چکیده:
Mispronunciation is still among the frailties of language learners the world over. The present study reports an all-out investigation into pronunciation training for the Persian-speaking EFL learners at the intermediate level of language proficiency. More specifically, the present study investigated (a) the underlying causes of mispronunciation at the level of segmental features, (b) the crucial importance of error analysis prior to developing any materials concerning suprasegmental features, and (c) the effectiveness of materials developed on the basis of the findings in the first two phases of the study. Sixty-Four Persian-speaking intermediate EFL learners were selected as participants for the purposes of this study. Twenty-Four of them assisted in the second and forty of them in the third phase. Since the results obtained in the first two phases were to be used for the preparation of the materials in the final phase, the researchers devised a pretest posttest design to prove or disprove the efficacy of the whole study. Thus, two intermediate classes in one of the language schools in Isfahan were chosen and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The first phase of the study confirmed the great impact of Persian language on EFL learners’ English pronunciation (51.82%). The second phase supported the idea that some suprasegmental features such as linking sounds are obstacles to proper pronunciation for Persian-speaking EFL learners. The results obtained from the last phase of the study indicated that pronunciation training with supplementary materials is rewarding albeit the progress might be slow.
خلاصه ماشینی:
In this respect, in light of previous works and research conducted on error-analysis and contrastive analysis of Persian and English phonology, fresh teaching materials were targeted to be used by Iranian EFL learners on an intermediate level of language proficiency either as a self-study or as supplementary input in academic contexts.
Research Questions The following are the main research questions the present study aimed to answer: 1) Which of the English segmental features are more difficult for Iranian EFL learners at the intermediate level of language proficiency?
3) To what extent the researcher-made teaching materials can be helpful for intermediate Iranian EFL learners to learn accurate pronunciation of the English language?
Participants Method Since the first phase of the study regarding the segmental features was to figure out the commonest mistakes that Persian-speaking EFL learners make only at the level of words, no special group of learners was selected.
Both interlingual and intralingual sources of mispronunciation among Persian-speaking EFL learners, namely borrowed words, proper nouns, absent sounds, stress, both initial and final consonant clusters, schwa, rule ignorance and silent letters were tested and scored in the first section of the pretest and posttest.
The researcher-made pronunciation-teaching materials are not constructive for intermediate Persian-speaking EFL learners to build up accurate pronunciation of English language.