THE INTERFERENCE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE

THE INTERFERENCE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE

IN THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION AT THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Hoang Thi Them^*, Phung Thi Thu Ha University of Technology - TNU

ABSTRACT

This paper looks at pronunciation mistakes made by the first year students at Thai Nguyen University of Technology (TNUT) and deals with the question if the causes of the mistakes come from students’ mother tongue. In investigating, a combination of different data collection methods were used including recording students’ pronunciation, observing their performance in class and note-taking. The findings indicate that Vietnamese has influences on students’

pronunciation of English sounds. The mistakes are classified into three types: sound omission, sound replacement and consonant clusters in which ending sound omission is the most common mistakes, but the mistakes of replacing sounds also occur frequently. Through the study, it is suggested that teachers should focus more on students’ pronunciation to make their speech understood. For this reason, it is advisable that the teachers pay more attention to teaching how to produce English sounds, providing more opportunities for students to practise the English sounds effectively.

Key words: pronunciation, sound omission, sound replacement, consonant clusters, ending sounds.

INTRODUCTION^*

In a speech communication situation, a speaker always tries to make him understood and interested. Learners with good pronunciation are likely to be understood even if they make errors in other areas, whereas learners with bad pronunciation will not be understood, even if their grammar is perfect [1].

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. KenWorthy 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 [2]. Similarly, Hubbard states that the sound systems (phonology) of the first language impose themselves on the new language and this leads to a ‘foreign’

pronunciation [3].

Remarkably, Avery and Ehrlich point out that the sound system of the native language can

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be seen to influence our students’

pronunciation of English 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 [4].

The first language plays an important role in producing English sounds. With regard to the interference of Vietnamese in pronouncing English, it has received much attention with many recent studies. One of the studies indicates that Vietnamese consonants affect the students’ acquisition of the English /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ [5], while the other shows the difficulties that learners have when producing final consonants due to Vietnamese language [6]. An author confirms that Vietnamese learners often make mistakes of changing /l/ to /n/ [7].

As teachers of English, the authors can see mistakes made by students at TNUT, mostly

living in the north of Vietnam where there are many dialects, which interferes with English pronunciation. It is necessary therefore to find out how Vietnamese affects students’

pronunciation of English sounds and make some corresponding improvements.

THE STUDY The subjects

The study was carried out with 50 students in the class 53X1 at Thai Nguyen University of Technology in their second term, the academic year 2017-2018.

The instruments

The data of the study were obtained by using 2 data collection instruments: class observation and recording.

Class observation

The class observation was administered in 15 periods in the class 53X1. The author attended the class, observing all the activities and taking notes of mistakes that some students made when they were asked to speak or practice in each period, then classified their pronunciation mistakes.

Recording

Students’ pronunciation was collected through students’ recorded readings. Two elementary-level paragraphs were chosen for students to read and be recorded by recorders.

The recordings would make it possible for the students’ performance to be transcribed so that the authors could identify and classify pronunciation mistakes and analyze possible causes.

Data collection procedures

From February to May, the author observed 50 students in the class 53X1 in 15 periods.

When students spoke, the researcher listened and took notes all of their pronunciation mistakes.

In May, 50 students were given two paragraphs and required to read out loud the paragraphs for a few times so that they could be familiar with the text , then their readings were recorded. Next, the students’ recorded readings were transcribed by the two authors

and were checked by an English teacher working at TNUT.

RESULTS

The results are analyzed on the basis of English pronunciation and Vietnamese pronunciation. After doing research, the authors found that most of the students made mistakes repeatedly. The found mistakes were classified into three main types: sound omission, sound replacement and consonant clusters.

Results from recording

Table 1. Mistakes made by participants.

Mistake types

No. of Participan

ts with mistakes

Percentage (%)

Sound omission

Final position:

ʧ, z, s, ʃ, θ, ð, t, v, d, p, k, f, ʤ.

44 88%

Sound replacement

ð=z (d) 28 56%

p = f/b 13 26%

θ = t’ 16 20%

ʤ=z 21 42%

r = z 14 28%

tr = C 18 36%

l = n 7 14%

n = l 9 18%

Consonant clusters

Insertion of /ǝ/

17 34%

Deletion 4 8%

Results from observations

The observations were made during 15 periods. In order to obtain reliable information the author attended the class and minutely wrote down all students’ mistakes and counted the number of mistakes.

DISCUSSION AND SUGGESTED

IMPLICATIONS

Mistakes in omission of sounds

From the data of the class observation, it shows that most of the students often omit the ending sounds /ʧ, z, s, ʃ, θ, ð, t, v, d, p, k, f, ʤ/

again and again. Of these ending sounds, /ʧ/,

/θ/, /ð/, /ʤ/, /d/, /v/, /k/, /f/, /z/ are omitted frequently especially /ʧ/, /θ/, /ð/, /ʤ/. The students of the class do not often pronounce the final sounds, they even make mistakes when saying a simple sentence “I often go to school by bike” in which the sound /k/ in

“bike” was omitted. As table 1 and table 2 indicate that 88% of student subjects in the research omit many of the final sounds in words: “supermarket, enjoyed, bank, banks, closed, cash, sends, replies, think… ” and 21.5 % of the mistake numbers are made. It is evident that there is a higher frequency of omission.

Table 2. Mistakes observed in the class Mistake types Mistake

frequency

Percentage (%) Sound

omission

Final position:

ʧ, z, s, ʃ, θ, ð, t, v, d, p, k, f, ʤ.

63 21,5%

Sound replacement

ð= z (d) 74 25.3%

p = f/b 22 7.5%

θ = t’ 17 5.8%

ʤ=z 13 4.4%

r = z 29 9.9%

tr = C 32 10.9%

l = n 8 2.7%

n = l 12 4.1%

Consonant clusters

Insertion of /ǝ/

18 6.2%

Deletion 5 1.7%

Total 293 100%

It can be easily understood that why the students omit the ending sounds so frequently. These kinds of mistakes are due to the differences between the two languages.

Vietnamese has only six final consonants which are all closed ones. It means that there is no release phase in their production.

Vietnamese final consonants are actually silent and the evidence is given by examples /k/ in “bác”, /t/ in “mất”.

Both English and Vietnamese have labiodental sounds /f/, /v/ but the students do not pronounce these two sounds when they

occur in the final position of a word. It is in consideration of the fact that Vietnamese fricatives do not occur in word-final position.

In the class 53X1 , a student says [ai lʌ ɔl taɪ ǝ mϳu zɪ] instead of [ai lʌv ɔl taɪps ǝf mϳu zɪk] for the sentence “I love all types of music”. Among the ending sounds, the sound /s/ is least omitted frequently. The reason for this is that most of the students often produce the final sound /s/ when they say any English words, even these words do not end in /s/; this causes sound redundancy.

With this particular sound /z/, many learners try to produce them but often end up with /s/

instead, just because they usually push the air through too hard. It should be noted that in making /s/ and /z/ distinct the opposition of fortis vs. lenis plays an important role.

Because of the differences between the two languages, the habit of “swallowing” the ending sounds in the mother tongue is in fact a negative transference that inhibits the pronunciation of ending sounds in the target language.

Mistakes in sound replacement

In our data, the informants replace some English sounds with some Vietnamese sounds such as /z/, / t’/, /C/, /z/ in Vietnamese instead of /ð/, /θ/, /tr/, /ʤ/ in English respectively (ð=

z, θ = t’, tr = C, ʤ=z).

As can be seen in table 1 and table 2, the mistakes caused by replacing sound are common since students have a habit of producing Vietnamese sounds that they think they are quite similar to English sounds . Among these mistakes, the most frequent is the replacement of /ð/ with /z/. In table 1, 56% of the students substitute /z/ for /ð/. For example, they said /zǝ/ instead of /ðǝ/ for the word the, or /ze

ǝ

is ‘d’ or ‘gi’ and in English the sound /ð/ is presented by the letter ‘th’. Although the Vietnamese sound /z/ and the English sound /ð/ are both fricatives, they are differently pronounced in term of place of articulation.

The sound /ð/ does not exist in Vietnamese so many students at TNUT change /ð/ to /z/

when they pronounce words with /ð/.

The result with 56% of the total times in substituting /z/ for /ð/ in the table 2 illustrates the importance of the sound /ð/ in English.

The reason why the frequency of this mistake is high is that the words containing the /ð/

sound are among the most frequently used words in the English language such as the, this, that, their, them, then, they...

Relating to the interdental sound, 20% of the participants replace the sound /θ/ in English with the sound /t’/ in Vietnamese when saying two words things and think, and 5,8 % of the times students make mistakes is counted. The mispronunciation of this sound is due to the similarities in orthographic of Vietnamese and English. Although the /θ/

sound in English and the /t’/ sound are pronounced differently, they have the same spelling ‘th’.

In reference to the substitution of /C/ for /tr/, Table 1 illustrates 36% of the students subjects change /tr/ to /C/ which is spelt “ch”

in saying the word train in the paragraph.

According to the notes from observation reveal a number of 5,8% for this replacement.

The results indicate that many of the students find it difficult to release /tr/. The reason may be that the combination of /tr/ is unfamiliar to the participants at TNUT who live in the north. Both Vietnamese and English have the same spelling “tr”, but “tr” in Vietnamese represents the sound /t/ and “ch” represents the sound /C/. The problem is that northerners in Vietnam do not produce the sound /t/. There is, therefore, no difference in pronunciation of two words: ‘trê’ and ‘chê’

and students always pronounce ‘chê’ for two words. This influence of the dialect prevents students from pronouncing correctly in the target language.

In term of the influence of the dialect, /l/ and /n/ are freely substituted for each other in word-initial position. In fact, 7 student subjects (making up 14%) replace /l/ with /n/

and 9 students (accounting for 18%) change /n/ to /l/. Table 2 indicates a total of 20 mistakes for the two types. For example, the word ‘midnight’ was pronounced as

‘midlight’ and ‘need’ was pronounced as ‘ leed’. The tables show that these two types of mistakes are the least frequent but they cause unintelligibility for hearers and lead to miscommunication. In Vietnamese phoneme system, /l/ is lateral sonant and /n/ is nasal.

But students at TNUT mostly living in the areas in the north do not know when to say a word with /l/ or /n/ in Vietnamese. In some provinces, “gạo nếp”(sticky rice) is said as

“gạo lếp”, “lúa” (rice) was said as “núa”.

Table 1 reveals 26% of the subjects producing /b/ or /f/ instead of /p/, but only one participant replaces /p/ with /f/ in the word

“replies” which is sounded like “reflies”.

Actually /p/ mistaken for /b/ is more common than for /f/.

The mispronunciation of /p/ to /f/ or /b/ is related to the Vietnamese phoneme system.

The Vietnamese language does not have the sound /p/ in the initial position. This sound can occur in some words such as “đèn pin”.

Because of the inexistence of the sound, it is really hard for students to pronounce and even they do not how to produce it. In addition, /f/ in Vietnamese is represented the letter combination ph (beginning with p) so student can substitute either /b/ or /f/ for /p/.

Similarly /r/ is commonly mistaken for /z/ at TNUT. From table 2, 29 mistakes for this kind are made and 14 participants (28%) substitute /z/ for /r/. The students pronounce many words incorrectly because they substituted /z/ for /r/ such as /zais/ instead of /rais/ in the word rice, /zentl/ instead of /rentl/

in the word rental and /zɪplaɪz/ instead of /rɪplaɪz/ in the word replies.

Another mistake that the students make is the substitution of /z/ for /ʤ/ or. As can be seen from the two tables, the mistake of the replacement of /ʤ/ with /z/ is also common at the university. 42% of the students mistake the sound /z/ for /ʤ/, and 13 mistakes are written down. As the sound /ʤ/ does not exist in Vietnamese, /ʤ/ is not pronounced correctly by the students at TNUT.

Mistakes in consonant clusters

As for consonant clusters, table 1 shows that 34% student subjects insert a vowel /ǝ/

between the consonants of the cluster, while only 8% participants delete one of the consonants. Likewise the mistakes of insertion of a vowel /ǝ/ is 18 and those of deletion is 5 from the table 2.

Properly speaking, Vietnamese does not have any consonant clusters which are new to the Vietnamese as well as to the speakers of other monosyllabic languages. The students therefore face many difficulties in mastering all English consonant clusters. So with all types of clusters, the students tend to insert a vowel /ǝ/ between the consonants of the cluster to match their segmental phoneme structure. The word speed /spi:d/ can be produced as /sǝpi:d/.

Implications

Firstly, pronunciation should be paid much attention, considered as a part in the textbook and taught carefully.

Secondly, teachers should teach students how to pronounce the English sounds.

Regarding ending sounds, teachers need to help students pronounce these sounds. First students must know how to produce the ending sounds /ʧ, z, s, ʃ, θ, ð, t, v, d, p, k, f, ʤ/. Next teachers let students release these sounds in words such as live, life, push … and then in sentences. With word-final fricative consonants /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /z/, /s/, /ʃ/, teachers point out the similarity between the initial and final sounds and have students practise them in words and sentences. Moreover students should practice the pronunciation of /s/ and /z/ in words that have grammatical endings – the plural, the possessive, and the third person singular present tense.

Concerning problems of sound replacement, teachers should help students distinguish the differences between these sounds. In order to help students not to substitute /t’/ for /θ/, /z/

for /ð/, teachers make sure that the pupils know how to pronounce them. Teachers tell students that to make /θ/, put your tongue between your teeth, then blow out air between your tongue and your top teeth and to make /ð/, first practice /θ/, then use your voice to make /ð/. Teachers have students try tongue

twisters such as Those three thugs think that they threw those things there.

As for the replacement of /p/ with /b/ or /f/, teachers point out that the lips come together for the English /p/ sound, whereas the bottom lip touches the top teeth for /f/ for substitution of /f/ for /p/. For substitution of /b/ for /p/, teachers focus on the aspiration of /p/ in trying to get students to make the distinction between /p/ and /b/ in initial position, then get students to practice these two sounds in minimal pairs such as pet and bet, pride and bride…

With regards to /l/ vs. /n/, teachers should indicate that /n/ is made with air escaping through the nose and that /l/ is made with the air escaping around the sides of the tongue.

Later teachers give students word combinations such as ‘night light’ and ‘slow snow’ to provide practice in distinguishing between the two sounds.

As to consonant clusters, because students often insert an /+/ between the consonants, teachers should ask students to practice increasing their speed, until the inserted vowel disappears. For example:

bəlue  b^əlue  b^əlue  b^əlue  blue Thirdly teachers need to pay more attention to student’s pronunciation and try to correct them any time possible.

Moreover, pronunciation is not easy to study, thus teachers should involve students’

motivation to learning pronunciation by various exercises and games while teaching.

By doing that students may feel less boring and learning pronunciation does not become too difficult for learners.

Finally, availability of materials for teaching is also necessary. The use of language laboratory will enhance proper pronunciation.

Learners will listen to pronunciation from native speakers which will help the learners pronounce sounds correctly. Learners should be taught to use the dictionary properly in terms of spelling and correct pronunciation.

CONCLUSION

In the paper, the results of the study illustrate that students’ pronunciation mistakes are

actually caused by mother tongue interferences in which the final sounds and the replacement of sounds have the most influences. Understanding the pronunciation problems, the authors give some suggestions and some practical solutions to overcome the difficulties in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning pronunciation.

REFERENCES

1. Gilakjani A. P. (2012). The significance of Pronunciation in English Language Teaching, English Language Teaching, vol 5 no.4, ISSN Print: 1916-4742, pp. 1-2.

2. Kenworthy, J. (1987). Teaching English Pronunciation. Longman Group UK Limited.

3. Hubbard, Jones, Thorton and Weeler. (1980). A Training Course for TEFL. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

4. Avery, P., & Ehrlich, S. (1992). Teaching American English Pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

5. Tuan L.T. (2011). Vietnamese EFL learners’

Diffculties with English Consonants, Studies in Literature and Language, vol 3 no.2, ISSN Print 1923-1555, pp. 56-57.

6. Thao N.T.T. Vietnamese EFL learners’

Diffculties with English Consonants, http://www.diva-

portal.org/smash/get/diva2:518290/fulltext01, 07/08/2018

7. HAYASHI, Kyoko. English Pronunciation of

a Vietnamese Student,

https://ci.nii.ac.jp/els/contentscinii_201802121650 43.pdf?id=ART0009256665, 07/08/2018

8. Cù Đình Tú, Hoàng Văn Thung, Nguyễn Nguyên Trứ. (1978). Ngữ Âm Học Tiếng Việt Hiện Đại, Nhà xuất bản Giáo dục.

9. Đoàn Thiện Thuật. (1978). Ngữ Âm Tiếng Việt, Nhà xuất bản Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội.

10. Vương Hữu Lễ, Hoàng Dũng. (1994). Ngữ Âm Tiếng Việt, Trường Đại học Sư phạm Hà Nội 1.

TÓM TẮT

ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA TIẾNG MẸ ĐẺ ĐẾN VIỆC PHÁT ÂM TIẾNG ANH CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC KỸ THUẬT CÔNG NGHIỆP

Hoàng Thị Thêm^*, Phùng Thị Thu Hà Trường Đại học Kỹ thuật Công nghiệp – ĐH Thái Nguyên Bài báo xem xét các lỗi phát âm mà sinh viên năm thứ nhất trường đại học Kỹ thuật Công nghiệp Thái Nguyên mắc phải và trả lời cho câu hỏi liệu những lỗi phát âm đó có phải do tiếng mẹ đẻ gây ra. Trong quá trình nghiên cứu, sự kết hợp của các phương pháp thu thập dữ liệu được sử dụng bao gồm ghi âm các phát âm của sinh viên, quan sát sự thể hiện của họ ở trong lớp học và ghi chép.

Kết quả nghiên cứu chỉ ra rằng tiếng Việt có ảnh hưởng đến việc phát âm các âm tiếng Anh của sinh viên. Lỗi phát âm được chia thành 3 loại: bỏ bớt âm cuối, thay thế âm và cụm phụ âm, trong đó lỗi bỏ bớt âm cuối là lỗi phổ biến nhất, nhưng lỗi thay thế các âm cũng xảy ra thường xuyên.

Thông qua nghiên cứu, một số đề xuất được gợi ý cho giáo viên, cụ thể là tập trung vào việc cải thiện các lỗi phát âm của sinh viên để làm cho phát âm của họ chính xác hơn. Vì vậy giáo viên cần chú ý hơn đến việc dạy cho sinh viên làm thế nào để phát âm chính xác các âm Tiếng Anh và cung cấp cho sinh viên các cơ hội luyện tập các âm đó một cách hiệu quả.

Từ khóa: phát âm, bỏ bớt âm cuối, thay thế âm, cụm phụ âm, âm cuối.

Ngày nhận bài: 22/8/2018; Ngày phản biện: 14/9/2018; Ngày duyệt đăng: 12/10/2018

*Tel: 0977 974933