English pronunciation

As for language learners, good pronunciation is quite desirable. This derives from the fact that
poor pronunciation skills can undermine learners’ self-confidence, restrict social interactions,
and negatively influence estimation of a speaker’s credibility and abilities. No wonder many
students want to be able to speak English well, with a pronunciation which can be easily
understood by both their fellow students and by English people. However, it may seem
confusing to talk of “good pronunciation” only without specifically pointing out how good the
learner’s pronunciation should aim to be.
Traditionally, most pronunciation teaching and learning tends to concentrate on individual
sounds, which although the most obvious, is not sufficient enough for good pronunciation.
Clearly, besides the sound system, other aspects of pronunciation such as linking, stress, and
especially intonation are equally important. Besides, it is essential to remember that a student
who can pronounce and recognize every English sound may still be unintelligible and unable to
understand the spoken English if he has not mastered English stress and intonation patterns,
important factors in the skill of communication. Pedagogically, as Kenworthy (1988) puts it in
the book titled “Teaching English pronunciation”, a good pronunciation should be the
mastery of individual sounds-segmental features, as well as stress, linking, and intonation-
suprasegmental ones. Among such suprasegmental features, intonation is considered what
makes a learner of English sound like native. In addition, Baker (1982) stresses that “in the
speech of advanced learners, departures from what we regard as desirable are said to be more
often matters of intonation than matters of how individual sounds are made”.
In spite of that, due to its inherent complexity and to the ensuring difficulty in learning and
mastering it, intonation was ignored for many years in language teaching. However, it is slowly
gaining recognition as an integral part of language fluency, competence, and proficiency.
Furthermore, at a time when the language learning task is geared to instant interpersonal
communication with efficiency and precision, the intonation phenomena could not have gone
unnoticed in the preparation of English teaching syllabus as well as the pronunciation practice
of all students of English.
Practically, most students of English at Danang University face big difficulties with intonation.
Undeniably, they also have problems with the pronunciation of some vowels, consonants,
stress, and linking. Nevertheless, intonation is one of the most concerning. In fact, it is often
complained that a majority of students tend to speak English flatly, i.e. their voices do not
either go up or down. Moreover, in my own observation of students of English at Danang
University, it can be argued that a great number of students are not aware of how to vary their
pitch properly. It is certain that applying intonation in speech is not an easy task for Vietnamese
learners of English.

Added to this, students at Danang University do not have many chances to practice
pronunciation in general and intonation in particular as the allocation time for pronunciation
courses is limited, only thirty periods in the first semester in the total of eight semesters. Due to
time limit, students hardly have good pronunciation as required, and pronunciation teachers are
unable to fully observe and recognize the learners’ progress as well as diagnose their problems.
It seems that most of the teachers are aware of students’ intonation deficiency but it is not
easy to get answer to the question: “What exactly is wrong and why?”
In Vietnamese, tone is mainly assigned to a word to distinguish its lexical meaning. It is
considered to be the height of the pitch and change of the pitch which is associated with the
pronunciation of syllables of words and which affects the meaning of the word. For example, in
Vietnamese ga means railway station, but gà means chicken.
In contrast, tones in English are not distinctive. This means that a change of tone will not result
in a change of lexical meaning. Tones in English do not change the meaning of the word with
which they are associated but change the meaning of the utterance as a whole. For example,
“John is going” is said as a statement with a falling tone but as a question with a rising tone.