Enhancing learners' pronunciation of vowel sounds Though Speaking Activities:The case of first Year students at Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia University,Jijel

Abstract

The present research assumes that in order for the students to improve their pronunciation, they need to practice in Speaking classes the theoretical knowledge acquired in Phonetics classes. In other words, the Phonetics class does not provide enough space for authentic pronunciation practice, a situation made worse by the quasiabsence of direct pronunciation practice in speaking classes.To overcome this problem, an experimental research was conducted on an experimental group and a control group of first year EFL learners at the University of Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia, Jijel. Each group consisted of 20 participants, and were both taught the same lessons on the pronunciation of RP vowel sounds. The lessons designed for the control group were purely theoretical, modelled on a classical teacher-centred approach. The experimental group, by contrast, were taught the same vowel sounds, rather implicitly, through speaking activities. Our experimental study went through three phases: an oral pre-test, the treatment period, and an oral post-test. The results of the pre- and post-tests were compared after calculating the means and the t test of both groups using SPSS Statistics software. The results obtained from the data analysis confirm the hypothesis stated at the beginning of the study i.e. this study proves that speaking activities are a good tool for learning good pronunciation. Hence, we come to reject the null hypothesis (H0) and confirm the alternative hypothesis (H1): Speaking activities enhance the learners’ pronunciation of vowel sounds