iAcknowledgement
I am, first of all, particularly indebted to my supervisor, Ms. Ha Cam Tam, of the
Faculty of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for her valuable
instructions, criticism, comments, correction and for her kindly encouragement during the
development of this Study.
I also wish to express my gratitude to the two teachers and also my friends: Imogen
from England and Tania from Russia for their assistance on the recordings and especially
for their valuable comments and suggestions in the data collection procedures.
My appreciation and gratitude are also extended to my students studying at Haiphong
Medical University for their enthusiastic help in recording and my colleagues there for
their encouragement and support.
The last but not the least, I would like to convey my thanks to my family, all my
friends and the one I love who encouraged me to take this task and to many others who
have assisted. All have enabled me to expand my area of expertise and to complete my
study.
And I would take a full responsibility for this paper, and would appreciate all
comments made on it.
Haiphong, September 2007,
Dao Thi My Hanh



Table of contents

Acknowledgement i
Abstract ii
Table of contents iii
List of tables v
Part 1: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale 1
2. Aims of the study 1
3. Scope of the study 1
4. Methods of the study 2
5. Organization of the study 2
Part 2: DEVELOPMENT 3
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 3
1.1 - Phonetics 3
1.2. Articulatory phonetics 4
1.3. Consonants 7
1.3.1. General descriptions of consonants 7
1.3.2. English consonants 7
1.3.2 1. Fricatives /Τ
ΤΤ
Τ, ∆
∆∆
∆/ and / Ζ
ΖΖ
Ζ, Σ
ΣΣ
Σ/ 8
1.3.2.2. Affricatives/

2.2.1.3. Mispronunciations across the positions of sounds 20
2.2.1.4. Mispronunciations across the positions of individual sounds 21
2.2.1.5. Mispronunciations across the exercises 24
2.2.1.6. Mispronunciations by deviation types 27
2.2.1.7. Mispronunciations across omission 28
2.2.2- Data collected through class 29
2.3. Discussion 30
Part 3: CONCLUSION 33
1. Major findings 33
2. Implications 34
3. Conclusion 36
4. Suggestions for further study 36
References: 37

v

Abbreviation
HPMU: Haiphong Medical University
ESP: English for Specific Purpose
ESL: English as Second Language
List of tables

thought of making a study on the pronunciation of English consonants that most
Vietnamese learners meet difficulties in pronouncing correctly, so as to see how differently
they pronounce from that the native speakers do. The results of the research can infer some
suggestions basing on the reasons of this phenomenon to improve the students'
pronunciation in general and of those sounds in particular.
2. Aims of the study
This research aims at figuring out if the Vietnamese students under the study have
difficulties in pronouncing English consonants and the causes of those difficulties. The
results will provide insights and assist ESL teachers as they strive to reduce or eliminate
problems regarding pronunciation of those consonants as well as raising the awareness of
learners during their learning process. Therefore, the research focuses on problems that
learners of HPMU encounter in pronouncing English consonants.
3. Scope of the study
This study, basing on articulatory phonetics, presents several analyses on the
pronunciations of the six consonant sounds/∆, Τ, Σ, Ζ, δΖ, τΣ/, which occur in some
selected words and sentences used for recording, made by the ten non- English majored
students learning in HPMU with a hypothesis that the learners in HPMU produce these 2

sounds differently from the native speakers in terms of articulation. After affirming the
truth, some of the subjects' problems in pronouncing those sounds are pointed out with the
reasons causing them and suggested solutions for such problems.
4. Methods of the study
Since the study attempts to find out if the learners at HPMU have problems in
pronouncing the six studied consonants and how different it is in the pronunciation of those
sounds between the students at HPMU and native speakers, a combination of different data
collection methods were used including recording the participants’ pronunciations of
prepared scripts, observing their performance in class and note- taking. Details of

consonants that are blur and even do not exist in the Vietnamese language. Finally, a
general review of English teaching generally and English pronunciation teaching in
particular at HPMU is offered to see what happened to students' competence of English.
1.1 - Phonetics
This section starts with a distinction between the two related terms (often loosely)
used to refer to linguistic disciplines studying the linguistic sign which de Saussure called
the acoustic image: phonetics and phonology.
While phonetics deals with how speech sounds are actually produced, transmitted and
received in actual spoken language, phonology deals specifically with the ways those
sounds are organized into the individual languages, hence dealing with abstractions on a
virtual basis.
Here see two useful definitions for phonetics and phonology:
"Phonology deals with the speakers' knowledge of the sound system of a language. It
is therefore exclusively concerned with langue or competence. [ ] Phonology can be
divided into two branches: (1) segmental phonology and (2) suprasegmental phonology"
(Skandera & Burleigh, 2005:5).
"Phonetics first of all divides, or segments, concrete utterances into individual speech
sounds. It is therefore exclusively concerned with parole or performance. Phonetics can
then be divided into three distinct phases: (1) articulatory phonetics, (2) acoustic phonetics,
and (3) auditory phonetics" (Skandera & Burleigh, 2005:3).
Phonetics will be almost unanimously acknowledged to be the linguistic science,
which studies speech sounds: the way in which they are produced (uttered, articulated), the
way in which they are perceived, their physical characteristics, etc. Therefore, it is these
more “palpable”, measurable aspects of the phonic aspects of language that constitute the
domain of phonetics. (Katamba, 1996) 4

Phonetics is concerned with various aspects relevant for the physical characteristics of

• trachea
• lungs
• uvula
• diaphragm
• jaw bone 5


Pic. 1: Articulators
Articulatory phonetics deals with the major aspects of speech production. They are the
air stream mechanism, the state of vocal cords, the state of velum, the place and the
manner of articulation (Davenport & Hannahs, 1998). On the other hand, this study is paid
attention to consonants, particularly the six studied ones, therefore, the manner and the
place of articulation and voicing, the three main features of consonants, are discussed with
more interest, as followed.
Clark and Yallop use two features to describe the manner of articulation of
consonants: constriction and articulation. The degree of constriction decreases from total
closure via partial constriction to a fully open vowel like manner. Articulation divides into
dynamic and stable. Altogether, there are seven recognized manners of articulation: stop,
fricative, approximant, nasal, flap, tap and trill.
The manners of articulation are described as followed:
Manner Description
Stop
a complete closure at any point in the vocal tract and sudden release of
the closure.
Fricative
potentially stable articulation produced by a constriction in the vocal
tract that is narrow enough to create a turbulent airflow.

• velar: the tongue body and the soft palate.
• uvular: between the back of the tongue and the uvula (which hangs down in
the back of the mouth)
• pharyngeal: between the root of the tongue and the back of the throat (the
pharynx)
• glottal: This isn't strictly a place of articulation. Glottal sounds are made in
the larynx.
(Davenport & Hannahs, 1998)
Voicing is also one the main categories that consonants have to base on when being
described. The vocal folds may be held against each other at just the right tension so that
the air flowing past them from the lungs will cause them to vibrate against each other. This
process is called voicing. Sounds that are made with vocal fold vibration are said to be
voiced. Sounds made without vocal fold vibration are said to be voiceless. There are 7
several pairs of sounds in English which differ only in voicing that is, the two sounds
have identical places and manners of articulation, but one has vocal fold vibration and the
other doesn't. The six chosen consonants are such exact examples in pairs, /Τ, ∆/; /Σ, Ζ/;
/τΣ, δΖ/.
1.3. Consonants
1.3.1. General descriptions of consonants
From a phonetic point of view, consonants are articulated in one of two ways: either
there is a closing movement of one of the vocal organs, forming such a narrow constriction
that it is possible to hear the sound of the air passing through; or the closing movement is
complete, giving a total blockage. The closing movement may involve lips, tongue, or
throat, but in each case the overall effect is very different from the relatively open and
unimpeded articulation found in vowels. (Crystal, 2003). In articulatory phonetics, a
consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of
the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence.

velar

glottal
plosive p

b t d k
nasal m n
fricative f v s z

h
approximant

(w)

j

(w)lateral
approximant

∆, Ζ, Σ/
Then Kelly (2000) provided the detailed descriptions of consonants in his books
including dental sounds /Τ, ∆/ (as in think, the, bath, bathe, mathematics, father). "The
tongue tip makes light contact with the back of the top, front teeth. Or, tongue tip may 9
protrude between upper and lower teeth. The soft palate is raised. /Τ/is unvoiced and fortis.
/∆/ is voiced and lenis. /∆/ is devoiced at the end of a word."
Also, he wrote "/Σ, Ζ/ (as in she, fish, beige, nation, measure) are post- alveolar
sounds. But when pronouncing them, the tongue blade makes light contact with the
alveolar ridge, and the front of the tongue is raised. /Σ/ is unvoiced and fortis. /Ζ/ is voiced
and lenis. It also devoiced at the end of a word. /Ζ/ does not occur as an initial sound in
English, and is rare as a final sound."
1.3.2.2. Affricatives
/τΣ
,
δΖ/

And Cruttenden (2001) gives the description of AFFRICATIVE: a complete closure at
some point in the mouth, behind which the air pressure builds up; the separation of the
organs is slow compared with that of a plosive, so that more extended friction is a
characteristic second element of the sound. English has only two affricatives, the voiceless
palato-alveolar /τΣ/ and its voiced counterpart /δΖ/
/τΣ, δΖ/ (as in church, judge, nature, larger) are also palato- alveolar sounds. The
tongue tip, blade and rims close against the alveolar ridge and side teeth. The front of the
tongue is raised, and when the air is released, there is audible friction. The soft palate is
also raised. /τΣ/ is unvoiced and fortis. /δΖ/ is voiced and lenis. /δΖ/ is devoiced at the end
of a word.
1.3.3. Vietnamese consonants

manner and the place of articulation of the consonants in the two languages. For instances,
both of the languages share the place and manner in articulating many consonants, such as
/p, b, m, w / (bilabial- stop, nasal, approximant), /k, Ν/ (velar- stop, nasal), /f, v/
(labiodental- fricative), /j/ (palatal- approximant), /n, l/ (alveolar- nasal, lateral
approximant), /s, z/ (alveolar- fricative) and /h/ (glottal- fricative).
And it is certain that in the two phonological systems there are foreign sounds to each
other, which make them different languages. Typically, in Vietnamese, the dental aspirated
sound /τ°Η/ is in letters ‘th’ the same way as the dental, fricative English sounds /Τ, ∆/
look in words. However, they are different in the manner of articulation, that is, the former
is stop, and the latter is fricatives, which creates problems for both in trying to learn each
other’s language. Another typical example of the sounds in both languages, which make
most of Vietnamese learners confused in articulating them. They are the affricative /♣/
and fricative /♣/ in Southern Vietnamese, which are supposed to teach as the national
model language from the very beginning of a child’s school- life, and the English
affricative /τΣ/ and fricative /Σ/. They seem to sound similar due to the same manner of
articulation, but they are different in the place of articulation, that is, the former are
retroflex and the latter are post alveolar. Besides confusing sounds, the two languages also
have the sounds that the other completely does not have in terms of either the place or the
manner of articulation, for example, the velar fricative /Φ/, the palatal nasal //, the palatal
stop /c/, the glottal stop // in Vietnamese, and the post alveolar fricative /Ζ/ and affricative
/δΖ/ in English, etc.
Research shows that English consonants which have different either place or manner
of articulation from Vietnamese seem to be often mispronounced by Vietnamese learners.
Six out of them are/Τ, ∆, Σ, Ζ, τΣ, δΖ/, which are the objects of the study and discussed
earlier. 12
Five out of the six chosen consonants do not exist in the Vietnamese language, i.e.
//, /ð/, //, /Ζ/ and // except for /Σ/ in Central and Southern dialects

certain consonants that most impede Vietnamese learners from communication. Also for

1
http://www.asha.org/NR/rdonlyres/79C5BEB1-088F-46D1-B8D2
C2F94664A657/0/VietnamesePhonemicInventory.pdf
2
http://dalea.du.se/theses/?itemId=2915
3
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERIC
ExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED208681&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=eric_accno&accno=ED208681

4
by Tran Thi Lan, PhD. Senior Lecturer, Hanoi University of Foreign Studies
http://www.britishcouncil.org/9_essential_english_pronunciation_in_the_vietnamese_context.doc
13
this reason, the research is carried out to find out the fact from a perceptible phenomenon
recognized by the author during her teaching process in HPMU, that is to say, the students
studying in HPMU cannot pronounce/∆, Τ, Σ, Ζ, δΖ, τΣ/ the same way as native speakers
do.
• Do the subjects have problems in pronouncing these consonants?
• How do they differ from native speakers in articulating these sounds?
• What are the causes of the mispronunciations?
The answers of these research questions are the aims that this study goes for.
2.1.2. Data collection instruments
In order to get the sound samples, the author chose some suitable scripts from a certain
book and got the students to read out loud. The scripts have two parts: the first one made
up by single words containing the chosen consonants, in fact, is pronunciation exercises
read separately by native speakers. That was extracted from certain tape scripts at scattered
pages in a book namely English File 1 published by Oxford University Press in 2003.
The reason for taking this exercise as the data instrument is that the book is designed
with pronunciation exercises of all English phonemes including the six selected consonants
of the study, which cannot be found in the course book Headway Elementary that the
subjects are being taught at university. Those exercises were found to be relevant and also
to meet the demand of the subjects' English level because the book was designed for
'beginners and false beginners' as it said. The purpose of this exercise is to get how the 15
subjects pronounce such six consonants in isolate words comparing with the way native
speakers do it. The followings are the words chosen from the book to use as data collection
instrument for the study:
/δΖ/

/∆/
juice
/δΖυσ/
the
/∆↔/
German

chair
/τΣε↔/
fresh
/φρεΣ/
change
/τΣεΙνδΖ/
sugar
/Συγ↔/
lunch
/λ℘ντΣ/
station
/στεΙΣν/
watch
/ω τΣ/
social
/σ↔υΣλ/
picture
/πΙκτΣ↔/
information
/Ινφ↔µεΙΣν/

(English File 1, cited at page 55) (English File ,1 cited at page 61)
/Ζ/

/Τ/
television
/∪τελΙϖΙΖν/

thumb
/Τ℘µ/

16 2.1.3. Data collection procedures
The data collection was conducted followings three steps discussed below.
Firstly, the respondents were asked to read out aloud the prepared scripts as mentioned
in the earlier section. What they read was recorded directly into the computer then
analyzed in the light of phonetics, particularly articulatory phonetics to find out the
differences in the subjects' pronunciation compared with the native's one.
Secondly, with the help of the two foreign teachers of English, one comes from Russia
and the other comes from England, the ten- recorded samples were listened to list out the
problems in students' pronunciation. Asking for the assistance of a Russian teacher whose
professional is English teaching is for the reason that the Russian teacher may have a more
objective point of view in finding out the subjects' mispronunciations when listening to
their recordings than the researcher herself because though she is also a non-native speaker
like the author; besides, she has no Vietnamese background and has never listened to the
students before hence she has no easy- understanding emotional state like the researcher.
Without being shown the origin of what was recorded beforehand, the two teachers
were asked to note down whatever they heard while they were listening to and what they
thought to be problematic with the pronunciation. At the same time, the recordings were
listened and noted down by the researcher in order to find out an independent result from
her two colleagues’.
Finally, the researcher observed the subjects’ real speech in class during her teaching
time to see if the subjects’ pronunciations in real performances were similar with that in
recordings. From the data collected how much the subjects mispronounced such
consonants and what the mispronunciations were like were pointed out.
1. I like drinking orange juice.

presented in two sub-parts as the following.
2.2.1. Data collected from the recordings
After investigating, the subjects' pronunciation problems relating to the six consonants
are found:
1. /Τ/ is usually pronounced like /th/ in Vietnamese (described by the native
teacher as soft /t/ sound) or even /t/ and is not pronounced at the final position.
2. /∆/ is pronounced like /th/ in Vietnamese or /s/, and /d/ in the final position.
3. /Σ/ is pronounced like /s/ and is omitted at the final position. 18
4. /Ζ/ is pronounced like /s/ or /z/ or /τΣ/ in the final position and again is
ignored at the final position.
5. /τ Σ/ is pronounced more softly than it should be, like 'ch' /c/ in Vietnamese
and is not heard in the final position.
6. /δΖ/ is pronounced like /Ζ, z, τΣ / and is dropped at the final position.
These problems above are in fact sound confusion and sound omission, in which the
former is more common than the latter. Yet, at first the author considers the two problems
to be one with a common name: mispronunciation, in order to present what she reckoned
up from the recordings more easily on the total number of the subjects and the times of
each consonant' occurring. And after that, she provided separate tables of two problems in
details.
Results of mispronunciations of the sounds through recording were presented in the
following order of tables from the highest to the smallest number of each sound in different
sections:
• across examiners
• across subjects
• across positions
• across individual sounds
• across exercises

ττ
τΣ
ΣΣ
Σ/
(%)
English
72.5 55 42.2 30 23.3 15.5
Russian
72.5 55 43.3 30 25.56 16.6
Vietnamese

72.5 55 43.3 30 24.44 17.7
Table 4: Mispronunciations across the examiners 19
The percentages are calculated by the operation a= b*100/ c; in which a is the
percentage of each sound mispronounced by the whole subjects, b is the real number of
each sound mispronounced by all the subjects, multiplied by 100 percent and the divide c-
the total number of each sound appearing in the two exercises multiplied by 10 subjects.
For instance, according to the notes by English teacher the ten subjects mispronounced
/δΖ/ for 38 times, and the number of this consonant' present in the two exercise is 9, then
we have 38*100/ 90 = 42.2%.
As it can be seen in Table 4, the results found by the three teachers are more similar
than different. This shows that the data are reliable to confirm the subjects'
mispronunciation. Moreover, the fact that native speakers of English can recognize foreign
accents in ESL/EFL learners' speech better than the other two teachers. Therefore, the
author took the results found out by the native teacher as the standard one to analyze.
As estimated in Table 4, 72.5 % (the highest) of the subjects tend to pronounce /Τ/ as
'soft' /t/ like a Vietnamese initial consonant 'th' in "thích" or /d/ or /t/, the second highest is

Ζ/ /Σ
ΣΣ
Σ/ /∆
∆∆
∆/ /τ
ττ
τΣ
ΣΣ
Σ/ 20
Subjects
(%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%)
a1 37.5 66.67 66.67 20 0 0
a2 100 33.33 44.44 20 11.11 44.44
a3 0 33.33 11.11 0 0 0
a4 87.5 16.67 11.11 20 22.22 0
a5 87.5 100 88.89 60 22.22 11.11
a6 100 66.67 33.33 60 22.22 11.11
a7 87.5 66.67 22.22 30 33.33 55.56
a8 100 0 11.11 20 22.22 11.11
a9 100 100 44.44 30 33.33 0
a10 25 66.67 88.89 40 66.67 22.22
Total of
subjects
mispronounced
(%)
90 90 100 90 80 60
Table 5: Mispronunciations across subjects

ΣΣ
Σ/
(%)
Initial
73.3 - 40 15 16.67 0
Medial
- 50 40 43.33 15 10
Final
70 80 45 80 45 32.5
Table 6: Mispronunciation across the positions of sounds
The same operation as in Table 4 is adopted here, but now a is the result of the ten
subjects' mispronunciation on each position of the sounds; b is the real number of
mispronunciation by all the subjects at each position, and c is the total number of times that
each sound appears in the two exercises.