ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
During the completion of this paper, I have appreciated precious support from
many people. First and foremost, I would like to express sincere gratitude towards
my beloved supervisor, M.A Nguyen Thi Thuy Chung for her devoted instruction
during the last year. Despite her business, she was always willing to give me advice
on the thesis. She guided me ways to conduct this study and correct each mistake of
forms and contents in my work. Without her assistance, it would have been so
difficult for me to accomplish the paper.
Secondly, I want to show my deep thankfulness to the lecturers who helped me
to carry out an interview for this paper. I highly appreciate their invaluable
suggestions to my work.
I also desire to say thanks to teachers in charge of guiding students to do
research and evaluating the progress of their works. Owing to their lessons and
comments, I knew how to carry out a study and what to improve in my paper.
Furthermore, I would love to thank students from K53N of English Faculty at
Thuongmai University, who have cooperated and given results of questionnaires to
finish my study.
Last but not least, my special gratefulness is to my much –loved family. At all
times, they stood by my side and encouraged me to overcome difficulties in
conducting this thesis. Thanks to their material and spiritual support, I had more
time and motivation to get over the challenge.

1


ABSTRACT

English has become the most used popular international language in Vietnam
in recent years. Despite being spoken by the millions of people, lots of Vietnamese
people including students still make mistakes in pronunciation, which makes them
embarrassing when speaking. This paper, therefore, focuses on some common

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW..............................................................7
2.1. The definition of pronunciation, consonants, and final consonants..............7
2.1.1. Pronunciation.................................................................................................7
2.1.2. English consonants.........................................................................................7
2.1.3. Final consonants............................................................................................8
2.2. Vietnamese consonants and English consonants............................................9
2.2.1. English consonants.........................................................................................9
2.2.2. Vietnamese consonants.................................................................................12
2.3. English final consonants and Vietnamese final consonants.........................14
2.3.1. Vietnamese final consonants........................................................................14
2.3.2. English final consonants..............................................................................15
2.3.3. Contrastive analysis of some English consonants and Vietnamese
consonants..............................................................................................................15
2.4. Interference of mother tongue on pronouncing English consonants..........16
3


CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS..............................................................18
3.1. Error of pronouncing some English consonants and final sounds made by
first- year students at Thuong Mai University....................................................19
3.1.1. Consonants confusion..................................................................................20
3.1.2. Omission of consonant cluster.....................................................................21
3.1.3. Omission of final consonants.......................................................................22
3.2. Evaluation of the English Faculty’s lecturers on pronouncing some English
consonants and final consonants of the first- year students...............................23
3.3. Reasons for errors of pronouncing some English consonants and final
consonants..............................................................................................................24
3.3.1. Lack of practices and drills...........................................................................24
3.3.2. Failure in distinguishing the differences among English consonants........25
3.3.3. Lack of correction from teachers.................................................................25

Chart 3.5
Chart 3.6
PICTURES
Picture 4.1
Picture 4.2
Picture 4.3
Picture 4.4

English consonants
Voicing contrast in English fricatives
Voicing contrast in English stops
Vietnamese initial sounds
8 ending Vietnamese consonants
Vietnamese ending consonants
English final consonants
Pronunciation errors of some English consonant cluster
Students’ interest towards learning English
Student’s perception to importance of learning English
Students’ consonant mispronunciation
Students’ consonant confusion
No. of students omits final consonants
Reasons for errors of consonant pronunciation
International Phonetic Alphabet
Listen to the consonant sounds
Example words
ELSA Speak with artificial intelligence (Source: Edu2)

5



they substitute the sounds that they do not have in their native language, with other
sounds which are close to them in the place of articulation. For instance they replace
/p/ with /b/, /θ/ with /s/ etc.
Similarly, several studies conducted by Vietnamese researchers showed that
Vietnamese learners encounter lots of difficulties in learning English pronunciation
1


and also common errors of mispronunciation. Dung (2014) pointed out that
Vietnamese speakers have a wider number of problems with the voiced versus the
voiceless stops in word final position, /b/, /p/, /d/, /g/ vs. /p/, /t/, /k/ and final
fricative consonants /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /s/, /z/. Omission of a fricative at the end of
words usually occurs when speaking English as fricatives do not occur in word-final
position in their mother tongue. Because of this, Avery and Ehrlich, emphasized”
Vietnamese students tend to omit one or more consonants from a difficult cluster”
(1992, p. 155).
In addition to the past works, Duong Thi Nu ( 2009, pp 41-50) has studied
pronunciation problems and the influence of the mother tongue. She highlighted
that the common pronunciation mistakes of Vietnamese learners are confusion in
terms of consonant sounds. So many sounds such as /s/ and /ʃ/, /z/ and / ʒ/, /dʒ/
and / ʒ/, /tʃ/ and Vietnamese /ć/ are confused e.g. (she/ sea), (measure / pleasure),
(change /tʃeindʒ/ is pronounced //tʃeinʒ/). For the /tʃ/ and Vietnamese /ć/, the
English /ʧ/ in chair is incorrectly pronounced like Vietnamese /ć/ in Vietnamese
che.
The mispronunciation of the above sounds is the result of the over practice of
the first language, a process of fossilization. According to (Yule; O’Connor, 1975)
reported that the main problem of English pronunciation is to build a new set of
sounds corresponding to the sounds of English, and to break down the arrangement
of sounds which the habits and the systems of the mother tongue have strongly built
up. It means that it is too difficult to change such habits which learners has

similarly pronounced in all positions. So students have lots of problems with
different sounds and are difficult to distinguish those consonants ones.
Consequently, the mentioned studies above pointed out the common problems
exist in the consonant pronunciation of most among English learners. However,
those studies were done outside Thuongmai University in general and students of
the English Faculty in particular. Therefore, that is why the research is intended to
fill a certain gap and seek such problems at Thuongmai University based on
conducted studies.
1.3 Aims of the study
The present study aims at investigating the most common pronunciation errors
made by first- year students at Thuongmai University. The research focuses on
analyzing factors that affect to these errors. And as final step, this study suggests
solutions to help to promote learning process of pronunciation in undergraduate
students.
Therefore, it was to answer the two following questions:
What common errors of pronouncing English consonants are made by firstyear students of English faculty at Thuongmai University?
What is the reason of making those errors?
1.4 Research subjects
3


Within the limitation of time and reference materials, the research only
emphasizes the pronunciation errors and final sounds in terms of consonants made
by first- year students at Thuongmai University.
1.5 Scope of the study
Because this study focuses on errors of consonant pronunciation that are made
by first- year students of English faculty, it is conducted on 100 students of K53N
who are chosen randomly. In addition, the researcher will interact with seven
teachers of English faculty who are teaching English phonetics and phonology at
Thuongmai University. They also have the ability to answer all problems related to

After each of 30 students recorded their sounds, the researcher listen carefully
samples and repeated this process a lot of times playing the tape at home. Both
incorrect and correct pronunciation was written down and analyzed descriptively.
In general, for the recording test, all sounds recorded from students were
written on papers, and the number of correct and incorrect pronunciation was
counted beside each student. Consequently, the recording test assisted a lot the notes
and the information, which was also drawn from observation.
1.6.3. Questionnaire
The third tool used in this study was a structured questionnaire, which was
used in collaboration with some of students and English teachers at the English
faculty.
A number of 37 copies of the questionnaire were printed and answered by 30
students and 7 Faculty’s teachers within two weeks.
Using open- ended and follow- up questionnaires served three main purposes:
- To assess common pronunciation errors made by students.
- To find out factors that affect to students’ English pronunciation.
- To suggest ways assisting in student’s pronunciation improvement.
The questionnaire used in this study had at least four sections:
- The first section is made of questions about the background of the
respondents.
- The second one comprises two questions in which the researcher enquires
about the respondents’ attitude towards the English language. It is really necessary
for this study as it can explain the students’ pronunciation performance.
- The third section consists of five questions all related to pronunciation,
particularly consonant sounds. These questions give the details about the students’
difficulties in the pronunciations of English sounds, which are pivotal since the
purpose of the study is to investigate the pronunciation errors made by first- year
students.
The fourth and the last section consist of two questions about solution to their
problems.

2.1.1. Pronunciation
One of definitions of pronunciation was supposed Cook (1996) and cited in
Pourhosein Gilakjani( 2016), pronunciation is defined as the production of English
sounds. Moreover, pronunciation is the production of a sound system which does
not interfere with communication either from the speakers’ or the listeners’
6


viewpoint (Paulston & Burder, 1976). As Richard and Schmidt (2002) defined,
pronunciation is the method of producing certain sounds.
According to Wikipedia, pronunciation is the way in which a word or
a language is spoken. It is referred to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds
used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct
pronunciation"), or simply the way a particular individual speaks a word or
language. Besides, a word can be spoken in different ways and depending on lots of
factors such as the duration of the cultural exposure of their childhood, the location
of their current residence, speech or voice disorders, their ethnic group, their social
class, or their education.
Therefore, pronunciation is the act or manner of pronouncing words; utterance
of speech, a way of speaking a word, especially a way that is accepted or generally
understood, and a graphic representation of the way a word spoken, using phonetic
symbols.
2.1.2. English consonants
As Wikipedia showed, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with
complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Notably, a consonant is a letter of the
alphabet which represents a basic speech sound produced by obstructing the breath
in the vocal tract. For example:
T is pronounced using the tongue (front part)
K is pronounced using the tongue (back part)
B is pronounced with the lips

Additionally, English has a “limited number of permitted combinations of
consonants in initial and final clusters.” (Avery and Ehlich, 1995, p.54) Some of the
following consonant clusters are taken from Avery and Ehlich (1995, p.55) such
as /-ʃl/, /-lʃ/, /-rʃ/, /-ltʃt/, /-rtʃt/, and /-ndʃd/.
Consonant Clusters Consist of /ʃ/: shrink, shrine, shroud, crucial, essential,
Welsh, mention, nation, etc
Consonant Clusters Consist of /ʒ/: garaged, sabotaged, vision, division.
Consonant Clusters Consist of /tʃ/: belched, hitched, watched, arched.
Consonant Clusters Consist of /dʒ/: bulged, changed, exchanged.
2.2. Vietnamese consonants and English consonants
2.2.1. English consonants
There are 24 consonants in English. They are classified according to 3 aspects:
 Place

of

articulation:

The place

of

articulation

bilabial (both

lips), alveolar (tongue against the gum ridge), and velar (tongue against soft
palate).
 Manner of articulation: Manners include stops, fricatives, and nasals.


Lateral
l
Approximant
w
r
j
Manner of

Table 2.1: English consonants (Source: English Phonetics and Phonology- Peter
Roach)
Place of articulation
Here are the details of place of articulation based on the definitions from
Oxford Advanced Leaner’s Dictionary.
Bilabials are consonants that are produced by using the two lips and include
/p, b, m, w/.
Labiodentals are consonants that are produced by “placing the top teeth
against the bottom lip”. Two labiodental sounds are /f, v/.
Dentals are consonants that are articulated by placing the tongue between the
teeth and include /θ, ð/.
Alveolars are consonants that are produced “with the tongue touching the part
of the mouth behind the upper front teeth” and include 7 alveolar sounds in English
/t, d, s, z, n, l, r/.
Palato-alveolars are consonants that “are produced by the contact of the front
part of the tongue with the hard palate just behind the alveolar “ridge” according to
the definition of palate- alveolar on the website . English
palato- alveolars include 4 consonants /ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ/.
Palatal/j/ is a consonant produced by “raising the tongue body against the
hard palate”.
Velar are consonants made by “placing the back part of the tongue near or
against the back part of the mouth -the soft palate” /k, g, ŋ /.

consonants or vowel quality changes (the sound of the vowel) in some dialects of
English that occur before unvoiced but not voiced consonants. Such processes allow
English speakers to continue to perceive difference between voiced and voiceless
consonants when the devoicing of the former would otherwise make them sound
identical to the latter. In other words, voicing plays a vital role in distinguish
consonant sounds.
Voiceless consonants include /p, t, k, f, θ, s, ∫, h, tʃ/.
Voiced consonants: /b, d, g, v, ð, z, ʒ, dʒ, m, n, ᶇ, l, w, r, j/.
English has four pairs of fricative phonemes that can be divided into a table
by place of articulation and voicing. The voiced fricatives can readily be felt to have
voicing throughout the duration of the phone especially when they occur between
vowels.
Here is an example of the voicing in English fricatives:
Articulation
Pronouncing with the lower lips against the teeth
Pronouncing with the tongue against the teeth
Pronouncing with the tongue near the gums
Pronouncing with the tongue bunched up

Voiceless
/f/ fan
/θ/ thin
/s/ sip
/ʃ/ Confucian

Voiced
/v/ van
/ð/ then
/z/ zip
/ʒ/ confusion


/g/ goat

Table 2.3: Voicing contrast in English stops (Source: Wikipedia)
2.2.2. Vietnamese consonants
While English has 24 consonants, Vietnamese has 22 initial consonants and 8
final consonants. They are also classified according to place of articulation, manner
of articulation and voicing.
Place of articulation

Manner of articulation

Labial Alveolar

Aspirated

Retroflex

Palatal

Velar

Glottal

ʈ

c

k



s

ş

x

Voiced

V

z

ʐ

ɣ

ced

Fricati
ve

t

Lateral

l

Table 2.4: Vietnamese initial sounds (Source: Le Quang Thiem, p.100)
Place of articulation

- Both consonant systems have fricatives /s/. /z/, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/
- Unlike English, Vietnamese consonant system does not include any
affricates.
- Vietnamese consonants are found in the initial or final positions of a word,
but the final consonants are never heard while English consonants are pronounced
in three positions: initial, medial and final.

13


2.3. English final consonants and Vietnamese final consonants
2.3.1. Vietnamese final consonants
In Vietnamese, there are only six consonants and two semi- consonants which
can be pronounced in the final position. It is indicated in the following table:
Manner of articulation
Noise consonant
Nasal
Sonan
semi
t
-consonant

Place of articulation
Labial
Alveolar
Velar
p
t
k
m

o
u
y

2

-t

3
4
5
6
7

-k
-m
-n
-ɲ
-ŋ

7

u̯

8

i̭̯

Examples
Tạo, úp, nép

/ ð /: breathe
/ʒ/: beige
/ʃ/: cash
/d ʒ/: change, huge
/t ʃ/: watch

/m/: Mom, room
/n/: noon
/ᶇ/: sing, spring
/l/: school, cool

Table 2.7. English final consonants
Additionally, English final consonants include pre-final (/m/. /n/, /η/, /l/, /s/)
and post- final (/s/, /z/, /t/, /d/, /θ/)
For example:
Pre-final plus final plus post-final (e.g. helped, banks, bonds, twelfth)
Final plus post-final plus post final: s, z, t, d, θ (e.g. fifths, next)
2.3.3. Contrastive analysis of some English consonants and Vietnamese
consonants
It is indicated that there are some differences between two English consonants
and Vietnamese consonants.
Firstly, there are more detailed and categorizing criteria for manner of
articulation in Vietnamese than in English. For example, manner of articulation
is divided into two manner of articulation for stop and fricative, and then stop
and fricative are divided into nasal stop and oral stop. Moreover, in Vietnamese,
there is oral stop/t’/, oral voiceless stop/ / ţ , t, c, k /, oral voiced stop/b, d/, nasal
stop / m, n , ɲ, n / in the manner of articulation for stop. Meanwhile, English
plosive consonants combine between oral stop and / p, b, t, d, k, g, m, n/ and
affricate/ tʃ, dʒ/.
Secondly, in the manner of articulation for fricative, English consonants are

consonant clusters such as /kt/ as in walked, / t/ as in washed, / d/ as in judged,
and /ld/ as in filled are very difficult for Vietnamese learners to pronounce.
Thirdly, Vietnamese learners often have problems with sound confusion
between /s/ and /z/. They replace /s/ for /z/, so that a word such as “advise” is

16


pronounced as “advice”. As a result, this leads to misunderstanding in
communication among learners and between Vietnamese and foreigners.
Fourthly, English also has many consonants clusters at the beginning and at
the end of the words while Vietnamese sound system does not. Vietnamese students
often left one or two sounds in the consonant clusters. For example, instead of
pronouncing world /wə:rld/, Vietnamese students pronounce /wə:rl/ without the
sound /d/ at the end.
According to Nguyen (2007), "two-consonant cluster that contain /l/ in /lz/,
/lt/, /ld/, or /lf/ are observed to be really difficult for all speakers since the sound
itself never appears in the first language" (p. 22). For instance, myself may be
pronounced as /maisel/. Therefore, these common mistakes can be very difficult for
Vietnamese learners, especially students to overcome.
In conclusion, through a contrastive view into English and Vietnamese
consonants, it highlights a very important point concerning the influence of the
native language. It is if learners hear the second language though a ‘filter’, the filter
being the sound system of the native language” (Avery and Ehrlich, 1995, p.xv). In
other words, the learners’ errors such as consonants omission, mispronunciation
may be the predictable and potential difficulties that the student subjects face
because of the influences of Vietnamese.

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS
The data were collected from the questionnaires, interviews and recording test

pronunciation, most students strongly agree that correct pronunciation is absolutely
crucial in communication (68%). The rest of students argue that pronunciation is not
as important as other skills.
In fact, first-year students who have got the basic knowledge of pronunciation
admit the difficulty of pronunciation over the past semester. One haft of students
(over 50%) often have trouble with pronunciation, especially consonants whilst
some students are able to pronounce correctly and confident with their ability.
As a result, the larger number of first-year students encounter great difficulties
in pronouncing sounds, especially consonants for several reasons which are
demonstrated the following.

18


3.1. Error of pronouncing some English consonants and final sounds
made by first- year students at Thuong Mai University
According to the analyzed results, it is indicated that majority of the students
have difficulty with a wider number of the English consonants. Particularly, the
sixth question of the questionnaire asked the students to point out which English
consonants that they encounter.

Mispronouncing consonant sounds
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%


g

∫

ʒ

tʃ dʒ

l

r

w

j

Chart 3.3. Students’ consonant mispronunciation
Table 3.1 illustrates that the students often make mistakes of 19 English
consonants. The bilabial plosives /p/ and /b/ were mispronounced around 6.2% and
4.3%, respectively. The alveolar plosives /t/ and /d/ are 19% and 19.5% while the
velar nasal /ŋ/ is only 7.5%. the labio-dental fricatives /f/ and /v/ are 7.8% and
9.5%. Notably, the dental fricatives /ð/ and /θ/ constitute up 40.1% and 42.3%, also
the post-alveolar affricates /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ make up and 17.3 appropriately 39% and
42%. The post-alveolar fricatives /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ are 45.2% and 49.2%, / while the
alveolar fricatives /s/ and /z/ are 26.4% and 29.3%.
Hence, based on both the survey and teachers’ answer, it is indicated that the
larger number of students have trouble with 8 out of 24 English consonants, which
are /tʃ/,/dʒ/,/ʃ/,/ʒ/, /θ/, /ð/, /z/, and /s/ sounds as these sounds are not pronounced in
Vietnamese language.
3.1.1. Consonants confusion

confuse /ʃ/-/s/, /s/-/z/ is 33% and 38%, respectively.
Therefore, many Vietnamese learners and users of English make mistakes in
pronouncing the above mentioned consonants are due to failure in distinguish
among sounds and how to place their articulation incorrectly.
3.1.2. Omission of consonant cluster
To identify the omission of consonant cluster among first- year students when
they speak English, each one was asked to pronounce ten consonants sounds aloud,
while his or her voice was recorded. Afterwards, the errors were analyzed
statistically as in the following table:

20