Phonetics & Phonology for Arab EFL Learners - Linguistics

This presentation delves into the realm of phonetics and phonology, specifically addressing the challenges faced by Arab learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). It highlights the differences between Arabic and English grammar rules, which often lead to pronunciation difficulties for Arab s...Read More

Arab EFL learners pronunciation
Phonetic and Phonology

summary
• The aim of this presentation is to elaborate on phonetic and
phonology in relation to Arab Learner of English Foreign
language(EFL).
• Secondly is how Arab learners can deal with pronunciation
challenges in English.
• The other issue is the importance of English phonetic and
phonology to Arab teachers.
• Lastly, the presentation will focus on the techniques a teacher
can use to teach Arab learners the pronunciation skills in English.

Phonetics
• It refers to how human beings produce, transmit and receive
various sounds. When it comes to Arabic language, the grammar
rules are different to those of English (Paradis and Prunet,2014:
p.56).
• The situation gives challenge to the Arab learners. For example,
in English one should say that “ I am interested in” however, the
Arab students would say the same sentence as “ I am interested
with”(Arvaniti, Żygis and Jaskuła, 2016: p.40).
• The meaning of the above sentence means that the preposition
rules in Arab language is different to those of English.

Phonology
• It refers to the study of various speech sounds that human
beings use in a particular language(Moosmüller, 2017:
p.488).
• Students have different accents because the phonological
system in English differs with those of Arab phonological
system.
• For instance, when Arab students are listening to English
speakers they may have challenges in translating the
meaning of the sentence hence they end up writing a
different thing from whatever the speaker have said.

How Arab learners can deal with English pronunciation challenges
• The best way to solve the pronunciation challenge is through
writing down whatever they have heard from the teacher and
confirming if it is the right word (Ohala, 2017: p.670).
• The second issue is that teachers should always insist on the
sentence structure, for instance the position of pronouns and
prepositions in the sentence (Cushing and Hellmuth, 2016: p.90).
• Arab sounds may not sound the same as English, however, most
learners write the way the word sound in their language.

Relationship between pronunciation phonology
and phonetics
• The sounds that students use to communicate affect the
meaning of what they say, thus the grammar itself.
• For instance, the symbols that are used in Arabic to begin a
sentence are not the same in English, therefore, the Arab
students may have a challenge concerning English
grammar.

Techniques teachers can use to assist Arab learners in
pronunciation.
• The first technique is to insist on the structure which includes
components such as spelling and the grammar rules.
• The second approach is writing various sentences every day
and the learners repeat the same on their own. The approach
assist in differentiating the Arab sounds and the English
Sounds while talking and writing (Jun, 2018: p.50).
• The last issue is that, the learners should not only know the
rules but also understand where and when to apply the rules
to improve their pronunciation skills.

References
• Arvaniti, A., Żygis, M. and Jaskuła, M., 2016. The phonetics
and phonology of the Polish calling
melodies. Phonetica, 73(3-4), pp.338-361.
• Cushing, I. and Hellmuth, S., 2016. Phonetics and
phonology. Knowing About Language: Linguistics and the
Secondary English Classroom, p.90.
• Jun, S.A., 2018. The phonetics and phonology of Korean
prosody: intonational phonology and prosodic structure.
Routledge.

References
• Moosmüller, S., 2017. Phonetics needs
phonology. Лингвистическая полифония. Сборник
статей в честь юбилея профессора РК Потаповой,
p.488.
• Ohala, J.J., 2017. Phonetics and historical phonology. The
Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics: A Handbook
for Language Teaching, pp.667-686.
• Paradis, C. and Prunet, J.F. eds., 2014. The special status of
Coronals: Internal and external Evidence: Phonetics and
phonology (Vol. 2). Academic press.