Abstract
This study explores the pronunciation difficulties experienced by Saudi EFL learners at Jouf University (JU) in the north of Saudi Arabia. To achieve this purpose, two main instruments were implemented: an experiment of pronunciation sensitivity response and two interview formats. The sample of this study was selected randomly and consisted of (n=20) students studying English major in their sixth level at JU, and (n=10) English language instructors from the same institution. A mixed-method approach was employed to find out the phonetic and phonological difficulties that participants encountered during the implementation of the experiment of pronunciation sensitivity response, and to interpret participant's responses to the interview formats. The findings revealed that EFL learners experienced six phonetic and phonological problematic patterns related to mispronunciation of: initial consonant cluster, final consonant cluster, multi-syllabic words, unfamiliar sounds, vowels, and voiced or voiceless phonemes. It was also found that EFL learners and instructors had different views regarding these phonetic and phonological issues. The limited time for practice, the lack of authentic materials and tasks, and the need for immersion classes, and effective instruction and learning were all found to be responsible about the phonetic and phonological problems EFL learners encountered and at the same time they were found to be the motives for overcoming these issues. It is believed that the implications and recommendations included in this study would improve the performance of Saudi EFL speaking abilities once they are incorporated effectively in their English learning settings.
Highlights
Many educational systems around the world have been implementing the teaching and learning English as a second/foreign language (EFL) since the mid of the twentieth century. In spite of this long history of practice that has been accompanied with the evolution of many distinctive theoretical instructional approaches, the process of learning a second language still encounters a number of phonetic and phonological challenges that could be basically attributed to the lack of effective communicative EFL classrooms
This section addresses the findings of this research in four subheadings as same order of research questions as follows: 4.1 EFL Learners' Problematic Speech Patterns
The poor speaking and pronunciation performance of Saudi EFL learners cannot be attributed to only one reason
Summary
Many educational systems around the world have been implementing the teaching and learning English as a second/foreign language (EFL) since the mid of the twentieth century. In spite of this long history of practice that has been accompanied with the evolution of many distinctive theoretical instructional approaches, the process of learning a second language still encounters a number of phonetic and phonological challenges that could be basically attributed to the lack of effective communicative EFL classrooms. These three factors: the lack of communicative EFL classes, the lack of immersed authentic activities and the impact of L1 can all be responsible about the poor phonetic and phonological production of the second or foreign language among EFL learners
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