97 learning activities, whereas the nonexistent English sounds can be drilled to the
students patiently in classroom meetings. To get the Cantonese EFL learners to comprehend the nonexistent English sound in the Cantonese phonemic inventory,
the teachers must understand the minimal pairs that are similarly pronounced with the target sound to be learned. These minimal pairs which are similar to the
problematic sounds are the bridge to help the Cantonese EFL learners to overcome their problems.
Last but not least, it is better for a good English teacher to understand the EFL learner‟s mother tongue. By understanding their language, the teacher can
identify what sounds of English, or later on what words of English are seemingly difficult for the learners to
master. Only by the comprehension on the learners‟ first language can a teacher of English as a foreign language be able to conduct a
needs analysis which can be used as a base to make innovations in English language teaching and learning activity.
98
CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
In this chapter, the writer summarizes the major findings aimed to answer the research objectives of this study as well as to give some suggestions for future
writers who are interested to continue or perhaps to do more researches dealing with similar topic.
5.1 Conclusions
The first question of the research problems is: how are the consonants of English and Cantonese similar and different? The answer to the question is that
Throughout the research it was found that English and Cantonese consonant speech sounds do have similarity in three major levels, namely speech production,
articulation and the classification of sound. English and Cantonese consonants are produced by similar organs of speech production, organs of articulation, and both
have similar classification system. Both Cantonese and English share a large number of consonants that are similarly produced articulation and acoustic wise.
There are 12 groups of consonant speech sounds which are shared by both languages. They are the three plosives: bilabial, alveolar, and velar; the three
nasals: bilabial, alveolar, and velar; the three fricatives: labio-dental, alveolar, and glottal; and the three approximants: palatal, labio-velar, and alveolar lateral. The
consonantal phonemes similarly shared by both English and Cantonese articulatory grid are: p, t, k, m, n,
ŋ, f, s, h, j, w, l. These sounds are considered
99 not problematic for Cantonese EFL learners. The differences lie in the
distributions of the mentioned sounds’ allophonic variant. These are the answers to the first problem formulation of the research.
The second question of the research problems is: What English consonants are considered as problematic for Cantonese EFL learners to pronounce? The answer
to the question is: the English consonants that can be considered as problematic for the learners are:
b, d, g, v, θ, ð, z, ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ, r. These sounds are predicted to be difficult to be accurately pronounced by Cantonese EFL learners due to their
nonexistent status in their Cantonese phonemic inventory. These are the answer to the second problem formulation of the research.
The third question of the research problems is: how can the research findings of the contrasted English and Cantonese consonants be implemented as
recommendations in developing learning material for Cantonese EFL learners? The three possible implementations are: the conduction of an auditory phonetics
based contrastive analysis, a phonological contrastive analysis on the suprasegmental features of the studied consonants, and and last but not least, is
the the statement of some considerable recommendations in developing learning material for English pronunciation learning for Cantonese EFL learners. These are
the answers to the third problem formulation of the research.
100
5.2 Recommendations
This research is but a preliminary study of a full set of the actual contrastive phonetics and phonology research. Therefore, this research is still far
from perfect as there are still many points this research have not discussed yet. Due to the limited access to potential research subjects at the moment this
research was written, audio evident is unavailable. Thus, question like: are the predicted problematic sounds indeed difficult to be pronounced by Cantonese EFL
learners, cannot possibly be answered within this researc h’s preliminary state. To
do so, further studies are needed. The writer would like to recommend lecturers and teacher-
candidates of Sanata Dharma University’s ELESP who are interested in doing the research on the phonetics and phonology, or contrastive analysis on
English and Cantonese in auditory phonetic scope and phonological contrastive analysis on the suprasegmental features of
both English and Cantonese’s consonants and vowels. Future interested writers might also be interested in
developing a set of pronunciation teaching material.
101
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