Vietnamese Learners Of English Research Articles

Word-Final /s/-/z/ Omission in Vietnamese English

Southeast Asian learners of English, including those from Vietnam, frequently omit word-final consonants in their English speech. Previous work on Vietnamese learners of English is limited, and errors are typically usually attributed to first-language transfer effects. No large-scale empirical study on Vietnamese learners has been carried out to aid the development of an evidence-based pedagogy. This study uses authentic spoken data to compare lexical and morphological word-final /s/ and /z/ in the speech of sixteen Vietnamese adult learners of English. We discuss the relative impact of frequency of use, whether the instance of a target /s/ or /z/ is in a root or bound morpheme, and whether the preceding phoneme is a consonant or vowel. An overall omission rate of 28.4% of expected instances was found. Morphological {-s} when it is preceded by a consonant has the highest error rate (50.7%). A multilevel binary logistic regression was performed to ascertain the relative effects. Morphological words containing /s/ or /z/ were significantly more likely to be pronounced with the /s/ or /z/ absent than lexical words containing a /s/ or /z/, as were those in clusters compared to those with a preceding vowel. The results indicate that phonological effects and morphological effects are stacked and not multiplicative and that the observed omission rates are not solely attributable to L1 transfer effects. Frequency of use is also highly correlated with accuracy.

Common Pronunciation Errors among Vietnamese Learners of English from Phonological Perspectives

This study investigates the phonological challenges encountered by Vietnamese learners of English and explores the strategies employed to address these challenges. A mixed-methods approach was employed, comprising a quantitative survey administered to 152 participants and semi-structured interviews conducted with a subset of 7 participants. Quantitative analysis of survey data revealed perceived difficulty levels for various phonological aspects of English pronunciation, with reconciling spelling and pronunciation emerging as the most challenging aspect. Qualitative interviews provided deeper insights into learners' experiences, highlighting additional phonological challenges such as distinguishing between vowel sounds and mastering intonation patterns. Participants reported employing a range of strategies, including regular practice, utilization of resources, and participation in interactive learning experiences, to address pronunciation difficulties. The implications of this research are twofold. Firstly, it contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the complexities surrounding English pronunciation learning among Vietnamese learners. Secondly, the identified strategies offer valuable insights for language teaching and support. Educators can tailor their teaching approaches to address the specific phonological challenges highlighted in this study, fostering more effective English pronunciation acquisition among Vietnamese learners. Additionally, the findings underscore the importance of providing diverse learning resources and opportunities for interactive practice to enhance pronunciation skills. These implications not only enrich our understanding of language acquisition processes but also have practical implications for educators, curriculum developers, and language learners alike.

Using English Discourse Markers to Enhance Speaking Skills: A Case Study at Van Lang University

Vietnamese learners of English have paid little attention to English discourse markers (DMs) although DMs play a significant role in the speech of native English speakers. Furthermore, few studies of DMs used by Vietnamese learners have been carried out. This research aims at identifying the participants’ perceptions of making use of DMs in conversational English and the ways they apply DMs in English conversations as the initial stage to prepare them for a plan of action that could fill the research gap. By means of audio recordings and questionnaires conducted in an English major class of 30 first-year students at Van Lang University (VLU), this research discovers that most of the participants acknowledge the vital roles of DMs in conversational English, such as facilitating general communication and indicating the speaker’s attitude. The research also finds that a plurality of the students is very limited in their use of DMs when making conversations. Therefore, as a recommendation, speaking courses should include DMs instructions. These results make a contribution to more studies on how to instruct DMs in conversational English so that the English-speaking skills of the students at VLU could be enhanced.

Learners’ Engagement in L2 Computer‐Mediated Interaction: Chat Mode, Interlocutor Familiarity, and Text Quality

AbstractThis study investigated the impact of synchronous computer‐mediated communication (SCMC) mode and familiarity with partners on learner engagement in second‐language task‐based interaction, and whether learner engagement is linked to subsequent joint‐written‐text quality. Ninety‐eight Vietnamese learners of English were assigned into (±) familiar groups and performed a picture‐sequencing tasks in 2 SCMC modes (i.e., video and text chat). Scores of 3 types of learner engagement (cognitive, social, and emotional) were compared across the conditions. Results showed that scores of all engagement types in the video chat were significantly higher than in the text chat. Familiar dyads also showed higher engagement than unfamiliar peers during the interaction. Learners reported different reasons for their preferences of video chat over text chat. Language‐related episodes, semantically engaged talk, and mutual help as measures of learner engagement were predictive of the subsequent text quality. The results contribute to the general understanding of the characteristics of video and text chat and their impact on learner engagement and text quality.

Exploring fluctuations in the relationship between learners’ positive emotional engagement and their interactional behaviours

This study investigated the nature of learners’ positive emotional engagement during a task-based interaction and its relationship with their interactional behaviours. Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL; n = 74) performed a communicative task in dyads in 15 minutes. Their positive emotional engagement was gauged using an Experience Sampling Method via a questionnaire that the participants completed after every five-minute interval of the interaction, capturing three timepoints of learners’ emotional engagement. Learners’ cognitive and social interactional behaviours were examined in light of the amount of second language production (words and turns), language-related episodes (LREs), and the degree of collaboration. Results showed that learners’ positive emotional engagement fluctuated over the course of a 15-minute interaction. Also, learners’ levels of positive emotional engagement were positively correlated with the amount of second language production and the degree of collaboration, but these relationships varied across the three intervals. No relationship was observed between learners’ emotional engagement and LREs. The results indicate that although learners’ positive emotional engagement may not be linked with their attention to form, relationships exist between learners’ positive emotional engagement and their language production, as well as their social relationships. These relationships can be, however, subject to change over the course of a short interaction.

A Study on Communication Breakdowns between Native and Non-native Speakers in English Speaking Classes

English majored students have a positive influence on intercultural awareness in learning a foreign language. In their classes, they are often asked to discuss some academic matters in British cultural beliefs. Although they have a high level of proficiency in English communication, there often encountered misunderstandings between them when they interpret things or present academic matters. As a result, students cannot achieve plurilingual and pluricultural competence in the course. This paper was conducted to investigate communication problems between Vietnamese learners of English and Native teachers at HUFI. The data were collected from 28 participants who are third-year students and four different lecturers from different countries. The findings revealed that sources were mainly clustered for the following reasons: perceptual and language differences, information overload, inattention time pressures, distraction/noise emotions, complexity in organizational structure, and poor retention. The perceptual and language differences, information overload, and emotions were mainly responsible for the quality of communication. This paper can help students engage in awareness-raising activities that promote understanding in some contacts and discussions.

An Investigation into Factors Affecting the Use of English Prepositions by Vietnamese Learners of English

English prepositions play a significant role in helping students form a well-structured sentence in their learning and communicating. To help Vietnamese learners of English acquire their competence, the authors have done survey research to investigate the factors affecting the uses of English prepositions made by Vietnamese learners of English. The population included 200 female and 200 male participants. A total of 400 answers on the questions provided in the 100-question questionnaire were used for hypothesis testing. The items in the survey were given different weights, and the total attainable marks were 100. The results showed that Vietnamese intra-lingual interference strongly affected prepositional sense expressed by Vietnamese EFL learners. Genders, level of learning (low, intermediate, and advanced), writing and speaking, and cognitive embodiment also played a significant role in terms of language transfer, affecting the usage of English prepositions by EFL learners.

Offering in English and Vietnamese

The study aims to help speakers of English find out types of general English offering which are widely applied in everyday communications and how to use offering forms correctly according to social distance and relative power of English native speakers and Vietnamese speakers in particular situations. The study is carried out with the hope of contributing to a better English language teaching and learning status and it is also expected that Vietnamese learners of English would have a chance to get used to the natural way of making offers in English so as to be successful cross-cultural communicators.

The acquisition of question intonation by Vietnamese learners of English

This paper examines the intonation of English statements and questions produced by Vietnamese speakers at two differing levels of proficiency. The goal of the study is three-fold: (1) analysing the final tunes and the prosodic structure observed in information-seeking questions, namely Yes-No question, Or-question, Tag-question and Wh-question, (2) evaluating which characteristics of the L2 English intonation can be clearly derived from the observation of the data, and (3) whether the L2 English intonation patterns are transferred from Vietnamese. A data set of 25 sentences that included 5 statements and 20 information-seeking questions were constructed. Ten native Australian English speakers as a control group and 20 Southern Vietnamese speakers of English (10 beginners and 10 advanced speakers) were recorded. The final tunes (the direction of the final F0 contours) of the sentences were analysed. The result showed that while the advanced speakers of English mostly produced intonation patterns that are typically used by native English speakers, beginning speakers of English used a variety of tunes, several of which are deviate from the native-like standard and clearly transferred from the tone contours in Vietnamese. The findings of this study have an original and significant contribution to the literature because it investigated into the prosodic transfer of intonation patterns between two typologically distinct languages: English, a stress accent language and Vietnamese, a contrastive contour tone language and has implications for intonation teaching.

TEACHING ENGLISH INTONATION TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS OF ENGLISH: TONICITY AND TONE

English intonation is often regarded as diffcult to teach in the foreign language classroom. However, its communicative value is of importance, with tonicity (nucleus placement / focus) singled out as one of the few prosodic features of the Lingua Franca Core (Jenkins, 2000). This study adopts an experimental approach to investigate the effects of intonation training among Vietnamese learners of English in tertiary education in Vietnam, looking at tonicity and tone. 27 second-year English major students at a Vietnamese university were recruited. Participants were split into the experimental group (EG, n=16) and the control group (CG, n=11). The research was implemented in an intonation training course of ten 150-minute classes taken by the EG, each class consisting of group discussion and intonation training. Quantitative data were collected from EG and CG on their ability to perceive and produce intonation focus and tonal differences in English using intonation pre-tests and post-tests. The results reveal a statistically signifcant difference in performance between EG and CG in perception and production of tonicity and tone. EG performed better in perception than production and in tonicity than in tone, and performance improved signifcantly over the period of training.

Explanations of Request Formulations by Vietnamese Learners of English in Australia

Explanations of Request Formulations by Vietnamese Learners of English in Australia

In ‘other’ words: Some thoughts on the transferability of collocations

In discussions of cross-linguistic influence (also known as language transfer), the focus is usually on the influence of a particular structure in a particular instance of language contact, for instance, the negative transfer of serial verbs by Vietnamese learners of English: She has managed to rise the kite fly over the tallest building (Helms-Park, 2003). Even so, as Helms-Park acknowledges, serial verb constructions can and do surface in contact situations besides the one she studied in Canada, and they can involve speakers of different languages. While serial verb constructions have unique syntactic traits, the same point about the transferability of multiword constructions in different contact settings is applicable in other instances and with collocations that can be viewed as unique in their lexical as well as syntactic characteristics. The following article considers such a case, based in part on my own teaching experience but also on transfer research from other settings as well. After a discussion of a collocation that I call the repeated other pattern found in different settings, I briefly consider other cases of transfer having lexical and syntactic peculiarities and appearing in more than one contact situation. There will also be some discussion of factors that transfer researchers and language teachers would do well to consider.

Intonation training integrated with language learning strategies (LLS) to Vietnamese learners of English

Speaking English with inappropriate intonation, which can impede communication and cause misunderstandings, is a characteristic of the speech of many university English majors in Vietnam. A study was carried out using participant action research, with the aim of improving Vietnamese learners’ intonation. The participants were fourteen second-year English major volunteers from a university in Vietnam. The study was implemented in two cycles of 12 two-part sessions, including one-hour group discussions and 90-minute sessions devoted to intonation learning strategies. The data include journals written by participants after each session; 30-minute interviews done at the beginning of the study; and recordings for pre- and post-tests. The Praat program was used for analysing intonation contours. Two native speaking judges rated learners’ ability to recognize and produce three tones (rising, falling, falling-rising), tonic syllables and intonation patterns to express their intended ideas. The results of the tests showed that the students’ intonation improved by approximately 30 percent. Qualitative data from the learners’ journals and the discussion sessions indicated that participants had learned to employ learning strategies. The two most popular strategies were to practise naturalistically (particularly, shadow talking) and to represent tones in memory. The study demonstrated that certain learning strategies can be developed to enhance the learning of intonation.

Criticizing in an L2: Pragmatic strategies used by Vietnamese EFL learners

Criticizing has been a rather under-represented speech act in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) literature. Native speakers (NSs) find this speech act challenging, often needing to pre-plan how to perform it (Murphy & Neu 1996). Thus, it can be expected that second-language (L2) learners will also experience considerable difficulty. This paper reports a study of the pragmatic strategies used by Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) when criticizing in English with a view to shedding light on the pragmatic properties of this under-researched act. Interlanguage data were collected from 36 adult learners via a peer-feedback task, a written questionnaire, and a retrospective interview. First and second language baseline data were collected from two respective groups of 12 Vietnamese NSs and 12 NSs of Australian English, via the same peer-feedback task and questionnaire. Results showed that the English language learners criticized in significantly different ways from the Australian NSs in terms of their preference for realization strategies, their choice of semantic formulae, and their choice and frequency of use of mitigating devices. A number of interplaying factors might explain these differences: learners' limited L2 linguistic competence and lack of fluency, which seemed to load their processing capability under communicative pressure, their lack of L2 pragmatic knowledge, and the influence of L1 pragmatics.

Prosodic transfer in Vietnamese acquisition of English contrastive stress patterns

This paper reports a study of prosodic transfer effects in the production and perception of three English stress patterns (broad-focus noun phrase, narrow-focus noun phrase and compound) at the level of word and phrase prosody by Vietnamese learners of English. The experiments examined the acoustic features and the perceptual strategies that native Australian English speakers and different groups of non-native speakers (Vietnamese beginning learners and advanced speakers of English) use to distinguish the three stress patterns. The results showed that native speakers and non-native speakers differ in their use of acoustic patterns which are optimally suited to their respective first language phonologies for realizing the three English stress patterns. Native speakers of English employed a combination of syntagmatic f 0 (and correlated intensity) contrasts and duration in distinguishing the three stress patterns. Vietnamese speakers had no problem in manipulating contrastive levels of f 0 and intensity on accent-bearing syllables but failed to realize the timing contrast between compound words and phrases and the syntagmatic contrast of accent in larger units such as polysyllabic words or phrases, as evidenced by their failure to deaccent the second element of the compound and narrow-focus patterns. Nevertheless, the advanced speakers’ ability to compress the constituents of the compounds and to deaccent the final nouns shows the effect of language learning/experience on prosodic acquisition. Possible mechanisms that underlie the transfer effects involved in three stress patterns are also discussed.

Origins of Complex Syntax in Interlanguage Development

This study examines the emergence of complex syntax in interlanguage (IL) development through a functionalist analysis of longitudinal, conversational IL data from two Vietnamese learners of English. The study focuses on discourse-pragmatic factors in the learners′ production and acquisition of complex syntax, specifically on their reliance on collaboration by interlocutors in the production of complex syntactic structures. Its findings offer a test of the utility of Givón's functionalist approach in SLA studies, and of claims by Hatch and others to the effect that “syntax develops out of conversation.” The interdependence of different linguistic levels in IL development is demonstrated, and the use of a variety of analytical units is shown to be critical in characterizing prepositional encoding in IL speech.

PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: ANOTHER LOOK AT INTERLANGUAGE SYLLABLE STRUCTURE

This study investigates syllable structure in the interlanguages of two Vietnamese learners of English. An analysis of conversational data sampled at three points over a ten‐month period shows first language transfer in three areas: (1) a preference for the closed syllable in the modification of English syllable‐final consonant clusters, (2) greater difficulty in the production of syllable‐final than syllable‐initial clusters, and (3) negligible use of vowel epenthesis as a syllable modification strategy. These results are interpreted as disconfirmation of the hypothesized universal preference for the open syllable and of the hypothesized prevalence of epenthesis as a syllable modification strategy in interlanguage speech.