Job Discussion Forums

[huayhuash]

I've never been to Vietnam but have taught some Vietnamese students elsewhere. The students I`ve taught all have the same pronunciaton problems and the main, and most interesting one, has been the inability to pronounce the end of words when they end in a consonant. The students, when concentrating and saying a word individually , can form the sounds ok but in connected speech, all the endings disappear! I've taught students from many countries and only found this problem with Vietnamese students. Can anyone tell me why this is?? Or where I can find out??? Thank you so much

[RedRoof]

I located a brilliant reference (while doing my TESOL @ Uni of Qld) which had a chapter per language analysing the difficulties with grammar and pronunciation for ESL learners in each language. It explained the basis for the difficulties from the perspective of L1 and I seem to remember it offered some pointers for working with ESL students from each group.

I found it invaluable for my case study and write up on my student who was a Japanese / Brazilian - thus English was actually her third language - she 'd grown up apparently effortlessly (by her report) bi-lingual in Japanese and Brazilian Portugese.

She was undertaking research papers and a PhD in my original discipline (PE & Motor Skill acquisition) so it was actually very interesting to proof read her research papers.

I'll try tonight to unearth my backup cds or a hard copy of the assignment and post the author/ title/ pub details. for you.

byeeeee
Red Roof

[chek]

I've been teaching here in Nam for awhile and also am studying the language. The reason they pronounce each individual word correctly is because they are taking their time and listening to you say the word. The reason they do not pronounce them correctly in connected speech is that the Vietnamese language does not have endings to words. When you speak Vietnamese you do not pronounce the ending of each word, therefore it is hard for them to pronounce the hard endings of our words. This is the biggest problems with Vietnamese learners, but my students also have problems with the "th" and "s/sh" sound. There is no 'th' sound in Vietnamese language either, you pronounce words with a th in them as a hard t. Thoung is pronounced like Tung. Hope this helps.

[huayhuash]

Hello and thanks for the replies.

RedRoof I think I know the book you mean but as far as I remember, theres no chapter for vietnamese. I could be wrong.

What you say makes sense chek but do you mean that in Vietnamese you just dont pronounce the last sound of the word, or that there are no consonant endings for words?
Either way, very interesting but it all seems very difficult for the unfortunate Namese student

Thanks again

[chek]

there are consonant endings, but they just aren't pronounced as hard as they are in English. It's is hard to explain but if you speak with a native speaker you will notice. They pronounce their consonants much softer than us and it is difficult for them, listen to how often they leave the 's''s off the endings in words. They don't pronounce the final 's' in Vietnamese speech and have a very difficult time saying plural forms or other words with s. Hope this makes sense and helps, this is just what I've gathered. peace

[RedRoof]

Sorry I haven't got to finding that reference for you yet. I'm in the throes of downsizing and sellin a very large 5br house + pool and organising to move to a 2br unit in the next suburb (in Brisbane/ Oz - not Vietnam). As you might imagine, that's not a small task. But I'm still looking.

And it may indeed have no chapter on Vietnamese - as has been suggested. I didn't need info on V at that stage.

Luckily you have better responses from people in Vietnam with hands on and in-depth experience.

All the best

Red Roof

[Henry_Cowell]

Learner English, by Michael Swan and Bernard Smith

http://www.amazon.com/Learner-English-Interference-Cambridge-Handbooks/dp/0521779391/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-9761775-8405630?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173389204&sr=8-1

[englishgibson]

Red Roof, you've got quite some plan there.

[spycatcher reincarnated]

I wrote the below a long time ago and by the looks of it at least a lot of it has been cribbed from somewhere.

Pronunciation

When a native English speaker has his first conversation with a Vietnamese person one of the first problems with comprehension that he will have will be because of pronunciation problems that the Vietnamese learner has. He has massive first language interference (L1 interference).

Vietnamese has a Romanised script, which fools people in to thinking that it is similar in pronunciation to that of English. This is clearly not so as, most vowels, consonants, consonant clusters, diphthongs and triphthongs are pronounced very differently. Compounding this problem is the fact that Vietnamese is a phonetic language and Vietnamese often think that they can read an English word that they have never seen before and be able to pronounce it correctly. See below for some examples:

1. The closest Vietnamese equivalent to f is bilabial
2. Vietnamese learners tend to pronounce final stops p, t, k, unexploded in all contexts.
3. Initial t is unaspirated in Vietnamese, producing a sound that can be confused with an English d. However, there is also a strongly aspirated t, written Th in Vietnamese.

Many English consonant clusters aren�t found in Vietnamese, which gives rise to mistakes. The most usual is the omission of the s in the middle of a consonant cluster:
Abtrak for Abstract

Also the final s, when following a consonant, is frequently omitted too. These mistakes are very difficult to eliminate.

Word order

Vietnamese, being non-inflecting, relies on word order and function words to signal meaning. That is why word order is of the greatest importance. Also Vietnamese usually doesn't use the verb to be, for example:

Nguoi ngay nay literally person this old = This person is old.

Sach ay hay literally book that good = That book is good

With other verbs the normal Vietnamese word order is: subject + verb + object:

Toi doc sach literally I read book = I read books

Anh viet thu literally older brother write letter = You write letters

The passive voice

Use of the passive voice in Vietnamese in relatively rare and it can be difficult to persuade Vietnamese that they are necessary to use in English even though they aren�t very difficult to use properly.

Articles

The English definite and indefinite articles have no direct equivalent in Vietnamese:

Cai Nha literally classifier house = the house

Mot cai nha literally one classifier house = a house

Nha nay literally house this = this house


Hope the above is of help.

[Henry_Cowell]