A Contrastive Analysis of English and Arabic Phonetics and Phonology and its Relation to Teaching (original) (raw)
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International Journal of Humanities and Social Science
The main purpose of this qualitative and descriptive study is to investigate the effect of the Arabic language speech sounds on learning English language pronunciation. In this contrastive analysis, the researcher described the speech sounds system of the Arabic language in comparison with their counterparts of English. The researcher used the direct observation as an instrument to observe and register notes about the students' pronunciation of both languages. However ,the results showed that there are speech sounds in the Arabic language that have counterparts in the English language and vice versa. Thus, these similarities between the speech sounds of the two languages facilitate and have positive effects on the process of learning the English language. The results also revealed that Arab EFL learners encounter many problems with learning English pronunciation especially with unfamiliar speech sounds that do not exist on their mother tongue since there are speech sounds in the Arabic language that do not have counterparts in the English language e.g. glottal stops. To sum up, due to these differences in the speech sounds of both languages, one can conclude that they have negative effects on the process of learning the English language and learners face difficulty in pronouncing these sounds correctly. Accordingly, mother tongue interference and overgeneralization rules affect the pronunciation and spelling of some English words. Finally, based on the results of this research, some suggestions and recommendations are presented which may help students and teachers in reducing Arab EFL learners' difficulties in improving their English pronunciation.
2021
Intelligible pronunciation is an essential component of communicative competence as learners who have adequate pronunciation can easily improve their speaking skills better than those who have weak pronunciation. Pronunciation is, therefore, vital to achieving successful communication. A large number of learners believe that the main difficulty they encounter when speaking a second/foreign language is pronunciation and consider this difficulty as the main source for their communication problems. Despite the fact that pronunciation is key to communicative competence, it is neglected in many Arabic teaching programmes. In view of this, the motivation for this presentation is the increasing unpopularity of the pronunciation aspect of teaching Arabic as a foreign language. This has caused a fewer efforts to be taken in improving learners' pronunciation skill despite this being quite a concern among professionals in educational environments that demand intelligible spoken Arabic. Accordingly, this presentation aims to provide both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the issue. It will present the latest data exposing learners’ perception of pronunciation instructions as well as teachers’ view on the un/necessity of teaching pronunciation and the lack of teaching materials that help them in teaching phonetic and phonological aspects of Arabic. This will be followed by discussion on the impact of pronunciation on other language skills, namely writing, reading, listening and speaking. A further focus will be on the phonetic and phonological difficulties encountered by learners such as the production and perception of Arabic sounds, scrutinising various factors and variations contributing to such difficulties and thus proposing the most appropriate methods and approaches that are recommended for Arabic teachers to tackle such challenges. This is concluded by examining how technology can help with teaching pronunciation inside and outside of the classroom and the latest technology tools utilised in language classrooms to meet pronunciation teaching and learning goals.
Arabic as a Foreign Language: Phonological Analysis of Speech Sounds Produced by Students
English Language Teaching, 2021
The aim of this paper is to expose the potential difficulties encountered by students learning Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) with a focus on sounds production. The research design was descriptive-analytic. The data was obtained using direct recording and interviews. The sample included 27 AFL students at the Arabic Institutes at IMSIU and KSU. The work on this research is twofold: first, the paper reports on teachers' and learners' views on the general difficulties encountered by students learning Arabic, focusing on those in post-secondary school getting ready for tertiary education. Secondly, the paper analyzes their speech for pronunciation errors found in sounds production. The results show that learners generally had no problem expressing themselves, but they had some pronunciation issues with some specific Arabic sounds. The results also show that the students attempt different methods to overcome pronunciation difficulties. Teachers were aware of these difficulti...
PHONOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH PHONOTACTICS: A CASE STUDY OF ARAB LEARNERS OF ENGLISH
This study is meant to phonologically analyze the English phonotactics in the English of Arab learners of English as a foreign language to determine the types of pronunciation difficulties they encounter. More specifically, it investigates the types of declusterization processes found in their interlanguage and the sources of such processes. The results of this study demonstrate that Arab learners of English unintentionally insert an anaptyctic vowel in the onset as well as in the coda of certain English syllables. Results also show that the major reason for declusterization processes is the mother tongue influence. In order to overcome such difficulties, this paper suggests a new approach for teaching and learning L2 syllable structure system.
Arabic and English Consonants: A Phonetic and Phonological Investigation
This paper is an attempt to investigate the actual pronunciation of the consonants of Arabic and English with the help of phonetic and phonological tools like manner of the articulation, point of articulation, and their distribution at different positions in Arabic and English words. A phonetic and phonological analysis of the consonants of Arabic and English can be useful in overcoming the hindrances that confront the Arab EFL learners. The larger aim is to bring about pedagogical changes that can go a long way in improving pronunciation and ensuring the occurrence of desirable learning outcomes.
Teaching Pronunciation for Arab learners of English: Using Gilberts' Prosody Pyramid
Developing proficiency in the target language requires sharpening one's repertoire in several competencies, including, linguistic, discourse, sociolinguistics as well as strategic competence which enable language learners to compensate any breakdown that usually occurs as a result of learners' limited knowledge whether in the system or pragmatic of the target language. However, all the above elements together play a major role in developing learners' overall communicative competence, they all be useless if the learners have not developed intelligible pronunciation in the target language. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate some of the pronunciation problems that Arab learners of English encountered regardless whether they belonged to the Arabic language interference or as a result of poor development in the intra-language systems. Henceforth, the paper depends on secondary data gathered from previous studies to reach a clear understanding about such problems and suggest some pedagogical techniques for teaching pronunciations to Arab learners of English, specifically with more focus to teaching the suprasegmental elements of phonology. The researcher recommends for English language teachers at secondary or tertiary levels to apply the Gilbert's Prosody Pyramid for teaching pronunciations to Arab students. Finally, the researcher explains how such model can be implemented in the classroom.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature E-ISSN: 2200-3452 & P-ISSN: 2200-3592 www.ijalel.aiac.org.au, 2019
ABSTRAC This study investigates why SUSE substitue the English consonant sounds /t/, /d/, /s/, /z /and /ð/ by the emphatic Arabic sounds /s/, /t/, /d/, and /ð/ in English words. The sample of this study is a group of Sudanese university students majoring in English. The first data collection tool is a test. This test contains a sample of words that contain the problematic sounds; these words have been observed to contain /ʌ/, /ə/ and /ɒ/. The second CAH is used to compare the articulation of the problematic sounds in both languages in addition to the emphatic sounds in Arabic. The most important results are as follows. First, some distinctive features of the English vowel sounds are shared by distinctive features of the emphatic Arabic sounds. Second, because of their absence in Arabic, the English vowels /ʌ/, /ə/ and /ɒ/ regressively and progressively influence the English sounds /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/ and /ð/ and change their quality to the emphatic Arabic sounds) /s/, /t/, /d/, and /ð/).