new to this

[jpaula]

hello everyone. I am very happy to have found this forum. I am currently teaching English in Algeria which means French and Arabic are the first languages of all of my students. But, I just got a new student who is Vietnamese and I am trying to prepare lessons, specifically to teach her to read and write. I know NOTHING about the Vietnamese language and so am trying to give myself a crash course on how to teach English to Vietnamese-speakers. Can anyone tell me some of the sounds/words that are most difficult for Vietnamese to pronounce/read?

Thank so much.

[mike]

When I went to Vietnam over the summer the family I stayed with thought the English word ''learn'' was the hardest word to say and the most fun to try and pronounce . Or in Vietnamese ‘‘ho (. under the o) c ho.c I think it was just the mix of the ''L '' and the ''urn ''sounds.

[giang]

Hi Jpaula.
Your question is extremely interesting but deserves a long research. I'm contacting one of my colleagues who have written a research paper titled "Regular mistakes of English learning Vietnamese students". I will send it to you when I get it. Now, I just summarize main phonetic mistakes and difficulties that Vietnamese students may have when learning English.

(1) Final consonnant:

Vietnamese students (VNs) usually don't pronounce te final consonant: They don't say the [t] in the English 'hat' or 'best', as in Vietnamese, the final consonants have not the "back" period. Similarly, they may have problem with [t] in 'out', 'bit'; [ch] in 'speech', 'reach', [d] in 'around', 'did'.

(2) Difficulty with [tr] in 'try', 'trouble'

(3) Difficulty with long and short vowels in 'beach' vs. 'bitch', 'hit' vs. 'heat', 'ship, vs. 'sheep'

(4) Difficulty with [th] in 'think', 'thought', 'thousand'

(5) Difficulty with consonantal slusters like 'speak' (they may say /sipik/, 'program' (they may say /poram/

Hope this helps a little.

Giang

[Khatores]

Many hard consonants are a challenge - in particular Z, J, both forms of G, R and L (which get switched, or substituted with W), and V.

Other hard consonants that are found in the langauge, such as B, C, D, K, Q and T are either not abrupt enough or are paired with some other sound.

Emphasize that a hard consonant - such as D - should "stand on its own" and not be paired with any other sounds. One way to do this is to stick a de facto sound after it, which is usually "uh" or "ah". A Vietnamese speaker who says "JUH" will say "J" more or less correctly. As they become better, they'll naturally polish it to be less extreme.

As far as pronunciation goes, most Vietnamese learners are used to monosyllabic words, unless they also speak a second language such as French. You may need to work on them not "gapping" comparatively lengthy English words, or (sometimes even worse) pronouncing soft sounds too softly on short English words, as if in Vietnamese.

Keep in mind too that the Viet language has an extremely simple grammatical structure. It has no temporal tenses, and does not always follow an English structure. Not all Viet speakers realize how critical this is, and may often flip the clauses or words within a sentence to the wrong ends.

Another common mistake is leaving out small but important linking verbs, articles and other things such as "a, as, the, is, are, were" etc.

The end result of this is that even if a speaker knows some words and has good pronunciation, sentences may come out something like the following (incorrect first, correct second...)

"What your name?" or "What your name is?"
"What is your name?"

"What you do?"
"What do you do/What are you doing?" (a function of time tenses)

[jpaula]

Wow. You have been a fantastic help. I will try all of this in our class tomorow and see how far it gets us. She is very motivated so I think she will be a very goôd student and now at least I know whêre to start.

[saigon]

Really good answers. It's useful for me since I also teach some English to my friends.

[Khatores]

Really good answers. It's useful for me since I also teach some English to my friends.
I have learned this from teaching English to Vietnamese friends.

There are also a number of books on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=br_ss_hs/002-4385535-0704026?platform=gurupa&url=index%3Dblended&keywords=teaching+english+to+asians&Go.x=8&Go.y=11&Go=Go) that focus on teaching English to either non-native speakers or Asians specifically. Unfortunately I have not yet read any (but it would probably be a good idea).

Here is a bibliography (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0872810461/sr=8-1/qid=1146748262/ref=sr_1_1/002-4385535-0704026?%5Fencoding=UTF8) supposedly for teaching English to Vietnamese.