Abstract:
The present research work investigates pronunciation as one of the most necessary skills in
learning and teaching English as a foreign language. It aims at evaluating university
students’ phonological knowledge and their pronunciation skills. It also aims at exploring
the relationship between the two aspects. This research is based on the hypothesis that if
the students have sufficient phonological knowledge, their pronunciation would be
accurate. In order to test the validity of the aforementioned hypothesis, an oral test was
used to check the learners’ pronunciation accuracy and a written test was used to identify
the degree of the students’ phonological knowledge. Both tests were administered to 30
second year students at the department of English, Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia, Jijel
University. The findings revealed that not only do students encounter serious pronunciation
problems, but they also lack phonological knowledge. They also demonstrated that there is
a weak correlation between the students’ phonological knowledge and their pronunciation
performance. In the light of these results, some pedagogical recommendations are
suggested.
