Pronunciation Errors Committed by EFL Learners in the English Department in Faculty of Education -Sana'a University (original) (raw)
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The study of pronunciation has received the less attention in the field of applied linguistics in comparison with other areas such as grammar and writing. As a result, EFL teachers are left to rely on their intuition to teach those components of pronunciation which are relatively . According to Fangzhi (1998:39) it is not enough to obtain an adequate level in pronunciationimportant to pay attention to pronunciation since it results in whether or not a speaker’s message can be passed or not by other people. Moreover, Gilbert (cited in Otlowsky, 2004:3) stated that, if someone cannot hear the target language well, she or he is cut off from the language. And if someone cannot be understood easily, she or he is cut off from conversation with native speakers. We can conclude from the statements above that pronunciation gives a significant effect to the production and reception of speech. However, many learners make a number of language errors and more implicitly pronunciation errors, which may eventually affect the intelligibility of speech. Hence, Pronunciation errors are an evitable issue that every EFL learner must face at a certain level, and Moroccan learners are no exception. The current study aims at investigating the most frequent errors related to segmental sounds produced by Moroccan EFL university students. The main objectives of the current study are first, to identify different kinds of pronunciation errors. Second, to classify these errors into categories, and attribute the errors to potential sources, and finally find a possible impact on other language areas. Key words: Errors, segmental sounds, pronunciation, EFL learners, error analysis, mother tongue, EFL teachers.