One Vietnamese ELL: A Data Analysis and Language Comparison Study

1. One Vietnamese ELL: A
Data Analysis and
Language Comparison
Study
Sarah L. Beacker
Wilkes University

2. Background Information
o 12-year-old male student
o Adopted from Vietnam at the age of six
and brought to the US
o Fluent speaker of Vietnamese at the time
of the move

3. Educational Background
o Never schooled in writing
o Learned English completely through immersion,
without Vietnamese scaffolding
o Never worked with an ESL teacher upon moving
to the US
o Worked with a Speech and Language
Pathologist on his speaking skills

4. Common Writing Errors
o Linking verbs
o For example, “I think the teacher nice.”
o Homonym Confusion
o For example, “…there house.”
o Possession/Contraction Confusion
o For example, “…my sisters class.”

5. Common Writing Errors
o Omission of Articles
o For example, “Its hardest class.”
o Superlatives
o For example, “…more good.”
o Spelling
o For example, “Quite” for “Quiet”

6. Common Speech Errors
o Dropping of final /s/ sound
o For example, “United State”
o Self-Confidence
o The student is a strong speaker, but due to
his accent and some pronunciation problems,
he is uncomfortable speaking

7. How to help?
By understanding
the Vietnamese language
and the way Vietnamese compares
to English, teachers will be better
able to understand the needs of
and help
Vietnamese ELLs.

8. Vietnamese in the United States
o Vietnamese make up the fourth largest Asian
group in America
o The number of individuals of Vietnamese
descent living in the US has grown dramatically
in the past decade, and the number is expected
to continue growing
(Hwa-Froelich, Hodson, & Edwards, 2002)

9. The Vietnamese Language
o Uses one letter or a combination of letters for
each sound, making it phonetic
o Consists of 23 consonants and 12 vowels
o Final consonant sounds of a word can only be a
voiceless stop or nasal
o There are no consonant clusters or blends
(Hwa-Froelich, Hodson, & Edwards, 2002)

10. Differences Between English and
Vietnamese
o Vietnamese is almost entirely without
inflectional morphology
o English utilizes word endings to indicate
number and tense
(Duffield, 2007)

11. Differences Between English and
Vietnamese
o Vietnamese is predominantly a
monosyllabic language, with few words
having more than one syllable
o English includes many examples of
polysyllabic words, and their use is
encouraged
(Hwa-Froelich, Hodson, & Edwards, 2002)

12. Phonetic Differences Between
English and Vietnamese
o The sounds /v/ and /ʒ/ do not exist in the Vietnamese
language.
o Some sounds occur in Vietnamese that do not occur in
Standard American English
o In certain situations, such as with the English /w/, the
Vietnamese pronunciation is different, closer to “hu”
(Hwa-Froelich, Hodson, & Edwards, 2002)

13. Translating Between Vietnamese
and English
o When English is translated into
Vietnamese, it is likely that the sentence
will no longer retain its intended meaning
(Weeks, Swerissen, & Belfrage, 2007)

14. Implications for Vietnamese ELLs
o Dropping of /s/ sound in speech is
understandable as Vietnamese has no
inflectional morphology
o Pronunciation difficulties are to be
expected, as some phonetic differences
occur between English and Vietnamese

15. Implications for Vietnamese ELLs
o The ELL will not be able to translate into
the first language of Vietnamese for
understanding and retain the intended
meaning, meaning that the student must
truly learn English as a separate language

16. Conclusions
o Understanding the first language of an
ELL can help with understanding errors
being made, as well as how to help correct
those errors

17. References
• Duffield, N. (2007). Aspects of Vietnamese clausal
structure: separating tense from assertion. Linguistics,
45, 765-815.
• Hwa-Froelich, D., Hodson, B.W., & Edwards, H. T.
(2002). Characteristics of Vietnamese phonology.
American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 11,
264-273.
• Weeks, A., Swerissen, H., & Belfrage, J. (2007).
Issues, challenges, and solutions in translating study
instruments. Evaluation Review, 31, 153-165.