PRONUNCIATION PROBLEMS

Pronunciation problems for Arab Speakers of English



Table of Contents

Introduction4

General aim4

Pilot study4

Major Experiment4

Theoretical context/background6

Factors that add to the difficulty of Arab learners6

Difference in English and Arabic languages8

Some factors affecting pronunciation11

Why the difficulty in pronouncing “P”15

Literature Review18

A General Review18

Earlier conducted studies25

Research Method/Methodology26

Purpose of the study26

Participants26

Data collection27

Data analysis27

Findings and Discussions28

Further Discussion40

Suggestions for improvement41

Further suggestions: Removing the deficiencies in pronunciation44

Conclusion48

References52

List of Tables and Figures

Contents

Table 3: Percentage of the mispronounced sound “p” in all the three positions of word; initial, medial and final.29

Table 4: Percentage of the mispronounced sound “d” in all the three positions of word; initial, medial and final.31

Table 5: Percentage of the mispronounced sound “t” in all the three positions of word; initial, medial and final.33

Table 6: Percentage of the mispronounced sound “v” in all the three positions of word; initial, medial and final.35

Table 7: Percentage of the mispronounced sound /t?/ in all the three positions of word; initial, medial and final.37

Figure 1. Percentage of each mispronounced consonant by each participant.38

Pronunciation problems for Arab Speakers of English

1. Introduction

General aim

This paper aims to investigate the problems that Arab speakers face in correctly pronouncing English alphabets.

The reasons are many, and to explore all will require a major work. As such experiments to investigate all the factors that result in the incorrect pronunciation of words cannot be conducted. It is for this reason that the main experiment was restricted to just one factor.

In this report while major problems of Arabs in correctly pronouncing English words are underlined, the other part intends to explore how Arab speakers rely heavily on consonants when trying to pronounce English words. The reason for this reliance happens to be the lexical structure of the Arabic language. It is also owing to the orthography of their mother tongue.

Pilot study

A pilot study was conducted in this regard. The purpose was to find out how Arab speakers pronounced words that had a similar or related consonantal arrangement or structure. The experiment proved that those words which had a similar consonantal structure were often mispronounced by Arab speakers. This outlined that the major reason for this confusion stemmed from the fact that Arab speakers relied mainly on consonants while trying to pronounce English words.

Major Experiment

Another experiment was conducted to find out the ability of Arab speakers in noticing missing vowels. They were asked to undertake a test that included word matching. The same test was undertaken by a group of native speakers of the English language. A third group was also included that comprised of non-Arab speakers who spoke English as a second language. There were five participants in each group. Results of those tests showed that the group of the native speakers of English was not only correct in recognizing the missing vowels in the test, they were also very quick. The other group that comprised of non-Arab speakers of English language, though not better than the group of native English speakers, proved to be much more quicker and correct than the Arab ...