A Study of Errors in Performing English Tense and Lax Vowels by 2nd year Students of Faculty of English at University of Foreign Language Studies – The University of Danang

Abstract

This study investigated into the errors of 2nd students of University of Foreign Language Studies when performing tense and lax vowels due to the differences between sound systems of Vietnamese and English. This descriptive study focuses on finding the problems that students have encountered and solutions for improving students‟ pronunciation, as well as their speaking skill. We found that although English and Vietnamese share some sounds which can help students find it easy to pronounce some words, there are still many differences for which students have a tendency to mispronounce some words. Based on these findings, various suitable solutions have been proposed to not only students of University of Foreign Language Studies but also English learners to improve their pronunciation.