Students’ Attitudes towards Teacher’ Using Minimal Pairs to Teach English Discrete Sounds: A Survey on First-Year English Majored Students at Dong Nai University

Abstract

The current study was conducted to explore English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ attitudes towards teachers’ using minimal pairs to teach English discrete sounds. The participants of this research were fifty students who were English majored freshmen at Dong Nai University. For data collection, a questionnaire survey was designed and administered to fifty students. The result indicates that most students have positive perceptions of using the minimal pairs technique in improving their production of English language sounds. However, some students have difficulty in pronouncing the minimal pairs such as /t∫/ and /dʒ/, /θ/ and /ð/, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/. Therefore, some suggestions are proposed to help students solve these problems and produce and acquire English individual sounds more accurately.