# Pronunciation features noticed by L1 Vietnamese MOOC users: In search of sociolinguistic salience

Laura Rupp, Alice Henderson

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## To cite this version:

Laura Rupp, Alice Henderson. Pronunciation features noticed by L1 Vietnamese MOOC users: In search of sociolinguistic salience. In A. Kirkova-Naskova, P. Humanez-Berral & A. Henderson, (Eds.). Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on English Pronunciation: Issues and Practices, pp.109-117, 2025, 10.5281/zenodo.16696322. hal-05196451

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Rupp, L. & Henderson, A. (2025). Pronunciation features noticed by L1 Vietnamese MOOC users: In search of sociolinguistic salience. In A. Kirkova-Naskova, P. Humanez-Berral, & A. Henderson (Eds.), *Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on English Pronunciation: Issues and Practices* (pp. 109–117). Université Grenoble-Alpes. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16696322

# Pronunciation features noticed by L1 Vietnamese MOOC users: In search of sociolinguistic salience

Laura Rupp

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Alice Henderson

Grenoble-Alpes University

## Abstract

The massive open online course (MOOC) English Pronunciation in a Global World – EPGW (Rupp, 2019) has been used by many enrolees around the world over the past five years. This paper examines the potential of using learner data from EPGW for pronunciation research, focussing on the role of salience in English pronunciation learning and teaching. Salience refers to the prominence of linguistic features to language users, a concept deployed in fields like variationist linguistics and language acquisition. There are two types of salience: linguistic (distance measurement) and sociolinguistic (social perception). We explore EPGW as a tool for directly investigating sociolinguistic salience through user-generated data that have not been influenced by the presence of (educational) authorities. In the case study presented here, we focus on Vietnamese-speaking enrolees in four runs of EPGW between 2019–2021. Results from these EPGW users show that they comment on a range of segmental and suprasegmental features, with suprasegmental features more prominent in unprompted comments. While the units in EPGW need to be adjusted to unequivocally establish that sociolinguistic salience is at the heart of the enrolees’ comments, the authors argue for increased attention in pronunciation teaching to the social value that learners attach to English pronunciation features.

**Keywords:** awareness, MOOC, pronunciation teaching, salience (linguistic and sociolinguistic), Vietnamese

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This chapter is based on the oral presentation given by the authors at the 8th International Conference English Pronunciation: Issues and Practices (EPIP 8) held May 8–10, 2024 at the University of Cantabria in Santander, Spain. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of the license, please go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
# 1. Introduction

The massive open online course (MOOC) entitled English Pronunciation in a Global World EPGW (Rupp, 2019) has been running successfully as a teaching tool for five years. We are currently at a stage at which we can explore the suitability of the learner data for conducting research into English pronunciation learning and teaching. In this paper we explore the usefulness of the MOOC for inquiring into the notion of salience. Salience has been alluded to in various fields, particularly in variationist linguistics and language acquisition. It refers to perceptually prominent linguistic properties to language learners (Jansen, 2014). Generally, the literature makes a distinction between two types of salience: one that is objectively measurable and one that is subjective and may vary across language users. Here we label these two types as linguistic and sociolinguistic salience. Sociolinguistic salience of linguistic features has frequently been probed by surveys/interviews about language attitudes. In this paper we present EPGW as a means for inquiring directly into speakers' sociolinguistic salience. EPGW provides data that are generated by language users without the intervention or physical presence of any authorities such as linguists.

The paper is structured as follows. In Section 2 we delve in more detail into the notion of salience and the distinction between objective and sociolinguistic salience. Section 3 presents EPGW and the nature of the data it generates for inquiring into sociolinguistic salience. We outline our method of analysis in Section 4, focussing on Vietnamese speakers of English in EPGW. In Section 5 we present our results and Section 6, the discussion, is where we also explore refinements for enhancing research into sociolinguistic salience using a MOOC. More broadly, we argue that in pronunciation teaching more attention should be paid to what pronunciation features learners find sociolinguistically salient.

# 2. Previous research specific to the topic

What is salience and what is the role that this notion has been assigned in the explanation of particular linguistic phenomena? From the literature it emerges that the notion of salience, whilst making sense intuitively, is still somewhat elusive. As a working definition we have taken that provided by Jansen (2014) who defines salience as "the fact that linguistic properties can be perceptually prominent to language users" (p. 91). In other words, salience refers to the fact that some linguistic features may stand out. Boswijk and Coler (2020) point out that "salience has no 'intrinsic' ... meaning", rather, "[the] meaning of salience depends entirely on contrast" (p. 714). Much of the literature on salience makes a two-way distinction between: 1) objective or linguistic salience, and 2) subjective or sociolinguistic salience. Both involve a speaker's awareness of a feature. Linguistic salience is caused by language internal properties that can be objectively measured, such as phonetic distance and phonological contrast. In general, the greater the phonetic distance or phonological contrast from one linguistic feature to another, the more salient it should be to a speaker. That is, at the focus is a linguistic property of certain linguistic elements that makes them more salient. For example, some languages lack the English TRAP-vowel /æ/. This vowel will be more salient to speakers of languages that have /e/ in their vowel inventory than to speakers of languages that have /a/, because the phonetic distance between /æ/ and /e/ tends to be larger than between /æ/ and /a/. In comparison, sociolinguistic salience is the result of language-external properties such as a feature being overtly stigmatised or being valued as a high-prestige variant in the target language. In other words, here a context for salience is constructed through "perception by individual speakers" (Trudgill, 1986, p. 11).

In the literature, the notion of salience has been invoked in the explanation of a range of linguistic phenomena. For example, in variationist linguistics, the notion of salience has been
attributed a role in the occurrence of linguistic change such as the diffusion of a feature (Kerswill & Williams, 2002), in the construction of social meaning (Podesva, 2011), or in dialect accommodation (Auer et al., 1998; Llamas et al., 2009). For example, in dialect accommodation, dialect speakers are expected to accommodate to those features of other dialect speakers which are linguistically salient and/or are positively valued, or to avoid features that are negatively valued sociolinguistically. The results of these studies have not always been straightforward; for example, Llamas et al. (2009) studied dialect accommodation in a border town between England and Scotland and found that speakers may not in fact accommodate in the expected direction. Further, a number of aspects of salience still need further scrutiny, such as the range of factors that play a role in salience and the extent to which linguistic features other than phonetic ones, (e.g., phonological, morphosyntactic and pragmatic features), can be analysed in the light of this notion. In second language acquisition studies, it has been argued that the salience of a linguistic feature facilitates learning. Namely, salient features predict the order of acquisition to the extent that linguistically salient features will be learned first and that negatively stereotyped features from the home variety will be replaced first (e.g., Ellis, 2018; Siegel, 2010).

**2.1 Research questions**

Our research questions are:

**RQ1:** Does the MOOC English Pronunciation in a Global World (EPGW) provide suitable data to inquire into the notion of salience of pronunciation features?

**RQ2:** What pronunciation features are considered salient by EPGW users?

**RQ3:** What are the implications of our findings for EPGW in particular and for pronunciation teaching in general?

**3. Research methodology employed**

**3.1 Sample**

The data for our study come from the 4-week massive open online course EPGW (Rupp, 2019), which has two major learning aims: for learners to develop their English pronunciation skills according to their personal pronunciation goals, and for them to become familiar with important socially situated aspects of pronunciation, such as intelligibility, identity, and language attitudes (e.g., Levis, 2005). EPGW offers a large range of different pronunciation exercises and activities, which are meant to provide enrolees with a maximally varied exposure to Englishes spoken around the world. In many of the practice materials, enrolees are invited to upload comments outlining their thoughts or experiences. In addition to this, enrolees make and upload a recording of a word list and a reading passage in the first and last week of the course, to assess their progress.<fnref n="1" /> Since the inception of EPGW in 2019, eight runs have been completed and over 133,000 learners from 191 countries have enrolled. For the purpose of our study, we decided to focus on data from Vietnamese speakers from four runs between 2019 and 2021. Our motivation for choosing this sample was twofold: English and Vietnamese have very different sound systems (e.g., Cunningham, 2013) and are typologically quite dissimilar.

<footnote n="1">¹ For an extensive description of EPGW, including the way in which it seeks to contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, see Rupp et al. (2023).</footnote>
## 3.2 Method

In an Excel spreadsheet, learner data from EPGW were compiled into four datasets for each of the four runs between 2019 and 2021. These sets were grouped by the start date of the run and contained user information and comments made throughout the four weeks of the course. These four large sets were combined into a single data set containing only learner data from enrolees who identified themselves as Vietnamese learners of English. This was initially done by searching the datasets for the character string ‘viet’ in the comments from enrolees. The comments containing this string were then reviewed to ensure that they contained either the words ‘Vietnam’ ‘Viet Nam’ or ‘Vietnamese’. Instances where the search term did not correspond to either of these key words were removed, e.g., two mentions of ‘soviet’. Subsequently, we read through the comments thus obtained, checking whether the enrolees were in fact Vietnamese or, for example, were simply commenting on a topic having to do with Vietnam but identifying themselves as being of another linguistic background. In this way, we ended up with 262 Vietnamese enrolees.<fnref n="2" />

We then searched the original data sets 2019–2021 against the unique author IDs of these 262 Vietnamese enrolees. The author ID links each enrolee to all the comments they made throughout their time in the course. The comments thus obtained were then filtered manually to exclude comments irrelevant to the subject of study. In order to inquire into the salience of English pronunciation features, we focussed on comments in which the enrolees expressed challenges or concerns regarding their English pronunciation or indicated English pronunciation features that they wished to develop. These comments involved steps right at the beginning of EPGW, a point at which enrolees would not have engaged with any of the course material yet, as well as later steps that address particular English pronunciation features. Excluded were, amongst others, comments congratulating other students or remarking on a preference for one accent over another. In this way, we identified 149 comments. Through the unique author IDs, we were also able to retrieve 40 recordings of enrolees reading out the word list and the reading passage. The links to the voice recordings were also extracted and filed separately.<fnref n="3" />

Pronunciation features mentioned by the Vietnamese enrolees were then coded according to the type of feature, e.g., a particular vowel sound, consonants clusters or word stress. This coding was based on contrastive descriptions of English and Vietnamese pronunciation (e.g., Cunningham, 2013; Swan & Smith, 1987), and input about challenges from a Vietnamese English speaker who participated in the mentor programme of the MOOC.<fnref n="4" /> The coding was documented in a code book.

<footnote n="2">² For the purpose of identifying enrolees from Vietnam, we did not base ourselves on the enrolees' detected country as provided by FutureLearn, the online platform on which EPGW runs; when enrolees register for the course the 'detected country' of an enrolee may be Vietnam, but we cannot know whether the enrolee is a speaker of Vietnamese. We acknowledge that by going about the data in this way, we have removed irrelevant data but also, it is highly likely we will have missed relevant tokens. In the four runs from 2019-2021, the system gave 702 'detected country' Vietnam, whereas only 262 enrolees identified themselves as Vietnamese speakers in their comments. Furthermore, we took as an object of inquiry the set of enrolees described above without taking into account any further social factors; we did not explore any of the other demographic metadata that FutureLearn asks enrolees to provide, such as age range, highest education level and area of employment.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Analyses of these recordings are not included here. The recordings will enable us to explore whether the comments made by Vietnamese enrolees match features in their actual English pronunciation in the recording. Should this not be the case, there must be another reason for enrolees to mention the English pronunciation features in their comments. Also, where enrolees have made recordings both at the beginning and at the end of the course, it will be easier to identify the extent to which they developed the pronunciation features that they commented upon, which would provide more robust evidence for the salience of these features.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ For an outline of this programme, see Rupp and Henderson (forthcoming).</footnote>
## 4. Data analysis and results

In the 149 selected comments, Vietnamese MOOC users express challenges or concerns regarding their English pronunciation. Some of these comments (N = 109) were prompted. For example, in an exercise on long and short vowels, users are asked: *Does your native language have long and short vowels?*, or in an exercise on word endings: *Do you omit word endings?* Other comments were not prompted (N = 40), e.g., at the beginning of the MOOC, users are asked: *Which English pronunciation features are difficult for you?* and *What are your needs regarding English pronunciation?* Most of the unprompted comments (28/40) were about suprasegmental features. Table 1 provides an overview of the features which Vietnamese speakers commented upon:

<caption>**Table 1**</caption>

*Features Mentioned by Vietnamese EPGW Users*

<table><thead><tr><th>Type of feature</th><th>English feature</th><th># of mentions</th><th>Total # of mentions</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="5">Segmental</td><td>vowel length;<br>including in diphthongs and clipping</td><td>27</td><td rowspan="5">87</td></tr><tr><td>consonants,<br>e.g., /f/, /f/, /ʒ/, /dʒ/, /θ/, /ð/, /p/, b/</td><td>21</td></tr><tr><td>vowels,<br>e.g., NURSE</td><td>19</td></tr><tr><td>reduction<br>of consonant clusters</td><td>17</td></tr><tr><td>rhoticity</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="3">Suprasegmental</td><td>word stress</td><td>31</td><td rowspan="3">62</td></tr><tr><td>intonation</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><td>connected speech</td><td>15</td></tr></tbody></table>

Segmental and suprasegmental features are listed, followed by the number of mentions for each feature. The fact that both segmental and suprasegmental features were commented upon may be treated as evidence of salience, with segmentals being slightly more frequently mentioned. Across the two types of features, vowel length and word stress are mentioned a similar number of times (27 and 31 mentions, respectively) and thus seem more salient to these EPGW users. Rhoticity, in contrast, is so rarely mentioned (3 times) that it does not seem salient to them.

We analysed the comments to determine whether they constituted evidence of one or the other type of salience. For example, one Vietnamese enrolee is aware that their pronunciation difficulties affect how successfully they communicate: “I have difficulty in connected speech, speaking unnaturally and making it hard to understand what I am saying” (VMa23ad). They
refer to a specific linguistic feature of English but they also assess their own speech as unnatural and difficult to decipher. Another enrolee expresses awareness of a norm, of true pronunciation: "I can speak sentences with true pronunciation but no intonation" (VMdb4d8). They claim their achievement – with 'true' presumably meaning being able to pronounce well at the segmental level or correctly in relation to a standard – but then they also state a perceived shortcoming (i.e., no intonation). Both types of comment seem to hint at language-external, i.e., sociolinguistic, salience: how their co-locutors potentially judge their speech and the imposition of a norm.

Note in this relation that many of the features mentioned by the enrolees have been earmarked and researched from a contrastive analysis or a pedagogical perspective, hinting at sociolinguistic salience in educational practices. Studies of typical difficulties faced by Vietnamese English users have argued that vowel length is challenging for their intelligibility (Cunningham, 2009a, 2009b). The monophthongisation of diphthongs has also been described as a common feature (Swan & Smith, 2001). Single consonants, too, may be modified, as pointed out by Cunningham (2009a): "... final /f/ as in the word *if* is often pronounced as [ip]. This pronunciation is viewed as characteristic of Vietnamese accented English in Vietnam – teacher and thus learner awareness of this is high, and the feature is stigmatised" (p. 3). Consonants in final position can also be particularly difficult (Ngo, 2011; Nguyen, 2020) leading to the elision or the simplification of clusters, perhaps in part because Vietnamese does not allow consonant clusters in any position (Avery & Ehrlich, 1992).

In terms of suprasegmentals, Vietnamese is a tonal language, where pitch carries lexical or grammatical meaning, i.e., distinguishes words or their inflections, whereas English can use word stress or the addition of another word such as *this* and *that* instead of a tone (Tang, 2007, 11). Enrolees' comments on word stress (n = 31) constitute half of all comments on suprasegmental features. These comments seem to resonate with adult Vietnamese ESL speakers in a study by Zielinski (2006), whose non-standard word stress patterns made them less intelligible to three native Australian listeners. For example, as Cunningham (2009a) notes, "the use in English of the rising *sac* tone on syllables that have a voiceless stop in the coda ... can result in a pitch prominence that may be interpreted as stress by listeners" (p. 2). Connected speech is another area where Vietnamese and English differ. English exhibits varied sandhi variation in all registers and speech rates, with widespread linking, assimilation and dissimilation, deletion, and epenthesis. In contrast, Vietnamese-accented English rarely exhibits any such features (Cunningham, 2009b).

**5. Discussion of results and key findings**

In our search for evidence of sociolinguistic salience in Vietnamese EPGW enrolees, three key findings emerge:

1) Vietnamese EPGW enrolees post unprompted comments, so they do have some awareness of particular English pronunciation features;

2) Both segmental and suprasegmental features are commented upon;

3) Given 1), a MOOC has potential as a suitable tool for enquiring into the salience of pronunciation features.

The results of our study demonstrate that Vietnamese enrolees in EPGW show awareness of a range of both segmental and suprasegmental English pronunciation features, with a slight majority of the unprompted comments (28/40) being about suprasegmental features. They flag both as features that are either challenging for them or which they wish to develop in their English pronunciation. Does this awareness stem from linguistic or sociolinguistic salience?
Two issues arise here. The issue with linguistic salience is that whilst relative distance in pronunciation may be quite straightforwardly measured for vowels, it is not straightforward for suprasegmental features such as stress and intonation. How does one measure the distance in stress between a monosyllabic language like Vietnamese and a stress-timed language like English? Or between a tonal language and a non-tonal language? An issue with sociolinguistic salience is that enrolees in EPGW are not asked about the reasons for flagging the English pronunciation features that they do. Is it because they were told about these features in their education? Our survey of the research literature on Vietnamese English speakers suggests that suprasegmental features are addressed to a lesser extent than segmental features. However, Ha Noi Open University provided us with the syllabi of two English Phonetics and Phonology courses that they run, which showed that they pay attention to segmental and suprasegmental features for an equal number of weeks. Perhaps the Vietnamese enrolees have had particular social experiences regarding the English pronunciation features that they mentioned in their daily lives; because the learning units in EPGW do not ask enrolees for the motivation of their comments, we cannot tell. Nonetheless, the fact that Vietnamese enrolees flagged the range of features observed reveals that these are important to them, regardless of whether the attached importance is due to linguistic or sociolinguistic salience.

**6. Conclusion and implications/applicability**

The solution for probing sociolinguistic salience in EPGW would seem to be to explicitly ask enrolees to motivate their comments regarding English pronunciation features that they find challenging or would like to develop in their English pronunciation. This would work best in steps at the beginning of EPGW, when enrolees have not yet engaged with any steps that address particular pronunciation features (which may prompt them to post a comment about those features).

More broadly, we would like to advocate an approach to English pronunciation teaching that takes account of and addresses English pronunciation features that may have social value for people developing their English pronunciation. Knowledge of language-internal factors (linguistic salience) constitutes a sound foundation for pronunciation teachers, yet they should also be knowledgeable about the language-external factors (sociolinguistic salience) which impact upon their learners. Teachers may prefer to not prioritise a feature if it contributes little to intelligibility, e.g., the English dental fricatives, yet learners may be particularly motivated to work on such features in order, for example, to avoid stigmatisation. Pronunciation teachers could take the opportunity to expertly balance their objectives with those of their learners. Following Boswijk and Coler (2020, p. 714), salience is not a static property of phonetic forms or an inherent attribute of units of this kind. The degree of salience of a form can differ between speakers.

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## About the authors

**Laura Rupp** is a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics and the director of the Centre for Global English at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She created the online course (MOOC) English Pronunciation in a Global World. Her research expertise is in grammatical language variation and change, and in English pronunciation learning and teaching. She has
published internationally on both subjects. Her work has been funded by the British Academy and The Netherlands Initiative for Education Research. Her project Language Stories was granted patronage by the Dutch UNESCO Commission.

Email: l.m.rupp@vu.nl

**Alice Henderson** is a Full Professor at Grenoble – Alpes University, France, where she teaches English for Specific Purposes to STEM students and is currently the assistant director of the LIDILEM research group. She taught English phonetics and phonology to English majors for 24 years at another French university and has been involved in teacher training in France, Norway, Poland, and Spain. In 2009 she initiated the bi-annual international conference English Pronunciation: Issues & Practices (EPIP). She has published internationally on English pronunciation learning and teaching, the perception of foreign-accented speech, and English Medium Instruction (EMI).

Email: alice.henderson@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr