This paper attempts to investigate the main difficulties and errors of a group of 20 ethnic students encounter when pronouncing English consonant sounds. The students in the case study come from remote areas of Thai Nguyen province in the North of Vietnam. During the time at their school, practicing English in class is rarely used. | Nguyễn Thị Thu Hoài Tạp chí KHOA HỌC & CÔNG NGHỆ 103(03): 91 - 96 PRONUNCIATION PROBLEMS - A CASE STUDY OF ETHNIC STUDENTS ANALYSING ERRORS OF PRONUNCIATION IN SPEAKING ENGLISH Nguyễn Thị Thu Hoài* Faculty of Foreign Languages – TNU SUMMARY This paper attempts to investigate the main difficulties and errors of a group of 20 ethnic students encounter when pronouncing English consonant sounds. The students in the case study come from remote areas of Thai Nguyen province in the North of Vietnam. During the time at their school, practicing English in class is rarely used. They have never had chances to speak to foreigners. As a result, they do not have any kind of exposure to a native English environment. The paper has analysed and synthesised the data and found that the ethnic speakers in this case had some particular errors such as omission of final consonant and consonant clusters sounds, as well as difficuties in pronouncing /θ/, and /s/ and /ʃ / and word stress problems. Finally, the paper suggests appropriate solutions for the kind of errors in order to help leaners inhance English pronunciation. Keywords: Errors of pronunciation, consonant sounds, clusters sounds, word stress Learner Background* All students were born in 1992 and grew up in ethnic families (Tay) in the North of Vietnam. Their parents are farmers in remote area in Thai Nguyen province. After graduating upper secondary school, like many other students, they took the entrance university examination and entered IT University. They have learnt English since they were at lower secondary school (from grade 6 to grade 12). At that time, grammatical method was considered as popular in teaching foreign language in Vietnam. The structure of language is, therefore, more concentrated. Teachers only pay attention to introduce grammar rules and give students grammar exercises in class. Although students know well the rules as well as do grammar exercises, they have a lot of difficulties in other skills .
