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Archibald, M. Aronoff and J. Gardner and B. Gardner, B. Others may stumble but not you On hiccough, thorough, lough and through. Well done! And now you wish, perhaps, To learn of less familiar traps? Beware of heard, a dreadful word, That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
Watch out for meat and great and threat They rhyme with suite and straight and debt. You see the sign and you decide to ask what kind of new thing this is. When you hear the pronunciation, you recognize the word usually written as chef. How did he arrive at that other spelling?
Take the first sound of the word sure, the middle sound of the word dead, and the final sound of the word laugh. If we cannot use the letters of the alphabet in a consistent way to represent the sounds we make, how do we go about describing the sounds of a language like English?
One solution is to produce a separate alphabet with symbols that represent sounds. Such a set of symbols does exist and is called the phonetic alphabet. In this chapter, we will look at how these symbols are used to represent both the consonant and vowel sounds of English words and what physical aspects of the human vocal tract are involved in the produc- tion of those sounds.
Phonetics The general study of the characteristics of speech sounds is called phonetics. Our main interest will be in articulatory phonetics, which is the study of how speech sounds are made, or articulated. Other areas of study are acoustic phonetics, which deals with the physical properties of speech as sound waves in the air, and auditory phonetics or perceptual phonetics which deals with the perception, via the ear, of speech sounds.
Voiced and voiceless sounds In articulatory phonetics, we investigate how speech sounds are produced using the fairly complex oral equipment we have.
We start with the air pushed out by the lungs up through the trachea or windpipe to the larynx. Inside the larynx are your vocal folds or vocal cords , which take two basic positions. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiceless. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiced. Because these are voiced sounds, you should be able to feel some vibration. Because these are voiceless sounds, there should be no vibration. Z-Z-Z-Z to hear and feel some vibration, whereas no vibration will be heard or felt if you make voiceless sounds e.
S-S-S-S in the same way. Most consonant sounds are produced by using the tongue and other parts of the mouth to constrict, in some way, the shape of the oral cavity through which the air is passing.
The terms used to describe many sounds are those which denote the place of articulation of the sound: that is, the location inside the mouth at which the constriction takes place. What we need is a slice of head. If you crack a head right down the middle, you will be able to see which parts of the oral cavity are crucially involved in speech production.
To describe the place of articulation of most consonant sounds, we can start at the front of the mouth and work back. We can also keep the voiced—voiceless distinction in mind and begin using the symbols of the phonetic alphabet for specific sounds.
These symbols will be enclosed within square brackets [ ]. The initial sounds in the words pat, bat and mat are all bilabials. They are represented by the symbols [p], which is voiceless, and [b] and [m], which are voiced.
We can also describe the [w] sound found at the beginning of way, walk and world as a bilabial. Labiodentals These are sounds formed with the upper teeth and the lower lip.
The initial sounds of the words fat and vat and the final sounds in the words safe and save are labiodentals. They are represented by the symbols [f], which is voiceless, and [v], which is voiced.
Notice that the final sound in the word cough, and the initial sound in photo, despite the spelling differences, are both pronounced as [f]. Dentals These sounds are formed with the tongue tip behind the upper front teeth.
The initial sound of thin and the final sound of bath are both voiceless dentals. It is also the middle consonant sound in feather and the final sound of bathe. Alveolars These are sounds formed with the front part of the tongue on the alveolar ridge, which is the rough, bony ridge immediately behind and above the upper teeth.
The initial sounds in top, dip, sit, zoo and nut are all alveolars. The symbols for these sounds are easy to remember — [t], [d], [s], [z], [n]. Of these, [t] and [s] are voiceless whereas [d], [z] and [n] are voiced.
It may be clear that the final sounds of the words bus and buzz have to be [s] and [z] respectively, but what about the final sound of the word raise? Notice also that despite the different spelling of knot and not, both of these words are pronounced with [n] as the initial sound.
Other alveolars are the [l] sound found at the beginning of words such as lap and lit, and the [r] sound at the beginning of right and write. Palatals If you feel back behind the alveolar ridge, you should find a hard part in the roof of your mouth.
This is called the hard palate or just the palate. Sounds produced with the tongue and the palate are called palatals or alveo-palatals. Examples of palatals are the initial sounds in the words shout and child, which are both voiceless. One other voiced palatal is the [j] sound used at the beginning of words like you and yet. Velars Even further back in the roof of the mouth, beyond the hard palate, you will find a soft area, which is called the soft palate, or the velum.
Sounds produced with the back of the tongue against the velum are called velars. There is a voiceless velar sound, represented by the symbol [k], which occurs not only in kid and kill, but is also the initial sound in car and cold. Despite the variety in spelling, this [k] sound is both the initial and final sound in the words cook, kick and coke. This is also the final sound in words like bag, mug and, despite the spelling, plague. It occurs twice in the form ringing.
It is the sound [h] which occurs at the beginning of have and house and, for most speakers, as the first sound in who and whose. This sound is usually described as a voiceless glottal. When the glottis is open, as in the production of other voiceless sounds, and there is no manipu- lation of the air passing out of the mouth, the sound produced is that represented by [h].
Charting consonant sounds Having described in some detail the place of articulation of English consonant sounds, we can summarize the basic information in the accompanying chart. Also included in this chart, on the left-hand side, is a set of terms used to describe manner of articulation which we will discuss in the following section. It contains the majority of consonant sounds used in the basic description of English pronunciation. There are, however, several differences between this basic set of symbols and the much more comprehensive chart produced by the International Phonetic Association IPA.
The most obvious difference is in the range of sounds covered. We would go to an IPA chart for a description of the sounds of all languages. Uvular sounds also occur in many native languages of North and South America.
Other non- English sounds such as pharyngeals produced in the pharynx occur in languages such as Arabic. There are many other consonant sounds in the languages of the world. There can be a lot of variation among speakers in the pronunciation of the initial sound in raw and red, the medial sound in very, and the final sound in hour and air. Different symbols e. Finally, in some phonetic descriptions, there are different symbols for a few of the sounds represented here.
For a fuller discussion of the use of these symbols, see Ladefoged Manner of articulation So far, we have concentrated on describing consonant sounds in terms of where they are articulated. We can also describe the same sounds in terms of how they are articulated.
Such a description is necessary if we want to be able to differentiate between some sounds which, in the preceding discussion, we have placed in the same category. For example, we can say that [t] and [s] are both voiceless alveolar sounds.
How do they differ? They differ in their manner of articulation, that is, in the way they are pronounced. The [t] sound is one of a set of sounds called stops and the [s] sound is one of a set called fricatives. A full description of the [t] sound at the beginning of a word like ten is as a voiceless alveolar stop.
In some discussions, only the manner of articulation is mentioned, as when it is said that the word bed, for example, begins and ends with voiced stops. As the air is pushed through, a type of friction is produced and the resulting sounds are called fricatives. If you put your open hand in front of your mouth when making these sounds, [f] and [s] in particular, you should be able to feel the stream of air being pushed out. The sound [h], as in Hi or Hello, is voiceless and also usually included in the set of fricatives.
These are called affricates and occur at the beginning of the words cheap and jeep. Nasals Most sounds are produced orally, with the velum raised, preventing airflow from entering the nasal cavity. These three sounds are all voiced. The words morning, knitting and name begin and end with nasals. Liquids The initial sounds in led and red are described as liquids. They are both voiced.
The [l] sound is called a lateral liquid and is formed by letting the air stream flow around the sides of the tongue as the tip of the tongue makes contact with the middle of the alveolar ridge.
The [r] sound at the beginning of red is formed with the tongue tip raised and curled back near the alveolar ridge. Glides The sounds [w] and [j] are described as glides. They are both voiced and occur at the beginning of we, wet, you and yes.
Try saying the expression Oh oh!. Between the first Oh and the second oh, we typically produce a glottal stop. This sound is considered to be characteristic of Cockney London speech. This sound is produced by the tongue tip tapping the alveolar ridge briefly.
Nor do writer and rider, metal and medal. They all have flaps. The student who was told about the importance of Plato in class and wrote it in his notes as play- dough was clearly a victim of a misinterpreted flap. This rather lengthy list of the phonetic features of English consonant sounds is not presented as a challenge to your ability to memorize a lot of terminology and symbols. It is presented as an illustration of how a thorough description of the physical aspects of speech production will allow us to characterize the sounds of spoken English, inde- pendently of the vagaries of spelling found in written English.
There are, however, some sounds that we have not yet investigated. These are the types of sounds known as vowels and diphthongs.
Vowels While the consonant sounds are mostly articulated via closure or obstruction in the vocal tract, vowel sounds are produced with a relatively free flow of air.
They are all typically voiced. To describe vowel sounds, we consider the way in which the tongue influences the shape through which the airflow must pass. For the first two, your mouth will stay fairly closed, but for the last two, your tongue will move lower and cause your mouth to open wider. The sounds of relaxation and pleasure typically contain lower vowels. The terminology for describing vowel sounds in English e.
Following the chart is a list of the major vowels with examples of familiar words illustrating some of the variation in spelling that is possible for each sound. The movement in this diphthong is from low towards high front. While the vowels [e], [a] and [o] are used as single sounds in other languages, and in some other varieties of English, they are only typically used as the first sounds of diphthongs in American English.
The accompanying diagram provides a rough idea of how diphthongs are produced and is followed by a list of the sounds, with examples to illustrate some of the variation in the spelling of these sounds.
Also, some of the sound distinc- tions shown here may not even be used regularly in your own speech. In fact, in casual speech, we all use schwa more than any other single sound. There are many other variations in the actual physical articulation of the sounds we have considered here. The more we focus on the subtle differences in the actual articulation of each sound, the more likely we are to find ourselves describing the pronunciation of small groups or even individual speakers.
Such subtle differences enable us to identify individual voices and recognize people we know as soon as they speak. We are clearly able to disregard all the subtle individual variation in the phonetic detail of voices and recognize each underlying sound type as part of a word with a particular meaning.
To make sense of how we do that, we need to look at the more general sound patterns, or the phonology, of a language. The sounds of language 37 Study questions 1 What is the difference between acoustic phonetics and articulatory phonetics? Keeping this in mind, try to provide a basic phonetic representation of the following words. Some words will be in more than one list. So we say that [k] is a voiceless velar fricative. Write similar definitions for the initial sounds in the normal pronunciation of the following words.
Among the types of consonants already described affricates, fricatives, glides, liquids, nasals, stops , which are obstruents, which are sonorants, and why? E i How would you make a retroflex sound? F What is forensic phonetics? In front of a mirror or enlist a cooperative friend to be the speaker , say the following pairs of words.
What clues are you using to help you make your decision? II English has a number of expressions such as chit-chat and flip-flop which never seem to occur in the reverse order i. Perhaps you can add examples to the following list of similar expressions. Further reading Basic treatments Ladefoged, P. Roach, J. Hartman and J. Live inne contri nire foresta. No mugheggia. Uanna dei pappa, mamma, e beibi go bice, orie e furghetta locche di dorra.
Bai ene bai commese Goldilocchese. Sci garra natingha tu du batte meiche troble. Sci puscia olle fudde daon di maute; no live cromma. Den sci gos appesterrese enne slipse in olle beddse. Bob Belviso, quoted in Espy In the preceding chapter, we investigated the physical production of speech sounds in terms of the articulatory mechanisms of the human vocal tract.
That investigation was possible because of some rather amazing facts about the nature of language. Yet those two physically different individuals would inevitably have physically different vocal tracts, in terms of size and shape. In a sense, every individual has a physically different vocal tract. Consequently, in purely physical terms, every individual will pronounce sounds differently.
There are, then, potentially millions of physically different ways of saying the simple word me. Obvious differences occur when that individual is shouting, is suffering from a bad cold or is asking for a sixth martini.
Given this vast range of potential differences in the actual physical production of a speech sound, how do we manage consistently to recognize all those versions of me as the form [mi], and not [ni] or [si] or [ma] or [mo] or something else entirely? The answer to that question is provided to a large extent by the study of phonology.
Phonology Phonology is essentially the description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds in a language. It is, in effect, based on a theory of what every speaker of a language unconsciously knows about the sound patterns of that language. Because of this theoretical status, phonology is concerned with the abstract or mental aspect of the sounds in language rather than with the actual physical articulation of speech sounds.
See the end of the chapter for a translation. Phonology is about the underlying design, the blueprint of each sound type, which serves as the constant basis of all the variations in different physical articulations of that sound type in different contexts. In actual speech, these [t] sounds are all very different. However, all these articulation differences in [t] sounds are less important to us than the distinction between the [t] sounds in general and the [k] sounds, or the [f] sounds, or the [b] sounds, because there are meaningful consequences related to the use of one rather than the others.
These sounds must be distinct meaningful sounds, regardless of which individual vocal tract is being used to pronounce them, because they are what make the words tar, car, far and bar meaningfully distinct. Considered from this point of view, we can see that phonology is concerned with the abstract set of sounds in a language that allows us to distinguish meaning in the actual physical sounds we say and hear.
Phonemes Each one of these meaning-distinguishing sounds in a language is described as a phoneme. When we learn to use alphabetic writing, we are actually using the concept of the phoneme as the single stable sound type which is represented by a single written symbol. An essential property of a phoneme is that it functions contrastively. This contrastive property is the basic operational test for determining the phonemes that exist in a language.
If we substitute one sound for another in a word and there is a change of meaning, then the two sounds represent different phonemes.
The basic phonemes of English are listed with the consonant, vowel and diphthong diagrams in Chapter 3. Because these two sounds share some features i. The prediction would be that sounds which have features in common would behave phonologically in some similar ways. A sound which does not share those features would be expected to behave differently. If so, then we will be on our way to producing a phonological account of permissible sound sequences in the language.
We can describe those different versions as phones. Phones are phonetic units and appear in square brackets. For example, the [t] sound in the word tar is normally pronounced with a stronger puff of air than is present in the [t] sound in the word star.
If you put the back of your hand in front of your mouth as you say tar, then star, you should be able to feel some physical evidence of aspiration the puff of air accompanying the [t] sound at the beginning of tar but not in star. In the last chapter, we noted that the [t] sound between vowels in a word like writer often becomes a flap, which we can represent as [D].
The crucial distinction between phonemes and allophones is that substituting one phoneme for another will result in a word with a different meaning as well as a different pronunciation , but substituting allophones only results in a different and perhaps unusual pronunciation of the same word.
In the second word, the effect of the nasal consonant [n] makes the [i] sound nasalized. It is possible, of course, for two languages to have the same pair of phonetic seg- ments, but to treat them differently.
In English, the effect of nasalization on a vowel is treated as allophonic variation because the nasalized version is not meaningfully contrastive. Clearly, in these cases, the distinction is phonemic. Minimal pairs and sets Phonemic distinctions in a language can be tested via pairs and sets of words.
When two words such as pat and bat are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme, occurring in the same position, the two words are described as a minimal pair.
More accurately, they would be classified as a minimal pair in the phonology of English. Other examples of English minimal pairs are fan—van, bet—bat, site—side. Such pairs have traditionally been used in the teaching and testing of English as a second or foreign language to help students develop the ability to understand the contrast in meaning based on the minimal sound contrast.
When a group of words can be differentiated, each one from the others, by changing one phoneme always in the same position in the word , then we have a minimal set. The sound patterns of language 45 For example, one minimal set based on the vowel phonemes of English could include feat, fit, fat, fate, fought, foot, and another minimal set based on consonant phonemes could have big, pig, rig, fig, dig, wig.
Phonotactics This type of exercise involving minimal sets also allows us to see that there are definite patterns in the types of sound combinations permitted in a language. In English, the minimal set we have just listed does not include forms such as lig or vig. According to the dictionary, these are not English words, but they could be viewed as possible English words. That is, our phonological knowledge of the pattern of sounds in English words would allow us to treat these forms as acceptable if, at some future time, they came into use.
They might, for example, begin as invented abbreviations I think Bubba is one very ignorant guy. They have been formed without obeying some constraints on the sequence or position of English phonemes. Such constraints are called the phono- tactics i. Because these constraints operate on a unit that is larger than the single segment or phoneme, we have to move on to a consideration of the basic structure of that larger phonological unit called the syllable.
Syllables A syllable must contain a vowel or vowel-like sound, including diphthongs. The most common type of syllable in language also has a consonant C before the vowel V and is typically represented as CV.
Technically, the basic elements of the syllable are the onset one or more consonants followed by the rhyme. The rhyme sometimes syllable onset rhyme nucleus coda consonant s vowel consonant s Figure 4. Syllables like me, to or no have an onset and a nucleus, but no coda. They are known as open syllables. When a coda is present, as in the syllables up, cup, at or hat, they are called closed syllables.
Consonant clusters Both the onset and the coda can consist of more than one consonant, also known as a consonant cluster. There are many CC onset combinations permitted in English phonotactics, as in black, bread, trick, twin, flat and throw. English can actually have larger onset clusters, as in the words stress and splat, consisting of three initial consonants CCC. The phonotactics of these larger onset consonant clusters is not too difficult to describe.
You can check if this description is adequate for the combinations in splash, spring, strong, scream and square. Does the description also cover the second syllable in the pronunciation of exclaim? Remember that it is the onset of the syllable that is being described, not the beginning of the word.
It is quite unusual for languages to have consonant clusters of this type. Indeed, the syllable structure of many languages e. Japanese is predominantly CV. It is also noticeable in English that large consonant clusters may be reduced in casual conversa- tional speech, particularly if they occur in the middle of a word. This is just one example of a process that is usually discussed in terms of coarticulation effects. Coarticulation effects In much of the preceding discussion, we have been describing speech sounds in syllables and words as if they are always pronounced carefully and deliberately, almost in slow motion.
Mostly our talk is fast and spontaneous, and it requires our articulators to move from one sound to the next without stopping.
The process of making one sound almost at the same time as the next sound is called coarticulation. There are two well-known coarticulation effects, described as assimilation and elision. Vowels are also subject to assimilation. In many words spoken carefully, the vowel receives stress, but in the course of ordinary everyday talk, that vowel may no longer receive any stress and naturally reduce to schwa.
Elision In the last example, illustrating the normal pronunciation of you and me, the [d] sound of the word and was not included in the transcription. This process of not pro- nouncing a sound segment that might be present in the deliberately careful pronunci- ation of a word in isolation is described as elision.
In fact, consistently avoiding the regular patterns of assimilation and elision used in a lan- guage would result in extremely artificial-sounding talk. The point of investigating these phonological processes is not to arrive at a set of rules about how a language should be pronounced, but to try to come to an understanding of the regularities and patterns which underlie the actual use of sounds in language.
The sound patterns of language 49 Study questions 1 What is the difference between a phoneme and an allophone? B In the phonology of Hawaiian there are only open syllables. Also, based on this slender evidence, which two English consonants are probably not phonemes in Hawaiian? C The word central has a consonant cluster -ntr- in the middle and two syllables. D Individual sounds are described as segments. What are suprasegmentals?
E The English words lesson and little are typically pronounced with syllabic consonants. F A general distinction can be made among languages depending on their basic rhythm, whether they have syllable-timing or stress-timing. How are these two types of rhythm distinguished and which type characterizes the pronunciation of English, French and Spanish?
How would you describe the special phonological processes involved in the pronunciation of the negative versions of the following words?
II The use of plural -s in English has three different, but very regular, phonological alternatives. For background reading, see chapter 2 pages 55—56 of Jeffries, Bob Belviso translated One attempt to interpret those very unusual spellings might be as follows: Once upon a time was three bears; mama bear, papa bear, and baby bear. Live in the country near the forest. No mortgage. One day papa, mama, and baby go beach, only they forget to lock the door. By and by comes Goldilocks.
She got nothing to do but make trouble. She push all the food down the mouth; no leave a crumb. Then she goes upstairs and sleeps in all the beds.
Further reading Basic treatments Davenport, M. Murray Spangler invented a device which he called an electric suction sweeper.
This device eventually became very popular and could have been known as a spangler. People could have been spanglering their floors or they might even have spanglered their rugs and curtains. The use could have extended to a type of person who droned on and on and really sucked , described as spanglerish, or to a whole style of behavior called spanglerism.
However, none of that happened. Word formation 53 Instead, Mr. Spangler sold his new invention to a local businessman called William H. The point of this small tale is that, although we had never heard of Mr. Spangler before, we really had no difficulty coping with the new words: spangler, spanglerish, spanglerism, spanglering or spanglered.
That is, we can very quickly understand a new word in our language a neologism and accept the use of different forms of that new word. This ability must derive in part from the fact that there is a lot of regularity in the word-formation processes in a language. In this chapter, we will explore some of the basic processes by which new words are created. When we look closely at the etymol- ogies of less technical words, we soon discover that there are many different ways in which new words can enter the language.
We should keep in mind that these processes have been at work in the language for some time and a lot of words in daily use today were, at one time, considered barbaric misuses of the language. Yet many new words can cause similar outcries as they come into use today. Rather than act as if the language is being debased, we might prefer to view the constant evolution of new words and new uses of old words as a reassuring sign of vitality and creativeness in the way a language is shaped by the needs of its users.
Coinage One of the least common processes of word formation in English is coinage, that is, the invention of totally new terms. The most typical sources are invented trade names for commercial products that become general terms usually without capital letters for any version of that product.
It may be that there is an obscure technical origin e. The most salient contemporary example of coinage is the word google. New words based on the name of a person or a place are called eponyms. When we talked about a hoover or even a spangler , we were using an eponym. Other common eponyms are sandwich from the eighteenth-century Earl of Sandwich who first insisted on having his bread and meat together while gambling and jeans from the Italian city of Genoa where the type of cloth was first made.
Some eponyms are technical terms, based on the names of those who first discovered or invented things, such as fahrenheit from the German, Gabriel Fahrenheit , volt from the Italian, Alessandro Volta and watt from the Scottish inventor, James Watt. Borrowing As Bill Bryson observed in the quotation presented earlier, one of the most common sources of new words in English is the process simply labeled borrowing, that is, the taking over of words from other languages.
Throughout its history, the English language has adopted a vast number of words from other languages, including croissant French , dope Dutch , lilac Persian , piano Italian , pretzel German , sofa Arabic , tattoo Tahitian , tycoon Japanese , yogurt Turkish and zebra Bantu.
In some cases, the borrowed words may be used with quite different meanings, as in the contemporary German use of the English words partner and look in the phrase im Partnerlook to describe two people who are together and are wearing similar clothing. There is no equivalent use of this expression in English. The English expression moment of truth is believed to be a calque from the Spanish phrase el momento de la verdad, though not restricted to the original use as the final thrust of the sword to end a bullfight.
Compounding In some of the examples we have just considered, there is a joining of two separate words to produce a single form. Thus, Lehn and Wort are combined to produce Lehnwort in German. This combining process, technically known as compounding, is very common in languages such as German and English, but much less common in languages such as French and Spanish.
Common English compounds are bookcase, doorknob, fingerprint, sunburn, textbook, wallpaper, wastebasket and waterbed. All these examples are nouns, but we can also create compound adjectives good-looking, low-paid and compounds of adjective fast plus noun food as in a fast-food restau- rant or a full-time job. Blending The combination of two separate forms to produce a single new term is also present in the process called blending.
However, blending is typically accomplished by taking only the beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the other word. There is also the word fax, but that is not a blend. Clipping The element of reduction that is noticeable in blending is even more apparent in the process described as clipping. This occurs when a word of more than one syllable facsimile is reduced to a shorter form fax , usually beginning in casual speech.
The term gasoline is still used, but most people talk about gas, using the clipped form. Other common examples are ad advertisement , bra brassiere , cab cabriolet , condo condominium , fan fanatic , flu influenza , perm permanent wave , phone, plane and pub public house. There must be something about educational environments that encourages clipping because so many words get reduced, as in chem, exam, gym, lab, math, phys-ed, poly- sci, prof and typo.
A particular type of reduction, favored in Australian and British English, produces forms technically known as hypocorisms. In this process, a longer word is reduced to a single syllable, then -y or -ie is added to the end. You can probably guess what Chrissy pressies are. Ting , describes that language learning strategies from a specific aspect as a learning strategies are possible behavioral thus observable, or mental then not observable.
Methodology This paper aims to determine the problems and the practice of learning and teaching English as a foreign language in the Faculty of Education, the National University of Laos. However, the main objective of this study seeks to identify the factors that cause low English language proficiency among student-teachers who have registered in Continuing Summer Program for Bachelor of Teacher Education in English. There were 30 student-teachers who have enrolled in a Continuing Summer Program for Bachelor of Teacher Education in English, in the academic year , were entered into this study.
The respondents were selected from two classes through the purposive sampling research method; each classroom was equally divided into 15 male and 15 female of English student-teachers. All participants were the second year students.
All selected participants were asked to answer this question with individual aspects. Each person was required to give ten items which needed to write down in the blank A4 paper provided. After that all answers were returned back, the researcher identified and developed into categories for www. The data analysis was used Microsoft Excel for calculating in order to find percentage of each category that causes Lao students weak in English language learning factors.
Table 1 below presents the factors that cause Lao students weak in English language learning. However, these cases cannot be generalized to all Lao students, but it does represent a majority of the learners; particularly, for student-teachers who have enrolled in Continuing Summer Program for Bachelor of Teacher Education in English in the academic year According to Normazidah et al.
Table 1. Family background influenced on using their English language as everyday life communication. Lack of English background knowledge. The English teachers are not well trained, for example using Lao language when teaching, so they cannot perform well and influenced the interest of the students. Old methods in teaching made the learning process dull and not interesting, so students feel bored and lack of interest. The education system itself does not encourage the students which means the resources such as textbooks, 10 Students not interested to read English books.
Students who came from rural areas less expose in using the English language. Students are very poor in grammar usages. English language is difficult to learn. Time is not enough for a tutorial. Students themselves are not interested in study English. Students do not practice to speak English with English native speakers. The classroom is crowded, the environment is not 12 The constraint of financial resources supporting.
After analyzing the data through Microsoft Excel Program, the researcher can find the highlights that put forward valuable pedagogical implications in the learning and teaching of English language in Laos, especially in the FOE at NUOL. The majority of students stated that the English teachers are not well trained, for example using Lao language when teaching, so they cannot perform well and influenced the interest of the students.
The majority of students' lack of English background knowledge; for example, the English curriculum is provided when they learn in the first year of low secondary school. The majority of students lack of confidence to use the language because of afraid and feeling shame if they make mistakes; Lao curriculum is not suitable for Lao students to help them improve English; English language is difficult to learn.
Students do not practice to speak English with English native speakers; classroom is crowded as well as the environment is not suitable. Therefore, the findings of this study clearly indicate that Lao students still have lack of many key factors to support them such as motivational encouragement, learning strategy and other related variables. In addition, this result also is highly important for language educations and policy makers to carefully inspect how language learning is theorized in Lao educational context and make necessary changes in order to both correspond to current the real life situations and advocate the best English language learning among Lao learners, particularly for higher education learners.
Recommendation Given in English language learning factors that affect EFL learners can influence for language stakeholders try to find the ways to solve the problems. It is important that language www. Based on the results of this study, the following recommendations can be made in order to improve and facilitate the learners and teachers: 1.
Students should be motivated to acquire a confidence whenever they make mistakes in language classrooms 2. Parents should try to encourage their children to actively involved in learning the English language at home and schools. English teachers should equip well-training courses at the Faculty of Education, National University of Laos and abroad.
Students should be encouraged to practice English language with native speakers in both inside and outside classrooms. Acknowledgements The researchers would like to take this opportunity to extend our gratitude to Vannasouk Baousangthong to help us collecting data and Sangsavanh Souriyavongsa uses her valuable time to write down Lao language and saves as a PDF file send to me.
Moreover, the researchers have great thanks to all respondents who have been taking a Continuing Summer Program for Bachelor of Teacher Education in English to answer the questions. References Abbasi, M. Negative influence of large scale assessment on language learning strategies of the Secondary School Certificate SSC students.
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2 2 , Motivation for Achievement: Possibilities for Teaching and Learning. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Braine, G. Cao, T. The challenges of learning English in Australia towards students coming from selected Southeast Asian countries: Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. International Education Studies, 4 1 , Carlo, M.
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Chang, Y. English worldwide. Cambridge University Press. Dembo, M.
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