Phonological Aspects of English Teaching and Learning - Research Paper Example

Phonological Aspects of English Teaching and Learning As a branch of linguistics, phonology is concerned with the way in which sounds are systematically organized in languages, including English. Like most languages, English has a wide range of variation in the pronunciation of words (Abdullah, Ahamed & Hassan, 2005). Linguists have analyzed the matter from the perspective of ELF (English as Lingua Franca) and EIF (English as International Language) and interpretations such as NS (native speaker) and NNS (non-native speaker). A teacher’s phonological awareness, which means their awareness of the sound structure of words, plays an equally important role in the teaching process of English. As the number of non-native English speakers rises due to globalization, there is a growing interest in phonology as the original language, which is fundamentally Standard English, has undergone some modifications (Mohammed and Alzughaibi, 2012). The purpose of this research paper is to analyze the phonological aspects of teaching and learning English by Arabic students who are not native English speakers. Key words: phonology, ESL, interference, mother tongue, audio-visual and Arabic language. Research Questions: 1. To what extent does the Arabic L1 phonological system facilitate or interfere with learning of the L2 English phonological system? 2. What evidence exists in the current literature (if any) to show that the use of audio-visual aids promotes the phonological acquisition of Arabic learners of English? Introduction: The several variants of English make it a wide area of research. Most ESL (English as a second language) teachers agree on the necessity of teaching explicit pronunciation in language courses (Montrul, 2010). While confidence in pronunciation facilitates the learners’ interactions with native speakers and improves their linguistic development, poor pronunciation masks good language skills and condemns learners to less academic, social, and professional advancement than they deserve (Clark, Yallop & Fletcher, 2007). When learners interact more with native speakers, they will greatly improve their pronunciation, but their hindrance stems from the fact that such interactional skills do not come naturally. As Kavaliauskiene (2009) points out, foreign language is influenced by their mother tongue and learners analyze and digest the information they receive from the perspective of their mother tongue first and then the new foreign language. Acknowledging this observation, it can also be said that the Arabic L1 phonological system can either facilitate or interfere with the learning of the L2 English phonological system. More specifically, it can be demonstrated that Arab learners insert vowels unintentionally in the onset and coda of some English syllables. For example, the syllable structures in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) did not allow clusters of the type CCC initially as English language did. So, as a result, the Arabic learners of English will insert the high front short vowel /i/ which declusterizes the clusters to ease their pronunciation. For example, the words ‘spring’ and ‘groups’ in English will be pronounced as /sɪprɪŋ/ and /gru:bɪz/ by the Arabic learners. As showed in the above examples, the Arabic learners will insert /i/ in the onset as /sɪprɪŋ/ and insert /i/ in final clusters (coda) as /gru:bɪz/ (Al-Saidat, 2010). This is because the mother tongue influences the learning of the vocabulary of the second language (Al-Saidat, 2010). Specifically, how the speaker recalls the mother tongue and how he or she compensates for their lack of knowledge of English with a tendency to construct composite lexical items. On the other hand, teaching and learning speaking skills is an integral part of teaching language, and speaking has been shown to be a result of listening. The significance of speaking skills is known to be the promotion of self-presentation. From the teaching perspective, it may be asked if the use of audio-visual aids can promote the phonological acquisition of Arabic learners of English (Zoghbor, 2014). The value of audio-visual aids in enhancing the learning of English by Arabic learners is that it can increase levels of confidence, however, empirical research and data supporting the proposition that audio-visuals facilitate learning foreign languages is scarce. According to Aufderhaar (2004), technology such as authentic audio have enabled instructors to use in the modern learning and teaching environment. Through such technology, visual learners can understand instruction and the corresponding meaning through graphic portrayals that include diagrams, illustrations, and charts. Auditory learners, who focus more on the spoken rather than written word, will also be able to pick up aspects of speech such as pitch and tone from lecture recordings or movie clips. Technology, specifically audio-visual aids, and its relation to second language acquisition will be explored further in answering the second research question, including the fact that audio-visuals have the potential to hinder learning. Background: Native language or mother tongue interference is an observable fact that contributes to the difficulties second language learners face in their attempt to have command over the target language. Historically, the mother tongue has been known to play a role in language transfer in the process of second language acquisition. From this perspective, language interference can be said to be the habitual transfer of the first language’s basic structure onto the target language’s basic structure (Ahmad & Nazim, 2013). This function of the mother tongue’s influence usually, and often, results in errors in the production of the target language by the learners. The main reason for such errors is because there is a tendency for second language learners to rely on the structure of their native language to speak or write the target language. Language transfer is a key phenomenon that has to be considered in the process of acquisition of a second language, and it is the foundation of the theory of language interference (Simonson, Gunter & Marchand-Martella, 2008). Hence, it should be acknowledged that the more the structures of two languages are further apart, the more the first language influences the acquisition of the second one. It is through this understanding that teachers appreciate the significance of teaching pronunciation and the learners demand more effective instruction in pronunciation. While it is established that learners may never attain the accent of native speakers of the second language they are learning, effective instruction in pronunciation will improve their intelligibility considerably (Zoghbor, 2014). On the teaching methods, the modern era has offered a new dimension with technological innovations that introduced audio-visuals. Alongside textbooks, language teachers also use a variety of related PowerPoint presentation, pictures, videos, posters and audio clips to enhance the teaching of language. The Interference of Arabic Language in Learning English Language: Learning a second language is either interfered with or facilitated by the mother tongue when the learner attempts to acquire new vocabulary or recall and apply vocabulary they had learned previously. The interference and facilitation may also occur when the learner attempts to construct complex expressions or words that they have not learned as a unit (Abd-Elbasser & Barakat, 2008). With 28 consonant phonemes and three vowel phonemes, the spoken Arabic language is more appropriately viewed from the perspective of a continuum of a variety of dialects (Jarrah, 2012). Arabic language speakers tend to exhibit characteristics of pronunciation that are a result of incorrectly transferring their mother tongue’s phonological rules into their English speech (Munro & Mann, 2005). Generally, non-native English pronunciations will be caused by the linguistic phenomenon whereby the Arabic language speakers carry the pronunciation rules and phonological processes of their mother tongue into their spoken English, as defined by the concept of interference. Morphologically, (smallest meaningful unit into which a word can be divided), the Arabic language is richer than English, which makes the manner in which it interferes with learning English as a foreign or second language more detectable and obvious (Al-Saidat, 2010). For example, the Arabic word fajaʿalnāhum (فَجَعَلْنَٰهُمُ) found in verse (23:41) can be translated into the English sentence "We made them". This single-word sentence has VSO (verb-subject-object) order. It is also possible that the single word divided into four distinct morphological segments: fa - a prefixed conjunction ("and") jaʿal - the stem, a perfect past tense verb ("made") inflected as first person masculine plural nā - a suffixed subject pronoun ("We") hum – a suffixed object pronoun ("them") *Example adapted from; (corpus, 2015) Problematic issues are attributed to the native language’s interference, especially when the native language and target language are completely different, which is the case when Arabic students learn English language. This difference poses serious difficulties among Arabic speaking students of English when they try to acquire the skills necessary to master English such as the proper pronunciation of vowels (Kirchhoff & Vergyri, 2005). The morphologically richer Arabic language makes its syntax completely different from English, a factor that seriously interferes with the learning of English language. The interference is more pronounced when the Arabic speaking learners tend to use their native Arabic as a reference for using English. Such interference may also arise from the learner’s prediction or assumption of equivalence, either functionally or formally, of rules or items that share form and function (Abdullah, Ahamed, & Hassan, 2005) Literature Review: When Arabic speaking learners perceive the context of the vocabulary of English using their mother tongue, they will be employing a necessary learning strategy, however, and inevitably, that will result in an error. The extent to which the mother tongue facilitates or interferes with learning English is dependent on the distance between the two languages as well as the learner’s realization of the transferability assumptions (Mohammed & Alzughaibi, 2012). Arabic language speakers tend to have a characteristic difficulty with the pronunciation of some consonants sound in English as /p/, /v/, /ŋ/, /t ʃ/, /dʒ/ (Jarrah, 2012). This difficulty can be explained by viewing language as a habit, a notion that Mohammed and Alzughaibi (2012) agree with and add to, explaining that learning a new language entails establishing new sets of habits. Earlier studies had shown that learning English by Arabic speaking students is characterized more by negative transfer rather than positive transfer as explained by the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (Montrul, 2010). Here, the positive transfer is absent because of the differences in the linguistic elements between Arabic and English and these differences create difficulties, referred to as negative transfer, in learning the target language. The high presence of mutually exclusive language patterns and forms between the two languages heightens not only the learning problem but also the potential extent of the interference. As proposed by the theory of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis, the learners will tend to catalogue the key areas of difference by comparatively analyzing the systems of both the foreign and native languages in an effort to develop more effective learning material (Montrul, 2010) The Extent of Interference: Normally, there is a high influence of Arabic language on Arabic speaking learners of English language. The interference may arise from a strategy on the part of the learner that predicts or assumes equivalence, both functionally and formally, of two items or rules sharing either form or function (Mohammed & Alzughaibi, 2012). More sophisticated learning of another might comprise of many rules or marking features for differentiating between the two languages (Mohammed & Alzughaibi, 2012). The most significant interference issue is that when Arabic speaking learners begin learning English at novice level, their faculty of language already manages the native language. Thus, they do not differentiate English language from neutral or zero perspective; they deduce the new phonological, syntactic, semantic and morphological patterns through those of the earlier stored native language. Thus, when two diverse languages like Arabic and English, the native language (Arabic) will typically dominate on the application and use of new rules. Pick this two sentences for instance, (1) I were interested with it (in) and (2) I love to select roses with various colors (Of) The wrong use of the preposition “with” rather than “to” in the first case happened since it is equivalent to “bi” in the Arabic preposition, which implies “to.” Thus, Arabic interference caused there errors that happened in the former sentences. Nevertheless, Arabic speaking students do not turn to literal translation prior to them forming English patters that are regarded the answer to this issue. This means that they translate English into Arabic and Arabic to English, word for word. Without carrying out the translation process, Arabic students learning in English still make use of their native language when coming up with new language patterns (Mohammed & Alzughaibi, 2012). In addition, according to Jarrah (2012), errors made by them because of Arabic interference happens more often than those made by them because of other learning problems. Prepositions, on the other hand, have hardly ever a one to one correspondence between English and Arabic (Mohammed & Alzughaibi, 2012). In Arabic, prepositions might be translated to a number of English prepositions whereas an English application might have a number of equivalents in Arabic. A number of linguistic aspects, which differ between both English and Arabic, develop hurdles for Arabic speaking learners to comprehend English language. For instance, Arabic adjectives agree in number and gender with nouns plus they follow them (Mohammed & Alzughaibi, 2012). This might cause Arabic speaking learners to make a lot of mistakes, for example, “he is man short.” Adverbs are, on the other hand, utilized less frequently in Arabic compared to in English and, apart from adverbs of time; do not comprise of a set pattern. Since Arabic adverbs of manner are different from English, they are normally expressed in a sentence: for instance, fast is expressed "with speed", and riskily as "in a risky way" (Mohammed & Alzughaibi, 2012). Therefore, Arabic learners of English find lots of confusion between adverbs and adjective application in English and Arabic (Jarrah, 2012). In addition, there is often confusion between the adverb and adjective forms in English, plus the adjective form is normally over utilized by Arabic speaking learners, for instance, he drives his car very dangerous. A study conducted by Abdullah, Ahamed and Hassan (2005) supported that Arabic learners filter sounds in the English language through the Arabic language’s phonological system. When they do such filtering, the learners usually end up making inappropriate distinctions for English. The pairing of English vowels such as /æ/ and /ε/, /ɪ/ and /i/ and /ε/ and /e/ will most likely be problematic for Arabic speaking learners (Celce-Murcia, Brinton & Goodwin, 2010). That is because it poses a challenge to them when they are required to discriminate vowels that have similar articulatory positions. Therefore, learning phonological skills of listening to English will involve the vowel space being redefined to reflect better on the distinctions of vowels in English (Celce-Murcia, Brinton & Goodwin, 2010). These literature reviews show that mother tongue actually interferes with the learning of a second language to a large extent. The Use of Audio-visual Aids in the Phonological Acquisition of Arabic Learners of English: In the context of this research, a visual is considered to be any image that is either projected or not and can be classified as pictures, figures, perceptions, replicas and reproductions among others (McCrocklin, 2012). On the one hand, instructors can plan for visuals and project them on a screen to deliver an intended meaning. On the other hand, some visuals are not planned for or projected and occur randomly in learning activities, such as signs and physical demonstrations. When the use of audio-visuals is not planned for but happens spontaneously as a result of another activity. Unplanned visuals are triggered by on-going activities in the teaching process that provide the instructor to offer extra signs and signals such as facial expressions and body movements to assist the learners in perceiving an immediate meaning (McCrocklin, 2012). Audio-visual aids offered by modern technology in learning have the potential to enhance methods of teaching that result in improved comprehension by the students. However, it is also worth noting that imagery also has the potential to hinder learning a new language because it is capable of interfering with performance in certain simultaneous visual tasks. Instructors who rely heavily on modern technology can inadvertently inhibit the learning process. Dolati (2011) explained this phenomenon by likening it to the law of diminishing returns and points out those learners will only get a certain degree of enjoyment from the assistance of a machine since it will lack the personal relationship between themselves and the instructor. From the perspective of phonology, auditory learners will be focused more on the spoken, rather than the written, word. Therefore, recorded lectures are capable of facilitating the acquisition of speech nuances such as pitch and tone. According to Aufderhaar (2004), there is evidence that using audio-visual aids are beneficial because they assist not only the learners but also the teachers. This is in recognition of the new trend that learning a new language is based more on the communicative need than the grammatical need of writing. According to Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin, (2010), Arabic speaking learners engage in learning for the purpose of maintaining communication with English speakers and research has shown a relationship between the comprehending process of a linguistic statement and the corresponding visual scenes. Audio-visual aids have the potential of making teaching and learning more interactive and encouraging discussions. For example, an English class in the mainly Arabic state of Libya in Northern Africa was presented with a video clip of a rotating picture that could be understood and explained from multiple angles (Emran, n.d). When each student was asked to explain the picture as they understood it, agreements and disagreements came up. The instructor introduced the class topic as “argumentative speech” through the discussions the students brought up. From this example, it can be seen that the video clip was instrumental in prompting the learners to come up with ideas. Although the instructor could have introduced the class topic directly, she used the video clip to draw out ideas from the learners and lead them into the active discussion. This is evidence that audio-visuals aids promote phonological acquisition because the learners not only got ideas of the forthcoming topic beforehand but were also motivated to develop their speaking skills as they argued about what they thought the picture was (Dolati, 2011). The same class was then shown a motivational video that featured a man without hands and legs but could swim, play golf, football, and drums. Afterward, the learners were asked to share their feelings and the inspirations received from the video with the class. Therefore, the video presented them with an opportunity to not only develops their phonological skills through discussion but also listening and thought generating skills. From this perspective, audio-visuals can be said to be useful and more importantly, their usefulness will be determined by the ability of the contents presented to the learners to generate discussion. For instance, in the two examples above, the picture was intentionally designed to be interpreted in multiple ways. It, therefore, follows that each student had his or her perspective, understanding and interpretation that they believed to be correct. Ideally, this gives the students a chance to talk actively in defense of their opinion, which is directly related to developing phonological skills (Dolati, 2011). The motivational video is also quite effective because it first touches on the learners’ conscious by showing them the challenges a fellow human. Once their attention is fully drawn to the video, they will be able to listen keenly because they can relate to the topic. Then, once the motivational part begins, the students are in the right frame of mind to share their feelings in the discussion that follow (Dolati, 2011). In another study conducted by McCrocklin (2012) at the Iowa State University, the aim was to train vowel contrast, and (/i/-/ɪ/) was used after the learners had taken a pre-test. While one group of learners was given video training, another was given audio training. They were then given post-tests as well as delayed post-tests to find out how the training had impacted them. From the results, it was established that both groups showed significant improvements. Arabic speaking learners need to categorize vowels in the process of learning to listen to English (Celce-Murcia, Brinton & Goodwin, 2010). It is also further observed that lip spreading or rounding, gliding and tension and tongue height and position within the oral cavity are characteristics that distinguish English vowels. Therefore, in English language length, unlike in the Arabic language is not among the distinguishing features but is influenced by the environment of the vowel (Celce-Murcia, Brinton & Goodwin, 2010). Imagery, especially when combined with texts, will facilitate learning the English language by the Arabic speaking learners. This is because the learners will be prompted to think about and engage more fully in the language process. The ability of learners to create relations among words, and their sensitivity to language, is enhanced by using visuals. According to a study conducted among randomly selected 100 Arabic-speaking university students in Pakistan, audio-visuals helped them to give maximum concentration to the learning process (Dolati, 2011). The study’s findings are evidence that resourceful classrooms in which English is taught are favorable and effective. Visual aids enhance the outcome of learning as well as the effectiveness of teaching as they help not only the learners but also the instructors. Instructors agree that by using audio-visual aids they can design content that targets the learners’ maximum skills. Audio-visual aids in the learning process also promote learning by making the learners more active as they encourage the discovery of the personal implications of ideas. Other studies in Sudan revealed that teachers had positive attitudes towards giving instructions using audio-visual aids and that this positively impacted the learners’ acquisition of phonological skills (Abedrabu, 2013). The instructors also believed that audio-visual aids for teaching English affected the learners’ motivation and achievement of phonological skills. As shown in the Sudan study, using audio-visual aids both enhances the learning process as well as increases the learners’ use of English. From these studies, this paper shows that there is evidence in the existing literature that points towards the effectiveness of audio-visual teaching aid in the teaching of English to Arabic speaking learners. Method: All the articles in this review were retrieved using online databases as well. The keywords that I chose included phonology, ESL, interference, mother tongue, audio-visual and Arabic language. I also searched for ‘can audiovisuals be used to improve language skills of ESL students’ and ‘the effectiveness of audiovisuals in teaching English’, as well as the topic. I also made sure to include the most current issues of the TESOL Journal article in my article searches in order to make sure that I had the most up to date information available for my reference. I limited my search only to relevant topics and concentrated on emerging teaching trends that looked into various uses of audiovisual aids in a classroom setting. The studies I chose did not need to focus on immigrant students but rather on the effectiveness of audio visual aids as an English language teaching tool in various countries. I analyzed my review articles basing on their relevance to the topic, year of issue and quality of the methods used in enacting the study. That is the reason why the research results I presented were quite cut and dry, direct to the point. By combining content and thematic analysis, it was evident that I would never predict the outcome of professional experiments on my topic. Because most of the studies focused on teaching English, I had to find ways and means of connecting the results to Arabic speaking students and audio visual aids. Therefore, I became quite confident of the information that I shared in the article reviews. I was satisfied with the results and had the confidence to know that I had presented sufficient information to support my discussion topic. Conclusion and Suggestions: Although it has been shown that there are various forms of English, this paper was based on literature about teaching Standard English to Arabic speakers learners. Phonology has been shown to be the branch of linguistics that addresses the way sounds are systematically organized in languages, and English, like most languages, has a wide range of variation in pronunciation. It has also been shown that the native language’s, or mother tongue’s, interference is a contributory aspect observed in the difficulties second language learners face in their endeavor to have command over the target language. Historically, the mother tongue has always played a role in language transfer in the process of second language acquisition. The literature review has shown that language interference can be the habitual transfer of the first language’s basic structure onto the target language’s basic structure. In an attempt to show the extent to which mother tongue interferes with Arabic speaking learners, this paper has shown that it is the key factor contributing up to 66% of the interference. Therefore, the foreign language is usually influenced by mother tongue and learners will characteristically analyze and digest the information they receive from the perspective of their mother tongue and the foreign language. The extent to which the mother tongue can facilitate and interfere with learning English depends on the distance between the two languages as well as the learner’s realization of the transferability assumptions. For example, Arabic language speakers also encounter difficulties with the pronunciation of /p/. On the other hand, the use of audio-visual aids to teach English to Arabic speaking learners has been shown to be advantageous, although some drawbacks have also been pointed out in page 12, line 3-9. However, the literature review conducted in this paper shows that the benefits by far outweigh the drawbacks in teaching English to Arabic speaking learners. Audio-visual aids have been shown to have the potential for making teaching and learning more interactive and give rise to discussions. As shown in the two examples used in this paper, audio-visual aids give Arabic-speaking students an idea of the forthcoming topic and engages their imagination. From this research, it has been shown that Arab learners of English have difficulties with certain syllables in English. Hence, the following procedures are recommended since they are of help when addressing pronunciation problems in relation to consonant consequences: Comparing the syllable patterns of Arabic and English and focusing on the differences. For example, most Arabic words such as عِيد‎ /ʕiːd/ (which means feast) can be broken down into smaller units, or syllables, due to its richer morphology. Therefore, it is important for instructors to understand that he due to the differences, students will have difficulties with most of the English words that cannot be broken down (Al-Saidat, 2010). Placing more emphasis on the pattern of the foreign syllable so as to eliminate the chances of predicted errors. For example, instructors should start with an emphasis on words that can be compared to the Arabic morphology, which means the words should be chosen such that they can be broken down to as many units as possible, such as the word “pronunciation” (Al-Saidat, 2010). The introduction of syllable patterns of Arabic (or the mother tongue of the learner). For example, every new word introduced should follow the Arabic syllable pattern and maintain the breakable words such as “mathematics” till the students gain proficiency sufficient proficiency in the basic structure of the language (Al-Saidat, 2010). The introduction of short syllable patterns first and then long syllable patterns such for English. At this stage, for example, the instructor can gradually start introducing more complex words with fewer syllables like for example ‘night’ (Al-Saidat, 2010). References Abd-Elbasseer, M., & Barakat, S. (2008). English speech intelligibility test among persons of Abdullah, I. 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