CAN THO UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

THE PRODUCTION OF ENGLISH /S/- CLUSTERS IN
INITIAL POSITION OF ENGLISH NON-MAJORED
STUDENTS AT CAN THO UNIVERSITY

B.A Thesis
Field of study: English Language Teaching

Supervisor:
LE HUU LY, M.A

Researcher:
NGUYEN THI THUY NUONG
Class: NN0652A2
Student’s code: 7062957

Can Tho, April 2010


Tóm tắt
Bài nghiên cứu này được thực hiện với mục đích khảo sát về sự phát âm chùm phụ
âm đầu [s] trong tiếng Anh của sinh viên trường Đại học Cần Thơ. Cụ thể hơn, nghiên
cứu này nhằm tìm hiểu xem giới tính có ảnh hưởng đến sự phát âm chùm phụ âm đầu [s]
của những người học tiếng Anh hay không, những lỗi phát âm nào thường đi kèm với
từng phái và giữa những chùm phụ âm [s] gồm hai phụ âm và những chùm phụ âm [s]
gồm ba phụ âm, loại nào khó phát âm chuẩn hơn. Đối tượng nghiên cứu được chọn một
cách ngẫu nhiên trong các sinh viên trường Đại học Cần Thơ bao gồm hai mươi người:
mười nam, mười nữ. Những sinh viên này sẽ đọc một danh sách những từ và những câu

production of s-clusters which are unpronounced the pre-initial consonant [s],
unpronounced the initial consonant like [p], [s], [t], [m], [n] [tr] of s-clusters and
Epenthesis. Among them, the first type had a greatest percentage. Besides, another
conclusion was drawn was that longer clusters would be more difficult for students of
non English major at CTU to produce correctly. Overall, female students had more
mispronunciations than their male counterparts for s-cluster sounds in word list.
However, in context, they had fewer errors than male participants.

ii


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

During implementing this thesis, I have received much help and contribution from
many people to whom I would like to express my deep gratitude.
First and foremost, my thesis hardly finished without valuable encouragement,
advice, comment from my supervisor, Mr Le Huu Ly. I could not forget his enthusiasm to
give me such a great help so that I could finally finish my thesis.
Second, my regards are respectively sent to all the teachers of the English Department
for their encouragement and guidance. Especially, my sincere gratitude is sent to Ms.
Hong Thi Thanh Truc, an English teacher in the English Department, and Ms. Elizabeth
Hollingsworth, a native speaker from America for helping me detect the participants'
mispronunciations. Also, I would like to thank all of the participants and some of my
friends, especially Nguyen Ngoc Cat Khuyen and Le Thi Van for their help during the
time I collected the data for this study. And I would like to acknowledge Ms. Ngo Thi
Trang Thao who gave me useful instructions to analyse the data using SPSS program.
Next, I would like to send my special thanks to my close friends for being by my
side and giving much encouragement to finish this thesis.
Last but not least, I really want to thank my family and my boyfriend whose
encouragement was very meaningful and very important to me during the time of doing

3.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ................................................................................ 15
3.3 HYPOTHESIS .................................................................................................... 15
3.4 PARTICIPANTS.................................................................................................. 16
3.5 RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS ........................................................................... 16
3.6 RECORDING PROCEDURE ............................................................................. 17
3.7 CODING............................................................................................................... 17
Chapter 4 – RESULTS .......................................................................................................... 18

iv


4.1 Gender differences in the Production of English /s/- clusters
in initial position of English non-majored students at CTU.............................. 18
4.1.1 Descriptive statistics for [sp] in word list and in context........................... 19
4.1.2 Descriptive statistics for [sk] in word list and in context.......................... 20
4.1.3 Descriptive statistics for [sn] in word list and in context........................... 21
4.1.4 Descriptive statistics for [sw] in word list and in context.......................... 22
4.1.5 Descriptive statistics for [st] in word list and in context............................ 23
4.1.6 Descriptive statistics for [sm] in word list and in context.......................... 24
4.1.7 Descriptive statistics for [sl] in word list and in context............................ 25
4.1.8 Descriptive statistics for [spr] in word list and in context ......................... 26
4.1.9 Descriptive statistics for [spl] in word list and in context.......................... 27
4.1.10 Descriptive statistics for [skr] in word list and in context ....................... 28
4.1.11 Descriptive statistics for [str] in word list and in context ........................ 29
4.1.12 Descriptive statistics for [skw] in word list and in context...................... 29
4.2. Types of mispronunciations of s-cluster sounds in initial position ............................. 30
4.3. Analysis of bi-literal s-clusters /sC/ versus tri-literal s-clusters /sCC/ clusters.......... 32
4.3.1 Cluster /sp/ vs. / spC/.............................................................................................. 33
4.3.2 Cluster /sk/ vs. / skr/, /skw/ .................................................................................... 34
4.3.3 Cluster /st/ and / str/................................................................................................ 35

Table 4.12: Descriptive statistics for [sm] in word list and in context............................... 24
Table 4.13: Levene’s Result for [sm] in word list and in context ...................................... 24
Table 4.14: Descriptive statistics for [sl] in word list and in context................................. 25
Table 4.15: Levene’s Result for [sl] in word list and in context......................................... 25
Table 4.16: Descriptive statistics for [spr] in word list and in context............................... 26
Table 4.17: Levene’s Result for [spr] in word list and in context ...................................... 26
Table 4.18: Descriptive statistics for [spl] in word list and in context............................... 27
Table 4.19: Levene’s Result for [spl] in word list and in context ...................................... 27
Table 4.20: Descriptive statistics for [skr] in word list and in context............................... 28
Table 4.21: Levene’s Result for [skr] in word list and in context ...................................... 28
Table 4.22: Descriptive statistics for [str] in word list and in context................................ 29
Table 4.23: Levene’s Result for [str] in word list and in context ....................................... 29
Table 4.24: Descriptive statistics for [skw] in word list and in context ............................. 29
Table 4.25: Levene’s Result for [skw] in word list and in context..................................... 30
Table 4.26: Types of mispronunciations of s-cluster sounds ............................................. 31
Table 4.27: Number of errors of tri-literal s-clusters and bi-literal
s-clusters made by participants in isolated words............................................ 32
Table 4.28: Number of errors of cluster /sp/ vs. /spC/ by
participants in isolated words and in context................................................... 34

vi


List of Firgures

Figure 4.1: Total rates of errors of tri-literal s-clusters and
bi-literal s-clusters made by participants in isolated words ......................33
Figure 4.2: Total rates of errors of cluster /sp/ vs. /spC/
by participants in isolated words and in context........................................34
Figure 4.3: Total rates of errors of cluster /sk/ vs. /skC/ by

reasons. Nguyen (2007) mentioned three main reasons. First, it may be influenced by
learners' mother tongue. Second, it may be because of the study environment and third, it
is learners' motivation in studying pronunciation.
Like some other languages, Vietnamese has phonetics that keeps native learners
from pronouncing English like native speakers. The limitation of Vietnamese word-initial
consonantal cluster sounds and the frequency of English initial clusters errors, which are
made by many Vietnamese learners, have caught attention to this area of this topic.

1


The Production of English /s/- clusters in initial position of English non-majored students
at Can Tho University.
At Can Tho University, all undergraduates of English non-major have to finish
three courses of. The materials for these courses are REWARD ELEMENTARY books
which supply students basic knowledge about English grammar, pronunciation and
vocabulary. However, in non-majored classes, because of limited time of 4 periods per
week in class, lessons usually focus on grammar and reading and therefore, teachers do
not much focus on teaching English pronunciation or correcting students’ pronunciation
mistakes. Furthermore, in these courses of General English, students study different
majors in different schools, they have different English levels and English is just a
subsidiary subject. Thus, having problems in pronouncing English is understandable.
This paper will investigate the difficulties of English non-majored students at Can
Tho University when dealing with English initial s-clusters. This is considered one of the
most significant problematic features of English learners. The finding of this research
will hopefully help English non-majored students at Can Tho University to become aware
of their systematic errors and carefully try to produce English initial s-clusters correctly.
1.1.1 The Sonority Sequencing Principle
There is a universal (in all languages) tendency for sonority to gradually increase
in the onset, and decrease in the coda. This is called the Sonority Sequencing Principle.

Cluster formation is one of the most interesting topics of various aspects of a
language’s phonology. This is attested in the variety of cluster formation in language
acquisition (L1), language learning (L2), as well as the dialectal variants of the norm. The
fundamental claim governing cluster formation is that the bigger the distance between the
members of a cluster on the sonority scale is, the better structured the cluster is
(Clements, 1983).
A consonant cluster is described as being two or more adjacent consonants in the
same syllable (e.g., /br/ in brush, /skw/ in square, and /nt/ in paint). The consonants that
constitute a cluster are referred to as cluster elements in this paper. Consonant clusters are
very commonly used in English words. McLeod et al. (2001) reported that one third of
single syllables in English start with word-initial clusters. Many English words end in
consonant clusters due to word-final grammatical morphological structures which can,
but do not always, create word-final clusters. For example, the phonemes /s, z, t, d/ are
added in word final position for the possessive form of pronouns (e.g, it’s, mum’s), plural

3


The Production of English /s/- clusters in initial position of English non-majored students
at Can Tho University.
nouns (e.g., dogs, lips) while the phonemes /sp, sl,../ in “speak”, “slang” are consonant
clusters in initial- position.
Concerning the possible combinations of initial consonants, Brinton (2000, p. 55)
lists the following non-permissible sequences of consonants:
- stop + stop, such as in /pt/;
- stop + nasal, such as in /pn/;
- nasal + stop, such as in /np/;
- stop + fricative, such as in /ts/;
- fricative + stop, such as in /ft/, except where the fricative is /s/
A classification of the possible English clusters taken from Avery & Ehrlich (1992,


The Production of English /s/- clusters in initial position of English non-majored students
at Can Tho University.

 The initial bi-literal s- clusters
In the book “English Phonetics and Phonology”, Roach (2008, 78) wrote “One sort
is composed of s followed by one of a set of about eleven consonants”. It was a
combination of [s] with one possible consonant, so it was called [sC]. He listed some
examples such as “sting”, sway, smoke. The /s/ in these clusters is called the pre-initial
consonant and the other consonants (t, w, m in the above examples) the initial consonant.
These clusters are showed in table below.
Table 1.1: Two-consonant clusters with pre-initial /s/
Initial
Pre-s +
e.g

p

t

k

b

spin stik skin -

d

g


- - smel snou -

Roach (2008) also noted that two-consonant clusters of s plus l, w, j were also possible
(e.g slip, swiη, sju:).
 The initial tri-literal s- clusters
Besides, Roach (2008) also mentioned about

– They are [sCC]. Example of

three-consonant clusters are “split” /split/, “stream” /stri:m/, “square”/skweə/. The s is the
pre-initial consonant, the p, t and k that follow s in the three example words are the initial
consonant and the l, r and k are post-initial. These clusters are showed in table below.
POST-INITIAL
l
S PLUS INITIAL

r

w

j

p

splay

spray

---


1.2.3 Problems for pronouncing English /s/-clusters.
According to Selkirk (1982), the /s/-clusters are equally problematic for theoretical
accounts of English and other languages with [s]-clusters. First, [s] stop clusters violate
the sonority sequencing principle, in that they have a falling sonority slope. Secondly,
clusters [sl-], [sn-] and [st-] violate a phonotactic constraint on initial clusters in English
which prohibits homorganic clusters. Thirdly, [s] is the only sound that may be followed
by a nasal or a stop in initial clusters. Finally, [s] is the only sound that may occur at the
beginning of a three-element cluster such as [str-], [spr-], [skw-] or [spl]. All these facts
reveal the special status of /s/-clusters.
1.3 Research Aim:
The purpose of this research is to examine the production of s- clusters in initial
position of English non-majored students at Can Tho University (CTU). Especially, this
study aims to investigate if male and female speakers pronounce those sounds
significantly differently.
1.4 The organization of the study
This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the importance of
pronunciation in studying languages and presents some related theories of this study.
Chapter 2 summarizes some studies that examined the production of English initial sclusters in some countries and some other studies about Vietnamese EFL learners'
pronunciation of the target sounds. Chapter 3 is about the methodology through which the
study is conducted. Chapter 4 presents the results of the study. And, chapter 5 discusses
the research findings, limitations and conclusion.

6


The Production of English /s/- clusters in initial position of English non-majored students
at Can Tho University.

Chapter Two


a short training by repeating s-cluster words provided by an American native speaker.
Immediately after the training, they were tested again by listening to the tape containing
the 26 sets of sentences. The results partially supported studies which proposed that
perception influenced production. There was also support for the power of L1
interference over Markedness and Universal Canonical Syllable Structure. Epenthesis
was the strategy of syllable simplification present in all cluster types. Some subjects,
though, resorted to a short epenthetic vowel (/I/), thus indicating that they might be
developing a separate category for initial /s/ clusters.

Like Silveira, Cardoso, French & John (2008) also based on a theory of
markedness to do a research to investigate the effects of markedness and input frequency
in the development of English homorganic /sl/, /sn/ and /st/ among Brazilian Portuguese
native speakers learning English in a classroom environment. It provided a
multidisciplinary analysis for the acquisition of /s/ + consonant onset clusters (sC) in
second language phonology, adopting a variationist approach for data collection and
analysis that included from a variety of linguistic disciplines, including theoretical
phonology, psycholinguistics, second language acquisition, and sociolinguistics.
The results of an oral production study indicated that English learners acquire /sl/ and /sn/
clusters earlier than the most marked /st/, corroborating the hypothesis that markedness,
and not input frequency, determines the order of acquisition of bi-literal s-clusters in
second language production.

To consider the acquisition of /s/-clusters relative to other clusters of English,
many studies were done by Smit (1973), Barlow (1997), Gierut, (1999). In Smit’s study
(1973), the errors on word-initial consonant clusters made by children in the Iowa were
tabulated by age range and frequency. The error data show considerable support in the

8



9


The Production of English /s/- clusters in initial position of English non-majored students
at Can Tho University.
Another study was done by Rauber (2002) to examine the production of English
initial /s/ clusters by Portuguese and Spanish EFL Speakers. In order to compare the
production of speakers of both native languages the same corpus was used. By basing on
the analysis on the Markedness Differential Hypothesis, he tried to confirm whether the
difference in the structure of Portuguese and Spanish syllables results in greater
difficulties in different /s/ clusters in different environments or not. The participants
chosen for this experiment were nine native Spanish speakers from Argentina and ten
native Portuguese speakers from Brazil. They were asked to read and were recorded the
sentences done by the researcher. After analyzing, the results revealed that epenthesis
(the addition of an extra vowel) to the initial clusters is the usual strategy for dealing with
syllable structure difficulty, which can be a result of native language interference and
linguistic universals. He concluded that learners’ difficulties established by the
Markedness Differential Hypothesis and the Structural Conformity Hypothesis were
borne out, since longer initial /s/ clusters caused a greater rate of epenthesis than shorter
ones for both Spanish and Portuguese speakers.

Although few studies have investigated the phonological context where errors
occur, another aspect that should be taken into account regarding epenthesis and
consonant deletion for syllable simplification is the influence of environment in
Spanish/English and Portuguese/English interphonology. Carlisle carried out several
studies involving native Spanish-speaking learners of English as a second language, who
were asked to read a number of topically unrelated and randomly ordered sentences
containing initial /s/-clusters in two types of environment. Carlisle (1991) examined
epenthesis before three word-initial onsets in English: /sk/, /st/ and /sp/; Carlisle (1991,
1992, ) investigated the frequency of epenthesis before the word-initial onsets /sl/ and

Epenthesis was a popular error among Brazilians, Portuguese and Spanish when
pronouncing s-cluster sounds (Rauber,2002). They inserted a vowel like [ə] or [i] after
the sound [s] to make s-clusters more easily to produce. In the context of Vietnam,
problems about the acquisition of English pronunciation have not been paid enough
attention, as they should be. It is the fact that Vietnamese learners of English have much

11


The Production of English /s/- clusters in initial position of English non-majored students
at Can Tho University.
difficulty in English pronunciation. Similarly, these s-cluster sounds also cause
difficulties for English learners that were specified in some studies below.
2. Studies about English pronunciation of Vietnamese learners
Whereas much research with a focus on syllable codas has been done on English
as a second language (ESL), native speakers of Portuguese, Arabic, and Chinese, not
many researchers have examined native speakers of Vietnamese in this regard. Not until
the 1980s, when there was an influx of Vietnamese immigrants to the United States after
the Vietnam War, did researchers such as Sato (1984, 1985) and Benson (1986) begin to
investigate the L2 phonology of Vietnamese immigrants upon noticing their erroneous
production of syllable onsets and codas. Findings from these studies have confirmed that
consonant clusters are one area of difficulty Vietnamese ESL learners have.
In this regard, Hwa-Froelich, Hodson, and Edwards (2002) did a rather
comprehensive investigation into Vietnamese phonology, comparing and contrasting its
phonological characteristics with English, in order to see how these features may be
carried by Vietnamese learners into their L2 English phonology. They also suggested that
Vietnamese learners might have problems with both English consonant clusters in initial
position and final position.
Tang (2007) used survey and ethnographic methods to provide a linguistic basis
for promoting first language maintenance of Vietnamese in a larger United States context

the clusters.
Li (2004) conducted a study about the English vowels pronounced by Taiwanese
learners in order to find out if there were similar linguistic features that impeded or
facilitated English vowels and to examine whether gender had effect on vowels
perception. The results show that both male and female Taiwanese speakers of English
had difficulty on pronouncing vowels. However, female speakers were reported to be
better at pronouncing vowels than their counterparts
Many other studies reported the superiority of females over males in language
learning. For example, a study conducted by Carooll and Sapon (1967) showed that girl
pupils were better than their boy counterparts in learning foreign languages in grades
kindergarten to 12. Having the same purpose, in his research, Farhady (1982) finally
found out some evidence suggesting that females were better than males in listening

13


The Production of English /s/- clusters in initial position of English non-majored students
at Can Tho University.
comprehension tasks. In another study, Boyel (1985) conclude that female were typical
superior to males in all aspects of language leaning, except listening vocabulary.
These studies involving gender differences in learning language once again
revealed that gender had effect in learners’ learning languages. Because no one examined
the gender difference in pronouncing the clusters, hopefully, with the purpose of
examining the influence of gender on the production of [s]-cluster sounds, this study can
investigate something new for Vietnamese learners of English. The methodology of the
study will be presented in the next chapter.

14



The Production of English /s/- clusters in initial position of English non-majored students
at Can Tho University.
non-majored students’ production of s-clusters in initial position in word list and in
context. Another hypothesis was that longer clusters would be more difficult for these
participants to produce.
3.4 PARTICIPANTS
Twenty students including ten males and ten females from course 32 to 35 were
randomly chosen to be the participants of this study. All of them are students at Cantho
University. However, their majors are different: six of them come from School of
Education, 3 students from College of Agriculture and Applied Biology, 4 students from
School of Engineering Technology, 1 student from School of Social Sciences and
Humanities, 5 students from School of Economics – Business Administration, 2 students
from College of Aquaculture and the last one from School of Law.
Most of them had studied English for six years at their high schools. At Cantho
University, some of them finished three courses in General English while others are
studying these courses. Eighteen over twenty students have taken some English courses
in some Foreign Language Centers in Can Tho City. Although they had different
proficiency of English, it is certain that the participants already knew these sounds and
the way to produce.
3.5 RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS
The instrument of this study consisted of 2 parts. Part 1 was a list containing 24
individual content words in which there are two words carrying the target [s]-cluster
sounds concluding: [sp], [st], [sk], [sw], [sm], [sn], [sl], [spl], [spr], [str], [skw] and
[skr]. The second part was 24 sentences which written based on those 24. This
instrument could make the participants' production more reliable because they would be
very conscious when reading the isolated words (Abrahamsson, 1999). The instrument
was examined and developed with the help of a lecturer who got a Master's degree in the
United States and especially he has much experience in teaching pronunciation.

16