The Role of Intervention in Reducing Accented Pronunciation of English Vowel Sounds

Abstract

This study investigates whether students at English department have accented pronunciation of English vowel sounds that results from the mother tongue and the previously learned French language. Using an experimental design, a group of six second year students of English at Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia University, Jijel, have been given a list of words containing all English vowels to pronounce in order to judge the degree of accentedness of their pronunciation. This was done by the students evaluating themselves and two teachers of Phonetics who acted as judges of foreign accent. Later, it was experimented with the most vowel sounds that are problematic (/ɒ/, /e/, /ɜ: /, /ʊə/, /aɪ/, /əʊ/ and /eə/) in order to reduce accent through instruction and practice, classified as a small-scale intervention. Students who were post-tested on vowels which received treatment showed very little improvement on five treatment vowels, while two others /eə/ and /ʊə/ continued to be accented or problematic. On the other hand, students who were post-tested on vowels which did not receive treatment showed very little improvement two and five vowels remained very highly accented or problematic for students; these are /ʊ/, /ɪ/,/uː/, /ɔɪ/, /aʊ /. More careful and guided practice is needed to be carried out by students to reduce accent in pronunciation