouth, behind which the air pressure builds up; the separation of the
organs is slow compared with that of a plosive, so that more extended friction is a
characteristic second element of the sound. English has only two affricatives, the voiceless
palato-alveolar /τΣ/ and its voiced counterpart /δΖ/
/τΣ, δΖ/ (as in church, judge, nature, larger) are also palato- alveolar sounds. The
tongue tip, blade and rims close against the alveolar ridge and side teeth. The front of the
tongue is raised, and when the air is released, there is audible friction. The soft palate is
also raised. /τΣ/ is unvoiced and fortis. /δΖ/ is voiced and lenis. /δΖ/ is devoiced at the end
of a word.
1.3.3. Vietnamese consonants
In the Vietnamese language, according to Wikipedia*, there are 21 consonants of
Hanoi variety (Northern Vietnamese) and 22 of Saigon variety (Southern Vietnamese), but
they are all called initial consonants (Mai Ngoc Chu, 1997) as shown in the table below.
Note: Consonant sounds from both northern and southern dialects of Vietnamese are
based on Nguyen Dinh Hoa (2001). Sounds are represented by IPA symbols.

*

a free encyclopedia on the Internet


10

Table 2. 21 Consonants in Northern Vietnamese dialect

Table 3. 22 Consonants in Southern Vietnamese dialect
The Southern Vietnamese variety is essentially the same as the Northern with some
exceptions including regional consonants variation, for example, at the beginning of
syllables, Northern /v, z/ appear as Southern /j/; Southern /r/ appears as Northern /z/,
Southern /c, ♣/ appear as Northern /c/, and Southern /s, ♣/ appear as Northern /s/.
And note that Northern Vietnamese dialect contains twenty-one consonantal
phonemes. Of these, nineteen can occur word-initially (although one of these, [p], occurs
only in foreign loans), and just eight are permitted word-finally: [m n Ν p t k j w]. The
plosive sequence [p t k] are unreleased in all syllabic contexts. (Kirby, 2005)


11

1.3.4. English vs. Vietnamese
It is easy to infer from Table 1-3 that there are more similarities than differences in the
manner and the place of articulation of the consonants in the two languages. For instances,
both of the languages share the place and manner in articulating many consonants, such as
/p, b, m, w / (bilabial- stop, nasal, approximant), /k, Ν/ (velar- stop, nasal), /f, v/
(labiodental- fricative), /j/ (palatal- approximant), /n, l/ (alveolar- nasal, lateral
approximant), /s, z/ (alveolar- fricative) and /h/ (glottal- fricative).
And it is certain that in the two phonological systems there are foreign sounds to each
other, which make them different languages. Typically, in Vietnamese, the dental aspirated

sound /τ°Η/ is in letters ‘th’ the same way as the dental, fricative English sounds /Τ, ∆/
look in words. However, they are different in the manner of articulation, that is, the former
is stop, and the latter is fricatives, which creates problems for both in trying to learn each
other’s language. Another typical example of the sounds in both languages, which make
most of Vietnamese learners confused in articulating them. They are the affricative / ♣/
and fricative /♣/ in Southern Vietnamese, which are supposed to teach as the national
model language from the very beginning of a child’s school- life, and the English
affricative /τΣ/ and fricative /Σ/. They seem to sound similar due to the same manner of
articulation, but they are different in the place of articulation, that is, the former are
retroflex and the latter are post alveolar. Besides confusing sounds, the two languages also
have the sounds that the other completely does not have in terms of either the place or the
manner of articulation, for example, the velar fricative /Φ/, the palatal nasal / /, the palatal
stop /c/, the glottal stop / / in Vietnamese, and the post alveolar fricative /Ζ/ and affricative
/δΖ/ in English, etc.
Research shows that English consonants which have different either place or manner
of articulation from Vietnamese seem to be often mispronounced by Vietnamese learners.
Six out of them are/Τ, ∆, Σ, Ζ, τΣ, δΖ/, which are the objects of the study and discussed
earlier.


12

Five out of the six chosen consonants do not exist in the Vietnamese language, i.e.
/ /, /ð/, / /, /Ζ/ and / / except for /Σ/ in Central and Southern dialects1, thus it is
understandable that the subjects mispronounce them most of the time when they speak.
1.4. Review of previous research on pronunciation.
Indeed, there are several studies on Vietnamese learners’ problems or difficulties in
any aspects of English pronunciation including some relating to English consonants. For
example, “Difficulties for Vietnamese when pronouncing English: Final Consonants” by
Nguyen, Thi Thu Thao (2007)2 proved that English word-final consonants are not

pronounced in a native-like way by Vietnamese speakers. And Vietnamese effort to
pronounce English word-final consonants is towards omitting, adding schwa or replacing
by sounds closer to those existing in their mother-tongue. "Teaching English to Speakers of
Vietnamese. Refugee Education Guide: General Information"23that highlights problems
Vietnamese speakers are likely to have in learning English and suggests ways of helping
Vietnamese students of English over difficulties caused by these differences. Or 9
Essential English Pronunciations in the Vietnamese Context4 found that English sounds
not found in Vietnamese, for example, the interdentals /δ/, /θ/, can be mixed up with /f/ or
Vietnamese /th/ though this may not influence comprehensibility. Another finding of this
study is that Vietnamese students often neglect these and constant exercises on final
endings should be done attentively during any course.
Recently, an article named Common pronunciation problems of Vietnamese learners
of English, by Ha Cam Tam (2005) also pointed out the two main problems in
pronunciation of Vietnamese learners, that is, sound omission and sound confusion.
However, many previous studies found in books, linguistic magazines or on the Internet
are only about general pronunciation problems of wide issues, none of them specifies in
certain consonants that most impede Vietnamese learners from communication. Also for
1

/>C2F94664A657/0/VietnamesePhonemicInventory.pdf
2
/>3
/>ExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED208681&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=eric_accno&accno=ED208681
4
by Tran Thi Lan, PhD. Senior Lecturer, Hanoi University of Foreign Studies
/>

13

this reason, the research is carried out to find out the fact from a perceptible phenomenon

recognized by the author during her teaching process in HPMU, that is to say, the students
studying in HPMU cannot pronounce/∆, Τ, Σ, Ζ, δΖ, τΣ/ the same way as native speakers
do.


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Chapter 2: THE STUDY
So far the literature review has presented the basic theory of phonetics, articulatory
phonetics, consonants and the relevant matters. They are the background supporting this
main part of the study, which consist of the methodology and data analysis. The former
presents the research questions, the data instruments with the methodology, the data
collection procedure and the subjects of the study. And the latter provides the results
getting from the collected data and the discussion of those results at the same time. From
that the study can come to an implication to conclude what have been raised from the start.
2.1. Methodology
2.1.1. Research questions
The study focuses on analyzing the pronunciation of Vietnamese learners; in this study
these were students in HPMU, on the six English consonants that do not exist in the
Vietnamese language. Therefore, the study is set up to the followings questions:
• Do the subjects have problems in pronouncing these consonants?
• How do they differ from native speakers in articulating these sounds?
• What are the causes of the mispronunciations?
The answers of these research questions are the aims that this study goes for.
2.1.2. Data collection instruments
In order to get the sound samples, the author chose some suitable scripts from a certain
book and got the students to read out loud. The scripts have two parts: the first one made
up by single words containing the chosen consonants, in fact, is pronunciation exercises
read separately by native speakers. That was extracted from certain tape scripts at scattered
pages in a book namely English File 1 published by Oxford University Press in 2003.

The reason for taking this exercise as the data instrument is that the book is designed
with pronunciation exercises of all English phonemes including the six selected consonants
of the study, which cannot be found in the course book Headway Elementary that the
subjects are being taught at university. Those exercises were found to be relevant and also
to meet the demand of the subjects' English level because the book was designed for
'beginners and false beginners' as it said. The purpose of this exercise is to get how the


15

subjects pronounce such six consonants in isolate words comparing with the way native
speakers do it. The followings are the words chosen from the book to use as data collection
instrument for the study:
/δΖ/
juice
/δΖυ σ/
German
/δΖ∈ µ↔ν/
orange
/ ρΙνδΖ/
Japanese
/δΖΘπ↔νΙζ/
geography
/δΖΙ γρ↔φΙ/
biology
/βαΙ∪ λ↔δΖΙ/
(English File 1, cited at page 15)
/Σ/
shower
/Σαυ↔/

she
/ΣΙ /
fresh
/φρεΣ/
sugar
/Συγ↔/
station
/στεΙΣν/
social
/σ↔υΣλ/
information
/Ινφ↔µεΙΣν/
(English File 1, cited at page 55)
/Ζ/
television
/∪τελΙϖΙΖν/
usually
/ϕυ Ζ↔λΙ/
garage
/γΘρα Ζ/
revision
/ρΙ∪ϖΙΖν/

(English File 1, cited at page 70)

/∆/
the
/∆↔/
father
/φΑ ∆↔/

brother
/βρ℘∆↔/
that
/∆Θτ/
mother
/µ℘∆↔/
with
/ωΙ∆/
(English File 1, cited at page 21 & 43)
/τΣ/
chess
/τΣεσ/
chair
/τΣε↔/
change
/τΣεΙνδΖ/
lunch
/λ℘ντΣ/
watch
/ω τΣ/
picture
/πΙκτΣ↔/
(English File ,1 cited at page 61)
/Τ/
thumb
/Τ℘µ/
third
/Τ∈ δ/
eighth
/εΙτΤ/

month
/µ℘νΤ/
Thursday
/Τ∈ σδεΙ/
theatre
/ΤΙ↔τ↔/
(English File 1, cited at page 79)

These words chosen contain the six studied sounds in three positions: initial,
internal and final in order to capture as full picture of the subjects’ mispronunciation of
these sounds as possible.
In addition, with the purpose of finding out if the subjects have the similar
problems with those sounds in connected speech in terms of pronunciation, the author
made six simple sentences using some of the words in the first exercise. These sentences
are the followings:


16

1. I like drinking orange juice.
2. I usually watch television in my free time.
3. I often go shopping with my mother.
4. We go to the theatre every Thursday.
5. She has a shower everyday.
6. We sometimes play chess before lunch.
2.1.3. Data collection procedures
The data collection was conducted followings three steps discussed below.
Firstly, the respondents were asked to read out aloud the prepared scripts as mentioned
in the earlier section. What they read was recorded directly into the computer then
analyzed in the light of phonetics, particularly articulatory phonetics to find out the

differences in the subjects' pronunciation compared with the native's one.
Secondly, with the help of the two foreign teachers of English, one comes from Russia
and the other comes from England, the ten- recorded samples were listened to list out the
problems in students' pronunciation. Asking for the assistance of a Russian teacher whose
professional is English teaching is for the reason that the Russian teacher may have a more
objective point of view in finding out the subjects' mispronunciations when listening to
their recordings than the researcher herself because though she is also a non-native speaker
like the author; besides, she has no Vietnamese background and has never listened to the
students before hence she has no easy- understanding emotional state like the researcher.
Without being shown the origin of what was recorded beforehand, the two teachers
were asked to note down whatever they heard while they were listening to and what they
thought to be problematic with the pronunciation. At the same time, the recordings were
listened and noted down by the researcher in order to find out an independent result from
her two colleagues’.
Finally, the researcher observed the subjects’ real speech in class during her teaching
time to see if the subjects’ pronunciations in real performances were similar with that in
recordings. From the data collected how much the subjects mispronounced such
consonants and what the mispronunciations were like were pointed out.


17

2.1.4. Subjects of the study
Since the study applies the technique of recording, the subjects involved are ten nonEnglish majored freshmen and sophomores aged 18 to 20 years old including 6 females
and 4 males. All the students in HPMU were taught English in the course book namely
Headway Elementary in the first year. And at the time of the study, in terms of English
proficiency, all the subjects have generally covered basic grammatical categories and
developed basic skills in reading, speaking, listening and writing at the level of elementary.
They are learning to become general practitioners at HPMU and they were chosen
incidentally. All of them are from different areas in the North, i.e. Quangninh (Halong

city), Haiphong, Haiduong, Hung yen, Hanoi (the suburbs), Bacninh, Phutho. It is certain
that they were given the common education from the very start of their life because the
places they are from are generally at the similar level of development. Moreover, they are,
on the whole, intelligent and hardworking students, because getting into a medical school
is not easy work.
In short, the subjects of the study are compatible in terms of age, sex, and knowledge
of both the mother tongue and foreign language. Therefore, it can be said that the scripts
used to record are suitable and obviously at their level of English competence.
2.2. Data results
The data of the study was analyzed in the light of articulatory phonetics mentioned
earlier in 1.2, Chapter I.
Because the data were collected from two sources: recordings the subjects reading two
prepared exercises in lab and observing their real speech in class during the lesson, they are
presented in two sub-parts as the following.
2.2.1. Data collected from the recordings
After investigating, the subjects' pronunciation problems relating to the six consonants
are found:
1. /Τ/ is usually pronounced like /th/ in Vietnamese (described by the native
teacher as soft /t/ sound) or even /t/ and is not pronounced at the final position.
2. /∆/ is pronounced like /th/ in Vietnamese or /s/, and /d/ in the final position.
3. /Σ/ is pronounced like /s/ and is omitted at the final position.


18

4. /Ζ/ is pronounced like /s/ or /z/ or /τΣ/ in the final position and again is
ignored at the final position.
5. /τΣ/ is pronounced more softly than it should be, like 'ch' /c/ in Vietnamese
and is not heard in the final position.
6. /δΖ/ is pronounced like /Ζ, z, τΣ / and is dropped at the final position.

These problems above are in fact sound confusion and sound omission, in which the
former is more common than the latter. Yet, at first the author considers the two problems
to be one with a common name: mispronunciation, in order to present what she reckoned
up from the recordings more easily on the total number of the subjects and the times of
each consonant' occurring. And after that, she provided separate tables of two problems in
details.
Results of mispronunciations of the sounds through recording were presented in the
following order of tables from the highest to the smallest number of each sound in different
sections:
•

across examiners

•

across subjects

•

across positions

•

across individual sounds

•

across exercises

•

across sound deviations

•

across sound omission

2.2.1.1. Mispronunciations across the examiners
The first one is of the mispronunciation of each sound by the whole subjects figured
out by the three examiners.
Consonants

/Τ/
Τ

/Ζ/
Ζ

/δΖ/
δ

/Σ/
Σ

/∆/
∆

/τΣ/
τ

Teachers

(%)

(%)

(%)

(%)

(%)

(%)

English

72.5

55

42.2

30

23.3

15.5

Russian

72.5

55

43.3

30

25.56

16.6

Vietnamese

72.5

55

43.3

30

24.44

17.7

Table 4: Mispronunciations across the examiners


19

The percentages are calculated by the operation a= b*100/ c; in which a is the
percentage of each sound mispronounced by the whole subjects, b is the real number of
each sound mispronounced by all the subjects, multiplied by 100 percent and the divide cthe total number of each sound appearing in the two exercises multiplied by 10 subjects.
For instance, according to the notes by English teacher the ten subjects mispronounced
/δΖ/ for 38 times, and the number of this consonant' present in the two exercise is 9, then
we have 38*100/ 90 = 42.2%.
As it can be seen in Table 4, the results found by the three teachers are more similar
than different. This shows that the data are reliable to confirm the subjects'
mispronunciation. Moreover, the fact that native speakers of English can recognize foreign
accents in ESL/EFL learners' speech better than the other two teachers. Therefore, the
author took the results found out by the native teacher as the standard one to analyze.
As estimated in Table 4, 72.5 % (the highest) of the subjects tend to pronounce /Τ/ as
'soft' /t/ like a Vietnamese initial consonant 'th' in "thích" or /d/ or /t/, the second highest is
when many of the participants (55%) produced /Ζ/ incorrectly as /z/ or /s/. It is followed by
/δΖ/ (42.2%) when several of them pronounced it as /z/ or even /τΣ/. Some (30%)
pronounced /Σ/ as /s/ and a few (23.3%) made /∆/ as /z/, /d/ or soft /t/ and only few of the
students (15.5%) mispronounced /τΣ/.
2.2.1.2. Mispronunciations across subjects
The following table shows details of each student's mispronunciation, and the
percentages are calculated by the same operation as for the whole participants, but now for
each subject.
As being shown in the Table 5 below, half of the subjects (in bold) (50%)
mispronounced all the six consonants, 30% of them mispronounced 5 out of the six sounds,
10% made 4 out of the six and the other 10% made only two of the six consonants. This
table also shows that all of the subjects (100%) produced the consonant /δΖ/ not the same
way as it is in English, usually, they made it as /z/ or a bit harder. About the other sounds,
90% subjects mispronounced /Τ, Ζ, Σ/, 80% of them could not pronounce /∆/ and 60% did
Τ
not succeed with /τΣ/.

Consonants

/Τ/
Τ

/Ζ/
Ζ

/δΖ/
δ

/Σ/
Σ

/∆/
∆

/τΣ/
τ


20

Subjects

(%)

(%)

(%)

(%)

(%)

(%)

a1

37.5

66.67

66.67

20

0

0

a2

100

33.33

44.44

20

11.11

44.44

a3

0

33.33

11.11

0

0

0

a4

87.5

16.67

11.11

20

22.22

0

a5

87.5

100

88.89

60

22.22

11.11

a6

100

66.67

33.33

60

22.22

11.11

a7

87.5

66.67

22.22

30

33.33

55.56

a8

100

0

11.11

20

22.22

11.11

a9

100

100

44.44

30

33.33

0

a10

25

66.67

88.89

40

66.67

22.22

90

90

100

90

80

60

Total of
subjects
mispronounced
(%)
Table 5: Mispronunciations across subjects
2.2.1.3. Mispronunciations across the positions of sounds
The next table shows details of the students' mispronunciation across the sounds'
positions.
Consonants

/Τ/
Τ

/Ζ/
Ζ

/δΖ/
δ

/Σ/
Σ

/∆/
∆

/τΣ/
τ

Positions

(%)

(%)

(%)

(%)

(%)

(%)

Initial

73.3

-

40

15

16.67

0

Medial

-

50

40

43.33

15

10

Final

70

80

45

80

45

32.5

Table 6: Mispronunciation across the positions of sounds
The same operation as in Table 4 is adopted here, but now a is the result of the ten
subjects' mispronunciation on each position of the sounds; b is the real number of
mispronunciation by all the subjects at each position, and c is the total number of times that
each sound appears in the two exercises.