ADDRESSING PRONUNCIATION PROBLEMS OF STOP CONSONANTS AMONG NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS THROUGH AUDIO-VISUAL AIDS: A UNIVERSITY IN SOUTHERN VIETNAM

Abstract

This study investigated the effectiveness of audiovisual aids in addressing pronunciation difficulties among non-English majors in English stop consonants. The study was conducted with 40 non-English major students at Tra Vinh University in Vinh Long Province during the second semester of the 2024–2025 academic year. Before the intervention, a questionnaire was administered to examine learners' perceptions of their ability to recognize and produce stop consonants, as well as their perceived difficulties in distinguishing minimal pairs. Then, the participants were asked to take a pronunciation test, whose results were compared with the posttest results, and to draw a conclusion about the intervention’s effectiveness. An eight-week intervention using audio-visual materials was subsequently implemented. After that, a posttest was conducted to assess its effectiveness. The questionnaire findings revealed that /p/, /d/, and /k/ were perceived as more challenging than /b/, /t/, and /g/ in both recognition and production. In the pronunciation test, learners performed better at recognizing the sounds /p/, /b/, /d/, /k/, and /g/. They also produced the sounds /p/, /b/, /d/, and /g/ more accurately at the single-word level. Additionally, students showed fewer errors in producing /p/ at the sentence level. These results suggest that audio-visual aids can effectively enhance learners’ recognition and production of some English stop consonants. Pedagogical implications, recommendations, and limitations are also presented to guide future research.