HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY No.2
FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
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HA THI KIM ANH

A STUDY OF COMMON ERRORS IN PRONOUNCING
A GROUP OF FRICATIVE SOUNDS EXPERIENCED
BY 11 th GRADE STUDENTS IN YEN LAC HIGH SCHOOL

(SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF
THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS OF ENGLISH)

B.A THESIS IN ENGLISH

SUPERVISOR: NGUYEN THI MINH PHUONG M.A
DR. WILLIAM H. SALAZAR

Ha Noi, 2018

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Mrs. Nguyen Thi Minh
Phuong,

my

research



ABSTRACT

This research was conducted to explore the fricative sounds which students
in Yen Lac High School frequently mispronounce. Then researcher suggested some
techniques and solutions to improve their pronunciation skills in terms of fricative
sounds. The scope of the study was done with the participant from two classes
included forty 11 th grade students. Questionnaire, recorded test and classroom
observation were employed as the data collecting instruments. The results of the
research revealed the problematic sounds and the ways that Yen Lac High School
students made mistakes when pronouncing fricative sounds. The study, based on the
findings, would help students and teachers recognize the limitation of learners in
pronouncing English. Hence, teachers and students could find appropriate ways to
teach and correct English pronunciation.

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STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP
Tittle:
A STUDY OF COMMON ERRORS IN PRONOUNCING A GROUP OF
FRICATIVE SOUNDS EXPERIENCED BY 11 th GRADE STUDENTS IN
YEN LAC HIGH SCHOOL
I certify that I am the sole author of this bachelor of art thesis and this study
has not been copied by me from any other person‘s work than sources listed in the
bibliography as references. I further declare that this work is written by my best
under the instruction from my supervisor.
Date submit: May, 9th 2018.
Student


1.1.3. Aspects of pronunciation ..............................................................................................5
1.1.3.1. Phonemes ....................................................................................................................5
1.1.3.1.1. Vowels ......................................................................................................................5
1.1.3.1.2. Consonants ...............................................................................................................6
1.1.3.2. Stress ......................................................................................................................... 11
1.1.3.2.1. Word stress ........................................................................................................... 12
1.2. Fricative sounds ............................................................................................................. 12
1.2.1. Definitions of fricative sounds.................................................................................. 12
1.2.2. Classification of fricative sounds ............................................................................. 13
1.2.3. Descriptions of “/θ/, /ð/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /h/, /f/, /v/” sounds .................................. 14
1.3. Pronunciation errors ...................................................................................................... 16

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CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOG Y
2.1. Participants ..................................................................................................................... 19
2.2. Data collection instruments .......................................................................................... 19
2.2.1. Questionnaire .............................................................................................................. 19
2.2.1.1. Rationale of questionnaire...................................................................................... 19
2.2.1.2. Procedure of questionnaire..................................................................................... 19
2.2.2. Recorded Test ............................................................................................................. 20
2.2.2.1. Rationale of recorded test....................................................................................... 20
2.2.2.2. Procedure of recorded test...................................................................................... 20
2.2.3. Classroom observation............................................................................................... 20
2.2.3.1. Rationale of the classroom observation................................................................ 20
2.2.3.2. Procedure of the classroom observation............................................................... 21
CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
3.1. Findings........................................................................................................................... 23
3.1.1. Results of the questionnaire ...................................................................................... 23

Table 10: Errors with /ð/ sound ........................................................................................... 28
Table 11: Errors with /s/ sound............................................................................................ 28
Table 12: Errors with /z/ sound ........................................................................................... 28
Table 13: Errors with /h/ sound ........................................................................................... 28
Table 14: Errors with /v/ sound ........................................................................................... 28
Table 15: Errors with /ʃ/ sound ............................................................................................ 29
Table 16: Errors with /ʒ/ sound ........................................................................................... 29

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PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
As a developing country, Vietnam currently has an urgent need to use the
international language English, to promote economic investment, especially after
becoming a member of World Trade Organization (Nguyen Thi Thu Thao, 2007).
English has been a compulsory subject in school for many years, from primary school
to higher education. Nowadays, people are aware of the significant role of English and
take it as a mean to develop other career like Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology.
Pronunciation is the most important skill in spoken language; however, many of
English language learners find it difficult to master English pronunciation (Gilakjiani,
2011). Hinofotis, 1981 stated “Problems in pronunciation weaken their communicative
competence”. Moreover, though many of students have learnt English as Second
Language they still lack sufficient competence in pronunciation skills (Charity and
Mallision, 2011). That is because of many factors. The first reason is the impact of
mother tongue on English. Like some other languages, Vietnamese has phonotactic
features that keep native learners from pronouncing English like native speaker
(Nguyen Thi Thu Thao, 2007). The second reason is that high school students likely to
focus on grammar and vocabulary instead of speaking skills. There are extremely
limited opportunities for learning listening and speaking of English in Vietnam. In

they accounts for ten percent of the total population.
5. Significance of the study
After the research, it is hoped that the results will be helpful to provide:
1. Input for English learners to minimize their difficulties in pronouncing fricative
sounds which they mostly pronounce wrongly. Then they can self-correct their
incorrect pronunciation.
2. Input for English teachers some methods to help students pronounce better.
6. Overview of the study
The research work has three main parts: Introduction, Development and
Conclusion.
Part I: The “Introduction” consists of the rationale, aims of the study, research
question, scope of the study, significance of the study and overview of the study.
Part II: The “Development” consists of four main chapters:
Chapter 1: Literature review. This chapter reviews previous studies of some
well-known researchers to give the reader a theoretical background of English
pronunciation and fricative sounds.
Chapter 2: Methodology. This chapter describes how to do the study by
presenting the techniques and procedures of the research.
Chapter 3: Findings and discussion. This chapter presents the result of research
and the analysis of the data.
Chapter 4: Pedagogical implication. This chapter gives some suggested
solutions for learners to enhance their pronunciation.

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Part III: In the “Conclusion” part the researcher gives a brief summary of the study,
the limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies.

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We should view English pronunciation instruction as the same role as the other aspects
and skills of the English language, such as vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing
since it is a crucial part of communication. In conclusion, pronunciation must be
incorporated in the materials, classroom activities and testing tools; and the teachers

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should take English pronunciation teaching seriously and bring it into school lessons.
1.1.3. Aspects of pronunciation
1.1.3.1. Phonemes
1.1.3.1.1. Vowels
Vowels are sounds in which the air stream moves up from the lungs and
through the vocal tract very smoothly; there’s nothing preventing it. Vowels are the
“heart” of syllable (Mara Yoshida, 1996). There are 15 vowels in English. They are
listed as follows:
Table 1: Vowels in English

According to Peter Roach (2009) English vowels are divided into 4 categories
by four questions:
- How high is the tongue? According to this criterion there are:
▪ High vowels if they are made with either the front or the back of the tongue is high in
the mouth. It is raised above its rest position, such as in /i:/, /u:/
▪ Low vowels if they are made with the tongue below its rest position, such as in /ʌ/
▪ Mid vowels if they are made with the tongue between its position, not too high and
not too low in the mouth such as in /e/
- What part of the tongue is raised? According to this question we have:
▪ Front vowels: are the vowels produced when the front of the tongue is raised to the
highest point in the mouth, such as in /i:/
▪ Back vowels: are the vowels produced when the back of the tongue is raised to the


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phonemic alphabet. There are 24 consonants in English. They are listed as follows:
Table 3: Consonants in English

According to Roach (1991) in English Phonetic and Phonology consonants
are divided based on place of articulation and manner of articulation.
The place of articulation is the location of the obstruction of air stream in the
articulation of the consonants. Here is the classification of North American English
consonant phonemes.
Table 4: Classification of NAE Consonant Phonemes

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According to the place of articulation: It describes the point at which the
articulation actually touches or it is at its closest. Describing the consonant sounds this
way gives more information about what the various articulators actually do.
Bilabials: are the sounds made with the two lips pressing together or coming
together / p, b, m, w/.
Labio-dentals: are the sounds which are produced with the lower lip touching
the upper front teeth /f, v/.
Dentals: are the sounds which are produced when the tip tongue touching the
inside of the lower front teeth and the blade touching the inside of the upper teeth, for
instance: /θ/ and /ð/.
Alveolars: are the sounds which are produced when the air escape through a
narrow passage along the center of the tongue, for instance: /t/ and /d/.
Palato alveolars: are the sounds produced with the tongue tip or blade coming

together but without the vocal tract being narrowed to such an extent that a friction
noise is produced.
According to the voicing: We use the following terms: fortis and lenis. In
some certain situations in the linguistic level, the voice opposition may be lost then the
energy of articulation becomes an important factor. For instance, a voiceless/ voiced
sounds such as p, t, k and b, d, g are distinguished not only by the presence or absence
of voice but also by how strong we breathe involved in the articulation. In English,
there are some consonants which are tend to be articulated with pretty weak power,
while there are some which are always voiceless are relatively strong. Thus, it may be
easy to define p, t, k as fortis (strong) and b, d, g as lenis (weak). Fortis consonants
normally shorten the preceding vowels, while lenis consonants often lengthen the
preceding vowels (Tam, p15-16). Actually, it is a little difficult to remember the term
fortis and lenis; however, we will follow the practice of many books and use these
terms. According to Roach (1991), the plosive phonemes of English can be presented
in the form of table as shown below:
Table 5: Place of articulation of plosive phonemes
Place of articulation
Bilabial
alveolar
Fortis

p

velar

t

k

(“voiceless”)



/ʃ/ and /ʒ/ both are palate-alveolar, which can be understand that their place of
articulation is partly palate and alveolar.
1.1.3.2. Stress
A stress syllable is made when we pushing more air out of the lungs. It may
also have an increase in laryngeal activity. Stress can always be define in term of
something a speaker does (Ladefoged, 1975).
Roach (1991) said that stress, as a sound phenomenon, can be studied from two
aspects: production and perception. The production of stress syllables is said to signify
a greater energy than the production of unstressed syllables. From the perceptive point
of view, stressed syllables are outstanding. Prominence includes of different factors
such as loudness, length, pitch and quality.
Roach (2009) stated that many experiments have been conducted on the
perception of stress, and it is clear that many different sound characteristics are
important in making a syllables recognizably. There are four main different reasons
which make stressed syllable important.
 The time we articulate a syllable plays an important part in prominence. If
one of the syllable in our “nonsense word” is made longer than the others, that
syllables are likely to be heard as stressed.
 Every voiced syllable is said on some pitches; in this term it refers to the
frequency of vibration if the vocal fold and to the musical notion of low and highpitched notes.

If one syllable in our “nonsense word” is said with a pitch that is

remarkably different from the others, this is likely to produce the effect of prominence.
 If a syllable contains a vowel which is not similar with its neighboring
vowel, it will be prominent.
 Actually, loudness is an element of prominence so if one syllable is made
louder than the others, it will be heard as stressed.

groups: a primary stress, characterized by prominence and by a rise –fall tone; a
secondary stress, weaker than the primary stress but stronger than that of the
unstressed syllables; and unstressed syllables, defined by no prominence, becoming
then the background against the prominent stressed syllables appear. Unstressed
syllables normally have the short closed vowels and the schwa.
1.2. Fricative sounds
1.2.1. Definitions of fricative sounds.
According to Roach (1991) fricatives are consonants with the characteristic that
when they are produced, air escapes through a small passage and makes a hissing
sounds, sometimes called “friction”. In fact, every language has fricatives, including
some sounds like “s’’. Fricatives are continuant consonants, which means you can
keep saying these consonants continually without interruption as long as you have
enough air in your lung. (There are some consonants which are not continuant like
plosives: p, b, f, t) .In the consonant articulation, two organs are brought and held close
together or the escaping airstreams to produce strong friction. Hence, like plosives,
fricatives are characterized by a noise component. This friction may or may not be

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accompanied by voice.
English has a complex system of fricative phonemes. They can be seen in the
table below:
Table 6: Place of articulation
Labiodental

Dental

Alveolar


According to classification of English consonant phonemes we have some types
of fricatives.
 Labio-dental fricatives /f, v/ (example: fan, van, fish, halve)
When producing these sound we raise the soft palate and close the nasal
resonator. In order to produce friction form the escaping air, the inner surface of the
lower lip makes a light contact with the edge of the upper teeth. For /f/, the friction is
voiceless, whereas they may become vocal cord vibration accompanying /v/. In short,
/f/ and /v/ are labiodentals, that is, the lower lip is in contact with the upper teeth. The
fricative noise is never strong and is scarcely audible in the case of /v/.
 Dental fricatives /θ, ð/ (example: this, that, thank, think)
When producing these sounds, we raise the soft palate in order to force all the
breath to go through the mouth, the tip of the tongue contact with the inner surface of
upper teeth. These sounds have sometimes been described as if the tongue was actually
placed between the teeth and it is common for teacher to teach the students to do this.
However, the tongue normally placed inside the teeth. The tip of the tongue touches
the inside of the lower front teeth and the blade touches the inside of the upper teeth.
The air escapes through the gaps between the tongue and the teeth.
 Alveolar fricatives / s, z/ (example: see, star, increase, rice, zip, zoo)
These sounds are produced when we raise the soft palate and close the nasal
resonator then the tip and blade of the tongue make a high contact with the upper
alveolar ridge. The friction between the tongue and the alveolar ridge is created
because the air stream escapes through the narrow groove in the center of the tongue.
In other words, alveolar fricatives share the same articulation as t and d. The air

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escapes through a narrow passage along the center of the tongue and the sound
produced is comparatively intense.
 Palato – alveolar fricatives /ʃ, ʒ/ (example: shoes, measure, sure)

Any sound that is created by creating friction by forcing air through a narrow channel

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is known as a fricative.
 /ð/ sound is a voiced sound
Possible positioning
▪ Initial position as in these, there, that
▪ Medial position as in weather, leather, father
▪ Final position as in with
If you pronounce /ð/ sound, you would feel the vibration in your throat. You can also
feel your tongue tip acting against your upper front teeth.
 /s/ sound
Possible positioning
▪ Initial position as in sound, sit, sea
▪ Medial position as in essay, escape
▪ Final position as in pass, increase, difference
This sound is totally voiceless. You will be able to feel air being forced between the
tongue and alveolar ridge.
 /z/ sound
Possible positioning
▪ Initial position as in zoo, zebra
▪ Medial position as in exit, represent
▪ Final position as in bronze, was
This sound is very clearly a voiced sound. As the /s/ sound you can feel air being
forced through the tongue and the alveolar ridge, meaning that it is a fricative being
articulated at the alveolar.
 /ʃ/ sound
Possible positioning

▪ Initial position as in fish, find, friend
▪ Medial position as in effort
▪ Final position as in leaf, laugh
This sound is voiceless. You can feel that your top teeth are touching your lower lip,
and so is a labio-dental sound. Finally, you should be able to feel the friction of the air
as it forces its way between the lips and teeth, and this is what is called a fricative .
 /h/ sound
Possible positioning
▪ Initial position as in heart, heal, help
▪ Medial position as in ahead, adhere, behave
▪ Final position does not appear
This sound is the voiceless equivalent of /g/. The place of articulation should be felt as
being the soft palate at the back of your mouth.
1.3. Pronunciation errors
According to Duong Thi Nu (2008) Vietnamese learners of English often
confuse /ʃ/ /ʒ/ /ʧ/ /ʤ/ with other sounds. It is classified into four pairs:
1. /ʃ/ - /s/

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The confusion of this sound pair can be explained that the speakers cannot
figure out the difference between the two sounds. Another reason for this confusion is
the negative impact of the mother tongue. Vietnamese learners are too much
influenced by the way they pronounce /s/ in Vietnamese. Consequently, though they
are able to aware of the difference between too sounds, they do not pronounce them
differently. For instance: /ʃiːt/ (sheet) is frequently pronounced as /siːt/ (seat)
2. /ʒ/ - /z/
Vietnamese often fail to pronounce /ʒ/ as a fricative sound. They often turn / ʒ/
into /z/ sound. These two sounds are both voiced fricatives and alveolar. When

Students who commit these errors often do not know how to put the tongue correctly
in each word. They tend to pronounce all these sounds similar resulting in their
incorrect pronunciation.
Finally, the third type of pronunciation errors is “sound redundancy”. It shows
that students likely to over pronounce the ending sounds. Most of them add s or z at
the end of the word making the redundant sounds.

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