The Awareness of Correct English Pronunciations of Business English Major Students at Phetchabun Rajabhat University

Correct English pronunciation is an essential key to ensure successful communication between speakers (Ellis, 1997). When learning to pronounce it is also important to take into account the effect the learners native language will have on the speakers ability to pronounce certain sounds within the second language. According to Kenworthy (1987) only "one or two features are enough to suggest a particular language showing through their (the speakers) spoken English". This mispronunciation no matter how small it may be can be enough to cause confusion and misunderstanding in a conversation to occur. In Thailand the current level of correct pronunciation and language proficiency is very low. As a result, there has been many lost business opportunities for Thailand and Thai people. Also when a Thai person realizes that they are pronouncing a word incorrectly they lose the confidence to speak with foreigners because "they might make a mistake". This dilemma is confounded further when speaking to people who have never studied a foreign or second language before, as they are easily irritated if they cannot quickly understand what the non-native speaker is trying to convey (Garrigues, 1999). The results showed that 2nd year students had the most correct English pronunciation when compared to the 1st year and 3rd year students. All students however had a major English pronunciation problem when it came to final sounds with /z/and /d/as the students were not aware of the phonological rules in English when they completed the Detect Me English words test.