Teaching pronunciation of english consonants by using contrasting and substituting techniques

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 các phụ âm tiếng Anh bằng
việc sử dụng kỹ thuật đối chiếu và 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 các phụ âm tiếng Anh bằng
việc sử dụng kỹ thuật đối chiếu và 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

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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.

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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.

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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
1. Background to the study ...................................................................... 1
2. Objectives of the study ......................................................................... 2
3. Research question ................................................................................. 2
4. Scope of the study: ................................................................................ 3
5. Methodology ......................................................................................... 3
6. Significance of the study....................................................................... 3
7. Organization of the study ..................................................................... 4
PART 2: DEVELOPMENT ......................................................................... 5
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................... 5
1.1. Brief overview of Vietnamese and English consonant sounds ....... 5
1.1.1. Vietnamese consonant sounds ................................................... 5
1.1.2. English consonant sounds .......................................................... 6
1.1.3. Brief comparison between Vietnamese consonant sounds and
English ones .......................................................................................... 7
1.2. Review of some pronunciation teaching methods .......................... 8
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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
1. Recapitulation of major findings ....................................................... 39
2. Concluding remarks.......................................................................... 40
3. Limitations of the study ..................................................................... 41
REFERENCES ........................................................................................... 43
APPENDIX .................................................................................................... I

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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

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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

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PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1. 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 do 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

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for teachers in pronunciation teaching because Vietnamese and English
consonant sound systems share some similarities and many distinctive
differences. For example, both Vietnamese and English have the alveolar
voiceless plosive /t/, but there are some slight differences in the place of
articulation as well as the quality of aspiration of the two sounds is not the
same. It may be a good idea in teaching pronunciation if the teacher can make
use of the similarities and differences of the two consonant sound systems to
help learners differentiate the sounds and master the pronunciation of the
foreign sound. Teachers of pronunciation, as observed, mainly depend on
ready-made materials in text books and neglect some useful factors from the
native language.
This study was carried out to evaluate how some teaching 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 the objective, this study was set up to answer the following
question:
To what extent do the contrasting and substituting techniques help
learners improve their pronunciation of consonant sounds?

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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
students studying at the school.
It was carried out with the participation of first year students at the school.
The consonant sounds which are used in this study are limited. The English
consonant sound system consists of 24 consonant sounds, so it is very
difficult to include all those sounds in this research. Therefore, the researcher
only focuses on teaching the most frequently mispronounced consonant
sounds made by the students at the school. There are six consonant sounds
included in this study.
5. Methodology
This study employs the quasi-experimental design. The participants are
chosen randomly. Tests are assigned before and after the intervention. The
data are collected for analysis.
6. Significance of the study
The significance of this study is in the use of Vietnamese consonant sounds as
a supporting tool in teaching some English consonant sounds. In this study,
some English and Vietnamese consonant sounds are contrasted and
substituted to help the participants (students) really get the essence of the

English sounds. Therefore they can have a better pronunciation of the English
target sounds as well as avoid the negative transfer from the native language
to the second language.

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7. Organization of the study
This study consists of three main parts.
Part 1 is the introduction. This part provides the overview of the study
Part 2 is the development. This part consist of 3 chapters
Chapter 1 is the literature review. It provides an overview of pronunciation
teaching as well as previous related studies. It also presents the author’s
framework.
Chapter 2 deals with methodology. It restates the research questions and
describes the applied techniques, participants, data collection instrument, data
collection procedure, and data analysis.
Chapter 3 discusses the results and findings. Major research findings and
discussion are presented in details in this chapter.
Part 3 is the conclusion; this part presents conclusions and implications of the
study.

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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

1.1.1. Vietnamese consonant sounds
According to Đoàn Thiện Thuật (1999), Vietnamese language has 22 initial
consonant sounds and 6 final consonant sounds. These sounds are categorized
in the following chart:
Place of articulation

Tongue tip
Labial

Tongue

Manner of articulation

straight

twisted

Uvular

Glottal

c

k

ʔ

ɲ

ŋ

blade

(retroflex)
voiceless
aspirated
Stops

t’

voiced
voiceless

unaspirated

Fricatives

voiced

t

ʈ

b

d

nasal

m

n

voiceless

f

s

ʂ

χ

v

z

ʐ

ɣ

voiced

l

Table 1: Vietnamese consonant sounds
(Extracted from Đoàn (1999: 153)

5

h


All these 22 consonant sounds can be in the syllable initial position. Six of
them which can appear in the syllable final position are /m/, /n/, / ŋ/, /p/, /t/,
/k/.
It is necessary to note that present Vietnamese language does not have any
consonant cluster like /pl/, /st/, or /kl/. This makes it difficult for Vietnamese
learners when studying a foreign language such as English.
1.1.2. English consonant sounds
According to Roach, the classification of English consonant sounds are given
in the following chart (Roach, 2000)
Place of articulation

Bilabial Labio-

Dental

Alveolar Plato-

Palatal

Velar

Glottal

alveolar

dental
Manner of articulation

Plosive

p

Fricative

b

t d
f v

θ ð

s z

Affricate
Nasal

h

ʃ ʒ

ʧ ʤ

m

n

Lateral
Approximant

k ɡ

ŋ
l

w

r

Table 2: English consonant sounds

6

j


English consonant phonemes are characterized by three major characteristics,
namely voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation.
There are two more consonant sounds which are not listed in the table, which
are the 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 consonant
sounds.
The first group consists of consonant sounds which are shared by both of the
languages. These consonant sounds are nearly identical in the two languages,
such as the nasals (/m/, /n/, /ŋ/), the labio-dental fricatives (/f/, /v/), etc.
The second group consists of sounds which only appear in one language. For
example, the uvular fricative voiceless / χ/ in words like khó khăn does not
exist in English; vice-versa, the English dental voiced fricative /ð/ is not a
consonant sound in Vietnamese language, though it can sometimes be
produced by a few people as an alternative sound of /z/.
The third group consists of consonant pairs which are made up of sounds
appearing in the two languages with only some certain different feature. The
difference can come from the qualities of the sounds or the regional dialects.
For example, the English alveolar voiceless plosive /t/ differs from the
Vietnamese /t/ in the quality of aspiration; the post-alveolar approximant /r/
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appears in both Vietnamese and English, but the Vietnamese sound is
sometimes pronounced with a slight vibration of the tongue tip, which is not a
feature of the English sound /r/. The biggest difference existing between
consonant sounds in English and Vietnamese is that the consonant sounds in
English are pronounced when they are at the end of a syllable, which is a
significant difference from Vietnamese final consonant sounds. For example,
the final alveolar plosive sound of the word cut /kʌt/ is pronounced with the
puff of air pushed out strongly, but the final sound of cắt in Vietnamese is
unexploded.

Pronunciation problems come mainly from the consonant sounds in group
two and three, i.e. the sounds which do not exist in Vietnamese and the
sounds which slightly differ from the Vietnamese equivalent sounds.
1.2.

Review of some pronunciation teaching methods

Pronunciation teaching has a long history and it has experienced different
methods and approaches. This part of only reviews three significant teaching
methods which are related to the techniques applied in this study.
The first recognizable method was Direct Method. It first became popular in
the late 1800s and early 1900s. This method uses students’ intuition and
imitation to teach pronunciation. Students are required to approximate the
model of the teacher or a recording through imitation and repetition.
“This instructional method was grounded on observations of children
learning their first language and of children and adults learning foreign
languages in noninstructional settings” (Celce-Murcia et al, 1996, p.:3).
One of the most significant techniques that came from the period of the Direct
Method is listening and imitating. In this technique, students listen to teacher
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modeling then repeat and imitate it. Nowadays, with the development of
technology, tape recorders, video recorders, and language labs can be used as
support to enhance this technique.
The second significant trend in pronunciation teaching is the Reform
Movement, which emerged in 1890s and was influenced by Henry Sweet,
Wilhelm Vietor, and Paul Passy, who formed the International Phonetic
Association and developed the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The
phoneticians supporting this movement advocated that:

 The spoken form of a language is primary and should be taught first
 The findings of phonetics should be applied to language teaching
 Teachers must have solid training in phonetics
 Learners should be given phonetics training to establish good speech
habits.
As a result, phonetic training technique came to existence from the Reform
Movement. It uses articulatory descriptions, articulatory diagrams, and a
phonetic alphabet to teach learners the mechanism of sound production and
sound transcription.
The third trend was Audiolingualism in the United States in the 1940s and
1950. This method emphasizes the importance of pronunciation and state that
it should be taught explicitly from the start. It is similar to the Direct Method
in that the learner imitates the teacher’s modeled sounds. However, there is a
remarkable technique in these methods which is the use of Minimal pair
drills – drills that use words that differ by a single sound in the same position.
This technique is used for both listening practice and guided oral production.
It is based on the concept stated by Bloomfield (1933) that a phoneme is a

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minimally distinctive sound. It normally begins with words and then move on
to sentence drills. Some sample minimal pairs may be as followed:

A

B

/i:/

/i/

Sheep

ship

Seat

sit

Least

list

Sleep

slip

Sentences:

Don’t sit in that seat
Is that a black sheep?

vs.

Is that a black ship?

This is one of the most commonly used activities in pronunciation teaching.
Using this activity, the teacher has students differentiate the sounds by
listening, i.e. the teacher says two words (e.g., seat and sit) and has students

decide if the sounds are the same or different. Then, the teacher should read a
word from either list and asks students to identify which sound is being
pronounced. After the listening discrimination comes the guided oral
production practice. Students imitate teacher’s model to practice each list in
isolation, then in contrast. Finally, individual students are called on to read the
lists without a model.
In the 1960s, with the development of the Cognitive Approach, which was
influenced by Chomsky and Neisser and viewed language as governed
behavior rather than habit formation, the role of pronunciation was

10


deemphasized. The arguments for that were that native-like pronunciation was
an unrealistic objective and unachievable, and that time would be better spent
on teaching more learnable items, such as grammar and vocabulary.
The 1970s witnessed the two significant pronunciation teaching methods,
namely the Silent Way and Community Language Learning. The Silent Way
(Gattegno, 1972) pays attention to accuracy of both sound production and
structure production from the initial instructing stage. Community Language
Learning is a method developed by Charles A. Curran (1976). This method is
intuitive and imitative as in the Direct Method.
When the Communicative Approach to language teaching came to popularity
in late 1970s, teachers decided that teaching suprasegmental features of
language in a discourse context was the optimal way to organize a short-term
pronunciation course for nonnative speakers.
Today, pronunciation teaching seeks to identify the most important aspects of
both the segmental and suprasegmental features, and integrate them
appropriately to meet every learner’s needs.
1.3.

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 to 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
the 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 chooses a Vietnamese equivalent sound to the English consonant
sound being taught. Then, the teacher contrasts the qualities of the two
sounds, emphasizing the differences. In the second stage, the teacher has
students do some sound substituting drills.
The process of applying the techniques should go through the following
steps:
- The teacher introduces the sound being taught. This step can be
accomplished by using a recording tape.

- The teacher explains the mechanism of producing the target sound.
- The teacher has students pronounce the target sound. This is a listening
and repeating drill in which students have to imitate the model
pronunciation.
- The teacher contrasts the target sound with the Vietnamese equivalent
sound(s). A Vietnamese sound which has either similar pronunciation
and/or similar written representation is chosen to contrast with the
English target sound. The differences between the two sounds are
emphasized.

12


- The teacher replaces the Vietnamese sound with the English target
sound in some Vietnamese words and requires students to pronounce
the words. In substitution can make some nonsense words and they can
be funny too. However, the main purpose is for the learners to get the
essence of the English sound.
- The teacher has students practice English words containing the sound
that is being taught.
The techniques can be applied as a highlight in 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 Method, the minimal pair drills
of Audiolingualism, the phonetic training of the Reform Movement.
In the second step, the teacher provides students with a description of the
mechanism to produce the target sound. This is a distinctive feature of the

phonetic training of the Reform Movement.
In the third step of the technique implementation, the teacher provides
pronunciation models of the target English sound and students imitate. This is
the significant feature of the Direct Method. Learners have had access to the
mechanism of how to pronounce the sound in the previous step and now they
can apply what they have just learnt to pronounce it.
In the next step, the teacher chooses a Vietnamese sound which is similar to
the English sound being taught in either written form or spoken form and

13


helps students compare and contrast the sounds. The differences are
highlighted so that students who mispronounce the sound in the previous step
can now see their problems.
The next step is the biggest significance of the techniques implemented in this
study. The teacher picks some Vietnamese words containing the Vietnamese
sound which is similar to the English sound being taught. Then, the teacher
creates new words by replacing the Vietnamese sound with the target English
one. This may make some nonsense words and may make students laugh. But
that is not a big deal in a pronunciation class. When the students pronounce
the newly-created words, the strange pronunciation helps them get the key
features of the English sound. At this point, the teacher can make use of the
strength of Minimal pair drills. Each pair consists of the original Vietnamese
word and the newly-created one. Students are required to pronounce both
words of each pair. Furthermore, these techniques can eliminate foreign
factors which may hinder the access to the true quality of the target sound. As
mentioned in the previous part, different rules of combining sounds in English
and Vietnamese may cause difficulties to Vietnamese learners. Furthermore,
surrounding sounds may also hinder the learner from acquiring the true

quality of the target sound. Even, sometimes learners are defeated by the
surroundings sounds and fail to pronounce the target word. Using these
techniques, the target sound is isolated and put into the native linguistic
environment of the learner. There is no more hindrance from the neighboring
sounds as well as no more foreign sound combinations. Learners are given the
best option to get the real features of the sound.
After the learners have accessed the essence of the target sound, it is brought
back to its English language environment. The teacher provides students with

14


some English words containing the target sound to practice their
pronunciation.
These techniques can limit the negative transfer. According to the Contrastive
analysis hypothesis, the transference from the native language to the target
language is a significant factor in accounting for foreign accents. Using these
techniques, learners can see the true qualities of the target sound contrasted
with those of the native sounds, and therefore reducing the negative
transference.

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CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
This chapter presents descriptions of the participants, the implementation of
the techniques, the data collection instruments, and the procedures of data
collection.
2.1. Participants
The study has the participation of 40 first year students. 11 of them are male

and the other 29 are female. They are from 18 to 20 years old. They come
from different provinces.
They are studying English at the School of 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 on a pretest. This test is aimed at deciding
the most commonly mispronounced consonants and choosing students to
participate in the next step. In the test, the participants are required to read out
loud a wordlist. Their pronunciation errors are noted by the examiner.
First, 6 consonants which are mispronounced the most are selected for the
study. Then, 40 students who mispronounce the 6 consonants are chosen.
They are divided into two groups; each group consists of 20 students.
This study also has the support of an American teacher. He has been teaching
in Vietnam for more than 5 years, and he can speak a little Vietnamese. He
helps in the tests as an examiner.

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