Query: English pronunciation

title: Pronunciation difficulties in the consonant system experienced by Arabic speakers when learning English after the age of puberty
abstract: PRONUNCIATION DIFFICULTIES IN THE CONSONANT SYSTEM EXPERIENCED BY ARABIC SPEAKERS WHEN LEARNING ENGLISH AFTER THE AGE OF PUBERTY Ana Marina do Val Barros The current study investigates the difficulties Arabic speakers may encounter when pronouncing English consonants. All participants are adults who have been in contact with the American culture for at least four years. The results show that the Arabic speakers in this study had difficulties to pronounce eight English consonants. The results also demonstrate that the difficulties experienced by Arabic speakers may differ depending on the country they come from. For instance, a person from Kuwait may experience different problems with English consonants when compared to a person from Egypt. This study provides insights and assists ESL teachers with the development of teaching strategies that will reduce or eliminate future problems regarding English consonants pronunciation by Arabic speakers.

title: Self Efficacy, Attitudes, and Choice of Strategies for English Pronunciation Learning

title: Improving EFL Students' English Pronunciation by Using the Explicit Teaching Approach
abstract: Due to several reasons, pronunciation instruction had often been neglected in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes. Consequently, many EFL learners always find it difficult to speak confidently because of their poor pronunciation. This study is a three cycled action research aimed at enhancing EFL students' pronunciation by using the explicit teaching approach. The participants were 21 students majoring in English Education at Universitas Kristen Indonesia who attended Integrated Skills IV class in the even semester of 2015/2016 Academic Year. The participants were provided with special practices on pronunciation, including watching video or listening to English expressions containing elements of English pronunciation difficult to them, drillings the elements, recording and transcribing their utterances, and comparing the transcriptions with those of native speakers' Data were collected through tests and questionnaires. The results revealed that the explicit teaching approach enhanced the participants' English pronunciation skills, as shown by the increase of their average scores in the four tests administered during the actions implementation. The survey results revealed that for the participants the approach was interesting, helped pronunciation development, and increased self confidence in English speaking.  action research, pronunciation, explicit teaching

title: English Pronunciation Errors Made by Saudi Students
abstract: Arabs often pronounce many English words wrongly which leads to spelling and writing errors. This paper deals with English pronunciation errors made by two groups of native Saudi Arab speakers. The students in the first group are of English major while the students in the second group are of Arabic major. Generally, Arabic speakers use direct transfer and interference from Arabic in addition to stress shifts in their pronunciation that are not recognized stress patterns in English. Also, there are some sounds in English that have no equivalence in Arabic, which leads to vowel and consonant errors. This study identifies the pronunciation errors made by Saudi students in pronouncing words of problematic nature to Arabs in general. The students in both groups made vowel insertion and confusion, orthography, stress, intonation, errors; but the more trained students in group 1 made less errors than the students in group 2.

title: English Pronunciation Teaching and Research: Contemporary Perspectives

title: Pronunciation and Comprehension in English as a Lingua Franca Communication: Effect of L1 Influence in International Aviation Communication
abstract: This article explores the issues of pronunciation and comprehension in the English as a lingua franca (ELF) context of pilot air traffic controller radiotelephony communication, and how these are handled in the proficiency rating scale globally used to assess pilots and air traffic controllers engaging in international flight and air traffic control. Based on an analysis of live radiotelephony discourse, feedback from aviation experts on sources of miscommunication, and an investigation of the phonetic features of key turns in the discourse, we present results indicating that L1 influenced pronunciation is one of the major factors causing miscommunication on the part of the speaker, together with unfamiliarity with the pronunciation on the part of the listener. Findings also suggest the descriptors for the Pronunciation and Comprehension criteria in the rating scale do not reflect the ways language users deal with these matters in their work. This study therefore argues that a new conceptualization of proficiency is needed for taking up the real matters in the assessment of ELF in the aviation context and other ELF contexts at large.

title: English Pronunciation Instruction: A Literature Review
abstract: English Pronunciation instruction is difficult for some reasons. Teachers are left without clear guidelines and are faced with contradictory practices for pronunciation instruction. There is no well established systematic method of deciding what to teach, when, and how to do it. As a result of these problems, pronunciation instruction is less important and teachers are not very comfortable in teaching pronunciation in their classes. This paper reviews some of the important issues of English pronunciation instruction. The aims of this paper are to define the term pronunciation, discuss the goal of pronunciation instruction, explain the importance of pronunciation instruction, elaborate the role of teachers in teaching pronunciation, and finally mention some suggestions in helping teachers to improve learners' pronunciation. The review of literature shows that if teachers want to teach pronunciation accurately they should be trained in pronunciation instruction.

title: Advantages of Using Computer in Teaching English Pronunciation
abstract: Pronunciation continues to grow in importance because of its key roles in speech recognition, speech perception, and speaker identty. Computer is being increasingly used in teaching English pronunciation to enhance its quality. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the advantages of using computer in English pronunciation instruction. Understanding the advantages of computer is an important step in the successful use of computer into English language teaching in general and pronunciation instruction in particular. Findings from empirical research, teachers' roles in using computer, and implications for language teachers and learners are also discussed.

title: The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary English Pronunciation
abstract: rules and representations (such as those found in Chomsky Halle, 1968) Let us take an example from stress placement. As any learner of English knows, the patterns of English stress placement are complex: robust, enter, cinema, Appalachicola. Chomsky and Halle's main stress rule was one of the first successful attempts to find patterns in English stress placement. To paraphrase and simplify (ignoring nouns) For verbs or adjectives, assign primary stress to the final vowel of the word if the word ends in a long vowel, or a short vowel followed by a consonant; otherwise stress the penultimate syllable. As Kaye (1990) pointed out: if this is a possible rule, what isn't? The point to be made here is that, when looking at proposals like the main stress rule, linguists began to realize that grammatical models must be learnable based on the input that the learners are exposed to. It was no longer enough to find the patterns in the data. From this point on, linguistic theory began to offer real insights into the study of both first and second language acquisition. The rules proposed give us descriptions of where the L2 learner starts, where they want to end up and what their intermediate system looks like.

title: English Pronunciation Instruction: Views and Recommendations
abstract: Despite decades of advocacy for greater attention, research into pronunciation instruction in English language teaching continues to be restricted. This article provides a comprehensive review of some important issues of English pronunciation instruction. The purposes of this review are (a) to explain different views of pronunciation instruction, (b) to elaborate the role of pronunciation in language teaching methods, (c) to discuss native like pronunciation, and (d) to mention some recommendations for the better teaching of English pronunciation. The review of the literature of this paper indicated that the objective of pronunciation instruction is not to gain native like pronunciation and speak exactly like native speakers of English. Instead understandable pronunciation should be the ultimate aim of oral communication.