Babkina, V. (2018). Phonological interference of mother tongue over the English

 

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CHAPTER I 
INVESTIGATION OUTLINE 
1.1
 
Formulation of the problem 
On the way towards comprehensibility during oral communication 
many Peruvian EFL learners face pronunciation difficulties. Spanish is 
their native language and, as any other mother tongue, it interferes with 
the pronunciation of the English sounds and speech aspects during the 
process of L2 learning. Second language learners tend to transfer all their 
knowledge of the native language into L2, including phonemes and 
allophones, suprasegmental features of pronunciation, patterns of 
syllables and so on. As a consequence, this mother tongue interference 
causes various problems in understanding a message the learners are 
eager to transmit in L2. What is more, Peruvian EFL learners are often 
uninformed about the English language pronunciation peculiarities and, 
therefore, about the failure in comprehending that may happen during 
their oral discourse. Partly it is due to the fact that in the language 
classroom, teaching English pronunciation is frequently left aside or even 
ignored. 
The study
concentrates on the production of the English language 
consonant sounds which 
can be compared with mortar that keeps 
together the speech flow and organises vowel sounds together. The 
pronunciation of various English consonant sounds by Peruvian learners 
requires special attention due to the difference between Spanish and 

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English phonetic and phonological rules. Some English sounds are absent 
or pronounced differently in the Spanish language. Besides that, there are 
pronunciation differences in the variants of the Spanish language not 
only inside Spain but also inside the countries of Central and Latin 
America.
The present investigation focuses on the cases of phonological 
interference of Peruvian learners´ mother tongue over their English 
language consonant sounds pronunciation. To be more specific, the study 
focuses only on those cases that really impede meaningful 
communication. During the process of investigation it became clear that 
when referring to consonant sounds pronunciation interference it is 
necessary to discuss the pronunciation difficulties on the level of the 
phonemes.
Phonemes have communicative value, in other words, correct use 
of the phonemes within one language is vital from the point of view of 
message comprehension. Whenever there is phonemic confusion caused 
by language transfer, we experience misunderstanding during the process 
of communication. In order to avoid miscommunication, L2 learners 
must be able to identify and use the linguistically significant phonemes 
appropriately. It does not necessarily mean obtaining native-like 
pronunciation of the second language. On the contrary, it involves the 
ability to be intelligible during speaking. To achieve native-like 
proficiency is often a personal choice.
Therefore, the study is dedicated to the L2 consonant sounds 
pronunciation analysis on the level of the phonemes with 
the principal 
objective to help Peruvian learners of English cope with the phonemic 
difficulties, improve their L2 consonant sounds pronunciation and, last 
but not least, be aware of the importance of intelligible pronunciation.