Learning English Phonetics: Preferences, Attitudes and Expectations of Libyan EFL University Students (original) (raw)
Related papers
Learning English phonetics: preferences and attitudes
Proceedings of the Phonetics Teaching and Learning Conference, edited by Joanna Przedlacka, John Maidment & Michael Ashby. Pages 51-55.
Phonetics is a commonly taught subject at university level. It may be an explicit part of the curriculum or an implicit element in, for example, foreign language pronunciation teaching. However, there are very few studies on the teaching and learning of phonetics. Moreover, the learner perspective has rarely been investigated although learner opinions and attitudes affect the learning outcomes. The purpose of this study was to investigate learner attitudes towards phonetics and preferences in the broad themes covered in phonetics. The data were collected with a questionnaire from university students (n=133) of English at the end of a lecture series on English phonetics. According to the results, accent differences was the most preferred theme. Suprasegmental issues and practical phonetic transcription were preferred to segmental issues. Students’ attitudes were positive: phonetics was considered challenging, interesting and useful. Students also thought that phonetics teaching had improved their pronunciation of English.
This study examines the acquisition of pronunciation amongst Polytechnic Kuala Terengganu learners. This research will be carried-out in Politeknik Kuala Terengganu amongst semester one diploma and Information Technology and Electronics and Electrical Engineering learners in Kuala Terengganu of Terengganu in Malaysia. Quantitative research was conducted via questionnaire administration. Descriptive statistical analysis was used to assess the students' responses to the learning of phonetics in improving pronunciation. This article will focus only on the aspect of mother tongue interference and which English language to speak as gleaned from the results of the questionnaires.
Journal of English Language Teaching and Learning, 2019
One essential yet often-ignored factor in pronunciation teaching is learners' beliefs towards teaching and learning of pronunciation. Awareness of this factor can help both learners and teachers achieve their language learning and teaching objectives. The current study investigated 195 Iranian EFL learners' beliefs and perceptions about various aspects of pronunciation teaching and learning. The learners answered a 30-item Likert-scale online questionnaire which inquired about their views regarding the overall importance of pronunciation instruction, the type of syllabus, the design of classes devoted to pronunciation, the introduction of pronunciation features, the ways of practicing these features, and the role of error correction. To enhance the findings from the questionnaire, the researchers interviewed a subsample of the participants about various pronunciation dimensions specified in the questionnaire. Results revealed that the majority of the participants believed teaching and learning pronunciation was of paramount importance in EFL contexts as it helped them achieve their communicative goals more effectively. The learners also largely preferred a structural over a task-based syllabus for pronunciation instruction but differed regarding whether pronunciation features should be taught in isolation or in communicative contexts, and whether correction of their pronunciation errors should be done by the teacher or peers. Findings of this study can inform the mainstream pronunciation teaching and learning practices and materials designs.
Teaching pronunciation in the New Educational Reform: Students’ attitudes and teachers' views
Language Teaching and the Reform of University Studies (S. Diouny & M. Yeou, eds), 2010
The present paper investigated (a) the attitudes of a group of Moroccan university students toward pronunciation; and (b) the views and practices of teachers in regard to pronunciation instruction. Attitudinal measures such as the perceived utility of pronunciation, level of confidence and interest in pronunciation were explored. Overall, students valued pronunciation as an important part of learning (both segmental features and suprasegmental features), aimed for functional intelligibility and wanted pronunciation teaching be improved. Teachers were not very keen on teaching pronunciation, particularly suprasegmentals. Reasons include lack of confidence, lack of time, scarcity of teaching materials and resources, and large groups.
This study aims to represent the developing status of pronunciation teaching in a context of comparison and contrast, and tries to illustrate the learners' and lecturers' positions, roles and most importantly responsibilities required by today's methodology of pronunciation teaching. In this context, it is argued that pronunciation teaching methodologies have changed over decades since the Reform Movement. The exact status of teaching pronunciation appeared first in the Audio Lingual Methods and continued in the Communicative Language Teaching methods; however, the ways of teaching pronunciation has explicitly a long history and the principles of Reform Movement affects the approaches of the following teaching methods. The current approaches provided the scholars with new perspectives, and Penny Ur is one of these scholars whose ideas and principles are analysed here. Even though Ur's claims about nondeliberate teaching of pronunciation, the results gotten from the q...
This study examines perceptions of learners on pronunciation acquisition, learning phonetic transcriptions and their sounds associations amongst Polytechnic Kuala Terengganu Learners. This study was carried-out amongst semester one diploma of Electronics and Electrical Engineering learners in Kuala Terengganu Polytechnic, Terengganu, Malaysia. This study also hopes to show that by learning to recognise and read phonetic symbols learners will be able to overcome any pronunciation disability using the dictionary. This research follows the quasi- experimental design of a control-group A and treatment group B selected randomly doing a pre-test and post-test. The treatment of explicit instruction of phonetic transcriptions for 45 hours was given only to the experimental group. This study focuses on the analysis of oral test answers by learners. Some of the challenges identified in the acquisition of pronunciation are mother tongue interference, mispronunciation because spelling does not reflect pronunciation, unintelligibility and miscommunication and the lack of confidence to speak the English Language. Whilst factors that affect pronunciation acquisition are mother tongue, exposure, motivation, students’ perception, ways of learning, which English to speak and others. However, it was discovered that phonetic instruction of transcriptions and their sounds’ association improves pronunciation competence. Some of the implications of this study are aimed at ELT academicians and practitioners to apply the method used in this study to up-grade the standard of pronunciation proficiency and a suggestion that the learning of pronunciation using phonetic symbols should be taught earlier in their education.
Attitudes toward English phonetics learning: a survey on Indonesian EFL learners
Journal on English as a Foreign Language, 2021
Indonesian EFL learners face challenges in comprehending English phonemes as it becomes one of the significant predictors of English literacy. Hence, the English Phonetics subject is considered one of the most difficult ones, making the teaching and learning process less effective. Addressing Indonesian EFL learners’ attitudes toward English phonetics teaching is significant to improve phonetics teaching, yet, research on this has not received much attention. This present study was conducted to explore EFL learners’ attitudes toward English phonetic learning. A quantitative approach with survey design was employed involving 112 Indonesian EFL students. The researchers identified students’ attitudes using an adapted questionnaire from Lintunen and Makilahde (2015). Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25 was utilized to analyze the data. The results indicate that Indonesian EFL students perform positive attitudes toward English phonetic learning, although they c...
Challenges of Teaching Phonetics and Phonology in a Multilingual Classroom
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2022
The teaching of Phonetics and Phonology in multilingual classrooms now-a-days is fraught with multifaceted challenges. These are caused by students' abhorrence for the course, their displeasures at the compulsory status assigned to it, students' attitudes towards it, lack of basic and functional laboratory facilities and other social and psychological factors affecting learners who constitute the major classroom participants. This study investigates the teething problems encountered by teachers who teach Phonetics and Phonology in tertiary institutions; it uses a private university in Ogun State, Nigeria as a case study. The population of the study comprises all students from the Departments of Languages and Mass Communication of the University in question. The study adopts a descriptive research design and an ex post facto design; it equally uses Contrastive Linguistic Analysis (CLA) and Articulatory Phonology (AP) as theoretical frameworks. Also, Participant Observation Method and Focus Group Interviews were used as instruments for data collection. Simple random technique was adopted in selecting both the target population (of 35 students from 200 level and 300 level) and the data (3 lectures) for this study. One of the major findings was that the interference of students' Mother Tongue (MT) in the pronunciation of English sounds (especially those that were not in existence in their MT) was prominent in the practical classes; and this frustrated teacher's effort in teaching the course. The researcher therefore recommends that educational stakeholders (especially the government at all levels) should provide basic laboratory facilities, motivation and training for teachers who go extra miles to teach students Phonetics and Phonology; and ensure that they understand and practice it.
Pronunciation Pedagogy Revisited: Voices From Omani B. Ed. Students
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2024
This article investigates the attitudes of Omani B. Ed. students towards various aspects of pronunciation pedagogy. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the study captures students' preferences for pronunciation instruction methods, their attitudes towards different English accents, the role of technology in pronunciation learning, and the influence of extracurricular exposure to English. The findings reveal a strong preference for instructor-led methodologies, the use of technology, and a focus on communicative competence. Additionally, the study highlights a preference for Received Pronunciation among students, while views on American and International accents are polarised, reflecting the complex interplay of cultural, educational, and personal factors in accent choice. The research also underscores the significant role of extracurricular exposure to English in shaping students' attitudes towards pronunciation learning and correction. The study's insights have profound implications for curriculum design and teaching methodologies in English language teaching in Oman, emphasising the need for pedagogical approaches that are responsive to students' diverse linguistic backgrounds and experiences.