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A study on common mistakes made by
Vietnamese beginners of English in
pronouncing θ, δ, ʃ, ʒ, ʤ, ʧ and possible
solutions Lê Ngọc Hân

University of Languages and International Studies
M.A Thesis: English Linguistics; Code: 60 22 15
Supervisor : Prof.Dr. Võ Đại Quang
Year of graduation: 2011 Abstract. It is undeniable that English has become the most popular foreign
language in Vietnam nowadays. Nevertheless, among millions of people speaking
English in Vietnam, there are many people who make mistakes in pronunciation.
This paper is focused on the mistakes made by Vietnamese beginners of English
when pronouncing the six English sounds θ, δ, ʃ, ʒ, ʤ, ʧ . Causes for the mistakes
and some tentative suggestions to mitigate the problem are then discussed. The
mistakes are identified in terms of both wrong manner of articulation and wrong
place of articulation of the sounds. It is argued that the mistakes can be explained in
terms of inadequate knowledge of the articulation of the sounds and, more
importantly, the interference of the mother tongue. Suggestions for effective ways to
overcome the difficulty include careful instructions in how to pronounce the sounds,
comparative and contrastive analysis of the phonetic features of the sounds in
English and the equivalents in Vietnamese, and emphasis on drills and practice.

Keywords. Phát âm; Phụ âm; Tiếng Anh

pronouncing θ, δ, ʃ, ʒ, ʤ, ʧ can be avoided.
1.2.3. Research questions
The above-mentioned objectives can be elaborated into the following research questions:
Question 1: What common mistakes do Vietnamese learners have in pronouncing the English
sounds θ, δ, ʃ, ʒ, ʤ, ʧ?
Question 2: What are the causes of those mistakes?
Question 3: What are possible solutions to those mistakes?
1.3. Scope of the study
In thesis we only concentrate on common mistakes made by 30 students who are studying
English as major field in Bac Ninh Specialized High School in pronouncing “θ, δ, ʃ, ʒ, ʤ, ʧ”
and causes of those mistakes as well as possible solutions to eliminate them. These collected
mistakes are considered as the common ones made by Vietnamese learners.
1.4 Organization of the study
To achieve the aims of the study, this paper is divided into five chapters.
Chapter one : Introduction
Chapter two :Literature Review
Chapter three :Methodology
Chapter four : Findings and discussions
Chapter five :Conclusion

CHAPTER TWO : LITERATURE REVIEW
Chapter two “Literature Review” is devoted to the presentation of the theoretical background
relevant to the research. Firstly, the review of pronunciation as well as factors affecting
pronunciation learning are introduced. Then the literature related to mistakes is given. It

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includes the notion of mistakes in language learning, types of mistakes and the main causes
of mistakes. Lastly, articulatory features of the six consonnants are mentioned.
2.1 Theoretical Background
2.1.1 The role of pronounciation in language teaching

consonants that most impede Vietnamese learners from communication and common
mistakes in English pronunciation. For this reason, the research is carried out to find out the
common mistakes made by the students studying in Bac Ninh Specialized High School in
pronouncing some English consonants and improve their pronunciation.

CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY
Chapter three “Methodology” describes in detail the research methodology which comprises
the principles based on which the study is carried out. It also presents techniques employed in
this thesis, namely questionnaire, tape recording and interview.

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In order to fulfill the study, a combination of survey questionnaire, tape recording and
interview is employed.
3.1 Survey research
Among the research methods, survey research is one of the most important areas of
measurement in applied social research. The broad area of survey research encompasses any
measurement procedures that involve asking questions of respondents. A “survey” can be
anything form a short paper-and- pencil feedback from to an intensive one-on-one in-depth
interview.
Survey research can be also defined in terms of the type of information gathered or the
purposes for which the information is collected. Alreck and Settle (1995:98) contended that
the reasons for conducting survey include influencing a selected audience, modifying a
service or product, and understanding or predicting human behaviour. Rea and Paker
(1997:88) added understanding people‟s interests and concerns as motivations for using
surveys, with data reflecting descriptive, bahavioural or preferential characteristics of
respondents.
3.1.1 Steps for conducting a survey research
In this process of conducting a survey research, the researcher must make a series of careful
decisions about how the study will be carried out. These include a great deal of steps such as:
determining the purpose of the study; stating the research questions; specifying the

Correlational Analyses can be applied along with the descriptive to analyze relationships
among variables.
3.2 Techniques employed in this thesis
3.2.1 Data collection instruments
In order to complete this minor thesis, both quantitative and qualitative methods have been
conducted to collect data. They include: tape recording, questionnaire and interview.
3.2.1.1 Tape recording
A task was designed to record the students‟ pronounciation including two main parts: In part
one, students read aloud sounds and words which the sounds appear. In part two, there is a
short passage for students to read aloud, this passage has many words with the sounds
students always mispronounce.
3.2.1.2 Questionnaire
Questionnaire was used as the first tool to collect data for this study. This kind of method has
proved to be effective and time-saving since it could yeild a variety of data ranging from
factual, behavorial to attitudinal from numerous respondents in different situations.
In this research, a great number of question types categorized by Youngman (1986, as cited
in Nunan, 1992: 144) including frequency, list, category and ranking questions had been
applied. In that way, some serious limitations of questionnaires as cited in Dornyei (2003:10),
which are simplicity and superficiality of answers, unreliable and unmotivated respondents,
respondent literacy problems and fatigue effects, seemed to have been solved.
a. Aims of the questionnaire
The questionnaire is designed to clarify:
-Students‟ attitude toward pronunciation (question 4)
-Students‟ perception about their pronounciation mistakes (questions 5,6)
-Students‟ perception about causes of their mistakes in pronouncing some
consonants.(question 7)
-Students‟ self-treatment to oversome those mistakes (question 9)
-Reflection on teachers‟ methods to help students eliminate their mistakes in pronouncing
some English consonants (question 11)
b. Selection of participations

This study is carried out in the light of the action research so an overview of the action
research is provided including the definition, processes of the action research. Moreover, it
presents techniques employed in this thesis, namely survey questionnaire, tape recording and
interview as well as the aims of each technique and the procedure of collecting the data.

CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
4. 1 Findings from tape recording
There are two main types of errors found in the data. Among common errors, omission of
ending sounds was more frequent than others. It is easy to understand why ending sound such
as /ʤ/ was so frequently (85 % of the students omitted this sound as ending sounds) because
Vietnamese learners do not have to pronounce the ending sounds. In addition, the sound /ʤ/
is really hard for Vietnamese learners to pronounce especially when this sound occurs at the
end of words. Regarding the second type of errors, sound confusion, the most frequent errors
are /θ/, /ʧ/, / ʃ /. In brief, the data presented shows that when the subjects read the words or
the sentences consisting of those consonants, all of the subjects seemed to fail to produce the
sounds appropriately enough to make their speech comprehensible to native speakers.
4.2 Findings and discussions from the questionnaire
4.2.1 Students’ attitude towards pronunciation
The importance of pronunciation is acknowledged by most of the questionnaire respondents,
57% of students thought it was very important. It can be referred that only by mastering good
pronunciation can the English learners speak English fluently and make others understand.
Meanwhile, 20 % of them considered pronunciation important in studying English. About 13
% of the participants did not know whether it is important or not. Only 10 % of the students
considered pronunciation not very important in English studying. This is due to the focus of
lexical grammar in their studying.
4.2.2 Students’ perceptions of their frequency of pronunciation mistakes

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When being asked about their frequency of making mistakes in pronouncing English sounds,
43% of the participants thought that they often mispronounce English sounds. 33% of them

teachers give the phonetic training to the students.
4.3 Findings from the interviews
Students were asked which sound in the word “worth” they cannot pronounce correctly. Ten
subjects answered that is the sound / θ / and explained why they mispronounced this sound
was because they did not know how to use their tongue and their teeth appropriately. Besides,
they tended to make it in the same way with the sound /th/ in Vietnamese.
The same questions were raised with the sound /δ/ in the word “that/this”, /ʃ/ in “English”, / ʒ
/ in “television”. All students confirmed that these are the sounds they found difficult to
produce correctly. When being asked about the causes of their mispronunciation of the
sounds / θ, δ/, they said that they were not used to put the tongue outside the mouth between
upper teeth and the lower teeth. Moreover, blowing the air out was not an easy task for them.

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With the sounds / ʃ, ʒ, /, they said they often made it as the sound /s/ and /z/.They found it
hard to raise the tongue up and make the mouth rounded at the same time. On being asked
about the mispronunciation with the sound /ʧ/, they thought they always made it more softly
than it should be, like „ch‟ in Vietnamese. For the sound /ʤ/, most of the students had no idea
about the way to produce it exactly.
4.4 Summary
This chapter can be considered as the most significant one of the study as it provides the
necessary data and evidence for the writer to fulfill the task. Firstly, students‟ mistakes with
English sounds were found out through the recorded tape. Next a questionnaire was given to
find out their opinions about their mispronunciations of some sounds and their confirmation
of the causes and their methods and teachers‟ methods to improve their pronunciation. Last
but not least, interviews were conducted to cover the shortcomings left by the questionnaire.

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION
5.1 Recapitulation
This part of the study covers types of common mistakes made Vietnamese learners in
pronouncing θ, δ, ʃ, ʒ, ʤ, ʧ, causes of these mistakes and some recommendations to mitigate

Teaching a foreign language is considered as a hard job as there are a great deal of
requirements the teachers have to live up to. This is not an easy job for language teachers in
Vietnam. That is the reason why English pronunciation is paid more attention to and this can
only be improved when learners‟ difficulties in English pronunciation is understood. This
thesis can be considered as a reference for any teachers for any teachers who concerns about
the learner‟s pronunciation.
5.3 Suggestions for further research
After conducting this study, I discovered some limitations remained. Firstly, the scripts for
recording did not have enough typical examples of words to use for analysis of the most
frequent mistakes.
Moreover, during the data analysis, I found that all the subjects made mistakes with not only
the six consonants but also the clusters of vowels, the pitch, intonation and the aspects of
connected speech. However, due to the scope of the study, the other problems would be taken
consideration in another study.
Therefore, the author wishes to study more about Vietnamese learners‟ pronunciation
mistakes in pronouncing other consonants as well as vowels on the same subjects with the
hope of helping her students improve their English so that they can use it for further study. References

Books:
1. Avery, P & Susan, E. (1912), Teaching American English Pronunciation, OUP.
2. Baker, A & Goldstein, S. (1990), Pronunciation Pairs – An Introduction course for
Students of English, CUP.
3. Bowen, T & Mark, J. (1992), The Pronunciation Book, OUP.
4. Brown, J.D & Rodgers, T.S. (2002), Doing Second Language Research, OUP.
5. Cam Tam, Ha. (2005), Common pronunciation problems of Vietnamese learners of
English, Journal of Science, VNU, pp. 5-11.
6. Celce-Murcia, M (Editero). (1996), Teaching Pronunciation, CUP.

28. Wisker .G. (2001), The postgraduate Research Handbook, Palgrave.
Websites :
29. International Phonetic Alphabet video. Retrieved May 15, 2011 from
http://www.shef.ac.uk/ipa/symbols.php
30. The Internet TESL Journal’s TESL /TESOL /ESL/ESOL .Retrieved May 15, 2011
from link /http://iteslj.org/links/ESL/Pronunciation/Tongue_Twisters/
31. Pronouncing English sounds .Retrieved May 15, 2011 from
http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc-soundsipa.htm.