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

STRATEGIES TO CORRECT COMMON ERRORS IN
PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FINAL CONSONANT CLUSTERS
MADE BY SECOND-YEAR ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS
AT PHUONG DONG UNIVERSITY

(NHỮNG CHIẾN LƯỢC SỬA CÁC LỖI THƯỜNG GẶP KHI PHÁT
ÂM NHÓM PHỤ ÂM CUỐI TRONG TIẾNG ANH CỦA SINH VIÊN
NĂM THỨ HAI CHUYÊN TIẾNG ANH TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC
PHƯƠNG ĐÔNG)

M.A. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code: 60 14 10 Hanoi – 2011 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

LIST OF TABLES, CHARTS vii
PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale of the study 1
2. Aims of the study 2
3. Scope of the study 2
4. Method of the study 3
5. Thesis Design 3
PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 5
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5
1.1. English pronunciation 5
1.1.1. Standard English Pronunciation 5
1.1.2. Aspects of English pronunciation 5
1.1.2.1. Consonant sounds 6
1.1.2.2. English final consonants and consonant clusters 7
1.1.2.3. A comparison between English and Vietnamese final consonants.9
1.2. Errors 12
1.2.1. Errors vs. Mistakes 12
1.2.2. Pronunciation errors 13
1.2.3. Final consonant clusters errors 13

v
1.3. Error correction 14
1.3.1. Definition and types of error correction 14
1.3.2. Approaches to error correction 16
1.4. Techniques to deal with final clusters 16
CHAPTER 2: AN OVERVIEW OF TEACHING AND LEARNING
PRONUNCIATION AT PDU 21
2.1. The syllabus 21
2.2. The learners 22
2.3. The teachers 22

APPENDIX 4: Findings from observation XXVI

vii

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Table of consonant sounds pp. 6-7
Table 2: Component of consonant clusters pp. 8-9
Table 3: Reduction errors found in the data from recordings pp. 27-28
Table 4: Substitution errors found in the data from recordings p. 30
Table 5: Errors from students’ reading out loud the 230 errors from recordings p. 31
Table 6: Details of errors from observation p. 32

LIST OF CHARTS
Chart 1: Types of errors p. 26
Chart 2: Comparison of two results from recordings and observation p. 33 1

Although final clusters errors are very common to Vietnamese learners, it seems that
teachers do not pay much attention to them. Firstly, it is perhaps because the final sounds
are not pronounced as clearly as other sounds in an utterance so they are less noticed by
both learners and teachers. In addition, few researches have been carried out on these
particular final clusters errors. The latest and most noticeable research on this issue was
done by Pham (2009); however, it did not analyze deeply students‟ final clusters errors as
well as did not suggest particular strategies for correcting them.

Being an English teacher at Phuong Dong University (PDU), I realize that many of my
students encounter difficulty in pronouncing English final clusters though they are able to
produce single consonants accurately. For the above reasons, I would like to conduct this
research entitled “Strategies to correct errors in pronouncing English final clusters
made by second- year English-majored students at PDU”.

The research hopes to find answers to the following questions:
 What are the English final cluster errors that second-year English-majored students at
PDU often make?
 What are some strategies to correct those errors?
2. Aims of the study
The main aim of the study is to analyze final clusters errors in pronunciation of the second-
year students in English Department, PDU, and then to suggest strategies to help teachers
deal with students‟ final clusters problems.
3. Scope of the study
There are many pronunciation errors that Vietnamese students are likely to make.
However, within the limit of a minor thesis, this study focuses on analyzing the students‟
final clusters errors and proposing the strategies for correcting them.

3

This study was implemented for a group of 30 English-major second-year students at

well as procedures of data analysis. Chapter 4 (Results and Discussions) mainly deals with
the findings from the recordings and observation. Some discussions about these findings
can also be found in this chapter.
Part 3, the Conclusion, discusses the major findings and limitations of the research as well
as provides suggestions for further study.


follow RP English in which the /r/ sound is not pronounced at the end of words, so RP English
will be used as the criteria for analyzing students‟ pronunciation in this research.

1.1.2. Aspects of English pronunciation
Pronunciation is a complicated concept that involves many aspects. Generally, it can be
broken into the following components: vowels, consonants, word stress, rhythm, intonation,
and other aspects of connected speech (assimilation, elision, linking and intrusion). Basically,