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 Hanoi, 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES


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 ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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

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.

iv
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)

vi


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
4.2.2. IPA symbol card game 35
viii

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

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
of use” (Tam Ha Cam, 2005).
2

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 8

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. 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

/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.
6 Figure 3: Place and manner articulation of the sound /v/
(as achieved from
/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 /
(as achieved from
/frameset.html
7

/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 /


/∫/ 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 / ∫ /
(as achieved from
/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).
10 Figure 9: Place and manner articulation of the sound / ʒ /
(as achieved from
/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 /

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
13

pronunciation. The sounds most frequently mispronounced by Vietnamese students
in Tam‟s study are shown in the following table:
No
Sounds
Mispronunciation
1.
/θ/
/t/
2.
/∫/
/z/

Mistakes
groves
serve
give

/ɡroʊvz/
/sɜ:v/
/ɡɪv/
 /ɡrufz/
/sɜ:f/ or / sɜ:/
/ɡɪf/
Table 3: Mistakes in producing the sounds /f/ and /v/
14

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.
Words
Standard Phonemics
transcription
Mistakes
Thursday
Thieves
Thunder
Worthy

/θɜ:rzdeɪ/
/θi:fz/
/θʌndər/
/wɜ: ðɪ/


- Another deviation done by the students was the substitution of /θ/ with /s/ which
could be found in the medial position only.
Ex: „birthday‟/bɜ:sdeɪ/  /bɜ:sdeɪ/
- Devoicing may also be a common problem since English orthography uses the
letters "th" for both /θ/ and /ð/.
Ex: „monthly‟ /mʌnθli//mʌnli/
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/.
Words
Standard Phonemics
transcription
Mistakes
Deviations
garage

prestige

genre explosion


ʒ-0
Table 5: Mistakes in producing the sounds /ʃ/ -/ ʒ/