VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOL UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUTHIFS: FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES PHAM THI TU HANG PROBLEMS OF HATINH LEARNERS IN PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANTS (Khó khăn của học vién Ha Tinh trong việc phái âm phụ âm cuối Tiếng Anh) M. MINOR PROGRAMME TIESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60. HANOT- 2010 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOL 2 UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDLES PHAM THI TU HANG 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. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.15 Supervisor: Ha Cim Tam Ph.
HANG!- 2010 DECLARATION ‘TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATIOM. TABLE OF CONTENTS. LIST OF TABLES AND ABRRIEVIATIONE. PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 7 Rationale of the study ww 0% œ ‘The aim of the study.
The scope of the stud. Organization of the sludy © PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT 9 Chapter I: LITERATURE REVITW 9 1.1 General description of consonants, 1. Classification of consonanis.5 Review of previous research Chapter 2: THE STUDY 23 2.2 Data collection instruments .3 Data vollection procedures 2.1 Plosive or slop /p, Affticate AJ 2.7 Discussion and findings .3 PART THREE: CONCLUSIO 1. Limitations and suggestions for further study 38 REFERENCES 39 "1 into two branches: (1) segmental phonology and (2) suprasegmental phonology" (Skandera & Burleigh, 2005-5) Phonology is primarily concemed 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 phonalogy of English looks al the vowels, consonants and suporasemental fealures 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 pattems 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 abstraet units called phonemes. When we transcribe a word in a way thal shows none of the detaits of the pronunciation Uvat, 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 undetlying phonemes, This rescarch aims al finding oul if HTU students have difficulties in pronouncing the five chosen English consanants in the final position.
Tl takes the problems of their pronunciation into consideration which concerns with the way they use their organs of articulation pronouncing such sounds, ‘'his is also what articulatory phonetics study, so the theoretical background of it is presented with more details as follows.3 Articulatory phonetics Atticulatory phonetics, one of three main branches of phonetics, is the study of the organs of speech and their use in producing specch sounds, The term ‘organs af spucch’ refers to those parts of the human body that. are concemed in various ways with the production of speech. A lot of them are only secondarily concerned wath the production of speech- their primary fanctions have to de 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 "1 into two branches: (1) segmental phonology and (2) suprasegmental phonology" (Skandera & Burleigh, 2005-5) Phonology is primarily concemed 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 phonalogy of English looks al the vowels, consonants and suporasemental fealures 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 pattems 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 abstraet units called phonemes. When we transcribe a word in a way thal shows none of the detaits of the pronunciation Uvat, 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 undetlying phonemes, This rescarch aims al finding oul if HTU students have difficulties in pronouncing the five chosen English consanants in the final position.
Tl takes the problems of their pronunciation into consideration which concerns with the way they use their organs of articulation pronouncing such sounds, ‘'his is also what articulatory phonetics study, so the theoretical background of it is presented with more details as follows.3 Articulatory phonetics Atticulatory phonetics, one of three main branches of phonetics, is the study of the organs of speech and their use in producing specch sounds, The term ‘organs af spucch’ refers to those parts of the human body that. are concemed in various ways with the production of speech. A lot of them are only secondarily concerned wath the production of speech- their primary fanctions have to de 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 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Consonants of English Table 2: Number of subject mispronounced the consotintz under study Table 3: Sotmds deviations of the consonants under study made by the informants Table 4.
Sound omission made by informanis ABBREVIATIONS HTU: Hatinh University RP: Received Pronunciation LI: Mother tongue L2: Second Language PART ONE: INTRODUCTION LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Consonants of English Table 2: Number of subject mispronounced the consotintz under study Table 3: Sotmds deviations of the consonants under study made by the informants Table 4. Sound omission made by informanis ABBREVIATIONS HTU: Hatinh University RP: Received Pronunciation LI: Mother tongue L2: Second Language PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 10 ‘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, ad articutatory phonetics. The second section describes consonanls in genoral, English and Viettamose consouanls.
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 concemed 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, (ack CR. et al, 1997) Articulatory phoneties deals with the way in which speech sounds are produced.
Sound are usually classified according to the position of Tips and the tongue, haw 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 lo measure the characteristics of these sound waves.
Auditory phonetics deals with how speech sounds are perecived by the listener, 1.2 Phonology Phonology is essentially the description of the systems and pattems 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 # phonemic difference if two words (such as “while” and “right” or “cal” and bat”) differin only a single sound “Phonology deals with the speakers’ knowledge of the sound system ofa language.
It is therefore exclusively concemed with langue or competence [.] Phonology can be divided 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 communigalion may even be broken down. “A lsamer who sonsisiontly misprononmecs 2 range of phonemes can be extremely difficult for a speaker fom another language community to understand” (Kelly, 2000:11). ‘here 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 leamers are not the exception even though they have leamt English since the early age.
Another reason is that no research has been carried on this ficld al Hatinh University (HTU), This leads the author to the thouglit of making a research on “Problems of [atinh learners in pronouncing Bnglish final consonants” with the purpose of finding out the causes of mispronunciations. The aim of the study ‘The study aims at finding out if HTU leamers have difficulties in pronouncing English word final consonants and what the causes of these problems are. The results will provide an overview of leamers’ 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 leaning correc! pronunciation so ax lo produce Enghsh word-finat consonants properly. Hypothesis 1 HTU learners have difficulties in pronouncing Haglish word-final consonants 2.
Their problems may be caused by mother tongue interference 4, The scope of the stuily This research presents several analyses on the pronunciation of the five consonants cocuming in some solected words using for recording namely /s/, /tf/, /8/, it, /p/ in final position made by the ten English majored students studying al IITU with a hypothesis thai 12 divided into the supragtottal and the subgiottal tract (as shown in Picturel),(Ladefoged, 2001). In neatly all speech sounds, the basic source of power is the respiratory system pushing air of the lungs. Air fiom the lungs goes up the windpipe and into the larynx at which point it must pass between two small muscular folds called the voual 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 wacl, The shape of the vocal wacl is very important factor in the production of speech. The parts of the vocal traci thal can be used to form sounds are called articulatots. 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 thal can be Taised 10 press against the back wall of the pharynx and shut off the wasal tract, preventing air from going out through the nose.
AL the lower end of the soft palate is a small appendage hanging down that is known as the avila.