Abstract:
A large number of studies dealing with phonology have focused their attention on phonological production at the expense of phonological perception which provides the foundation stone for phonological production. This study focuses on phonological perception at phonemic level. The purpose of the study is helping beginning learners improve their perception of the English phonemes which are confusable for them. To this end, we propose transcribing as an aural input enhancement device and examine its effect on learners’ phonemic perception. Thirty one females who were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups participated in this study. The experimental group had transcribing exercise during the experiment while the control group did not. The results of the study show that transcribing improves beginning learners’ phonemic perception significantly. Therefore, EFL teachers are advised to include transcribing exercise as one of the techniques to improve learners’ phonemic perception and, hence, their listening comprehension.
Machine summary:
The Effect of Transcribing on Beginning Learners’ Phonemic Perception Mohammad Afsharrad MA Student, Semnan University Aram Reza Sadeghi Benis Assistant Professor, Semnan University Abstract A large number of studies dealing with phonology have focused theirattention on phonological production at the expense of phonological perception which provides the foundation stone for phonological production.
Therefore, EFL teachers are advised to include transcribing exercise as one of the techniques to improve learners’ phonemic perception and, hence, their listening comprehension.
Key words: transcribing exercise, input enhancement, phonemic perception, beginning EFL learners 3333/6/8 :ییاهن دییأت E-mail: mohammadafshar@live.
ir 3333/3/3 :لوصو خیرات Introduction Pronunciation, which includes both perception and production of phonological features, has been recognized as an important area in SLA studies (Burgess & Spencer, 2000).
To date, different methods have been suggested for including pronunciation practice in classroom and developing learners’ pronunciation (Flege & Fletcher, 1992; Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 1996; Kelly, 2000; Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011).
A good source which provides lists of problematic phonemes for EFL learners with different language backgrounds is the book "English Pronunciation in Use" (Hancock, 2012).
The research question to be answered is: Does transcribing help beginning Iranian EFL learners improve their perception of phonemically contrastive pairs of words?
It attracts novice learners’ attention to the incoming input at the lowest level (sounds) which results in their noticing the phonological features of the new language they are learning which, in turn, leads to their perception of the problematic sounds.
Consequently, listening teachers of elementary levels are advised to assign transcribing exercise in order to help beginning learners improve their phonemic perception.