Common Errors in Pronouncing Minimal Pairs Made by English-Majored Freshmen at Ba Ria – Vung Tau University, Vietnam

Abstract

In the current globalization era, English increasingly becomes the most desirable language to be mastered. The act of producing correct pronunciation is considered as the crucial aspect contributing to the communication competence in English since mispronunciation will certainly lead to misunderstanding in communication. However, in fact, there is a significant difference in the sound system of English and Vietnamese language, which makes many Vietnamese learners encounter problems of pronouncing some sounds in English, especially the minimal pairs. In order to achieve the aim of discovering pronunciation errors of minimal pairs in English, 58 freshmen of English department at Ba Ria-Vung Tau University participated in this investigation by completing the questionnaire and recording the pronunciation of seven common pairs of word containing minimal pairs including /tʃ/ - /dʒ/; /s/ - /ʃ/; /s/ - /z/; /b/ - /p/; - /dʒ/; /t/ - /θ/ and /z/ - /ð/. The result shows the students are unable to differentiate the sounds of those minimal pairs; and the primary causes for this problem are the learners' mother tongue interference, and their limited exposure of English language. In addition, some recommendations in the light of findings are presented in this paper.