Essay identifying some common errors in pronucing the ending sounds

Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................3
1.1.

Rationale ...............................................................................................
...3

1.2.

Aims

of

the

study ....................................................................................3
1.3.

Scope

of

the

study ....................................................................................4
2. LITERATURE REVIEW...........................................................................4
2.1. English pronunciation…………………………......................................4
2.2. English consonants ………………………..............................................4
2.3. Final English consonants ………………………....................................5

3. METHODOLOGY .....................................................................................7
3.1. Subjects....................................................................................................7
3.2. Procedures of data collection...................................................................7
3.3. Procedures of data analysis......................................................................8
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ................................................................8
4.1. Omission of single final consonants...................................................9
4.2. Substitution of single final consonants.............................................11
5: CONCLUSION.........................................................................................12

1


Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

REFERENCES .............................................................................................13
APPENCDICES ...........................................................................................14
Appendix 1.......................................................................................14

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, FIGURES AND TABLES
List of abbreviations
ESL: English as a Second Language
EFL: English as a Foreign Language
NTU : Nguyen Trai University
List of figures
Figure 1: The proportion of omission errors in single final consonants
List of tables
Table 1: The classification of English consonants
Table 2: The proportion of types of error in single final consonant
pronunciation
Table 3: The proportion of substitution errors in single final consonants

2


Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

I. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale
It is undeniable that oral communication proficiency is one of the key
targets any Vietnamese ESL learners wish to achieve. However, a big number of
foreigners have commented “many Vietnamese speakers can speaking English, but
only a few have intelligible English pronunciation that they can be understood
easily in direct communication with foreigners” (Ha, 2005, Common
Pronunciation Problems of Vietnamese Learners of English, p.1) As a matter of
fact, Vietnamese learners of ESL encounter considerable pronunciation difficulties
concerned with their own language. Like other languages, Vietnamese sound
system has several phonetic features making Vietnamese people find it hard to
pronounce some English sounds like native speakers. One of the outstanding
problems faced by Vietnamese ESL learners lies in the pronunciation of single
English final consonants. In an attempt to gain insights into the problem in English
single final consonant pronunciation of the first year students at Nguyen Trai
University, the researcher has conducted this study in order to identify some
common errors in their pronouncing single final consonants. Once having been
completed, this study would give decent benefits. On the first place, the research
can draw out some typical pronunciation mistakes made by NTU first year
student. Consequently, it can helpfully contribute to the understanding of the
students’ difficulties arising while learning to speak English with appropriate
pronunciation.
1.2. Aims of the study

3


Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

The research is aimed to investigate typical single final consonant errors in
the pronunciation of NTU students and raise their awareness of their pronunciation
problems.
Research questions:
1.

Do NTU students make mistakes when pronouncing English final
consonants?

2.

What are the common errors in pronouncing English final
consonants made by first year students at NTU?

1.3. Scope of the study
Within the scope of a small research with the maximum number of 3,000 in
length, the study is conducted with no ambition to cover all the pronunciation
problems encountered by Vietnamese ESL learners in general or even by NTU
students in particular. The main focus of this study is limited to identifying some
common mistakes in single final consonant pronunciation made by first year
students at NTU only.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. English pronunciation
There have been so far various ways of defining the terminology
“pronunciation”. According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Encyclopedia (2004),

pronunciation is considered “the way in which a language is spoken”.
As cited in Nguyen (2008:06), the American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language (2007) defines pronunciation as “a way of speaking a word,
especially a way that is accepted or generally understood”.
In the scope of this study, the researcher would like to mention pronunciation
as the production and reception of sounds of speech, especially the final consonant
sounds.
2.2. English consonant sounds

4


Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

In “Language: Its structure and use” (2004), Edward Finegan offer the
following definition of consonant: “consonants are sounds produced by partially
or completely blocking air in its passage from the lung through the vocal track”
Roach (2000) defines consonants as “sounds in which there is obstruction
to the flow of air as it passes the larynx” Also according to Roach (2000) and
Kelly (2000), English has 24 consonants which are categorized into 6 groups
based on their manner of articulation, that is: stop (plosive), fricative, affricative
nasal, lateral and approximant.
Labio
Bilabia

-

Dent

Alveol

l

dent

al

ar

al
Plosive

+b
-p

Fricative

Plata

Velar

r
+g
-k

+v

+ð

-t

+z

-f

-θ

-s

Glott
al

+h

+ʒ
-ʃ
+ dʒ
- tʃ

+m

+n

+ŋ

+l

Lateral
Approxima

alveola

+d

Affricate
Nasal

Palato-

+r

+w

+j

nt

Table 1: The classification of English consonants
2.3. English final consonants
Yule ( 2006: 47) states “ The basic structure of the kind of syllable found in
English words ….is shown in the accompanying diagram”

Syllable

5


Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

Onset

Rhyme

Nuleus
Coda
Consonant(s)

Vowel

Consonant(s)
The term “final consonants” refers to the consonant sounds which appear at the
end of words. In linguistics, they are also called codas, “the coda is the final
consonant or consonant cluster” (Barbara and Brian, 1994)
According to Rachel (2003), there can be 4 consonants in a coda:

- If there are no consonants at the end of the word, it has zero codas.
-

A single coda is called the final consonant. Any consonants except /h/,
/r/, /w/ and /j/ may be a final coda.

-

Two consonant cluster

+ Pre-final: /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /l/, /s/ followed by a final consonant
+Consonant plus post-final :/s/, /z/, /t/, /d/, /θ/
Eg : tank, edge, bell, wind, cooks…
-

Three consonant clusters

+ Pre-final plus final plus post-final
Eg. helped, banks, bonds, twelfth
+ Final plus post-final plus post final s, z, t, d, θ
E.g. fifths, next, lapsed

- Four consonant clusters.
+ Most are pre-final plus final plus post final plus post-final
E.g. twelfths, prompts

6


Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

+ Occasionally there is one final and three post final consonants e.g. sixths,
texts.
Yule (2006:48) suggested that “It is noticeable in English that large consonant
clusters are frequently reduced in casual conversational speech”. In fact,
speakers tend to omit complex consonant clusters in order to simplify the
process of articulation.
As this study is aimed to identify the pronunciation errors in common single
final consonants only, the data collected would only refer to single codas or
single final consonants rather than other types of codas.
3. METHODOLOGY
3.1. Subjects
The participants in this research were 42 first year students from 2 classes
in NTU, the new private university where the researcher is working as an English
lecturer. Also being in charge of teaching these two classes, the researcher has
obtained the good understanding of their English proficiency. Coming from

different parts of Vietnam, most of them studied English for 7 years from
secondary to high school. It is also needed to mention that all of these students are
not from the class majored in English but they only learn English as one of the
obligatory subjects in class. When this study was conducted, all of them had been
studying at NTU for one a half semester at the level of Elementary with the main
text books listed as “ Market Leader – Elementary”, “Essential Grammar in Use”
and “Let’s talk 1”, in most of which , there are not many sections specialized in
teaching pronunciation. The students mostly learn about English pronunciation
only from the teacher’s additional instruction and correction of their pronunciation
mistakes during the lessons in class. All the things above refer to the fact that most
of these students’ English background knowledge in general and their
pronunciation knowledge in particular are still rather limited.
3.2. Procedures of data collection

7


Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

The necessary data were collected during March, 2011 in 2 first year
classes in NTU. Several data collection instruments were employed to gain access
to the students’ problems in pronouncing final consonants.
The first instrument adopted is class observation since the researcher had
plenty of time and opportunities to directly observe the students during every
lesson in class. The detailed schedule was based on 2 classes’ timetable of English
speaking lesson with 1 period per class per week. So from 1 st to 20th March, the
total number of periods in which the observation in both classes was conducted
during 3 weeks was 6 periods. The students were required to work in pairs or
individually on a speaking topic of the lesson they had learned. Whenever a
student made a speech, the researcher took note in the check list ( See Appendix 1)

all the mistakes with his or her pronouncing single final consonants.
Added to that, the audio-recording instrument was also adopted to collect
information for take-home analysis. Placed on the teacher’s desk, the tape recorder
was used when the students came to make pair discussion or individual
presentation. Both the process of observation and audio-recording were carried out
at the same time during 6 periods of speaking lesson in 2 classes.
3.3. Procedures of data analysis
After the data had been collected from observation and recording process,
they were analyzed carefully in a systematical way with the application of both
statistical and interpretive method, which ensured the validity and reliability of the
study. All the errors made by students were counted according to the criteria of
types, sounds frequency. They were then classified and organized into tables and
charts to facilitate the synthesis and comparison. Pie charts were used to analyze
and compare the figures in a general sense while tables were preferably applied
when further details were required.
4: RESULTS AND CONCLUSION
The statistics listed in the data analysis were calculated to figure out the
percentage (in total of 100%) of the common single final consonant pronunciation

8


Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

errors made by the students. Besides, the researcher would like to make a further
discussion on those findings with the aim to find out some methods to improve the
students’ single final consonant pronunciation.
The most common errors were chosen in regard to the number of times they
were made and the number of students who made those kinds of errors. The result
of the statistical process showed that the outstanding types of errors could be

classified into 2 main groups: omission of single final consonants and substitution
of single final consonants. Among the total number of 284 errors, 218 ones
belonged to the group of final consonant omission and the rest of 61 were the
substitution errors.
Types

of Number of students (total:42)
Number
Percentage

Number of times (total:284)
Number
Percentage

errors
Omission
41
98%
218
77%
Substitution
15
35%
66
23%
Table 2. The proportion of types of error in final consonant pronunciation

It can be seen from the table above that up to 77% (repeated 218 times) of the
errors collected are identified as omission errors made by a big proportion of 98%
students. This figure refers to the students’ most popular pronunciation mistakes

with single ending consonants. As for the second notable type of substitution
errors, the percentage of error repetition is 23% with 15 students making this error
(repeated 66 times). In order to have a closer look at these two kinds of errors, the
researcher made a detailed and in-depth analysis of each error as follows
4.1. Omission of single final consonants
As mentioned before, consonants /h/, /r/, /w/ and /j/ can not be a final coda
which can be the final consonant or consonant cluster. Therefore, only 20
consonants considered as single final consonants are analyzed in this study.

9


Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

Figure 1
As can be seen from the chart, among the rest of 20 consonants, there are
several ones to be rarely omitted while the others’ omission is particularly serious.
On the first place, the group of 6 consonants, such as /m/,/n/,/g/,/tʃ/ ,/ʒ/,/ŋ/
share the same number of errors, that is zero. That should be explained by the
following reasons. Firstly, being produced through the nose with the mouth closed,
the nasal ending sounds: /m/, /n/, /ŋ/ in Vietnamese seem not to be much different
from those in English. These 3 consonants in fact, are also paid little attention in
pronouncing when they are at the end of words. The similar situation happens to
the consonant /g/. However, when it comes to 2 consonants /tʃ/ and /ʒ/, the
researcher finds the percentage of zero surprising since those sounds are
considered difficult for Vietnamese to pronounce. It is possible that the number of
words ending with these 3 consonants were not used much in student’s speech.
The similar explanation can be used for the case of the consonant /ð/ with 3 errors
made since few words the students spoke ended with this sound. Also counting for
small number of errors is the 2 plosive- bilabial consonants /b/and /p/. It is said

10


Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

that the way they are pronounced in Vietnamese with two lips closed together is
just like that in English.
On the other hand, it is revealed that the students encounter great trouble with
some plosives and fricatives when they appear at the end of words. The alveolarplosive consonant /t/ certainly appears at the ending position of many Vietnamese
words; however, the way it is pronounced is completely different from that in
English. More noticeably, there are a large number of English ending consonants
which never occur as ending consonants in Vietnamese words, such as /s/, /l/,
/v/, /d/ although they also belong to Vietnamese alphabet. What is more, some
English final consonants, like /ʃ/, / dʒ/, / tʃ/ and /θ/ are really hard for students to
pronounce as they are totally new to their native language. All the reason
mentioned above may be explain the reason why the students makes that great
number of errors with these English ending consonant.
4.2. Substitution of final consonants
The mistake of substitution of sounds may result from the students’
misconception and lack of understanding about some distinctive features of certain
consonants. That leads to their confusion when it comes to pronouncing some
sounds in a correct way as they find it uneasy to distinguish one sound from other
similar sound. The table above presents the way the students replace certain single
final consonants with others
Substitution errors in single

Number of errors

Percentage

final consonants
(total:66)
d=t
9
z=s
22
v=f
4
ð = z /s
12
ʃ=s
19
Table 3: The proportion of substitution errors in single final consonants

14%
33%
6%
18%
29%

As it can be seen from the table, most of the substitutions are made between 2
final consonants with the only difference in their voicing but with the same
manner and place of articulation, such as /t/ and /d/, /z/ and /s/, /v/ and /f/.

11


Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

Whereas, few students have good knowledge of this phonetic theory and in fact,
they are themselves have difficulty in pronouncing the ending voiced consonants
like /d/, /z/, / ð/ and /ʃ/. Therefore, the students tend to be confused a lot with this
kind of final consonant pronunciation.
On the whole, there are two common types of errors NTU freshmen made
with the pronunciation of single final consonants, that is: the sound omission and
sound substitution, among which the first type is committed with the bigger
number of times and students as well.

5. CONCLUSION
In the sum, this research paper is expected to perform as a fairly
comprehensive study on identifying some common errors in pronouncing single
final consonant made by NTU first year students. Significant findings concerning
the research questions have been revealed through a process of the investigation.
Firstly, the findings show most of the students make a lot of pronunciation
mistakes, especially with ending final consonants. The second important
conclusion to be drawn out is about the most common types of errors in
pronouncing singular final consonants. Remarkably, NTU freshmen tend to make
much more omission errors than substitution errors. This fact can be resulted from
their limited knowledge of English phonetics and the considerable influence from
their mother tongue in their English speaking as well. That also contributes to raise
the awareness of common errors in pronouncing single final consonants among
both teachers and learners. The teacher, therefore, is motivated to find out effective
methods to help students limit these kinds of mistakes and improve their English
pronunciation.
Although this research has been conducted to the best of the researcher’s
efforts, time constraint and other unexpected objective factors have led to certain
unavoidable limitations involving the collection of the subject selection and

12

Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

procedure of data collection. The total number of participants remained relatively
limited. There were only 42 students from 2 classes at NTU; thus the reliability of
samples might not be ensured. Added to this, the research was conducted within a
short period of time; thus the data collected may not be successful to make an
accurate reflection of all the errors NTU first year students may make with
pronouncing ending final consonants.
Despite the aforementioned shortcomings, the research’s flexibility and
serious work is expected to have well retained the validity and reliability of the
result. However, it is worth noting that these above shortcomings should always be
taken into consideration when further related studies are conducted in the future.
REFERENCES
Barbara A. H., Brian B. (1997). The Status of Final Consonant Clusters in English
Syllables: Evidence from Children Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Volume 64, Issue 1, p. 119-136 University of New England, New South Wales,
Australia.

Retrieved

January

16,

2009

from

the

web

/>Ha, C.T. (2005). Common pronunciation problems of Vietnamese learners of
English. Journal of Science - Foreign Languages. Retrieved March 28, 2009 from
the World Wide Web />Kelly, G. (2003). How to teach pronunciation. Oxfordshire: Bluestone Press
Nguyen, T.T.T (2007). Difficulties for Vietnamese when pronouncing English final
consonants. Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska C. Uppsats

13


Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

Nguyen, H.D. (2008) Common mispronunciations made by CLC students at
English Department, College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University.
VNU, Hanoi.
Rachael, A.K. (2003). Understanding English Variation. University of Surrey Roehampton, Week 3.
Roach, P. (2000). English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Yule, George (2006) The study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press

APPENDIX 1

The checklist of pronunciation errors with
single final consonants (per student)
Stude
Final

nt
consonan
ts
b
p
d
t
g
k
v
f
ð

Types of errors
Sound
Sound
omission
substitution

14


Vũ Thị Thanh Huyền

θ
z
s
ʒ
ʃ
dʒ

- tʃ
m
n
l
ŋ

15