3
understood. Therefore, the major emphasis in
the language classroom is
being made on guiding learners towards attaining the principal objective
- communicative competence.
There were arguments amongst theorists about whether the final
objective of teaching pronunciation is intelligibility or achieving a native-
like command of English pronunciation. Some insist on that fact that
attaining the level of intelligibility in communication is not enough, that
it is always important to bring pronunciation to the level of perfection.
Others assure that it is impossible to reach the level of native-like
pronunciation for a non-native speaker. However,
nowadays there is no
longer underscored priority of achieving the native-like pronunciation,
but having an ability to express oneself within the frame of intelligible
communication. It is believed that the goal of any training course is to
achieve intelligible, not perfect pronunciation.
Thus, the present paper is dedicated to the problem of the mother
tongue influence over the English language
pronunciation that takes
place among Peruvian EFL learners. It mainly concentrates on the
pronunciation of L2 consonant sounds due to the fact that the
peculiarities of the English language consonant sounds pronunciation
usually cause difficulties for Peruvian learners. It has been observed that
the majority of the students experience phonological interference of their
native language - Spanish spoken in Peru - over the pronunciation of L2
consonant sounds, regardless of the level of proficiency of other language
skills.
The study was carried out at the
Graduate School of Business
(ESAN) located in Lima, Peru. The principal objective of the
investigation is to help the learners deal with some cases of phonological
interference and, as a result, improve their L2 consonant sounds
pronunciation and communicative competence.
By applying practical
pronunciation activities and certain instructions selected and prepared
specifically for the study, this investigation aims to demonstrate the
possibility of any progress that a group of learners can make in
pronunciation of the consonant sounds of the English language. The
activities were chosen in accordance with
a five-phase communicative
framework proposed by Celce-Murcia; Brinton and Goodwin
(2010) in
4
the book “Teaching Pronunciation Hardback with Audio CDs (2): A
Course Book and Reference Guide”.
The paper has four principal chapters. The purpose of Chapter I is
to discuss the main problem of the study, to express the major objectives
and to formulate the hypothesis of the investigation. This chapter also
intends to justify the study and demonstrate some of its limitations. The
antecedents of the investigation are also mentioned in Chapter 1.
The second chapter is entirely dedicated to some important
theoretical aspects of the research. Since the study
is focused on one of
the language skills – pronunciation, this chapter includes references
about theoretical and practical aspects of teaching and learning the
English language pronunciation. Moreover,
the chapter explains the
notions of phonetics and phonology as regards to English and Spanish
phonemes, phonological rules and some other pronunciation features.
Next, Chapter III describes the methodology of the study with
regard to the research design, research questions,
the participants of the
study, materials and resources used in the intervention, techniques and
methods applied to gather all the necessary data. Moreover, this chapter
discusses the procedure of the investigation and provides the description
of each stage.
And, finally, the results of the investigation are explained in
Chapter IV. The outcomes are demonstrated in graphs and tables, and
discussed within the reference to the hypothesis of the study.
The
conclusions of the research, the recommendations for further
studies, bibliographical references and annexes are presented at the end
of the paper.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: