VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES COMMON MISTAKES MADE BY 10-GRADE STUDENTS AT ME LINH HIGH SCHOOL IN PRODUCING ENGLISH VOWEL AND CONSONANT SOUNDS (Những lỗi phổ biến của học sinh khối 10 tr ờng THPT Mê Linh trong việc phát âm các nguyên âm và các phụ âm Tiếng Anh) M. MINOR THESIS Major: English Teaching Methodology Code : 60 14 10 HANOI, 9/2011 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES COMMON MISTAKES MADE BY 10-GRADE STUDENTS AT ME LINH HIGH SCHOOL IN PRODUCING ENGLISH VOWEL AND CONSONANT SOUNDS (Những lỗi phổ biến của học sinh khối 10 tr ờng THPT Mê Linh trong việc phát âm các nguyên âm và các phụ âm Tiếng Anh) M. MINOR THESIS MAJOR: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE : 601410 SUPERVISOR: KIM VAN TAT, M.A HANOI, 9/2011 TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION.cQQQnn HS nh nh nh Tà ni tà nền 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTTS. ch nh TH nh nh hy il ABSTRACTT.
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The scope of the study.ccce cece cece cence ene eee TK TH ng nh nh nh e eae kg 3 SN .icc:ntiẳđáẳảiẳiÝiiiả4]. Organization of the Sfudy.c Ăn HH TH KT HH như 3 PART II: DEVELOPMENT.-c cm HH ni ni nu mg4 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW. Phonetics and phonology. SH SH ones 4 1.
QC SH tena HT nh nh kh nh key 5 1. The main differences between English and Vietnamese sounds. cece cece cece cece nent ee eee neta HH TK nh nh en nen ớt 11 1. HS SH ni Km nh Ki nà ki ghi 12 1.
The importance of teaching and learning pronunciation. Review of previous research .-- c2 teeta ena ences se 13 CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY. Context of the Study.cQQ Q2 eee ST ng nh nh ch 15 2. Teaching staff and teaching methods.
Students and their background. The teaching materials and faciÏities.- c2 HH HT een en như 17 2. Data collection instruments. SH HH HS HH n nh nh KH 18 2.- c2 212g ng ng ng nh kh nhe 18 2.
Data collection prOC€dUr€s.‹ c2 nh ea eeeeeneees 18 2. Data analysis ProCeSS. cọ tence HH HH KH nh ke 19 2. 20 CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION.
Classroom observation and GisCUSSION. Findings and discussion from the questionnaire. Findings about the students’ attitudes towards pronunciafion. Findings about the common problems with English sounds and the main [È>))L` Ta.
Findings about the common problems with English sounds. The causes of consonant and vowel mistakes. The solutions to the problems.‹------‹-:--- << en en enens 27 3. Students’ self COTreCtIOn.
Teachers’ methods in teaching pronunciafion. Students’ expectation from their teachers’ methods in teaching FODROyOLE OCCA 18 (0)) na. 29 CHAPTER 4: SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS FOR 10” GRADE STUDENTS AT ME LINH HIGH SCHOOL TO PRODUCE ENGLISH SOUNDS CORIREC TLUY.- << 7c cọ Ki Ki Ki Ki Ki Ki Ki 31 4. Using visual a1dS.--c eee ence nent ng SE ng nh nh nh sẽ 31 4.
Solutions for English sounds practice. HT SH TT nh nh nh re 32 4. Do the listening eX€TCISS:. HH HH TH nàn nà nh nh ens 34 4.-- sec Sàn ease es34 “VU Đa.
ene neces teeta e na enae anes 35 PART IH: CONCLUSION. Limitations and suggestions for further study .- - Go on n9 TH Ki Ki Bi 099800896098040 APPENDICTES.- co HH HH KH 0009800890096 I LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figure 1: Diagram of Vowels Figure 2: ` Consonants in the English language Table 1: Pronunciation matters mentioned in Tieng Anh 10 Table 2: students’ attitude toward pronunciation Table3: students’ opinion on the level of difficulties of English vowels Table4: students’ opinion on the level of difficulties of English consonants Table5: Causes of students’ mistakes in producing English sounds Table 6: Students’ opinions about their self- correction Table 7: Teaching English pronunciation methods Table 8: Students’ expectation from their teachers’ methods in teaching pronunciation PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the study 10 In the process of integration and globalization, English is rapidly becoming an indispensable instrument in community communication. It is being used world-wide as the main language in business, trading, communication, etc.
Therefore, more and more people learn English as foreign language and wish to be able to master it as native speakers. However, learners cannot success in studying English without mastering English pronunciation because pronunciation is one of the most important components of a language. It is really very important for learners to have communication of the target language as correct possible right from the start. There have been a great deal of notable works about pronunciation and pronunciation teaching since the dawn of language teaching such as ones written by, Gimson (1962), Kenworthy (1987), Avery &Ehrlich (1992), Jerkins (2000).
However, few studies have been done on common mistakes in pronouncing English sounds alone. The most popular one is the study by Avery &Ahrlich (1992) in which the problems of selected language group are discussed. In their work they have confirmed that ““Vietnamese speakers do not experience too much difficulty with the English vowels”. In reality, Vietnamese learners often mispronounce the sound / œ / and /e/.
Moreover, their explanations about the problems which Vietnamese learners have with English consonants are not really appropriate. It is said that Vietnamese learners have not so many difficulties when producing English sounds because English and Vietnamese have the same Latin alphabets. However, there is a big difference in the phonetics alphabets between the two languages and the ways to pronounce them. Thus, the most common cause is the default misunderstanding of the way these sounds are produced and the effect of some sounds of the mother tongue.
In Vietnam, English is the core foreign language that is taught as a compulsory subject at all school levels. The need to acquire this so popular language proves to be constant with socioeconomic changes in Vietnam in recent years. However, it is undeniable that many Vietnamese students receiving the English teaching from their teachers at schools can’t pronounce English words correctly. This is one of the first language influences on the second language acquisition in the way that some features of pronouncing words in English do not exist in Vietnamese.
In fact, Vietnamese learners of English have many difficulties in pronouncing English. For high school students, especially students at Me Linh high school are not the exception even II though they have learnt English since the early age. Another reason is that no research has been carried on this field at Me Linh high school in Hanoi. This leads the researcher to the thought of making a research on “Common mistakes made by tenth grade students at Me Linh high school in producing English vowel and consonant sounds” with the purpose of finding out the causes of mispronunciations.
It is hoped that this study will contribute to the goal of enhancing students’ performances in the teaching and learning foreign language. Aims of the study The study aims at finding out common mistakes made by tenth grade students at Me Linh high school in pronouncing English words and the causes of these problems. The results will provide an overview of learners’ pronunciation at Me Linh high school and give suggestions for teachers to improve the situation. The findings of this research will hopefully help Me Linh high school students to raise their awareness of learning correct pronunciation so as to produce English vowel and consonant sound properly.
What are the common mistakes in pronouncing English vowels and consonants made by 10" grade students at Me Linh high school? 2. What are the causes of those mistakes? 3. What are solutions to the problem? 4. Scope of the study The study limited itself to the investigation of common mistakes in English pronunciation of the 10" grade students at Me Linh high school in Hanoi.
The researcher of the thesis pays attention to find out students’ common mistakes in the lessons Language focus with the sub- section Pronunciation of Tieng Anh 10- textbook. Solutions are also provided to help improve teaching and learning English pronunciation in general, teaching and learning English pronunciation for the 10" grade students at Me Linh high school in particular. Research method 12 A combination of different data collection methods was used including class observations and questionnaires for students. Details of the methodology applied in the study are discussed in Chapter 2 of Part two.
Organization of the study The study composes of three parts: Part one, /ntroduction, includes the rationale, aims, research question, scope, method and organization of the study. Part two, Development, consists of four chapters. Chapter one, Literature Review, presents the theoretical background relevant to the research. The first section presents the basic concepts of phonetics, phonology articulatory phonetics.
The second section shows the main differences between English and Vietnamese sounds. The next section presents the importance of teaching pronunciation. The last section summarizes the review of previous research related to vowel and consonant pronunciation. Chapter two, the Study, describes the context of the study, the participants, and the method.
Chapter three is the findings and discussion from classroom observations and questionnaire. The last chapter is some suggested solutions for 10 grade students at Me Linh high school to produce English sounds correctly. Part three, Conclusion, summarizes the findings and gives limitations and suggestions for further research. Besides, the classroom observation transcripts, survey questionnaire and suggested solutions for the teachers and students are included in the Appendices.
PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter is devoted to the presentation of the theoretical issues related to the study. The 13 first section provides some basic linguistic and phonetic concepts to bring a common view of the matter studied including phonetics, phonology, English consonants and vowels. The second section describes the differences between English and Vietnamese. The next section presents the importance of pronunciation teaching and learning.
The final section discusses the review of some previous research related to English consonant and vowel sounds. Phonetics and phonology This section starts with a distinction between two related terms (often loosely) used to refer to linguistic disciplines studying the linguistic sign which Ferdinand de Saussure in Course of General Linguistics called the acoustic image: phonetics and phonology. Phonetics deals with how speech sounds are actually produced, transmitted and received in actual spoken language, while phonology deals with especially with the ways those sounds are organized into the individual languages, hence dealing with abstractions on a virtual basis. “Phonetics first of all divides, or segments, concrete utterances into individual speech sounds.
It is therefore exclusively concerned with parole or performance. Phonetics can be divided into three distinct phases: (1) articualtory phonetics, (2) acoustic phonetics and (3) auditory phonetics” (Skandera& Burleigh, 2005:3) 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.