Impact of Phonemic Transcription on Learners’ English Spelling: A Segmental Study

Abstract

Acquiring sufficient proficiency in English pronunciation is a strenuous task for EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. Among other reasons, one primary reason is the lack of correspondence between the sounds and letters of the English language which makes English pronunciation a hard task for foreign learners. To reduce this discrepancy of sounds and spellings in order to improve the pronunciation of language learners, phonemic transcription is used quite widely by EFL/ESL teachers across the world. The phonetic/phonemic transcription is based on the internationally recognized symbols commonly referred to as IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) offered by IPA (International Phonetic Association). Despite the immense usefulness of phonemic transcription, it has the potential to negatively affect learners’ normal English spellings. The present research aimed to explore the impact of continuous phonemic transcription on English spellings of EFL learners through a Pre experimental research design. The study participants were the students of Diploma level in the Functional Courses Department, National University of Modern Languages (henceforth NUML). A range of phonemic passages was used as a research tool to explore the impact of sounds on spellings and Cook’s classification of spelling errors was adapted as a model for the categorization of spelling errors. Findings of the study reveal various categories of sound substitution errors under the impact of consonants, vowels, and diphthongs. With continuous practice of converting phonemic transcription into normal English spelling/orthography, certain consonantal sounds like /ð/, /?/, /,/s/, /k/, /z/, /w/ and vowel sounds like /i:/, /i/, /æ/, /?/, /?/, /?/, /?/ show the Mother Tongue(MT) impact of sounds on spellings. While in the case of diphthongs, only two sounds /a?/, and /e?/ exhibit the impact of sounds on spellings.