Learners’ Perceptions of Arabic Consonant Contrasts: Gender and Learning-Context Effects

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of gender and the learning context on learners’ perceptions of Arabic consonant contrasts. To this end, 60 intermediate Arabic learners, half of which were males and half of which were females, were recruited from two different learning contexts: a study-abroad (SA) program in Egypt and an at-home (AH) setting at a western American university. Learners in the two groups were tested before and after a semester of Arabic study using a perception task that involved distinguishing four Arabic consonant contrasts: /d - dˁ/, /h - ħ/, /s - sˁ/, and /t - tˁ/). The results reveal that the advantage of females in segmental identification accuracy was not verified, as female performance did not significantly differ from male performance in any of the four target consonant contrasts. In contrast, the learning context was found to positively impact learners’ perceptions of the target Arabic consonants, as the SA group significantly outperformed their counterparts in the AH environment on the /h - ħ/ and /d - dˁ/ contrasts. However, there were no significant differences between learners in the two different contexts regarding the two other consonant contrasts (i.e., /s - sˁ/ and /t - tˁ/). The findings bring insights into the understanding of the gender-based differences in identifying problematic Arabic consonantal contrasts for English learners in two different contexts of learning, and they shed light on the implications for language pedagogy for pronunciation training.