Vietnamese College Students’ Pronunciation Of Three-Consonant Onset Clusters: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

The present research was conducted to investigate how Vietnamese college students pronounce English three-consonant onset clusters including /spl/, /spr/, /str/, /stj/, /skr/, /skw/, /skj/. These clusters are aspects of the English language that are governed by phonological rules, or more precisely, by syllabic structure. The aim of this paper is to provide the answer to the question whether Vietnamese learners of English are pronouncing those English clusters in an accurate manner and also to see if Vietnamese students commit any mistakes that are generally known to have been caused by the marked differences between Vietnamese and English syllable structures. To this end, 30 intermediate EFL learners were involved in a pronunciation test which was then recorded, followed by an interview session. The analysis of students’ speaking samples and their responses to the interview questions showed that some clusters were more problematic to the learners than others, thereby achieving lower levels of pronunciation accuracy. Vietnamese effort to pronounce English initial 3-consonant clusters is likely to be towards omitting, inserting schwa (or its variables) or substituting by sounds that are closer to those existing in their mother tongue. Inaccuracies when pronouncing these three-consonant clusters were most often caused by omission, rather than vowel insertion or modification.