VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

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HOÀNG THỊ THÊM

THE INTERFERENCE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE IN THE FIRST YEAR
STUDENTS’ ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION AT THAI NGUYEN
UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
Ảnh hưởng của tiếng mẹ đẻ đến phát âm Tiếng Anh của sinh viên năm thứ
nhấ t Trường Đa ̣i ho ̣c Ky ̃ thuâ ̣t Công nghiêp̣ Thái Nguyên

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE: 60140111

Hanoi, 2014


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

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HOÀNG THỊ THÊM

THE INTERFERENCE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE IN THE FIRST YEAR


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis could not have been accomplished without the help,
encouragement and support of many people who all deserve my sincerest gratitude
and appreciation.
First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my
supervisor, Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm, for her priceless support, wholehearted guidance, and
timely encouragement during the time I conducted this research.
I am also grateful to all the lecturers at the Department of Post-graduate
Studies, College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi whose
support and considerations have enabled me to pursue the course.
I would also like to send my thanks to all my colleagues who have helped me
a lot in creating good conditions in teaching and helping me with their experiences
during my thesis.
My special thanks also go to the students from two classes 49J1 and 49H for
their whole-heated participation in the study.
Finally, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my beloved family – my parents,
my husband, my children, whose support and encouragement has always been a
great deal of strength that has helped me a lot to overcome all problems to complete
this thesis.


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ABSTRACT
The research in this minor thesis was carried out to investigate whether the
mother tongue influences students‟ English pronunciation at Thai Nguyen
University of Technology. It sought the answers to the following questions:
1. What are pronunciation mistakes made by students at Thai Nguyen
University of Technology?

Part A: Introduction..................................................................................................... 1
1. Rationale of the study.............................................................................................. 2
2. Objectives of the study ........................................................................................... 2
3. Research questions of the study ............................................................................. 2
4. Scope of the study ................................................................................................... 2
5. Methods of the study ............................................................................................... 2
6. Organization of the study ........................................................................................ 2
Part B: Development ................................................................................................... 4
Chapter 1: Literature review ....................................................................................... 4
1.1. The interference of the mother tongue in foreign languages ............................... 4
1.1.1. Definition of the mother tongue and foreign languages. .................................. 4
1.1.2. The interference of the mother tongue in foreign languages ............................ 4
1.2. English pronunciation .......................................................................................... 5
1.2.1 English consonants ............................................................................................. 5
1.2.2 English vowels ................................................................................................. 10
1.2.3 Consonants clusters .......................................................................................... 12
1.3 Vietnamese pronunciation ................................................................................... 12
1.3.1. Vietnamese consonants ................................................................................... 12
1.3.2 Vietnamese vowels........................................................................................... 13
1.4. Review of Previous studies ............................................................................... 13
Chapter 2: The study ................................................................................................. 15
2.1 Methodology .................................................................................................... 15


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2.1.1 Setting of the study........................................................................................... 15
2.1.2 Participants ....................................................................................................... 15
2.1.3 Data collection instruments .............................................................................. 15
2.1.3.1 Class Observation.......................................................................................... 15

pronunciation. Learners with good pronunciation are likely to be understood even if they
make mistakes in other area, whereas learners with bad pronunciation will not be
understood, even if their grammar is perfect.
In fact, pronunciation is becoming increasingly recognized as a crucial area for
language learners (Celce-Murcia et al, 1996).
All learners know the importance of pronunciation. However, they find it difficult
to acquire an accent which is intelligible. One of those difficulties is caused by the
interference of their mother tongue in their language learning because each language has
its own rules and phonetic system which may cause a lot of obstacles to learners in
practising and performing them correctly.
In their book, Avery and Ehrlich (1992) show the reason why speakers of English
are able to recognize Spanish accents, Russian accents, Chinese accents … That is because
the nature of a foreign accent is determined to a large extent by a learner‟s native language.
Like any learners of English, Vietnamese learners are coping with so many
difficulties in pronouncing English because of the mother tongue interference. Vietnamese
and English differ a great deal, but Vietnamese students often transfer sound patterns of
Vietnamese into English, that makes their pronunciation imperfect and unintelligible.
As a teacher of English, I can see mistakes that students at TNUT have made in
producing sounds. Therefore, I would like to conduct this research to point out how
Vietnamese affects students‟ English pronunciation and make some corresponding
improvements. Those are the reasons why I decide to do a research entitled: “The


2

interference of the mother tongue in the first year students‟ English pronunciation at Thai
Nguyen University of Technology.”
2. Objectives of the study
The objectives of this study are stated as follows:
-

including

recording students‟ pronunciation in an oral test, observing their performance in class
and note-taking.
6. Organization of the study
The thesis consists of three parts: introduction, development with three chapters
and conclusion.
Part A: Introduction presents the rationale, aims, research questions, and
organization of the study.
Part B: Development includes three main chapters.
Chapter 1 Literature review provides a brief literature review relevant to the study.
In this chapter, section 1 discusses the interference of the mother tongue in foreign


3

languages, section 2 presents some aspects of English pronunciation , section 3 discusses
Vietnamese pronunciation and section 4 reviews previous studies
Chapter 2 The study consists of two sections: section 1 presents methodology,
section 2 displays findings and discussion.
Part C: Conclusion summarizes the major findings with reference to the research
questions mentioned in Part A. This part also includes implications to improve students‟
pronunciation, limitations of the study and suggestions for further study.


4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter, literature review, presents a review of related literature that provides


5

(phonology) and the grammar of the first language impose themselves on the new language
and this leads to a „foreign‟ pronunciation, faulty grammatical patterns and, occasionally,
to the wrong choice of vocabulary.” (Hubbard et al, 1983, p140).
Most linguists would probably agree that the mother tongue can affect learners‟
English in several ways. Pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, discourse structure,
handwriting and all other aspects of language use are likely to some extent to carry a
mother-tongue accent. But the most striking is in the case of pronunciation where the
phonological structure of a speaker‟s first language and the associated articulatory setting
of the lips, tongue, jaw, etc. usually his or her English speech quite strongly (Swan and
Smith, 1987).
In fact, the mother tongue plays an important factor in learning to pronounce
English. In his book, KenWorthy (1987) emphasizes the role of the mother tongue by
indicating the fact that a foreign accent has some of the sound characteristics of the
learner‟s native language.
Avery and Ehrlich (1992) point out that the sound system of the native language
can be seen to influence our students‟ pronunciation of English. According to them,
students‟ pronunciation of English is influenced in at least three ways. First, difficulties
may arise when a learner encounters sounds in English that are not part of the sound
inventory of the learner‟s native language. Secondly, difficulties may arise because the
rules for combining sounds into words are different in the learner‟s native language.
Thirdly, the patterns of stress and intonation, which determine the overall rhythm and
melody of a language, can be transferred from the native language into the second
language.
They also state that the native language not only affects the ability to produce
English sounds but also the ability to hear English sounds.
1.2. English pronunciation
This section does not focus on all aspects of English pronunciation. It only deals

k, g

tʃ, dʒ

Affricative
Nasal

alveolar

Glottal

p, b

Palato-

Velar

Plosive

dental

Palatal

Manner of
articulation

Labio-

Alveolar


voiced consonants and nine voiceless consonants.
In learning a language, it is very important to know how to produce a sound.
Linguists describe English consonants as follows:


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• Stop consonants (plosives)
According to Roach (1998), a plosive is a consonant articulation with the following
phase:
- The first phase is when the articulator or articulators move to form the stricture for
the plosive. We call this the closure phase.
- The second phase is when the compressed air is stopped from escaping. We call
this the hold phase.
- The third phase when the articulators used to form the stricture are moved so as to
follow air to escape. This is the release phase.
- The fourth phase is what happens immediately after the third phase, so we call it
the post-release phase.
English has six plosive consonants /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/. These plosives have
different places of articulation.
/p, b/ are bilabial, the lips are pressed together. /t, d/ are alveolar, the tongue blade is
pressed against the alveolar ridge. Normally the tongue does not touch the front teeth as it
does in the dental plosives found in many languages. /k, g/ are velar, the back of the tongue
is pressed against the area where the hard palate ends and the soft palate begins. All six
plosives can occur at the beginning of a word (initial position), between other sounds
(medial position) and at the end of a word (final position).
• Fricatives
Fricatives are consonants with the characteristic that when they are produced, air
escapes through a small and makes a hissing sound. Fricatives are continuant consonants,
as you can continue making them without interruption as long as you have enough air in

the word „hat‟, the /h/ must be followed by an / æ / vowel. The tongue, jaw and lip
positions for the vowel are all produced simultaneously with the /h/ consonant, so that the
glottal fricative has an / æ/ quality. The same is found for all vowels following /h/.

• Affricates
/ ʧ; ʤ/ are affricates. In the articulation of / ʧ; ʤ/ the soft palate being raised and
the nasal resonator shut off, the obstacle to the airstream is formed by a closure made
between the tip, blade, and rims of the tongue and the upper alveolar ridge and side teeth.
At the same time, the front of the tongue is raised towards the hard palate in readiness for
the fricative release. The closure is released slowly, the air escaping in a diffuse manner
over the whole of the central surface of the tongue with friction occurring between the
blade/front region of the tongue and the alveolar/front palatal section of the roof of the


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mouth. During both stop and fricative stages, the vocal cords are wide apart for / ʧ/, but
may be vibrating for all or part of / ʤ/ according to the situation in the utterance.
• Nasals
/m, n/ are nasals. The soft palate is lowered for both /m/ and /n/. For /m/ the mouth
is blocked by closing the two lips, for /n/ by pressing the tip of the tongue against the sides
of the palate. Both sounds are voiced in English, as they are in other languages, and the
voiced air passes out through the nose (O‟Corner, 1980).
/R/ is velar nasal. In the articulation of /R/, the soft palate is lowered and all the air
passes out through the nose. The mouth is blocked by the back of the tongue pressed
against the soft palate. The sound is voiced (O‟Corner, 1980).
• Lateral /l/
/l/ is lateral. Only one alveolar, lateral phoneme occurs in English, there being no
opposition between fortis and lenis, voiced or voiceless, or fricative and non-fricative.
Within the /l/ phoneme three main allophones occur:

immediately to the position of the following sound; the lips are rounded. The soft palate is
raised and the vocal cords vibrate; but when /w/ follows a consonant, some devoicing takes
place.
1.2.2. English vowels
“Vowel sounds are produced by passing air through different shapes of the mouth,
with different positions of the tongue and of the lips, and with the air stream relatively
unobstructed by narrow passages except at the glottis” (Finegan, 1994, p89).
According to Roach (1998), English vowels consist of short vowels, long vowels,
diphthongs and triphthongs.
Short vowels are only relatively short. There are seven short vowels in English: /"/,
/-/, /$/, /)/, /'/, /&/, /+/.
Long vowels are the vowels which tend to be longer than the short vowels in
similar contexts. There are five long vowels: /i:/, /*:/, /%:/, /&:/, /(:/.
Finegan (1994) describes English vowels in the diagram below:


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In these pairs of vowels, O‟Cornor (1980) indicates that /i:/ is longer than /I/, /u:/ is
longer than /ʊ/ and /&:/ is longer than /ɒ/.
English vowels can be summarized as follows:
/i:/ long high/ close front spread vowel
/"/ short high/ close front spread vowel
/e/ short mid front spread vowel
/æ/ short low/ open front spread vowel
/u:/ long high/ close back rounded vowel
/'/ short high/close back rounded vowel
/&:/ long mid back rounded vowel
/ɒ/ short low/open back rounded vowel
/%:/ long low/open back rounded vowel

a'


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A triphthong is a glide from one vowel to another and then to a third, all produced
rapidly and without interruption. There are five triphthongs in English: /-"+/, /a"+/, /&"+/,
/+'+/, /a'+/.
1.2.3. Consonant clusters
Roach (1998) defines English consonant clusters as follows: “When we have two or
more consonants together we call them a consonant cluster.”
Avery and Ehrlich (1992) determine that English consonant clusters can be found
in the initial and final positions of words. They classify initial clusters into five types. The
first type is initial two-consonant clusters beginning with a stop consonant such as „pl, pr,
bl, br, tr, tw,dr, kl,kr,.etc.‟. The second type is initial two-consonant clusters beginning
with a fricative such as „fl, fr, sl, sw, sp, st, sk, sm, sn, sf, et.‟ The next one is clusters
beginning with a nasal such as „mj‟ in „music‟. The fourth type is clusters beginning with
/h/ such as „hj‟ in „huge‟; the last type is initial clusters of three consonants such as „spl,
spr,str, skr,skw,.. et.‟.
They also divide final clusters into four types: Final clusters of two consonants
beginning with a nasal such as „mp, nt, nd, ns, nố, ndʒ, ŋk‟; final clusters of two
consonants beginning with „l‟ or „r‟ such as „lp, lt, ld, lk, lf, lv, lố, ls, rp, rb, rt, rd, rk, rv,
rm, rn, rl.‟; final clusters of two consonants beginning with a fricative or stop such as „sp,
st, sk, ft, fố, pt, pố, ps, tố, kt, ks, dz‟ and final clusters of three consonants such as „kst,
mpt, nts, nst, rts, rld‟.
Furthermore, Avery and Ehrlich (1992) state that the addition of grammatical
endings creates many more final consonant clusters. For example, the plural ending /s/
when added to „text‟ creates the four-consonant cluster /ksts/.
1. 3. Vietnamese pronunciation
In this section, Vietnamese consonants and vowels are dealt with.

C

k

ɲ

η

palatal

t‟

Aspirated

ʈ

p

t

Voiced

b

d

m

n


Fricative

Lateral Sonant

h

l

1.3.2. Vietnamese vowels
According to Đoàn Thiện Thuật (1999), Vietnamese has 13 single vowels,
including nine long vowels and 4 short vowels. Long vowels are /i/, /e/, /ɛ/, /a/, , /ɔ/, /o/,
/ɤ/, /u/, /ɯ/; short vowels are /ὲ/ (anh ách), /ɔ/(ong óc), /ɤ/(tân, thân), /ă/. In addition to
single vowels, Vietnamese has three diphthongs . They are /ie/, /ɯə/ and /uo/.
About diphthong distribution, diphthongs in Vietnamese are mostly centering, e.g:
/ie/ -iê, yê, ia, ya (hiền, miền, tiên), /ɯɤ/ -ươ, ưa (hươu, thưa, thương), /uo/ -uô, ua
(uống thuốc, lúa úa ).
1.4. Review of previous studies
The interference of the mother tongue in English pronunciation has appeared in
many studies, which means that it receives much attention for its importance. Some of
recent studies are summarized as follows:
The study entitled Mother tongue interference in the pronunciation of English
sounds by Yoruba language speakers by Samson, Abdullahi and Olagunju was conducted


14

with participants at Ahmadu Bello University. It revealed that the postgraduate students
have minimal interference compared to the undergraduate students and the non students
interviewed.
Leah Tweedy conducted a study in 2012 entitled Discovering factors that influence

students. Therefore, the study was carried out with two classes (49J1, 49H) consisting of
100 students at Thai Nguyen University of Technology in their second term, the academic
year 2013-2014 and each class had 50 students.
2.1.3. Data collection instruments
The data of the study were obtained using 2 research instruments: class observation
and recording.
2.1.3.1 Class observation.
The class observation was administered to find out students‟ pronunciation
mistakes. The observation was conducted in 20 periods in the two classes (49J1 and 49H)
with twenty speaking lessons. The researcher attended the classes observing all the
activities and taking note students‟ speaking and students‟ speech to find out and classify
students‟ pronunciation mistakes, then decided whether these mistakes are influenced by
the mother tongue or not.


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2.1.3.2. Recording
Students‟ pronunciation was collected through students‟ recorded speeches. The
speeches are the subject speaking freely on students‟ choice of a topic in an oral
examination. The goal of recording speech was to get as accurate of a depiction as possible
of students‟ true pronunciation abilities.
The free speech offers the participants a range of subjects on which to speak,
allowing for a conscious choice of a topic in an oral examination. The oral examination
chosen in this study was the final examination of the academic year 2013-2014. The test
was administered at the end of the second term after the students had finished “English 1”.
The students were asked to pick out one of the following topics to talk about:
- Your family
- Your weekday
- Your last holiday

the limited time in the oral test, the recording was administered to a population of 30
students.
2.2.1. Description on the three most frequent types of mistakes
After doing research, the researcher found that most of the students made mistakes
repeatedly. The found mistakes were classified into three main types: sound omitted, sound
replacement and consonant clusters. The tables below shows the results of the mistake
classification obtained from the class observation and recording, which illustrate the
number of mistakes and the kinds of mistakes the students committed and the number of
students make mistakes.
Mistake frequency
Mistake types

Sound omission

Observation

Final position: tM, z, s, 376

Recording
257

M, I, J t, v, d, p, k, f,
DN.

Sound replacement

J = z (d)

121