The relationship between deviance in segmentals and syllable structure and impressionistic judgements of ESL pronunciation

[摘要] This mini-dissertation identifies segmental and syllable structure errors made by Zulu mothertongue secondary school students learning English. The purpose of this identification is todetermine whether there is a relationship between the number of segmental and syllabicstructure errors made by the subjects and the impressionistic judgements of the speech samplesmade by ESL teachersThe review of the literature focuses on accent, pronunciation and the determination of an accent.A speaker's comprehensibility and intelligibility are influenced by his/her accent and way ofpronouncing the language. A speaker will have difficulty in getting a message across if he/shehas a low level of comprehensibility and intelligibility. It is generally acknowledged that the wayin which a person speaks is judged both socially and educationally. The norm against whichEnglish is judged is Received Pronunciation (RP). The pronunciation of English in South Africais reviewed and it is clear that there are many varieties of English spoken in South Africa. Thefocus of this study is on Black English as spoken by Zulus. In the literature several factorsaffecting the acquisition of native-like pronunciation are identified. These factors are discussedas they shed light on the reasons for the deviations found in the speech samples.Any language consists of a number of linguistic and phonetic elements,. Two such elements aresegmental and syllable structure. These two elements are discussed in detail and then typicalsegmental and syllable structure deviations made by ESL learners are investigated. Acomparison between the Zulu and English languages leads to an illustration of the consequencesof the pronunciation differences between them.The 40 subjects used in the study ranged in age from 17 to 18. They are all Zulu mother tonguespeakers of English who attend a secondary school in Gauteng. The subjects were recordedreading a passage and a word list. These speech samples were transcribed phonetically and anerror analysis was done for each sample. The number of segmental and syllable structure errorswere counted. The recordings were judged by six judges, all teachers of English. The number ofsegmental and syllable structure errors in each speech sample was compared with the markassigned to the speech sample by the judges. Pearson product-moment correlations werecalculated in order to determine the relationship between segmental and syllable structure errorsand the impressionistic judgements of pronunciation.The results of this study seem to indicate a strong relationship between the number of segmentaland syllable structure errors and the rating given to each speech sample. This indicates thatsegmental and syllable structures should not be ignored or simply taken for granted in theteaching of ESL learners.

[发布机构] North-West University