A Study on Pronunciation Mistakes Commonly Committed by the 8th Grade Students at Le Quy Don Secondary School, Hanoi Related to English Fricative and Affricativ

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES ---- ---- TRẦN THỊ THU HỒNG A STUDY ON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES



TRẦN THỊ THU HỒNG

A STUDY ON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES COMMONLY COMMITTED BY THE 8 TH GRADE STUDENTS AT LE QUY DON SECONDARY SCHOOL, HANOI RELATED TO ENGLISH FRICATIVE AND AFFRICATIVE SOUNDS

AND SOME POSSIBLE PEDAGOGICAL SOLUTIONS

Nghiên cứu lỗi phát âm thường gặp liên quan tới âm xát và tắc xát trong Tiếng Anh của học sinh lớp 8 trường trung học cơ sở Lê Quý Đôn, Hà Nội và một số giải pháp trong thực tiễn giảng dạy

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field : English Language Teaching Methodology

Code : 60.14.0111

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES



TRẦN THỊ THU HỒNG

A STUDY ON PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES COMMONLY COMMITTED BY THE 8 TH GRADE STUDENTS AT LE QUY DON SECONDARY SCHOOL, HANOI RELATED TO ENGLISH FRICATIVE AND AFFRICATIVE SOUNDS

AND SOME POSSIBLE PEDAGOGICAL SOLUTIONS

Nghiên cứu lỗi phát âm thường gặp liên quan tới âm xát và tắc xát trong Tiếng Anh của học sinh lớp 8 trường trung học cơ sở Lê Quý Đôn, Hà Nội và một số giải pháp trong thực tiễn giảng dạy

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field : English Language Teaching Methodology

Code : 60.14.0111

Supervisor : Assoc Prof Dr Võ Đại Quang

Hanoi, 2013

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALLY

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled

Students at Le Quy Don Secondary School, Hanoi Related to English Fricative and

Affricative Sounds and Some Possible Pedagogical Solutions.”

Submitted in partially fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MA in English Teaching Methodology

Except where the reference is indicated, no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis

Hanoi, 2013 Tran Thi Thu Hong

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis could not have been completed without the help and support from a number of people

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Assoc Prof Dr

Vo Dai Quang, my supervisor, who has patiently and constantly supported me through the stages of the study, and whose stimulating ideas, expertise, and suggestions have inspired me greatly through my growth as an academic researcher

A special word of thanks goes to my best friends, students studying at Le Quy Don Secondary School, and many others, without whose support and encouragement it would be never have been possible for me to have this thesis accomplished

Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family for the sacrifice they have devoted to the fulfillment of this academic work

ABSTRACT

It is clear that learners with good English pronunciation are likely to be understood even if they make errors in other areas, whereas learners with bad pronunciation will not be understood, even if their grammar is perfect Such learners may avoid speaking in English, and experience social isolation, etc Therefore, learners with poor pronunciation may be judged as incompetent, or lacking in knowledge Be aware of the importance of English as an international language as well as the necessary of developing the learner‟s communicative competence, teaching pronunciation has been constantly noticed

This minor thesis aims at identifying the most common mistakes when producing English affricative and fricative sounds by the students grade 8 at Le Quy Don secondary school, as well as investigating the main causes of these mistakes and the possible pedagogical solutions to assist them correct their mistakes

In the course of fulfilling this study, the researcher combined the data from two main courses: questionnaire for the students to investigate the causes of the mistakes and recording the informant‟s pronunciation of selected words and words within utterances and sentences to find out the most common mistakes with English fricative and affricative sounds

The data analysis reveals the following major findings: The students have a tendency to omission and deviation of affricative and fricative sounds both in syllable-middle and final positions Their own phonemic habits were carried into English and the students appear to fail to imitate a proper pronunciation These results are taken into account and lead to some pedagogical suggestions to deal with these problems found

LISTS OF TABLES

Table 1: Vietnamese initial and final consonants Table 2

Table 2: Sounds mispronounced by Vietnamese students (Tam,2007) Table 3: Mistakes in producing the sounds /f/ and /v/

Table 4.1: Mistakes in producing the sounds/θ/ -/ð /

Table 4.2: Mistakes in producing the sounds/θ/ -/ð /

Table 5: Mistakes in producing the sounds /ʃ/ -/ ʒ/

Table 6: Mistakes in producing the sounds /tʃ/ - /dʒ/

Table 7: Common pronunciation mistakes committed by the students Table 8: Number of students producing sound omission

Table 9: Number of students producing sound deviation

Table 10: Students‟ purposes of learning English grammar

Table 11: Causes of the students‟ mispronunciation

LISTS OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Consonant chart according to Place and Manner of articulation of the sound

Figure 2: Place and manner articulation of the sound /f/

Figure 3: Place and manner articulation of the sound /v/

Figure 4: Place and manner articulation of the sound / θ /

Figure 5: Place and manner articulation of the sound / ð /

Figure 6: Place and manner articulation of the sound / s /

Figure 7: Place and manner articulation of the sound / z /

Figure 8: Place and manner articulation of the sound / ∫ /

Figure 9: Place and manner articulation of the sound / ʒ /

Figure 10: Place and manner articulation of the sound / h /

Figure 11: Place and manner articulation of the sound / tʃ/& /dʒ/

Figure 12: The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1.The rationale of the study 1

2.Aims of the research 2

3.Scope of the research 2

4.Significance of the research 2

5.Structural organization of the thesis 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.Theoretical background 4

1.1.The description of English fricatives 4

1.1.1.Labio- dental Fricatives :/f,v/ 5

1.1.2.Dental Fricatives: / θ, ð/ 6

1.1.3.Alveolar Fricatives: /s,z/ 7

1.1.4.Palato-alveolar Fricatives: /∫, ʒ/ 8

1.1.5.Glottal Fricative: /h/ 10

1.1.6.The description of English affricates / tʃ/& /dʒ/ 11

1.1.7.Some similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese consonants in terms of affricatives and fricatives 11

1.2.Review of previous studies related to the research area of the thesis 12

1.2.1.Sound pair /f/ -/v/ 13

1.2.2.Sound pair /θ/ -/ð / 14

1.2.3.Sound pair /s/- /z/ 15

1.2.4.Sound pair /ʃ/ -/ ʒ/ 15

1.2.5.Glottal /h/ 16

1.2.6.Sound pair /tʃ/ - /dʒ/ 16

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 19

2.1 Research – governing principles 19

2.1.1 Research questions 19

2.1.2 Research setting 19

2.1.3 Research types 19

2.2 Research methods 19

2.2.1 Data collection instruments 20

2.2.2 Data collection procedures 20

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 22

3.1 Reports on the result collected by means of recordings 22

3.2 Reports on the result collected by means of questionnaire 26

3.2.1 Students‟ opinion on the importance of pronunciation 27

3.2.2 Students‟ purposes of learning English 27

3.2.3 Student‟s frequency in practicing English pronunciation 28

3.2.4 Students‟ knowledge of reading phonetic transcription 28

3.2.5 Causes of the students‟ mispronunciation 29

CHAPTER 4 : PROPOSED SOLUTIONS 33

4.1 Using IPA Chart 33

4.2 Making the lessons more interesting 34

4.2.1 Phonetic hangman 35

4.2.3 Shopping for sounds 35

4.2.4 Bingo 36

4.2.5 Using tongue twisters 36

4.3 Equipping facilities 37

4.4 Motivating the students 38

PART C: CONCLUSION 40

(i)Recapitulation 40

(ii)Concluding remarks 40

(iii)Limitations of the current research 41

(iv)Recommendations 41

PART D: REFERENCES 43 APPENDIX I

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 The rationale of the study

Presently, English appears to be a widely spoken language which is the dominant international language in all aspects such as communication, science, aviation, entertainment, education In Vietnam, it is undeniable that it has become the most popular foreign language to be used as a means of communication Therefore, good communication is the first target as well as the first criterion of English learners To communicate properly, the learners need correct pronunciation because pronunciation affects very much on the understandings of meanings of the

word If the sound of word is differing, it may lead the listeners to some other

meanings, and if this happens, it is very much obvious that it‟s not a proper communication In other words, unless he has sufficient knowledge of the sound patterns of the target language, he can neither encode a message to anybody nor decode the message sent by another person Pronunciation is an aspect of verbal communication which makes it more effective and attractive Thanks to good pronunciation , students not only become aware of different sounds and sound features, but can also improve their speaking immeasurably Therefore, the significance of pronunciation becomes highly considerable in the process of verbal communication

Since sounds play an important role in communication, foreign language teachers must attribute proper importance to teaching pronunciation in their classes Therefore, pronunciation instruction is of great importance for successful oral communication to take place since it is an important ingredient of the communicative competence (Hismanoglu, 2006) Nevertheless, among millions of people speaking English, there exist a great number of people who make mistakes

in pronunciation Specially, in producing English affricate and fricative consonant sounds makes many learners confused, meanwhile “sound is significant because it

is used as a part of a code of a particular language and achieves meaning in context

In this study, the writer has presented a brief description of some features of English affricate and fricative consonants as well as the mistakes made by Vietnamese when producing them On the foundation of these mistakes, some solutions are suggested to mitigate the problems

2 Aims of the research

The specific aims of the study are:

- To identify the most common mistakes when producing English affricative and fricative sounds by the 8th grade students at Le Quy Don secondary school

- To provide some strategies to help students avoid mispronunciation

3 Scope of the research

As can be seen, the English sound system consists of forty-four phonemes; twenty-four consonants, twelve pure vowels and eight diphthongs Generally, Vietnamese often have difficulties in producing some of these sounds in a proper way due to some reasons

It is necessary to make a distinction between errors and mistakes Mistakes are what the researchers referred to as performance errors (the learners know the system but fail to use it) while the errors are a result of one systematic competence (the learners‟ system is incorrect).( Richards, Platt and Platt.H,1992) According to Jame (1998), an error cannot be self-corrected while mistakes can be self- corrected if the deviation is pointed out to the speaker

Due to time constraints, the length of thesis and the researcher‟s knowledge, it is impossible for the researcher to study all the pronunciation mistakes made by students Therefore, this study only focuses on finding out the most typical mistakes made by the 8th grade students at Le Quy Don when pronouncing English affricative and fricative sounds

4 Significance of the research

i) Theoretical significance: The research assists both teachers and learners to review phonological characteristics and articulation of the sounds It is a solid foundation in teaching and learning English pronunciation

ii) Practical significance: The study identifies students‟ mistakes in producing affricative and fricative sounds in English and supplies English teachers with the understanding and practical view to have pedagogical suitable solutions to these kinds of established mistakes

5 Structural organization of the thesis

The study consists of three parts as follows:

PART 1 is the introduction, which provides an overview of the study with

specific reference to the rationale, the aims, the scope and the structural organization of the thesis

PART 2, development, consists of 3 chapters:

Chapter 1 presents review of previous studies related to the research of the

thesis and theoretical backgrounds about general descriptions of English affricative and fricative sounds

Chapter 2, the methodology underlying the research is presented It presents

the subject of the study, the instruments used to collect the data and the procedure

of the data collection

Chapter 3 is devoted to a detailed description of data analysis and a

thorough discussion of the findings of the study

PART 3 is conclusion including the summary of the main points presented

in the thesis and concluding remarks The limitations of the study and some

recommendations for further research are also discussed in this chapter

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1 Theoretical background

English has 24 consonant phonemes classified according to their respective

point of articulation, manner of articulation, voiced or voiceless They are

distinguished from each other by the distinctive features characterized by the way distinction listed above The consonants in English are patterned amazingly in pairs (except for the nasals) voiced/ voiceless

three-Figure 1: Consonant chart according to Place and Manner of articulation of the

sound (as achieved from http://nlpdotnet.com/Linguistics/Phonetics/ConsonantChart.aspx )

From the table above, according to Manner of Articulation, it‟s clearly that English fricatives consist of 4 minimal pairs: /f/ &/v/;/s/&/z/;/θ/&/ ð/; /∫/&/ʒ/ and /h/ sound while English affricate include one pair : / tʃ/& /dʒ/

1.1 The description of English fricatives

Fricative is defined, according to Tam Ha Cam (2005), as consonants with the characteristic that when they are produced, air escapes through a small passage and makes a hissing sound They are continuant consonants, as you can continue making them without interruption as long as you have enough air in your lungs

1.1.1 Labio- dental Fricatives :/f,v/

/f/ is a labio-dental, voiceless, fortis consonant It is produced by pressing the

lower lip against the upper teeth and forcing the air out between them The sound

can be spelt f – as in fine, flare, fringe, feud, loaf, stifle, ff – as in effort, snuff, ph –

as in physics, graph, or even gh – as in enough, tough

Figure 2: Place and manner articulation of the sound /f/

/frameset.html )

/v/ is the voiced, lenis pair of [f] with which it shares the place (labio- dental) and

manner (fricative) of articulation E.g leaf / leaves, wife/wives, of Derivational affixes can also voice the final consonant: life/liven

Figure 3: Place and manner articulation of the sound /v/

/frameset.html

1.1.2 Dental Fricatives: / θ, ð/

/θ/ is an interdental, voiceless, fortis fricative It occurs in word-initial, medial

and final position It is produced with the tip of the tongue between the teeth, the air

escaping through the passage in between The sound is rendered graphically by h-

thin, method, path The sound often occurs in clusters difficult to pronounce:

eighths [eıtθs], depths [depθs], lengths [leŋθs]

Figure 4: Place and manner articulation of the sound / θ /

/frameset.html

/ð/ is the voiced pair of [θ] being an interdental, voiced, lenis fricative In initial

position it is only distributed in grammatical words such as demonstratives: this, that, these, those, there; articles: the; adverbs: thus It occurs freely in medial

position: brother, bother, rather, heathen In final position it often represents the

voicing of [θ] in plurals like mouths [mauðz], wreaths [ri:ðz] which may prove difficult to pronounce, or in derived words like bath [ba: θ] (noun)/bathe [beıð] (verb) or breath [breθ] (n.)/ breathe [bri:ð] (v.)

Figure 5: Place and manner articulation of the sound / ð /

/frameset.html

1.1.3 Alveolar Fricatives: /s,z/

/s/ is an alveolar, voiceless, fortis fricative, produced with the tip and the blade

of the tongue making a light contact with the alveolar ridge, and the side rims of the tongue a lose contact with the upper side teeth The air- stream escapes through the narrow groove in the center of the tongue and causes fraction between the tongue and the alveolar ridge It is a hissing sound distributed in all major positions: at the

beginning, within and at the end of a word It is spelt s, ss or c in front of e, i or y:

e.g sour, say, hiss, assign, ceiling, cellar, cigarette, precise, cypress, bicycle

Sometimes the spelling can be sce, sci or scy (e.g science, scent, scene, scythe) s

is silent in words like corps, island, viscount

Figure 6: Place and manner articulation of the sound / s /

/frameset.html /z/ is the voiced, lenis, alveolar fricative that corresponds to the

voiceless /s/.It plays a important role in English as it is one of the main allomorphs

of the plural morpheme (distributed after a voiced consonant or a vowel) Like its voiceless counterpart, /z/ is a hissing sound, produced with a high-pitched friction

Figure 7: Place and manner articulation of the sound / z /

/frameset.html

1.1.4 Palato-alveolar Fricatives: /∫, ʒ/

/∫/ is an alveopalatal, voiceless, fortis fricative consonant The blade of the

tongue is raised against the region behind the alveolar ridge and the air is forced out through a groove a little wider than in the case of /s/, its more fronted counterpart

/∫/ is distributed in all three main positions in the word It is often spelt sh in words

like shoe, cushion or push It can also be spelt s (e.g sure, sugar) or ss (e.g pressure, mission) or ci (ancient, delicious), sci (conscious) ce (ocean), si (pension, mansion), ti (tuition, retribution) It is a variant of /∫/ in words like issue, tissue; ch: champagne, charade, moustache

Figure 8: Place and manner articulation of the sound / ∫ /

/frameset.html

/ʒ/ is the voiced counterpart of /∫/ It is an alveopalatal, voiced, lenis fricative It is

never distributed in initial position, but it can occur in medial (pleasure, treasure, measure) or final position (garage, prestige) It can be spelt either when followed

by u (visual) or i (decision), or z if followed by u (seizure) or ge (massage,

espionage)

Figure 9: Place and manner articulation of the sound / ʒ /

/frameset.html

1.1.5 Glottal Fricative : /h/

/h/ is a glottal fricative in English, a voiceless, fortis sound produced by letting

the air pass freely through the mouth during expiration /h/ freely occurs in initial

position in English: home, hiss, hut However, in a small number of words the

sound /h/ is dropped in both in initial and medial position: hour, heir, honor, honest, vehicle, annihilate The verb having /h/ is also silent in final position in the

interjection ah or in words like shah

Figure 10: Place and manner articulation of the sound / h /

/frameset.html )

1.1.6 The description of English affricates / tʃ/& /dʒ/

These are two alveo-palatal affricate phonemes in English In the articulation

of / tʃ/& /dʒ/, the soft palate is raised, the nasal resonator is shut off, obstacle

to the air stream is formed by a closure made between the tip, blade, and rims of

the tongue and the upper alveolar ridge and side teeth At the same time, the

front of the tongue is raised towards the hard palate in readiness for the

fricative release The closure is released slowly, the air escaping in a diffuse

manner over the whole of the central surface of the tongue with friction occurring

between the blade/ front region of the tongue and the alveolar/ front palatal

section of the roof of the mouth During both stop and fricative stages, the

vocal cords are wide apart for /ʃ/, but may be vibrating for all or part of according

to the situation of utterance / tʃ/ is voiceless but /dʒ/ is voiced with voice from the

throat (D.T Nu / VNU Journal of Science, Foreign Languages 25 (2009))

/frameset.html

1.1.7 Some similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese

consonants in terms of affricatives and fricatives

In Vietnamese, consonants are classified into 22 initial consonants and 6 final

Table 1: Vietnamese initial and final consonants

From the English consonants chart & Vietnamese consonants, in the initial consonant system, most Vietnamese sounds are not much different from English sounds in term of pronunciation Both consonant systems have fricatives /f/,/v/,/s/,/ʃ/, /ʒ/.However, there is no affricative sound system in Vietnamese In addition, Vietnamese fricative sounds are found in the initial position of a word, but the final consonants are never mentioned While English consonants are often heard and pronounced in three positions: initial, middle and final position (except /ʒ/, which is rarely found in the initial position)

1.2 Review of previous studies related to the research area of the thesis

There have been many researches dealing with the mistakes and difficulties made by learners when pronouncing English sounds

Tam( 2005) set up a research question involving the most common pronunciation problems of the students in the English Department of the University

of Languages and International Studies To answer this question, the data collection was carried out through an oral final examination, during the exam, students were requested to talk about a approximately five – minute particular topic While listening to the students talking, the researcher took notes of the errors involving

pronunciation The sounds most frequently mispronounced by Vietnamese students

in Tam‟s study are shown in the following table:

Table 2: Sounds mispronounced by Vietnamese students (Tam,2007)

It can be said that some English sounds such as affricative and fricative ones are not common to Vietnamese This causes a lot of difficulties for Vietnamese learners when making English sounds A few Vietnamese researchers conducted their studies on typical mistakes and some problems faced by learners Below are the

mistakes which the writer has synthesized from the previous studies

1.2.1 Sound pair /f/ -/v/

- /f/ is not a problem sound for most of the students but /v/ may sometimes cause

problems There is also a tendency to devoice /v/, especially at the ends of words /v/ was replaced with /f/ since the sound /f/ shares the same place and manner of articulation: labio-dental fricative sounds The distinction is only on the state of the vocal cords: /v/ is a voiced sound while /f/ is a voiceless sound For example:

Words Standard Phonemics

transcription

Mistakes

groves serve give

1.2.2 Sound pair /θ/ -/ð /

The problems with /θ/ -/ ð / are many and varied

- A dentalized [t] occurs when there is insufficient breath support

transcription

Mistakes

Thursday Thieves Thunder Worthy

Table 4.1: Mistakes in producing the sounds/θ/ -/ð /

- Since /ð/ and /d/ share the one identical characteristic, that is, voiced; /ð/ as a voiced dental fricative was being replaced with /d/ In term of /θ/, with insufficient airflow, a dentalized /d/ will occur

Table 4.2: Mistakes in producing the sounds/θ/ -/ð / (2)

- The third deviation happened when the students replaced /θ/ with /ð/ “In mispronouncing /θ/ as /ð/, the students altered one important feature of the sound /θ/, that is, the state of the vocal cords Generally, the sound of /θ/ is produced in the situation where the vocal cords are put at a distance when the air goes by in order to make sure that the vocal cords do not make vibration Yet, as they attempted to articulate /θ/, they closed their vocal cords when the air passed and created vibration As a result, the sound produced by the students was more likely to be heard as/ð/ than as /θ/” (Tiono, 2008)

- Another deviation done by the students was the substitution of /θ/ with /s/ which could be found in the medial position only

- Devoicing may also be a common problem since English orthography uses the letters "th" for both /θ/ and /ð/

1.1.3 Sound pair /s/- /z/

- With /s/ and /z/, the main problem comes from the omissions, which may result from grammatical deficiencies (plural, possessive, and so on) or from a failure to pronounce the ends of words The devoicing of final position /z/ may be helped by lengthening the preceding vowel

Ex: parents /‟peərənts/  /'peərənt/

1.1.4 Sound pair /ʃ/ -/ ʒ/

- On the whole, there were some basic deviations made by the students in

articulating /ʒ/: the replacement of /ʒ/ with /d/, /s/, /j/, /t∫/, /∫/, /dʒ/, and /Ø/

/ru:/

ʒ dʒ

ʒ d ʒs

- /ʃ/ is not a particularly common sound in English or the languages of the world, but can be learned quite easily However, the learners often fail to distinguish between a voiceless alvelo- palatal fricative / ʃ / and a voice alveo- fricative /s/

Ex: She /ʃi: / is often pronounced incorrectly as /si:/ in sea The same mistakes occur with nation, intonation, should, shut, push, share, finish, astonish, etc

1.1.5 Glottal /h/

/h/ is a voiceless glottal fricative It is simply a stream of air from the larynx directed through the open mouth It is not found in word-final position in English words /h/ is not generally a problem sound, but some learners may use a voiceless velar fricative /x/, as a substitution

1.1.6 Sound pair /tʃ/ - /dʒ/

- /tʃ/ and /d3/ are affricate sounds, which you produce by blocking off the breath-stream between the tongue and gum ridge, for a stop and a fricative The overall strength of production is important for /tʃ/ because weakening leads to a /ʃ/ substitution

/ dʒ / is less tense than /tʃ/, but it is still made with considerable strength Weakening may lead to a /ʃ/ substitution It‟s also reasons why learners often make mistake in

producing these sounds Moreover, in Vietnam language, there is no / tʃ/& /dʒ/, so they often pronounce them as /z/ and / ć /

chicken / t∫ikin/ / ćikin/ t∫  ć

To nutshell, to have a brief, specific, logic and general look, Tam Ha Cam (2005) grouped these mistakes into three main types: Sound omission, sound confusion and sound redundancy The most common errors were sound omission in which omission of ending sound were more frequent Simply, Vietnamese do not have to pronounce the ending sounds, so these mistakes are avoidable The author also emphasized that “the habit of “swallowing “the ending sound in the mother tongue is in fact a negative transference that inhibits the pronunciation of ending sounds in target language”( Tam H.C., 2005) Secondly, regarding the second type

of mistakes, some Vietnamese learners find it difficult in distinguishing fricative and affricative sounds and they often produce them interchangeably which makes their speech hard to understand Finally, sound redundancy is also a problem, which many students make mistakes They always tend to over pronounce the ending sounds /s/ or/z/ at the end of any words or sometimes in the middle of the words like

“hobby”- /hozbi/

Similarly, Hanh(2007) affirmed that the way the learners produced the sounds /θ/&/ð/; /∫/&/ʒ/, /dʒ/ was different from the native speakers by either making the sounds softer or harder Almost learners had difficulties in producing the sound /dʒ/ especially when it is in the final position , the sound /θ/ in every position

In addition to the studies above, Hoa(2007) confirmed that the Vietnamese learners in her study did have difficulty when pronouncing some English sounds such as /θ/&/ ð/; /∫/&/ʒ/ as revealed in the data collected and analyzed especially in the findings of the recorded tapes Their difficulty was that they could not produce these sounds correctly Through the questionnaire and the interviews, some causes were explored such as pronouncing the sound according to the way the students heard them, imitating the teachers‟ and friends‟ pronunciations To improve the

listening and repeating Also, the learners should be informed about the similaries and differences between the English and Vietnamese For example, self practice is a piece of useful advice the students should pay much attention to

According to the survey data collected in Huong‟s study( 2010), the difficulties encountered by the second students at That Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry in producing the consonant sounds //θ/&/ ð/; /∫/&/ʒ/ ; /tʃ/

- /dʒ/ were identified as followed:

 Low pronunciation ability

 Inadequate drills and practice: passive ways of learning and low motivation to English language learning

 Mother tongue interference

 Poor learning background: articulation features of the consonants under the research, teaching and learning environment inefficiency, inappropriate technique used by teachers

 Inadequate perceptions of mistakes

Tuan (2010, 2011) carried out two researches on pronunciation: “Teaching English discrete sounds through minimal pairs” (2010) and “Vietnamese EFL learners‟ difficulties with English consonants” (2011) Data collected from the survey reveals that the students had most difficulty in producing the English fricatives /∫/&/ʒ/ and affricatives /tʃ/ - /dʒ/ among the English consonants surveyed The learners have a tendency to substitute Vietnamese sounds for the English sounds

To sum up, the above researches have revealed the most typical pronunciation mistakes, especially regarding the sounds of fricatives and affricatives, made by Vietnamese learners of English In addition, some studies also investigated the problems and causes to lead to these mistakes and solutions are suggested to help their pronunciation ability

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 2.1 Research – governing principles

2.1.1 Research questions

The study addresses the following three questions:

1 What are the most common mistakes related to English affricative and fricative sounds the 8th grade students at Le Quy Don often make?

2 What are the causes of the mispronunciation?

3 What are the possible pedagogical solutions to help students correct these mistakes?

2.1.2 Research setting

The research was conducted on 150 students grade 8 at Le Quy Don secondary school, Hanoi These one-hundred and fifty students are students from 4 classes 8E, 8G, 8H, 8I They are chosen randomly to fulfill these tasks All of them have studied English since they were students at primary schools Up to now, they have had at least 5 years of learning English and been quite familiar with the English sounds as well as other grammatical systems 30 of them are chosen to join the recordings and all of them agreed to take part in the study voluntarily and 150 respondents participated in the questionnaire

2.1.3 Research types

This research is a survey one describing a work in progress of an applied research approach to investigate the most common mistakes when producing English affricative and fricative sounds by the students grade 8 at Le Quy Don secondary school and some pedagogical implication in English teaching language

2.2 Research methods

The study was conducted via a survey in which two instruments were used: recording the informants‟ pronunciation of selected isolated words, words within utterances, sentences and texts to find out the most common pronunciation mistakes and a questionnaire to investigate the causes of these mistakes and some solutions to