(Luận văn thạc sĩ) problems of hatinh learners in pronouncing english final consonants m a thesis linguistics 60 22 15

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THỊ TÚ HẰNG

PROBLEMS OF HATINH LEARNERS IN
PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANTS
(Khó khăn của học viên Hà Tĩnh trong việc phát âm phụ âm
cuối Tiếng Anh)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60.22.15

HANOI- 2010
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI


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UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THỊ TÚ HẰNG

PROBLEMS OF HATINH LEARNERS IN
PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANTS
(Khó khăn của học viên Hà Tĩnh trong việc phát âm phụ âm
cuối Tiếng Anh)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60.22.15
Supervisor: Hà Cẩm Tâm Ph.D.

HANOI- 2010

DECLARATION


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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION....................................................................................................................i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................ii
ABSTRACT..........................................................................................................................iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS......................................................................................................iv
LIST OF TABLES AND ABBREVIATIONS......................................................................v
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 7
1. Rationale of the study.............................................................................................. 8
2. The aim of the study................................................................................................ 8
3. Hypothesis ............................................................................................................... 8
4. The scope of the study............................................................................................. 8
5. Research method ..................................................................................................... 9
6. Organization of the study ........................................................................................ 9
PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT 9
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
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1.1 Phonetics ............................................................................................................. 10

1.2 Phonology ........................................................................................................... 10
1.3 Articulatory phonetics ......................................................................................... 11
1.4 Consonants .......................................................................................................... 13
1.4.1 General description of consonants. .............................................................. 13
1.4.1. Classification of consonants. ...................................................................... 14
1.4.3 English consonants ...................................................................................... 16
1.4.4 Vietnamese Consonants ............................................................................... 19
1.4.5 English vs. Vietnamese ................................................................................ 20
1.5 Review of previous research ............................................................................... 21
Chapter 2: THE STUDY 23
2.1 Research questions .............................................................................................. 24
2.2 Data collection instruments ................................................................................. 24
2.3 Data collection procedures .................................................................................. 24
2.4 The subjects ......................................................................................................... 25
2.5 Analytical framework .......................................................................................... 25
2.5.1 Plosive or stop /p, t/ ..................................................................................... 25
2.5.2 Affricate /tʃ/ ................................................................................................. 26
2.5.3 Fricative /ð, s/ .............................................................................................. 26
2.6 Data analysis ....................................................................................................... 27
2.6.1 /ð/ sound ...................................................................................................... 28
2.6.2 /p/ consonant ................................................................................................ 29
2.6.3 /tʃ/ consonant ............................................................................................... 29
2.6.4 /t/ consonant ................................................................................................. 30
2.6.5 /s/ consonant ................................................................................................ 30
2.7 Discussion and findings ...................................................................................... 33
PART THREE: CONCLUSION 36
1. Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 36
2. Implications ........................................................................................................... 37
3. Limitations and suggestions for further study...................................................... 38
REFERENCES

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Consonants of English
Table 2: Number of subject mispronounced the consonants under study
Table 3: Sounds deviations of the consonants under study made by the informants
Table 4: Sound omission made by informants

ABBREVIATIONS
HTU: Hatinh University
RP: Received Pronunciation
L1: Mother tongue
L2: Second Language

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION


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1. Rationale of the study
English has become one of the most popular languages in the world. It is a main tool
for global communication. Therefore, correct pronunciation plays a very important part in
using spoken English. Mispronunciation may lead to misunderstanding and the process of the
communication may even be broken down. “A learner who consistently mispronounces a
range of phonemes can be extremely difficult for a speaker from another language
community to understand” (Kelly, 2000:11). There is a fact that a lot of Vietnamese learners
often mispronounce English words, especially word-final consonants. As a result, they
produce incomprehensible utterances. Hatinh learners are not the exception even though they

have learnt English since the early age. Another reason is that no research has been carried
on this field at Hatinh University (HTU). This leads the author to the thought of making a
research on “Problems of Hatinh learners in pronouncing English final consonants” with the
purpose of finding out the causes of mispronunciations.
2. The aim of the study
The study aims at finding out if HTU learners have difficulties in pronouncing English word
final consonants and what the causes of these problems are. The results will provide an
overview of learners‟ pronunciation at HTU and give suggestions for teachers to improve the
situation. The findings of this research will hopefully help HTU students to raise their
awareness of learning correct pronunciation so as to produce English word-final consonants
properly.
3. Hypothesis
1. HTU learners have difficulties in pronouncing English word-final consonants.
2. Their problems may be caused by mother tongue interference.

4. The scope of the study
This research presents several analyses on the pronunciation of the five consonants
occurring in some selected words using for recording namely /s/, /tʃ/, /ð/, /t/, /p/ in final
position made by the ten English majored students studying at HTU with a hypothesis that


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these consonants are pronounced in Vietnamese-like way. Basing on the findings, problems
in pronouncing these sounds and the causes of them will be pointed out with solutions.
5. Research method
In the study, the author intends to figure out if HTU students have difficulties in
pronouncing some English word final consonants and how different their pronunciation of
these sounds is in comparison with that described in the analytical framework basing on
Received Pronunciation (RP) standard. A combination of different data collection methods
was used including recording the participants‟ pronunciation of prepared words and

observing their spoken English in class. Details of methodology applied in the study are
discussed in Chapter 2 of Part two.
6. Organization of the study
The study composes of three parts:
Part one, Introduction, includes the rationale, aims, research question, scope, method
and organization of the study.
Part two, Development, consists of two chapters. Chapter one, Literature Review,
presents the theoretical background relevant to the research. The first section describes the
basic concepts of phonetics, phonology and articulatory phonetics. The second section offers
a theoretical presentation of consonants, English consonants and the consonants under study.
The last section summarizes the review of previous research related to consonant
pronunciation. Chapter two, the Study, describes the context of the study, the participants, the
method, the findings and discussion.
Part three, Conclusion, summarizes the findings and gives suggestions for improving
English final pronunciation for HTU students.

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW


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This chapter is devoted to the presentation of the theoretical issues related to the study.
The first section provides some basic linguistic and phonetic concepts to bring a common
view of the matter studied including phonetics, phonology, and articulatory phonetics. The
second section describes consonants in general, English and Vietnamese consonants. The
final section discusses the review of some previous research related to consonant
pronunciation
1.1 Phonetics
Phonetics is the study of human speech sounds. It 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. There are
three main areas of phonetics: articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and auditory
phonetics, (Jack C.R. et al, 1997).
Articulatory phonetics deals with the way in which speech sounds are produced. Sound
are usually classified according to the position of lips and the tongue, how far open the
mouth is, whether or not the vocal cords are vibrating and so on.
Acoustic phonetics deals with the transmission of speech sounds through the air. When
a speech sound is produced it causes minor air disturbances (sound waves). Various
instruments are used to measure the characteristics of these sound waves.
Auditory phonetics deals with how speech sounds are perceived by the listener,

1.2 Phonology
Phonology is essentially the description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds
in a language, (Ladefoged, 2001:23). It involves studying a language to determine its
distinctive sounds and to find out which sounds convey a difference in meaning. When two
sounds can be used to differentiate words, they are said to belong to different phonemes.
There must be a phonemic difference if two words (such as “white” and “right” or “cat” and
“bat”) differ in only a single sound.
"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


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into two branches: (1) segmental phonology and (2) suprasegmental phonology" (Skandera
& Burleigh, 2005:5)
Phonology is primarily concerned with how we interpret and systematize sounds. It
deals with the system and pattern of the sounds which exists within particular languages. The
study of phonology of English looks at the vowels, consonants and superasemental features
of the language. Within the disciplines of phonology, when we talk about vowels and
consonants we are referring to the different sounds we make when speaking, and not the

vowel and consonants letters we refer to when talking about spelling.
When we describe the sound patterns that occur in English, we want to be able to say
that in some sense there are always the same underlying sounds may change depending on
the context in which they occur. The phonology of a language is the set of rules that describe
the changes in the underlying sounds, the abstract units called phonemes. When we
transcribe a word in a way that shows none of the details of the pronunciation that are
predictable by phonological rules, we are making a phonemic transcription, (Ladefoged,
2001). The variants of the phonemes that occur in details phonetic transcriptions are known
as allophones. They are generated as a result of applying the phonological rule to the
underlying phonemes.
This research aims at finding out if HTU students have difficulties in pronouncing the
five chosen English consonants in the final position. It takes the problems of their
pronunciation into consideration which concerns with the way they use their organs of
articulation pronouncing such sounds. This is also what articulatory phonetics study, so the
theoretical background of it is presented with more details as follows.
1.3 Articulatory phonetics
Articulatory phonetics, one of 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


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divided into the supraglottal and the subglottal tract (as shown in Picture1),(Ladefoged,
2001).
In nearly all speech sounds, the basic source of power is the respiratory system pushing
air of the lungs. Air from the lungs goes up the windpipe and into the larynx at which point it
must pass between two small muscular folds called the vocal folds. If the folds are apart, as

they normal are when breathing out, the air from the lungs will have a relatively free passage
into the pharynx and the mouth. But the vocal folds are adjusted so that there is only a
narrow passage between them, the airstream will cause them to vibrate. Sounds produced
when the vocal folds are vibrating are said to be voiced , as opposed to those in which the
vocal folds are apart, which are said to be voiceless. The air passages above the larynx are
known as the vocal tract. The shape of the vocal tract is very important factor in the
production of speech.
The parts of the vocal tract that can be used to form sounds are called articulators. The
articulators that form the lower surface of the vocal tract often move towards those that form
the upper surface.
The names of principal parts of upper surface of the vocal tract are the upper lip, upper
teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate and soft palate or velum. The soft palate is a muscular flap
that can be raised to press against the back wall of the pharynx and shut off the nasal tract,
preventing air from going out through the nose. At the lower end of the soft palate is a small
appendage hanging down that is known as the uvula. The part between the uvula and the
larynx is the pharynx.
The lower lip and the specific names for different parts of the tongue form the lower
surface of the vocal tract. The tip and the blade of the tongue are the most mobile parts.
Behind the blade is what technically called the front of the tongue: it is actually the forward
part of the body of the tongue, and it lies underneath the hard palate when the tongue is at
rest. The remainder of the body of the tongue may be divided into the center which is partly
beneath the hard palate and partly beneath the soft palate; the back, which is beneath the soft
palate; and the root, which is opposite the back wall of the pharynx.


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Picture 1: The organs of speech
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 five studied consonants; therefore, the manner, the
place of articulation and voicing- the three main features of consonants are discussed with
more interest later.

1.4 Consonants
1.4.1 General description of consonants.
A consonant is a speech sound where the air stream from the lungs is completely
blocked (STOP), partially blocked (LATERAL) or where the opening is so narrow that the
air escapes with audible fiction (FRICATIVE). With some consonants (NASALS) the air
stream is blocked in the mouth but allowed to escape through the nose. (Richard et al, 1997)
A consonant is a speech sound that functions at the margins of syllables, produced
when the vocal tract is either blocked or so restricted that there is audible friction. (Crystal,
2003)
From a phonetic point of view, they 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 the lips, the tongue, or the
throat. But in each case the overall effect is very different from the relatively open and


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unimpeded articulation found in vowels. In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in
spoken language that is charactized by closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to
cause audible turbulence, (Crystal, 2003:242).
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.
1.4.1. Classification of consonants.

Consonants are formed by interrupting, restricting or diverting the airflow in a variety
of ways. They can be divided into different kinds in accordance with three categories, i.e. the
degree of vocal cord vibration, the place and the manner of articulation. Some consonants
involve the vibration of the vocal cords: these are the voiced consonants. Others have no
vocal cord vibration: these are the voiceless consonants. However, the distinction is not
absolute: depending on where in a word consonant appears, there may be degrees of
voicing,( Kelly, 2000 : 5-7).
1.4.1.1 The manner of articulation.
The manner of articulation refers to the interaction between the various articulators act
in such way that the air is temporarily trapped, and then suddenly released. Consonants
classified based on the manners of articulation are plosive, affricate, fricative, nasal, lateral,
approximant, (Kelly, 2000).
Plosive

a complete closure is made somewhere in the vocal tract, and
the soft palate is also raised. Air pressure increases behind the
closure, and is then released „explosively‟.

Affricate

a complete closure is made somewhere in the mouth, and the
soft palate is raised. Air pressure increases behind the closure,
and is then released more slowly than in plosives.

Fricative

when two vocal organs come close enough together for the
movement of air between them to be heard.

Nasal

a closure is made by the lips, or by the tongue against the palate,


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the soft palate is lowered, and air escapes through the nose.
Lateral

a partial closure is made by the blade of the tongue against the
alveolar ridge. Air is able to flow around the sides of the tongue,

ApproximantVocal organs come near to each other, but not so close as to cause
audible friction.
1.4.1.2 The place of articulation.
The place of articulation focuses more on what the various articulators actually do. 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. The sounds of
this classification include bilabial, labio-dental, dental, alveolar palato-alveolar, palatal,
velar and glottal, (Kelly, 2000).
With regards to the place of articulation, the following table summarizes the main
movements of the various articulators:
Bilabial

Using closing movement of both lips.

Labio-dental

Using the lower lip and the upper teeth.

Dental

The tongue tip is used either between the teeth or close to the upper
teeth.

Alveolar

The blade of the tongue is used close to the alveolar ridge.

Palato-

The blade (or tip) of the tongue is used just behind the alveolar

alveolar

ridge.

Palatal

The front of the tongue is raised close to the palate.

Velar

The back of the tongue is against the soft palate.

Glottal

The gap between the vocal cords is used to make audible friction,

1.4.1.3 The degree of vocal cord vibration
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.


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Sounds made without vocal fold vibration are said to be voiceless. There are 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, for
example, /s, z/ or /θ, ð/
Describing the force of articulation, the terms fortis or strong and lenis or weak are
often used. In spoken English, fortis happens to equate with unvoiced sounds, which require
a more forcefully expelled airstreams than lenis sounds which in English happen to be
voiced. As far as English consonants are concerned, the distinction is most useful when it
comes to distinguishing between sounds that are articulated in essentially the same way, one
using the voice, the other not. An example pair is /p/ (unvoiced, and fortis), and /b/ (voiced,
and lenis), (Kelly, 2000)
1.4.3 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 table 1 with the rows for places of articulation and the columns for manners of
articulation. (Kelly, 2000)
1.4.2.1 Classification of English consonants
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, g]. Nasal stops are usually called
nasals: [m], [n] and [l]. English fricatives include [f, v], [θ ð], [s, z], [ʃ, ʒ] and [h] English
approximants are [j], [w], [.1], and [I]. Affricates can be seen as a sequence of a stop and a
fricative which have the same or similar place of articulation, and there are only two
affricative sounds in English [ tʃ ] [dʒ], (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). The summary of

English consonants is shown in Table 1 below:

Place of articulation
Front

back


Manner of articulation

Plosive

p

b

t

glottal

velar
k

g

tʃ dʒ

Fricative

f v

m

Lateral
Approximant

palatal

d

Affricate

Nasal

alveolar

Post-

Alveolar

dental

dental

labio-

Bilabial

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θ ð

s

z

ʃ

h

ʒ
η

n
l

(w)

r

j

w

Table 1: Consonants of English, (Kelly, 2000)
(Table 1 shows the places and manners of articulation for consonants. Whenever a cell has
two consonants, the voiceless is placed to the left and the voiced is to the right.)
The studied consonants can be called in different terms: Plosive or stop /p, t/, affricate
/tʃ/, fricative /ð/ if basing on the manner of articulation; bilabial /p/, alveolar /t, s/, dental /ð /
and post- (palato) alveolar / tʃ/ if basing on place of articulation. /p/, /t/, and /tʃ / are strong
and long fiction.

1.4.2.2 Phonological rules.
When we speak English, we do not only pronounce individual sounds, but the strings of
phonemes which make up utterances. In connected speech, sounds are not sometimes
produced as they have to, but some changes happen to them. In other words, some of them
can be assimilated, elided or linked. For example, the phoneme/t/ can become bilabial
before a bilabial consonant as in He‟s a rather fat boy. (/t/ assimilates to /p/). In the
sentence: We arrived the next day (/t/ elided between /ks/ and /d/), /p/ or /t/ and /d/ may be
elided when they appear within a consonant cluster. (Kelly, 2000)
Assimilation is the change of one sound into another sound because of the influence of
neighboring sounds, as the change of underlying[n] to [m] in „input‟[imput] or of
underlying[z] to [ʒ] in „does she‟ [dʌ ʒʃ ] (Ladefoged, 2000: 271)


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Elision is the leaving out of a sound or sounds in speech. For example, in rapid speech in
English, suppose is often pronounced as [spouz], factory ['fæktri],( Richard et all, 1992: 121)
The most common elision in English are/t/ and /d/, when they appear within a consonant
cluster. For example, in the phrase next day /t/ is elided between /ks/ and /d/; complex
consonant clusters are simplified, for example, acts /ækts/ can be simplified to /æks/, texts
/teksts/ to /teks/
When we say a sentence in English, we join or "link" words to each other. Because of
this linking, the words in a sentence do not always sound the same as when we say them
individually. Linking is very important in English. Linking r is the most familiar case. The
phoneme r cannot occur in syllable-final position in RP, but when a word‟s spelling suggests
a final r, and a word beginning with a vowel follows, the usual pronunciation for RP
speakers is to pronounce with r, for example, hear [hiə] but hear are [hiər ə]
The following section presents a list of rules for English consonant allophones which
are variants of a phoneme. The allophones of a phonemes form a set of sounds (1) do not
change the meaning of a word, (2) are all very similar to one another, and (3) occur in
phonetic contexts different from one another- for example, syllable initial as opposed to

syllable final. The differences among allophones can be stated in terms of phonological rules.
(Ladefoged, 2001: 271). The rules for English consonant allophones are described as
follows:
1. Consonants are longer when at the end of a phrase.
2. Voiceless stops /p, k, t/ are aspirated when they are syllable initial.
3. Obstruents- stops and fricatives- classified as voiced (that is /b, d, g, v, z, ð, ʒ/) are
voiced through only a small part of the articulation when they occur at the end of an
utterance (as /v/ in “try to improve”) or before a voiceless sound ( as /d/ in “add two”)
4. So called voiced stops and affricates /b, d, g, dʒ/ are voiceless when syllable initial,
except when immediately preceded by a voiced sound.
5. The approximants /w, r, j, l/ are at least partially voiceless when they occur after
initial /p, k, t/, as in “play, twin, cue”
6. Voiceless stops /p, k, t/ are not aspirated in such words as “spew, stew, skew”.
7. Voiceless stops and affricates /p, k, t, tʃ / are longer than the corresponding voiced
stops and affricates /b, d, g, dʒ/ when at the end of a syllable.


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8. Stops are unexploded when they occur before another stops in words such as “apt”
and “rubbed”
9. In many accents of English, syllable final /p, t, k/ are accompanied by a glottal stop,
as in pronunciation of “tip, pit, kick”. However, this rule does not apply to all varieties of
English
10. In many accent of English, /t/ is replaced by a glottal stop when it occurs before an
alveolar nasal in the same word, as in “beaten”.
11. Nasals are syllabic at the end of a word when immediately after an obstruents as in
“leaden, chasm”.
12. The lateral /l/ is syllabic at the end of a word when immediately after a consonant
12a. The liquids /l, r/ are syllabic at the end of a word when immediately after a
consonant.

12. Alveolar stops become voiced taps when they occur between two vowels, the
second of which is unstressed. This rule applies more to American English than to British
English is unstressed.
13a. Alveolar stops and alveolar nasal plus stop sequence become voiced taps when
they occur between two vowels, the second of which is unstressed.
14. Alveolar consonants become dental before dental consonants, as in “eighth, tenth,
wealth”. This rule applies to all alveolar consonants, not just stops, and it often applies
boundaries, as in “at this”. In more rapid style of speech, some of these dental consonants
tend to be omitted altogether
15. Alveolar stops are reduced or omitted when between two consonants.
16. A consonant is shortened when it is before an identical consonant.
17. A homorganic voiceless stop may be inserted after a nasal before a voiceless
fricative followed by an unstressed vowel in the same word.
18. Velar stops become more front as the following vowel in the same syllable
becomes more front.
19. The lateral /l/ is velarized when after a vowel of before a consonant at the end of a
word. (Ladefoged, 2001: 56-60)
1.4.4 Vietnamese Consonants
There are 19 consonants in the Hanoi dialect of Vietnamese.These consonants were
listed in Table 2 below, (Taiffalo, 2001). These consonants were represented slightly


20
different in Vietnamese orthography. In addition to the 19 consonants, other dialects may
contain retroflex consonants /tr/, /S/, and /Z/ (Nguyen 1997:20).

Table 2: Vietnamese consonants of Hanoi dialect
Glottal stop /?/ was not included in the consonant system of Table 1 . However,
according to Thompson (1987:21), glottal stop could be recognized as a phoneme. The
voicing of [b] and [d] are predictable allophones of /p/ and /t/ respectively, following initial

/?/ (Thompson 1987:21).
Fortis stops in Vietnamese are voiceless /p t c k /, and voiced /b d/. They are
characterized by relatively strong articulation. They are exceedingly fortis when they are at
the beginning of syllables. On the other hand, at the end of syllables they are about midway
between the extremes of fortis and lenis. Voiceless stops can occur in initial or final
positions, but voiced stops occur only initially. When voiceless stops occur in final positions,
they are unreleased.
Lenis oral consonants in Vietnamese are /f v th l s z x Ä h/. They are less articulated than
the fortis stops. They occur only in initial position.
Nasal consonants in Vietnamese are /m n N/. They are fully voiced and about midway in
relation to the extremes of lenis and fortis. They all occur both initially and finally.
1.4.5 English vs. Vietnamese


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It is easy to infer from Table 1 and 2 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, η/ (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 /tʰ/ is in letters „th‟ the same way as the dental, fricative English sounds /θ ð/ 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 learners in trying to learn each other's
language. Another typical example of the sound in both languages, which make most of
Vietnamese learners confused in articulating them. They are the /c/ in Vietnamese and /tʃ /
in English. 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 is alveolar and the latter is palatal. /p/

and /t/ in both languages have the same place of articulation but different manner of
articulation. In English, /p, t/ have 3 different allophones, i.e. they are aspirated in word
initial, not aspirated in medial position and not completely released in word final, (Vo Dai
Quang: 24). 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 palatal stop /c/, palatal nasal /η/, the velar fricative /γ/ in Vietnamese, and the
post alveolar fricative /ʒ/ and affricative /dʒ/ 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.
Of five English consonant /s, tʃ, ð, t, p/ which are the subjects of the study /tʃ, ð/ do not
exist in Vietnamese , /p, t, s/ have the different manner of articulation from those in
Vietnamese, thus it is understandable that the subjects mispronounce them most of the time
when they speak.
1.5 Review of previous research
There have been a number of studies about Vietnamese‟ difficulties in pronouncing


22
English consonants. Important findings were drawn and become a valuable basis for this
research.
Osburne (1996:164-181) analyzed a case study from her subject - a Vietnamese native
speaker who came to the United States in 1972 - then drew the conclusion that: “In
additional to cluster reduction, optional deletion of single syllable-final consonants,
especially fricatives, which is attested for Vietnamese L1 speakers […] was found”, and
“Consonants omitted, however, were always final consonants not permitted by Vietnamese.
She also stated that Vietnamese is non-rhotic so there is no /r/ sound at the end of English
syllables spoken by Vietnamese. What can be concluded from this study is that Vietnamese
learners have a tendency to: firstly move strange English ending sounds towards similar
sounds which exist in their mother tongue, secondly omit the sounds that are too difficult for
them and thirdly reduce final clusters.

In the article “Common pronunciation problems of Vietnamese learners of English”
Tam (2005) pointed out the two main problems in pronunciation of Vietnamese learners, that
is, sound omission and sound confusion. Relating to English final consonant pronunciation,
she stated that Vietnamese speakers omitted ending sound most frequently. A reason for
sound omitting is a negative transference of their L1 due to the habit of “swallowing” the
ending sound in the mother tongue. The following table shows her research results on
problems of mispronunciation of the informants in the study.

Order

Sound

Mispronunciation

1

θ

ť

2

s

ʃ

3

tr

ʧr ; ʧ

4

t

ʧ, s


23
5

ʃ

z

6

ʤ

z , ʧ, t, j, ʒ, s

7

ʧ

ʃ, ʒ, z

8

t

ʃ, ch, s,

9

v

f

10

ʒ

z ʧ, ʤ

Thao (2007) in the paper "Difficulties for Vietnamese when pronouncing English: Final
Consonants " 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 them by sounds closer to those
existing in their mother-tongue.
In the M.A Thesis „A Study on Pronunciation of

Some English Consonants by

Vietnamese‟ by Hanh (2007) also concluded that main problem relating to pronunciation by
Vietnamese are either the mispronunciation or sound omission, especially when the
consonants are in the final position.
The above studies are all about problems of Vietnamese learners in pronouncing English
consonants in general, none of them was done with certain consonants that seem to be

difficult for Vietnamese learners from one of the central provinces in Vietnam. Therefore,
this research was carried out to find out if HTU students have difficulties when pronouncing
the five chosen consonants /s, tʃ, ð, t, p/ in the final position.

Chapter 2: THE STUDY
The literature review has described the basic theory of phonetic matters regarding the
study. They are the background supporting this part of the research. This chapter presents
the methodology, data collection procedures and the subjects of the study. The results
getting from the data analyses and the discussion of those results are provided later to come
to conclusion of the hypothesis stated in the Introduction.


24
2.1 Research questions
The research focuses on analyzing the HTU students‟ pronunciation of five English
consonant /s, tʃ, ð, t, p / in the final position to find out if they have problems in producing
these sounds. The study was set up to answer the following questions.
1. Do the subjects under study have problems in pronouncing consonants: /s, tʃ, ð, t, p/ in
word final?
2. What are the causes of their mispronunciations?
2.2 Data collection instruments
In order to get the data for the study, the researcher designed two tasks and asked the
informants to read out aloud to record. Task one is a list of 34 separate words containing the
five chosen consonants at final position. Theses words are extracted from Lifelines (preintermediate) book by Tom Hutchinson published by Oxford University Press which is the
main syllabus for General English credit being studied by first year majored English students
at HTU.
Sounds are not always pronounced individually but in utterances; therefore, the author
provided task 2 including ten sentences using some of the words in the task 1. The
informants asked to do task 2 the same as task 1. This task aims at checking if the subjects
have the same problems in producing utterances as they do with single words. The words

chosen as data collection instruments for the study can be seen in the Appendix.
2.3 Data collection procedures
The data collection was collected via observation and recordings. By recording, the
informants were told to read out aloud the 34 prepared words three times in task 1 and once
with 10 sentences in task 1. What they read was directly recorded into the recorder. The
recording was done in a classroom in HTU in November 2009 just after one month since the
informants became HTU students.
Observation was done when the subjects were speaking English naturally without
awareness of being observed in the classroom lasting from my start of teaching the subjects‟
class to the start of research. After each time of teaching the subjects‟ class, I took notes


25
carefully in a notebook immediately. At the time of the study, I have been teaching the
informants about 30 hours.
The data was analyzed in the light of articulatory phonetics to find out how different
their pronunciation of the five chosen consonants when they speak English naturally in the
class and when recorded in comparision with the analytical framework. From the data
analysis how often they mispronounced such consonants and what the mispronunciations
were like will be pointed out.
2.4 The subjects
The subjects of the study consist of 10 female English majored freshmen of HTU. They
are chosen at random basing on their order number in the attendance register then the name
attached to these numbers were collected. They are from 18 to 19 years old. These
informants are coded as A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7, A8, A9 and A10.
All of them have learned English since 6th grade (about 12 years old) at the least. They
come from different districts of Ha Tinh province where the facilities for learning English
are not good. The learning aid is only a cassette player. Most of them can do written English
tasks quite well, but they speak English very badly with a lot of mispronounced words. They
know a little about phonetics.

The above things can conclude that the subjects of the study are compatible in terms of
age, gender and knowledge of both mother tongue and foreign language. It can be said that
the words used to record are suitable and obviously at their level of competence.
2.5 Analytical framework
The following section presents an analytical framework which describes how each
consonant under study is articulated and its variants basing on Received Pronunciation (RP).
This analytical framework will be used to analyze the pronunciation of the subjects of study.
2.5.1 Plosive or stop /p, t/
When producing a plosive, a complete closure is made at some point in the vocal tract, with
the soft palate raised; air pressure builds up behind the closure, which is then released
explosively ( Kelly, 2000).


26
To give a completed description of a plosive consonant we must describe what happens
at each of three following four phases in its production (Roach, 1983).
i, The first phase, closure phase, is when the articulator or articulators move to form
the stricture for the plosive.
ii, The second phase, hold phase, is when the compressed air is stopped from escaping.
iii, The third phase, release phase, is when the articulators used to form the stricture are
moved so as to allow air to escape.
iv, The fourth phase, post- release phase, is what happens immediately after iii,.
When /p/ is produced, the total closure is made using both lips. The soft palate is raised.
/p/ is voiceless and fortis. It happens as in pen, lip, happen
In articulation consonant /t/, closure is made by the tongue blade against the alveolar
ridge. The soft palate is raised. /t/ is voiceless and fortis. /t/ sound occurs as in hat and
hotter.
Variants of t phonemes:
 /t/ becomes bilabial before bilabial consonants /p/, /b/, and /m/;
 /t/ assimilates to /k/ before /k/ or /g/ as in that cat;

 /t/ and /j/ coalesce to form / tʃ/ as in didn‟t you.

2.5.2 Affricate /tʃ/
In pronouncing an affricative, a complete closure is made at some point in the vocal
tract, with the soft palate raised; air pressure builds up behind the closure, which is then
released relatively slowly.
In the articulation of /tʃ/ the tongue tip, blade and rims close against the alveolar ridge
and side teeth. Air pressure builds up behind the closure. The front of the tongue is raised,
and when the air is released, there is audible friction. The soft palate is also raised. /tʃ/ is
voiced and lenis as in church, teacher, cheap, watch.
2.5.3 Fricative /ð, s/


-

A1

A2

A3

A4

A5

A6

A7

A8

A9

A10

27

+Subjects
Sounds
/s/

33.33

32.33

88.89

11.11

22.22

44.44

0

77.78

11.11

11.11

/ð/

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

When producing fricatives, two vocal organs come so close together that the movement
of air between them can be heard as in /ð, s/
The alveolar fricative /s/ is articulated with the soft palate being raised and the tongue
blade makes light contact with the alveolar ridge. /s/ is a fortis or voiceless
In articulating dental fricatives /ð/, the tongue tip makes light contact with the back of the
top, front teeth. The soft palate is raised. /ð/ is voiced and lenis. It is often omitted in clusters
in formal speech.

2.6 Data analysis
The data analysis is presented based on the degree of mispronunciation of the five
sounds from the highest to the smallest. They are analyzed in the light of articulatory
phonetics which is described in the Literature Review.
The following table (Table 3) shows number of the informants mispronouncing the five
studied consonants. The percentages are calculated by the operation a=b*100/c; in which a is
the percentage of each sound mispronounced by each subject; b is the real number of each
sounds mispronounced by each subject, multiplied by 100 percent and the divide c which is
the total number of each sound appearing in both tasks multiplied by 10 subject.


28
/p/

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

82.33

66.67

100

/tʃ/

80.00

100

80

60

60

100

0

100

0

40

/t/

44.44

66.67

100

77.78

66.67

77.78

33.33

100

0

100

Table 3: Mispronunciation across the subjects
As can be seen from this table, all of the subjects have problems in pronouncing
English word-final consonants, 80 % mispronounced all the five consonants sounds, 20%
mispronounced 3 out of the five consonants.
The mispronunciation of the five studied consonants was mostly sound omission and
sound deviation which is shown in the following table 4 and 5 below.
A1

A2

A3

A4

A5

A6

A7

A8

A9

A10

/s/ (9)

3

3

8

1

2

2

0

7

0

1

/ð/ (5)

1

2

2

0

3

1

0

2

0

2

/tʃ/ (5)

0

2

1

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

/p/ (6)

3

6

6

6

1

6

0

5

4

6

/t/ ( 9)

4

5

5

3

0

6

4

6

0

3

Subjects
Sounds

Table 4: Sound omission made by informants
In producing isolating words, the frequency of sound deviation is higher than sound
omission. It seems that the informants tried to pronounce the words correctly, but they failed.
Their mispronunciations are shown as follows:
h

1. /ð/ is usually pronounced like /t / in Vietnamese or /z/ or sometimes /θ/
2. /tʃ / is mispronounced as /s, ʃ , t/ and /c/ in Vietnamese
3. /p/ is produced like /b, f, s/
4. /t/ is pronounced like /s/
5. /s/ is made as /z/
2.6.1 /ð/ sound