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

PHÙNG THỊ THANH NGA

FACTORS AFFECTING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION
LEARNING OF ETHNIC MINORITY STUDENTS AT LAI CHAU
COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Những nhân tố ảnh hưởng đến việc học phát âm Tiếng Anh
của sinh viên dân tộc thiểu số ở trường cao đẳng cộng đồng Lai Châu

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS
Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 8140231.01

Hanoi - 2018


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

PHÙNG THỊ THANH NGA

FACTORS AFFECTING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION
LEARNING OF ETHNIC MINORITY STUDENTS AT LAI CHAU
COMMUNITY COLLEGE

This thesis could not have been completed without the help and support from a
number of people.
First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Tran
Thi Thu Hien, my supervisor, who has patiently and constantly supported me
through the stages of the study, and whose stimulating ideas, expertise, and
suggestions have inspired me greatly through my growth as an academic researcher.
Secondly, a special word of thanks goes to all the lecturers and the staffs of
Faculty of Post Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International
Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their useful lectures, materials,
guidance and enthusiasm during my course.
Thirdly, I also thank my colleagues for their willingness to share their ideas
on this study and my students for their cooperation in completing the survey
questionnaires.
Last but not least, I am indebted to my family and all my friends who have
kindly given me assistance and encouragement. Without them, this study would
have no such great motivation.

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ABSTRACT
Pronunciation plays a very important part in learning English but it is a big
problem for most of ethnic minority students at Lai Chau Community College, the
only college in Lai Chau province where more than 90% of students are ethnic.
Most of them have difficulties in English pronunciation learning. Until now, no
research on English pronunciation learning of the ethnic learners at Lai Chau
Community College has been carried out.
The researcher, therefore, decides to convey the research with the aim of
finding out factors affecting ethnic minority students‘ pronunciation learning,
investigating typical pronunciation errors that ethnic minority students often


IPA:

International Phonetic Alphabet

NNSs:

Non-native speakers

L2:

Second language

LCCC:

Lai Chau Community College

SLA:

Second language acquisition

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 2.1: Information of students‘ participants
Table 2.2: Information of teachers‘ participants
Table 3.1: Teachers‘ view on students‘ difficulties in pronouncing vowel sounds
Table 3.2: Teachers‘ view on students‘ difficulties in pronouncing consonant sounds
Table 3.3: Students‘ evaluation on difficulty in learning English consonants

PART B: DEVELOPMENT..................................................................................... 4
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................ 4
1.1. Review of previous studies ................................................................................ 4
1.1.1. Previous studies overseas …………………………………………………….4
1.1.2. Previous studies in Vietnam ………………………………………………….5
1.2. Review of theoretical background .................................................................... 6
1.2.1. Perception of pronunciation ………………………………………………….6
1.2.2. Features of pronunciation .............................................................................. 6
1.2.3. Factors affecting English pronunciation learning …………………………..11
1.2.4. English pronunciation errors ………………………………………………..20
1.2.5. Common English pronunciation problems of Vietnamese learners ………...22
1.2.6. Overview of difficulties for learning English of ethnic minority students in
Vietnam ……………………………………………………………………………23

vi


1.3. Chapter summary ............................................................................................ 24
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY ......................................................................... 25
2.1. Research setting ................................................................................................ 25
2.2. Research approaches ....................................................................................... 26
2.3. Research participants ...................................................................................... 26
2.4. Data collection instrument .............................................................................. 27
2.4.1. The questionnaire …………………………………………………………...27
2.4. 2. The interview ………………………………………………………………27
2.4.3. The test ……………………………………………………………………...27
2.5. Data collection procedures and analysis ........................................................ 28
2.5.1. For the questionnaire ………………………………………………………..28
2.5.2. For the interview ……………………………………………………………28
2.5.3. For the test ………………………………………………………………….29

REFERENCES ........................................................................................................ 50
APPENDICES ........................................................................................................... I
APPENDIX 1 ............................................................................................................. I
APPENDIX 2 ......................................................................................................... VII
APPENDIX 3 ....................................................................................................... VIII

viii


PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
Nowadays, English is an important foreign language in the world since it
links people in many fields: science, technology, business, communication,
education, etc and thus, a great number of people study it. That is the reason why
teaching and learning English have become the necessity and importance in every
country.
Pronunciation plays a vital part of foreign language learning because it
directly affects learners' communicative competence as well as performance. Since,
limited pronunciation skills can decrease learners‘ self-confidence, restrict social
interactions, and negatively affect estimations of a speaker‘s credibility and
abilities. As Morley states, ―intelligible pronunciation is an essential component of
communicative competence‖ (Morley, 1991: 513). This consideration suggests that
teaching pronunciation is crucial to help the students develop the skills that are
necessary to communicate in the target language. Besides, Harmer also claims:
―pronunciation teaching not only makes students aware of different sounds and
sound features (and what these mean), but can also improve their speaking
immeasurably‖ and consequently ―help them achieve the goal of improved
comprehension and intelligibility‖ (Harmer, 2001: 183). Therefore, Kelly
believes that ―pronunciation work can, and should, be planned‖ (Kelly, 2000: 13).
Lai Chau Community College is a mountainous college in the North-West of

pronunciation of ethnic minority students at LCCC. The data collected for this
thesis are mainly from 85 ethnic minority students and three teachers of English at
LCCC.
5. Methods of the study
Both qualitative and quantitative methods are chosen for this study in order
to achieve the tasks mentioned above. A survey questionnaire is designed for 85
ethnic minority students at LCCC; this is considered as the main instrument to find
out the factors affecting their English pronunciation learning. Furthermore,
questionnaires provide lots of data for analysis, and the more data sets, the more
accurate the analysis is. Besides, interviews to three teachers have been also
conducted to get supplementary information. Especially, together with survey
questionnaire and interview, a test is designed with the aim of investigating on
typical pronunciation errors that ethnic minority students at LCCC often commit.

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6. Significance of the study
This study hopes to make concentration on teaching English pronunciation
for ethnic minority students at LCCC. Next, findings of the study could be shared
among teachers of English to improve English pronunciation skill for ethnic
minority students and the quality of teaching and learning in the coming years.
Especially, the findings could be used as a data base for further study.
7. Design of the study
The study is organized three parts as follows:
Part A, INTRODUCTION, presents rationale, objectives, research questions,
scope, methods, significance, and design of the study.
Part B, DEVELOPMENT, includes three main chapters:
Chapter 1, LITERATURE REVIEW, presents a review of literature and
theoretical background about English pronunciation learning, its perceptions and

due to its complexity (Kelly, 1969). It is believed that only few learners can
ever attain native-like pronunciation in the foreign language, especially those
who learn to speak a second language after puberty (Lenneberg, 1967).
Research in pronunciation is a hot issue in second language acquisition (SLA),
and a great of researchers attempted to find the affecting factors for
pronunciation. Among these studies, some studies focus on the learning age‘s
affecting for SLA (Harley, 1986; Mackay, Flege, & Imai, 2006), some studies
addressed the length of residence in the target language country (Flege, Bohn,
& Jang, 1997; Flege & Liu, 2001), and other studies focus on the frequency
of using the second language( L2) (Flege, Mackay, & Meador, 1999).
Kenworthy

(1987)

listed

the

factors

that

affecting

native-like

pronunciation. These variables include native language, age, exposure, innate
phonetic ability, identity and language ego, motivation, and concern for good
pronunciation. Incontestably, it is not easy to give an intact list for affecting
factors in pronunciation.

Le Ngoc Han (2011) studied on common mistakes made by Vietnamese
beginners of English in pronouncing /θ/, /δ/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /ʤ/, /ʧ/ and possible solutions.
The thesis makes clear the barriers that Vietnamese people pronounce /θ/, /δ/, /ʃ/,
/ʒ/, /ʤ/, /ʧ/ then gives the necessary suggestions.
Do Thi Thu Hang (2014) pointed out factors affecting English pronunciation
learning of H‘mong ethnic students in Ham Yen High School, Ham Yen District,
Tuyen Quang province. The results of the thesis are very useful but they only
mentioned on H‘mong ethnic minority students.

5


Compared to those previous studies, this study will also give general
information of pronunciation with its main features and common factors affecting
English learning. Besides, the study will provide general overview of common
mistakes of Vietnamese people as well as some main barriers of ethnic minority
people to learn English. From that, the author will analysis the documents collected
from Lai Chau Community College, give the main factors affecting English
pronunciation learning of ethnic minority students at this college and give the best
solutions.
1.2. Review of theoretical background
1.2.1. Perception of pronunciation
There are several definitions of pronunciation.

Generally speaking,

pronunciation is simply defined as ―the way in which a word is spoken‖ (Oxford
Advanced Learner‘s Encyclopedic, 1992) or ―the way in which a word is usually
pronounced‖


individuals or groups, depending on many factors, such as: the duration of the
cultural exposure of their childhood, the location of their current residence, speech,
their ethnic group, their social class, or their education‖.
In this study, the concept of pronunciation can be described as ―a way of
speaking a word, especially a way that is accepted or generally understood‖
(American Heritage Dictionary, 1992) or ―may be said to conclude the sounds of
the language or phonology; stress and rhythm; intonation; combination sounds;
linkage of sound‖ (Ur, 1996).
1.2.2. Features of pronunciation
As English increasingly becomes the language used for international
communication, it is vital that speakers of English, whether they are native or
non-native speakers, are able to exchange meaning effectively. In fact, in

6


recent discussions of English-language teaching, the unrealistic idea that
learners should sound and speak like native speakers is fast disappearing (Burns,
2003).
According to Burns (2003), it is more important that speakers of English can
achieve:
• Intelligibility (the speaker produces sound patterns that are recognizable as
English)
• Comprehensibility (the listener is able to understand the meaning of what is
said)
• Interpretability (the listener is able to understand the purpose of what is said).
For example, a speaker might say ―It‘s hot today‖ as ―IS ho day‖.
This is unlikely to be intelligible because of inaccurate sound, stress and
intonation patterns. As a result, a listener would not find the speaker
comprehensible, because meaning is not available. Because the speaker is

syllable-timed (for example, WHAT‘s his addRESS?). Jenkins (2002) emphasizes
that effective communicative pronunciation competence can be achieved more
through improving supra-segmental production in preference to segmentals.
Linking, intonation and stress are important features for effective pronunciation at
the suprasegmental level (Burns, 2003).
* Linking
Linking refers to the way the last sound of one word is joined to the first
sound of the next word. To produce connected speech, we run words together to
link consonant to vowel, consonant to consonant, and vowel to vowel. We
also shorten some sounds and leave others out altogether.
• consonant to vowel an

Australian

• consonant to consonant next

animal

week; seven

months

• vowel to vowel. Some sounds such as r, w and j (y) are inserted to link
adjacent words ending and beginning with a vowel: where (r
you?; you (w

) ought to; Saturday (y

) are


follow the communicative approach in teaching pronunciation. Harmer (1993)
stresses the need for making sure that students can always be understood and say
what they want to say. They need to master good pronunciation, not perfect accents.
That is, emphasis should be on suprasegmental features of pronunciation, not
segmental aspects, to

help

learners acquire communicative

competence

(Seferoglu, 2005). Bott (2005) asserts that, in recent years, increasing attention
has

been placed on providing pronunciation instruction that meets the

communicative needs of non-native speakers (NNSs) of English.
Empirical research and pronunciation materials‘ writers suggest that teaching
suprasegmentals before segmentals to intermediate and advanced NNSs could be
more beneficial in a shorter period of time (p.5). Seferoglu (2005) aimed to find

9


out whether integrating accent reduction software in advanced English
language classes at the university level results in improvements in students‘
pronunciation at

the segmental and suprasegmental levels, finding


communicative approaches to pronunciation

learning and teaching.
b. Segmental features
According to Seferoglu (2005), segmental aspects of the sound system
include individual vowels and consonants. Because segmental phonology is
relatively more easily explained and taught than the supra-segmental features
(Coniam, 2002), some studies focus on studying segmental phonology in preference
to suprasegmental features. Segmental features relate to sounds at the micro level.
They include specific sounds within words (for example, /l/ as in lamp, /r/ as in
ramp,

/æ/ as in

hat). The sound systems of consonants, vowels or their

combinations are called phonemes. Phonemes are sounds that, when pronounced
incorrectly, can change the meaning of the word (Burns, 2003). Compare the
changes of meaning in:
pet - pat
lamp - ramp
about - abort
Consonant sounds can be voiced (a part of the mouth is closed and the air
behind it is released suddenly - for example, /v/ as in van, /b/ as in bun) – or

10


unvoiced (air is pushed through a narrow part of the mouth – for example, /f /as in


11


language experienced by non-native speakers in order to help them overcome their
foreign accent and consequently improve their pronunciation. In addition, they
would also enable teachers to provide efficient pronunciation instruction and design
their teaching methodology according to students‘ needs.
* Age
An additional factor that affects the pronunciation is age. The debate over the
impact of age on language acquisition and specifically on pronunciation is varied.
Celce-Murcia et al. (1996) and Florez (1998) explore the impact of age on
pronunciation.

Some researchers argue that, after puberty, lateralization (the

assigning of linguistic functions to the different brain hemisphere) is completed and
adults‘ ability to distinguish and produce native-like sounds is more limited than
children. Others argue that various sensitive periods for language learning exist
and that ―adults need to readjust existing neural networks to accommodate new
sounds‖ (Florez, 1998, :1). Many scholars nominate children to acquire accent
very quickly and are better than adults in learning English. Considering the age of
the children as a major factor in the process of language acquisition; which means,
younger learners are much better than adults in acquiring a new language (AbelloContesse, 2009). He indicated that according to the learners‘ age, they vary in
acquiring language skills. However many still asking the question; Why is it that
younger learners are better to learn the foreign language? The only significant
reason is that, younger learners are able to learn the sound system more effectively,
while the learning process of adult learners may be more likely to be hindered
because of their age (Zhang and Yin, 2009).
* Personality

speaking in the target language and practice their pronunciation. The different
personality leads to the different learning style.

Compare

with extroverted

learners, introverted learners are afraid of making mistakes, losing face,
feeling nervous when speaking in front of others, feeling uncomfortable in
their first attempt at speech in English, and afraid of failure, laughter and
ridicule. In addition, young learners like to perform themselves in front of
others, and speaking out their mind without shying. However, with getting
maturation, learners become more and more sensitive and do not want to
perform themselves in front of others. It is also an important reason that
young learners acquire a second language quickly than adults.
* Attitude, motivation and identity
Pronunciation is also affected by learners‘ learning identity and
attitudes. ―The strongly determine the accuracy of learners‘ pronunciation are
a

person‘s

‗sense

of identity‘

and feelings

of ―group


Typically, there is intimate relation between motivation with and attitude.
According to Gardner and Lambert (1972), motivation can be divided into two
basic types, which are instrumental and integrative motivation. The former
relates to the utilitarian gains, such as getting a better job, going to a good
university, passing an exam. The latter involves positive attitudes toward the
target language and target language community, or wants to become a
member of the target language community. Gardner and MacIntyre (1991)
claimed that instrumental motivation and integrative motivation can promote
language learning.
Therefore, if the learner has highly motivation to have a better
pronunciation, they will become more eager to take part in the activities and
pay more attention to discriminate the sounds of the target language, and
grasp any opportunities for using the target language.
* Language differences
Munro and Derwing (1999) observed that even heavily accented speech is
sometimes intelligible and that prosodic errors (i.e., errors in stress, intonation, and
rhythm) appear to affect intelligibility more than do phonetic errors (i.e., errors in
single sounds). For this reason, pronunciation research and teaching focus both on
the sounds of language (vowels and consonants) and on supra-segmental features—

14


that is, vocal effects that extend over more than one sound—such as stress, sentence
and word intonation, and speech rhythm (Crystal, 2003; Munro & Derwing, 1999).
Languages have been classified as either stress timed or syllable timed. In stresstimed languages (e.g., British and American English, German, Dutch, Thai),
―stressed syllables fall at regular intervals throughout an utterance‖ (Crystal, 2003,
p. 245), and rhythm is organized according to regularity in the timing of the stressed
syllables. That is, the time between stressed syllables is equal because unstressed
syllables are spoken more quickly and vowel reduction occurs. For example, the