Production, Perception and Identification of English and Arabic Vowels and Semi-vowels by Iraqi Arabic EFL Learners

Abstract

The recent paper centers on reporting the error in the production, perception and identification of segmental phonemes of both Arabic and English. Formerly Arabic learners may come across many difficulties in the recognition and pronunciation a foreign language, such as English, due to the enormous variations, principally, in vowels and consonants inventory and their acoustic realizations. It also examines gender influence on learners' performance in three tasks. The total number of subjects are (36) Iraqi EFL learners; categorized into six groups based on their education proficiency levels. MP3 recording device is used in the tasks to record learners' pronunciation. The list of tested words contains (20) words that exemplify simple, long vowels and semi vowels. The results revealed that most Iraqi L2 learners have problems in articulating short and long English vowels and they come across fluctuating gradations of difficulty. The results also show that there is an effect of the level of education on the accuracy rate for some vowel categories. The most problematic vowels were /ɒ, ʌ, ɔ: / which were difficult for most subjects regardless their education level and proficiency in English.