DISCOVERING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION DIFFICULTIES AND STRATEGIES: A CASE AT TRA VINH UNIVERSITY

Thach Son Lei, Nguyen Thanh Trung

Abstract


Pronunciation can take a crucial role in communication because unintelligible pronunciation may cause the conversers to misunderstand. Therefore, obtaining a clear accent plays a vital role in understanding the speakers' intended meaning. With this importance, the current study attempted to investigate the learners’ perception of English pronunciation and explore the pronunciation difficulties facing Vietnamese EFL students. Then, it also attempted to discover learners’ ideas on how they would like pronunciation to be instructed. In order to have the data for the investigation, the study applied the quantitative method by using a 5-point Likert scale to measure the level of students’ agreement in these three mentioned domains of investigation. A group of 49 second-year EFL students was employed at the School of Foreign Languages, School of Southern Khmer Language - Culture - Arts and Humanity, Tra Vinh University. They are studying English as a foreign language, and their major is English education. The results revealed that students agreed that learning pronunciation is difficult and strongly agreed with the ideas exhibited in the questionnaire on how pronunciation should be instructed. These results are used as recommendations for learning English pronunciation, and limitations of the study were also included.

 

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Keywords


pronunciation difficulties, EFL students, intonation, communicative competence, strategies

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejfl.v8i2.5401

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