luận văn thạc sĩ cải thiện phát âm cho học sinh lớp 10 bằng việc sử dụng kí hiệu phiên âm nghiên cứu hành động tại một trường trung học phổ thông ở hải dương​ 1

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

PHƢƠNG THỊ THẢO

IMPROVING PRONUNCIATION FOR GRADE-10 STUDENTS
BY USING PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION: AN ACTION RESEARCH

PROJECT IN A HIGH SCHOOL IN HAI DUONG
(Cải thiện phát âm cho học sinh lớp 10 bằng việc sử dụng kí hiệu
phiên âm: Nghiên cứu hành động tại một trường trung học phổ
thông ở Hải Dương)

M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

Field: Teaching English Methodology
Code: 8140231.01

Hanoi - 2019


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF
LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

PHƢƠNG THỊ THẢO

IMPROVING PRONUNCIATION FOR GRADE 10 STUDENTS BY
USING PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION: AN ACTION RESEARCH
PROJECT IN A HIGH SCHOOL IN HAI DUONG
(Cải thiện phát âm cho học sinh lớp 10 bằng việc sử dụng kí hiệu phiên âm:

Nghiên cứu hành động tại một trường trung học phổ thông ở Hải Dương)

M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

Field: Teaching English Methodology
Code: 8140231.01
Supervisor: Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa, PhD

Hanoi - 2019


DECLARATION
I hereby declare that this research report is my own unaided work. It is being
submitted for the Master Degree of English Language Teaching, University of
Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. It has not
been submitted to any other degree or examination at any other university.

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to express my sincere gratitude to the following people for their contribution
to this study.
Dr.Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa, my research supervisor, for her valuable guidance,
commitment and support
Ms Duong Thi Loan and Ms Nguyen Thu Thao, for their support and care, which
helped me through many difficulties
My parents and my two beloved sisters for a great source of inspiration and
encouragement which help me to achieve my goals throughout my years of study
The teacher and the students participating in my study, for their time, assistance and

enthusiasm

ii


ABSTRACT
This action research aims to improve the pronunciation of vowel sounds for high
school students by using phonetic transcription. In order to achieve the aim, the
study identified the mistakes in vowel sounds made by the students through pre-test
and pre-questionnaire and then implemented a plan to help the students improve
such mistakes using phonetic transcription. Finally, the study evaluated the
improvement of the students after applying the technique by employing post- tests,
questionnaire and teacher‘s journal. The findings of the study revealed that the
students made a certain progress in pronouncing vowel sounds after learning with
phonetic transcription. They also showed a positive attitude towards the use of
phonetic transcription in pronunciation learning and wished to receive further
training using this technique.
Keywords: phonetic transcription, vowel sounds, high school students, action
research.

iii


TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION .......................................................................................................
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................
1.

Rationale of the study ..............................................................................................

2.

Research aim ..........................................................................................................

3.

Research questions ..................................................................................................

4.

Scope of the study ...................................................................................................

5.

Methods of the study ...............................................................................................

6.

Design of the thesis .................................................................................................

CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................
2.1. Pronunciation ......................................................................................................
2.1.1. Definition of pronunciation ...............................................................................
1.1.2. Definition of vowel sounds ...............................................................................
2.2. Phonetic transcription ...........................................................................................
2.2.1. Definition of phonetic transcription ..................................................................
2.2.2. The benefits of phonetic transciption in pronunciation learning ......................
2.3. Teaching pronunciation ......................................................................................
2.3.1. The aim of teaching pronunciation .................................................................

2.3.2. Techniques in teaching pronunciation ............................................................
2.3.3. The difficulties in pronouncing vowels and using phonetic transcription of the
students ......................................................................................................................
2.4.

Related studies..................................................................................

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY..................................................
3.1.

Research design ................................................................................

3.2.

The subjects of the study ..................................................................

3.3.

Data collection instruments ..............................................................

3.3.1 Pre-test and post-test ........................................................................................

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3.3.2. Pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire...................................................... 22
3.3.3. Teacher‘s journal........................................................................................... 23
3.4. Data collection and analysis............................................................................. 23
CHAPTER 4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.................................................. 25
4.1 The mistakes and difficulties of students in pronouncing vowel sounds...........25

4.2. The improvements of students after learning with phonetic transcription........32
4.3. The opinions of the students after learning with phonetic transcription...........36
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION............................................................................. 40
5.1. A summary of the major findings..................................................................... 40
5.2. Implications of the study.................................................................................. 41
5.3. Limitations of the study.................................................................................... 41
5.4. Recommendations for further study................................................................. 42
REFERENCES...................................................................................................... 43
APPENDICES.......................................................................................................... I

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1:Table lists of English vowels ( Kelly, 2000)................................................ 8
Figure 2: Sound Foundations (Under Hill, 1994)...................................................... 9
Figure 3: The percentage of students making mistakes in each vowel sound in the
pre-test.................................................................................................................... 26
Figure 4: The difficulties of the students in pronouncing vowel sounds and phonetic
transcription............................................................................................................ 28
Figure 5: Reasons for the students‘ difficulties in pronunciation............................30
Figure 6: The comparision between the results in the pre-test and post-test............33
Figure 7: Students‘ opinion about their improvements after learning with phonetic
transcription............................................................................................................ 36
Figure 8: Students‘opinions about learning with phonetic transcription.................37

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the rationale of the study including the theoretical and
practical basis for the study, current teaching situation and reasons for applying
phonetic transcription into teaching pronunciation in this action research. Besides,
the chapter also includes the research aim, research questions, scope of the study,
methods of the study as well as the design of the thesis.
1. Rationale of the study
Teaching and learning English for the communication purpose has become a
trend and an indispensable necessity in education since English plays a more and
more significant role as a means of global integration. Pronunciation has been an
integral part in learning a language, as Derwing and Munro (2005) assert that
―Having a good pronunciation of the language can help in normal communication,
particularly intelligibility‖. Learners with good pronunciation in English are more
likely to be understood even if they make errors in other areas (Adult Migrant
English Program Research Centre, 2002). Kelly (2000) also states that
pronunciation is the key to speaking and adds that the consistency in
mispronouncing phonemes can be extremely difficult for other speakers from
another language to understand. This can be very frustrating for learners who may
have a good command of grammar and lexis but have difficulty in understanding
and being understood by native speakers. It is estimated that the majority of the
breakdowns in communication in English is due to pronunciation problems
(Jenkins, 2000).
In the history of English teaching and learning, the practice has gradually
shifted from grammar- translation approach to communicative approach whose
ultimate goal is to develop students‘ productive skills. In other words, it aims to
helping students use the language to communicate rather than acquiring pure
language knowledge. To be more specific, students are required to take part in more
and more activities relating to productive features such as presentation, discussions

1

and debates rather than just dealing with grammar and vocabulary drills as before.
In addition, students have to take speaking tests besides paper tests at the end of
each semester. Obviously, speaking skills in general and pronunciation skills in
particular play a more crucial role in assessments. This circumstance requires more
efforts and attentions of both teachers and learners towards pronunciation skills in
teaching and learning.
During the teaching practice at my current education institution, I have
observed and noticed that pronunciation is one of the weakest skills of the students
in compared to reading, listening skills and other language competent like grammar
or vocabulary. One of the most obvious mistakes by my students is that they often
mispronounced English vowel sounds. To be more specific, they either
misrecognized one vowel sound for another, especially the ones which are
pronounced. They are assumed to be caused by one of the following reasons. First,
English‘s feature is an unphonetic language which presents in the inconsistency in
the relationship between spellings and sounds in English. That causes a huge
confusion for learners whose mother tongue does not bear that feature. Second,
there are some similarities between two vowel systems – English and Vietnamese.
Therefore, the Vietnamese learners often carry alternatives to the closet pure vowel
in pronouncing pure vowels in English in many cases (Honey,1987). This obviously
causes mistakes since most of the English vowel sounds are virtually different from
their Vietnamese counterparts. A minor difference in length of vowel or tongue, lip
positions can lead to the change of a vowel sound into another, the change in the
meaning of words and consequently, miscommunication occurring.
In order to help the students improve their pronunciation, I intended to apply
phonetic transcription into teaching pronunciation for the students. This technique
has been long used in pronunciation teaching and learning that may help to students
avoid mistakes in their pronunciation. In phonetic transcription, each symbol stands
for one sound and one only. In other words, the phonetic transcription is symbolized
as a bridge between the spellings and the sounds that help students overcome any

2


confusion and misunderstanding. It thus allows students to see the correct
pronunciation of an English vowel of phrase without the confusing influence of any
abnormalities in instructors‘ speech. In addition to that, it provides a reliable, ideal
model towards which students can work in their pronunciation independently. Along
with this idea, Hesselwood (2013) also stated that phonetic transcription could
represent clearly the sounds we have heard, because one symbol is one sound. It
could avoid the ambiguity of the similar sounds heard by the listeners. This feature
could help to solve the problem of being unphonetic of English. Lintunen (2004)
concluded in his research that phonetic transcription was good to help Slovenian
students study pronunciation. The students made fewer errors after knowing the
symbols of the sounds.
From all above rationales, I decided to implement using phonetic
transcription to improve students‘ pronunciation improvements in terms of vowel
sounds for the students and evaluate the students‘ improvements after six weeks of
the study.
2. Research aim
The research aim is to improve of students‘ pronunciation skills using
phonetic transcription. In order to achieve the aim, the study followed these
following steps: identifying difficulties of the students in pronouncing vowel
sounds, planning the action, implementing the action and evaluating the
improvements of the students after using phonetic transcription. In addition to that,
the study also investigates the students‘ opinion about the use of phonetic
transcription in pronunciation learning.
3. Research questions
Being drawn from the research aim, the main research questions that need to
be answered over the study are:

1.

To what extent was the students‘ pronunciation improved after

learning with phonetic transcription?

3


2.

What were the students‘opinions of the use of phonetic

transcription in pronunciation training ?
4.

Scope of the study
The study was conducted to a class of thirty nine grade-ten students at a high

school in Hai Duong during the first six weeks of the second semester. The research
subject was the improvement of the students in pronouncing vowel sounds after
learning with phonetic transcription during six weeks.
5. Methods of the study
The study used the method of classroom action research. Action research into
education setting is defined that ―action research is a form of self-reflective inquiry
that can utilized by teachers in order to improve the rationality and justice of
(1) their own practices, (2) their understanding of these practices and (3) the
situations in which these practices are carried out (Kemmis and Carr,1986). This
nature of action research meets the intention and the aim of the study that is to
improve the students‘ pronunciation of vowel sounds using phonetic transcription.

A variety of forms of action research have evolved (Carr & Kemmis, 1986;
Ferrance, 2000; Basuki, 2016) which adapt a methodical, iterative approach
embracing problem identification, action planning, implementation and evaluation.
The insights gained from the initial cycle feed into planning of the second cycle, for
which the action plan is modified and the research process repeated. However,
within the limit of this study, the researcher carried out one cycle only and followed
all main steps including identifying the problem, planning the action, implementing
the action and evaluating the action. Data of the study was collected by means of
questionnaire, tests and teacher‘s journal.
6. Design of the thesis
The thesis is composed of five chapters as follow:
Chapter One is Introduction mentioning rationales of the study, the research
aim, the research questions, the scope of the study, the method of the study, the
design of the thesis.
Chapter Two is Literature review which mentions the definition of
pronunciation, definition of vowel sounds, definition of phonetic transcription and

4


its benefits in pronunciation learning, aims in teaching pronunciation, common
difficulties in teaching pronunciation and techniques in teaching pronunciation and
related studies.
Chapter Three is Research methodology which consists of research setting,
research design, research subjects, data collection instruments, data collection
procedure and data analysis procedure.
Chapter Four is Findings and discussion. In this part, data is analyzed
collected from pre-test and post-test, pre- and post-questionnaire and teacher‘s
journal to evaluate improvements of students after using phonetic transcription and
their opinion about the applying of phonetic transcription

Chapter Five is Conclusion which summarizes the major findings of the
study and presents the implication and the limitations of the study as well as
recommendations for further studies.

5


CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
In this chapter, the study presents the definition of pronunciation in general,
the definition of vowel sounds as well as its classification. Besides, the chapter also
includes the definition of phonetic transcription and the benefits of using phonetic
transcription in pronunciation teaching and learning proved through the results of a
number of studies. In addition, this chapter mentions the aim of teaching
pronunciation, the difficulties in pronouncing vowels, techniques in teaching
pronunciation. Last but not least, the study discusses some related studies to bring
out more theoretical and practical background for the thesis.
2.1. Pronunciation
2.1.1. Definition of pronunciation
Cook (1996) defined pronunciation as the production of English sounds.
Pronunciation is learnt by repeating sounds and correcting them when produced
inaccurately. When learners start learning pronunciation they make new habits and
overcome the difficulties resulting from the first language. According to Otlowski
(1998), pronunciation is the way of uttering a word in an accepted manner. Adult
Migrant English Programe Research Centre (2002) gives a broad definition of
pronunciation as ―pronunciation refers to the production of sounds that we use to
make meaning. It includes attention to the particular sounds of a language
(segments), aspects of speech beyond the level of the individual sound, such as
intonation, phrasing, stress, timing, rhythm (suprasegmental aspects), how the voice
is projected (voice quality) and, in its broadest definition, attention to gestures and
expressions that are closely related to the way we speak a language‖. However,

within the scope of this study, the concept of the pronunciation mentioned mainly
refers to the production of particular sounds in a language system. To be more
specific, they are vowel sounds in English.
1.1.2. Definition of vowel sounds

6


Vowel sounds belong to segmental features in the system. A vowel is seen as
the class of sound which makes the least blocks to the air flow. Vowels are nearly
ever located at the centre of a syllable, and it uncommon to locate any sound other
than a vowel which is able to stand alone as a whole syllable (Roach, 1992). Each
vowel has a number of features that realizes it from other vowel sounds. These
comprise; the shape of the lips, which could be rounded, neutral, or spread. The
second feature is the position of the tongue, which may be front, middle, or back.
Finally, the tongue may be raised giving different vowel. Kelly (2002) stated that
vowels are produced when the airstream is voiced through the vibration of the vocal
cords in the larynx, and then shaped using the tongue and the lips to modify the
overall shape of the mouth.
Vowels are usually described in terms of:
 Length, although remember that length depends on stress and that even
short vowels in English may seem rather long when stressed
 The position in the mouth in which they are made (in terms of their position
from high to low and front to back)
 The degree to which the lips are rounded, spread or neutral. Basically, the
vowel sounds in English are divided into single vowels and diphthongs.
Single vowels or pure vowels have been divided up into categories.
 For close vowels the tongue is quite high in the mouth. Moving from /i:/
to /u:/; we also notice the different positions of the tongue; /i:/ is a front
vowel, and /u:/ is a back vowel. There are four close vowels /i:/, /i/, /u:/

and /ʊ/.
 For mid vowels the tongue is neither high nor low in the mouth. Moving
from /e/ through to /ɔː/, we also notice the different positions of the tongue;
/e/ is a front vowel, and /ɔː/ is a back vowel. There are four mid vowels /e/,
/ə/, /ɜː/ and /ɔː/.
 For open vowels, the tongue is low in the mouth. Moving from /æ/ through
to /ɒ/,we also notice the difference positions of the tongue, /æ/ is a front

7


vowel, and /ɒ/ is a back vowel. There are four open vowels including /æ/, /ʌ/,
/ɑː/ and /ɒ/.
Kelly (2000) defined a diphthong as ―a combination of vowel sounds‖. A
slightly closer analysis shows us that there is a glide (or movement of the tongue,
lips and jaw) from one pure sound to another. The first sound in each phoneme is
longer and louder than the second in English, but not in all languages. If we listen to
the word ―house‖, we can hear that the /a/ part of the sound is longer than the final
part /ʊ/. If you are trying making the /ʊ/ part longer, you will hear the difference.
English is usually described as having eight diphthongs, and they can be usefully
grouped in the following ways.
 Centring dipthongs ends with a glide towards /ə/. They are calling centring
because /ə/ is a central vowel. There are three centring diphthongs including
/ɪə/, /ʊə/, /eə/.
 Closing diphthongs end with a glide towards /i/ or towards /ʊ/. The glide is
towards a higher position in the mouth. There are five closing diphthongs
including /ei/, /oi/, /ai/, /əʊ/ and /aʊ/.
The table below gives example of 12 single vowels and 8 diphthongs in
English along with an example word for each sound.

Figure 1:Table lists of English vowels ( Kelly, 2000)

8


2.2. Teaching pronunciation
2.2.1. The aim of teaching pronunciation
The growth in the use of English, together with the ease of communication
worldwide, means that English is increasingly being used as a medium of
communication between speakers for whom it is not a first language (Kelly, 2000).
With the communicative paradigm, it has been recognized that the goal of getting
foreign language learners to have perfect pronunciation may be inrealistic and

9


inappropriate (Jenkins, 1998). Instead, it has been suggested that the goal in
teaching pronunciation should be ― intelligibility‖ (Kenworthy, 1987).
Kenworthy (1987) defined intelligibility as the stituation when our speaking
is being understood by a listenner at a given time in a given situation. Furthermore,
Burns (2003) stated that intelligibility exists when speakers produce sound patterns
that are recognizable as English. However, these term do not actually point out
which features of English pronunciation need to be learned in order to attain this
intelligibility. With this problem in mind, Jenner (1989) attempted to determine ―
what all native speakers of all verieties have in common, which enables them to
communicate effectively with native speakers of varieties other than their own‖. The
results of his analysis were brought together in the Common Core, which is a list of
the features of English pronunication which Jenner considered is essential for
intelligibility anywhere in the world. One of the seven essential areas to eliminate
errors in learner‘s pronunciation is vowel quantity among which the length of a

vowel is the matter. However, the length differences between the vowels of English
feature in all accents, and the long English vowels are very long in comparison with
average vowel lengths in other languages. Because of this, the distinction between
long and short vowels is more important than exact vowel quality, and should be
clear in speech.
2.2.2. Techniques in teaching pronunciation
One of the main ways in which pronunciation is practiced in the classroom is
through drilling. In its most basic form, drilling simply involves the teacher saying a
word or structure, and getting the class to repeat it (Kelly, 2000). The technique has
its roots in behaviorist psychological theory and ―audio-lingual‖ approaches to
teaching; these are both now largely consigned to history, though drilling has stayed
with us as a tried and tested classroom technique. Drilling aims to help students
achieve better pronunciation of language items, and to help them remember new
items. This is a crucial part of classroom pronunciation work, and is possibly the
time in the lesson when students are most reliant on the teacher. The teacher‘s main
role in drilling is that of providing a model of the words, phrases for students to

10


copy. Therefore, this method relies heavily on how precisely a teacher pronounces a
word or phrase and the ability to perceive and imitate correctly of students.
However, when applied in a big class with forty students or more, this technique
may appear to be less useful because teachers may not pronounce loud and clear
enough for students to listen to and imitate. In addition, big class size may prevent
teachers from getting the correct responses from students as they often pronounce
chorally. As the result, they cannot figure out which students get corrected
pronunciation and who do not.
Reading aloud is another popular classroom activity which has fallen in and
out of favour with teachers at various time. The main argument against it is that it

can interfere with successful pronunciation; spellings can clearly affect
pronunciation performance adversely (Kelly, 2000). This problem is also discussed
above, as it frequently happens in languages that share Latin letters in the alphabet.
What‘s more, this kind of practicing activities can be rather time-consuming, so
teachers can only help some students in a lesson. The others who do not have
chance to read out loud the text and get corrected from the teacher may have very
little benefits or none at all from this kind of activity.
Taping students‘ English is one of the techniques employed by many second
language learners including me. Taping learner‘s spoken English from time to time
can pay dividends. Tapes can be made while students are engaged in language
practice activities and used for all manner of language difficulties, but especially
those concerned with pronunciation. Besides, taping can also be done by students
themselves as a kind of homework or individual speaking task. Students might
tackle the same task on two occasions, the tape of the first ―attempt‖ providing the
basis for pronunciation work; the subsequent performance of the task will hopefully
be more successful, and the two attempts can then be contrasted. This technique can
help students solve their specific problems and target the correct mistakes instead.
However, it requires a lot of time and efforts of teachers to listen, give comments,
and then listen the later version to check the improvement of the students. This is

11


quite impractical in the current teaching situation of the researcher since the class size
is about 40 students meaning a huge amount of work that need to be processed.

One of the techniques that has been used widely among non-native EFL
speakers is phonetic transcription using the English phonetic chart (44 sounds)
which is based on the international phonetic alphabet (IPA). As mentioned
previously, one of the greatest advantages of phonetic transcription is that each

phonetic symbol presents an exact sound in English. By mastering these sounds,
English learners can learn to pronounce any English words properly without being
doubt about its correctness. Since English is not phonetic which means a letter or a
cluster can be pronounced differently in different cases, it presents a huge obstacle
for learners to be certain if they pronounce a word correctly, especially in a nonnative speaking environment when there is a lack of native speakers available to
help them correct their mistakes. What‘s more, phonetic transcription is likely to be
very beneficial for learners who are accustomed to a close phoneme-grapheme
correspondence in their native language when they want to learn a language with
more complicated grapheme-to-phoneme rules (Lintunen,2004). By learning
phonetic transcription, learners form a correct relationship between spelling and
actual sounds rather than basing on the orthography to pronounce an English word.
Learning through phonetic transcription can also help students to avoid the
ambiguity of the similar sounds (Hensselwood,2013), especially when this
ambiguity is more and more serious in a typical crowded classroom or by
unqualified instructors. Therefore the use of these phonetic symbols and phonetic
transcription can be seen as an effective and reliable method to help student improve
their pronunciation.
2.2.3. The difficulties in pronouncing vowels and using phonetic transcription
of the students
One of the significant problems faced by students of English in general and
Vietnamese students in particular is that each English vowel sound has more than
just one way of pronunciation. This causes many difficulties to learners and leads

12


them to a mispronunciation (Cruttenden, 1994). A typically cited example is the
pronunciation of ―ough”, which has at least eight distinct sound patterns attached to it
such as cough /kɒf/, bough /baʊ/, rough /rʌf/, although /ɔːlˈðəʊ/, through θruː/,/bought

/bɔːt/ , thorough /ˈθʌr.ə/, lough /lɒk/. This can be really challenging to whones are at
low competence level of English.
One of the greatest factors that may influence the pronunciation of vowel
sounds of Vietnamese learners is their mother tongue vowel system. As Honey
(1987) stated, "the highly complex Vietnamese vowel system possesses eleven pure
vowels (/a/, /ă/, /â/, /o/, /ô/, /ơ/, /e/, /ê/, /u/, /ư/, and /i/) and many more diphthongs
and tripthongs ". In general, most of Vietnamese vowels are free of positions, which
mean that they can stand-alone. Some, however, cannot. People can usually
recognize Vietnamese diphthongs and trip-thongs by the spelling. Also, according to
Honey, there are some similarities between the two vowel systems English and
Vietnamese. Both English and Vietnamese employ Latin alphabet in which they
share five main single vowels in common a, e, i, o, u and diphthongs like oa, ai, au,
ia. The Vietnamese learners who do not have sufficient pronunciation knowledge of
the vowels in English may shift them to the way they normally pronounce in
Vietnamese. Honey (1987) stated that the Vietnamese language often caries
alternatives to the closest pure vowel in pronouncing the pure vowel in English .
Moreover, the relationship between the orthography and the phonology in
Vietnamese is quite phonetic. Each letter represents one sound only, so students can
easily pronounce a word from a written word just by looking at it. In contrast, the
sounds of spoken English do not match up, a lot of time, with the letters of written
English. In addition to that, many words in English have silent letters, which are not
pronounced. Obviously, this causes a lot of difficulties for Vietnamese learners of
English. The learners who do not have the mastery of pronunciation of English
words, often pronounce them just by looking at their spelling are expected to
mispronounce many times (O‘ Connor, 2003). Vietnamese speakers, consequently,
face a large number of problems when speaking in English.

13

Another important factor in vowel section that causes problems for
Vietnamese speakers is the confusion between the long and short vowel sounds in
English (Nguyen, 2015). The distinction between tense and lax vowel pairs of
English almost always creates problem. Many Vietnamese learners of English
cannot pronounce the two vowels of each pair correctly. These authors figure out
that second language learners could pronounce "neither the tense nor the lax vowel,
but a vowel between the two. Failure to make these distinctions can lead to
misunderstandings‖ (Avery and Ehrlich,1992).
2.3. Phonetic transcription
2.3.1. Definition of phonetic transcription
Phonetic transcription is nothing more than a written record of the sounds of
a spoken language. The relationship between phonetic transcription and spoken
language is very similar to that between a printed musical score and a musical
performance (Anthony, 2019). The International Phonetic Alphabet symbols (IPA) is
the most widely used alphabet for phonetic transcription. The IPA was founded as
early as in 1886 by English and French language teachers, and as the study of
speech and phonetics has progressed, the amount of symbols required to express
speech and sounds for different language has also increased (Morris-Wilson, 2004).
The IPA has hundreds of symbols but only fifty or so- corresponding to the number
of sounds used in English- are necessary for transcription of English. In IPA system,
one phonetic symbol is used for each sound. There are variations of phonemic chart,
reduced from IPA for English language learners. However, one of the most common
phonemic charts is one developed by UnderHill (1994). It is also the one that the
author often employs during her teaching practice in class.

14


Figure 2: Sound Foundations (Under Hill, 1994)
2.3.2. The benefits of phonetic transcription in pronunciation learning

Phonetic transcription has been long used in pronunciation teaching and
learning as it offers a great number of benefits to language learners. Learning
phonetic transcription is essential when acquiring foreign language pronunciation as

15


it gives a point of reference for the learners. It is particurlaly useful for learners
studying a language with weak letter-to-phoneme correspondence and ambiguous
spelling such as English (Terguieff, 2012). Although various pronunciation rules
exist in English, they are often complicated and many exceptions occur. Therefore,
it is necessary to learn how to read phonetic transcription, as it will become a useful
skill when learning new words from dictionaries (Wells, 1996). Acquiring skill is
growing more and more important in a non-native learning environment like in
Vietnam where you can mainly rely on standard dictionaries, reliable Internet
sources and qualified teachers for correct pronunciation. It also allows
pronunciation teaching to move away from traditional teacher-centric teaching
towards a more independent way of learning pronunciation of learners.
Learning phonetic transcription also increase learner‘s phonemic awareness
and the accuracy of speech. It will help learners notice the distinction between the
two entirely different sound systems (Morris-Wilson, 2004). This is especially
essential for Vietnamese learners since Vietnamese and English both employ Latin
letters and symbols in their alphabet. That is why Vietnamese learners often
mispronounce many English words as the spelling of the letters in Vietnamese often
draws reader‘s attention away from the actual pronunciation of the ones in English.
Incorrect perception of sounds is the cause of many pronunciation difficulties, and
phonemic transcription is a good method of analytically perceiving and correcting
mistakes received imperfectly by ear.

2.4. Related studies

Ahasana El (2018) conducted a descriptive research which describes in detail
the class activities in teaching pronunication with phonetic transcription. It was
implemented during the even semester of 2017/2018 academic year in English
phonology class. There were six meetings observed and described in this research.
The first and the second meetings were the introduction of phonetic and IPA. It
made students accustomed to the symbols. The next meetings were the practices of
pronunciaton with phonetic transcription at word and then sentence level. The
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author observed, recorded and analyzed students‘ performance during the research.
The finding was that phonetic transcription could help students to correct their
pronunciation. Also phonetic transcription was concluded to help teachers simplify
the teaching of pronunciation. Much time would be saved and students were in
focus with the phonetic transcription instead of getting bored like in drilling or ―
repeat-after-me‖ method.
Lintunen and Mompean (2015) in their research stated that using phonetic
transcription in English classes was potential to remedy the pronunciation of the
English learners. It could give positive impacts for the correction of students‘
pronunciation, further more with good pronunciation students in Finland could be
more confident to practice their English although they were EFL. The study also
revealed that Finish students were enthusiastic to study with phonetic transcription.
It was because they liked and curious about how the English symbols were and how

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