THE PRONUNCIATION PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH –ed ENDING SOUNDS OF THAI UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
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Abstract
To communicate understandably and effectively, pronunciation plays an important role. However, in Thailand, the pronunciation aspect which is the important basic of the speaking skill is problematic for Thai learners, particularly regular verbs with –ed ending sounds. Therefore, this study aims to investigate students’ ability to pronounce –ed ending sounds and difficulties faced by the students in pronouncing –ed ending sounds. A quasi-experimental design was employed to 33 Thai first-year undergraduate students from the Faculty of Humanities in 2018 academic year. The results show that the most problematic sound among Thai students was the /t/ sound. Only 49.38% of the students pronounced this sound correctly. For the /d/ sound, 63.63% of the students succeeded in pronouncing it. Regarding the /ɪd/ sound, it seemed to be the easiest sound for students since 70.90% of them pronounced this sound correctly. The problems encountered by Thai students in pronouncing the –ed ending sounds may be caused by the following reasons: the role of negative transfer, a lack of knowledge of the pronunciation of –ed ending sounds, overgeneralization, and the inadequate exposure to the target language.
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