This study aims to
investigate the effects of proper English pronunciation errors on the overall
performance of adult students. In recent years, communicative language teaching
methodologies have started dominating second language learning and teaching in colleges
and universities. It has been found that English pronunciation is a major
problem for various ESL learners. The native language speakers achieve success
easily compared to non-native language speakers. It means students belonging to
China, Japan, India and other similar states may face a lot of difficulties
while studying at top colleges and universities of the United States, Canada
and Europe Pawlak, 2012).
They may also not
be able to fluently speak French, Portuguese, and Spanish. Some mistakes that
are common among all these students are pronouncing “th,” “schwa,” short “i,”
and “e,” as well as confusing “I” with that of “r” and “w” with “v.” The proper
pronunciation of “th” is next to impossible for adult students in second
language classrooms. According to Jennifer Ann Foote, Pavel Trofimovich, Laura
Collins, and Fernanda Soler Urzúa, “th” can be pronounced as “d” in words like
those, these, that, this, them and they. The only way to fix the issue is to
know the exact meanings of all of these words. Students must be able to make
correct sentences using these words and write phrases that actually make sense
(Foote, Trofimovich, Collins, & Urzúa, 2013).
The “schwa” is a
type of sound that can be heard or felt in words like choc(o), t(o), and
mem(o)ries. Most often, students do not pronounce it properly, and the only way
to fix the issue is by giving them a sufficient number of examples of how to
pronounce it. For instance, teachers can clarify the word “memory” to them with
eight to ten sentences, written on the whiteboard. Andrew H. Lee and Roy Lyster
mention that “I” is often confused with “r.” It is a kind of stereotypical
mistake made by Chinese and Japanese students. For example, they say slice
rather than rice, and this sound difficulty is present in almost all Asian
students studying at American and Canadian institutes. The proper pronunciation
of the short “i” is also difficult for adult students in second language
classrooms (Lee & Lyster, 2015). They get confused with words like sit,
hit, fit and live. The issue can be fixed by combining different words with
each other, such as sit with seat, hit with heat, fit with feet, and live with
leave. Students should be assigned tasks to make sentences using these pair of
words.
Similarly, students
confuse “v” with that of “w,” and this is a commonly found pronunciation
problem among Asian and European students. For instance, some students
pronounce west as vest, and water as vater. The only effective way to deal with
this issue is showing the student how to round his mount into “o,” followed by
unrounding it for producing the correct sound. Last but not the least, “e” is
not correctly pronounced by many adult students. Some of them fail to
understand the difference between bite and bit, and other similar words. This
issue can also be resolved if they are asked to practice word pairs on a
regular basis (Sheen, 2011).
It is obvious that
oral proficiency plays a significant role in language curriculum and the
success of students depends on how skilled and trained they are when it comes
to pronouncing different words. Learner uptake and corrective feedback are
frequently examined and observed in the realm of classroom research. Feedback
must be given to students to help them identify their errors and to get them
fixed within the classroom. The discussion is how words mentioned-above can be
fixed and what type of classroom strategies need to be implemented for better
results. Are learners’ errors corrected in the classroom or feedback is given
to them for improvements at a later stage? The ultimate goal of this research
is to understand how corrective feedback can help students pronounce different
commonly used words (Ning, et al., 2015).
Kazuya Saito and
Roy Lyster have examined that provision of correct feedback on specific forms
of language is necessary for experimental settings to be assured of great
results. Attempts were made to determine whether recasts and prompts have any
role as correct feedback in English language students’ oral proficiency or not.
It was also figured out which feedback treatment is more effective and better
than the other (Darabad, 2014). For this purpose, the words ending and starting
with “e” and “i” will be paid utmost attention too. In order to properly
analyze the data, experts used different one-way ANOVA conditions such as
+prompt –recasts, –prompts –recasts and others. The main issue is whether
corrective feedback can help students improve their pronunciation and
vocabulary or not. It is commonly observed that teachers make the incorrect use
of corrective feedback techniques, especially recasts and prompts, when it
comes to helping adult students pronounce different words inside and outside
the classroom (Saito & Lyster, 2011).
Pronunciation is
one of the most important problems that non-native English speakers often face
in the classrooms. Improper pronunciation may leave a negative impact on the
minds of students, cause communication problems, and damage a student’s
reputation in the eyes of his teacher or professor. When such students talk to
people around them, their pronunciation of words like “i,” “e,” and “l” are
incorrect, and they fail to understand how to use these words in English
sentences correctly. Without corrective feedback, they will never get to know
what their deficiencies are and how to fix errors in their pronunciations.
Thus, we can say that teaching pronunciation for ESL learners is the only way
to survive at colleges and schools (Tomczyk, 2013).
In recent months,
teachers have implemented various strategies and introduced a variety of techniques
to enhance the overall learning process. Many of them opt for simple methods
while the others go with sophisticated or complex teaching methodologies. But
none of them will benefit learners until or unless corrective feedback is not
provided to them. In other words, we can say that knowing a lot of vocabulary
words or phrases is useless if learners cannot pronounce commonly used words,
and this problem is common among ESL learners (Griffiths & Higham, 2017).
Such pronunciation mistakes can cause serious misunderstandings in the
classroom. For instance, if the word “sinking” is used on the internet in
sentences like “I am sinking,” various people may think that they can
communicate with their teachers using the same type of words or sentences, but
that’s not true. It should be noticed that several words are only meant to be
used on the internet, and can cause issues for the speakers if used in the real
world (Huang & Jia, 2016).
Studies indicate
that with all new words used in the classroom, teachers should provide examples
and write multiple sentences on the whiteboard to make students understand
everything properly. With a lot of practice, they can certainly achieve
success. Besides this, they should be provided with corrective feedback on a
regular basis to help them know their errors and how to fix those errors as
soon as possible (Naeimi, Saeidi, & Behnam, 2018).
Kazuya Saito
recorded Learners' responses in this regard. Many of them claimed that
corrective feedback was not provided to them and it could help them improve
their oral deficiencies to an extent. Recasts were the focus of his research
and the impacts of corrective feedback on communication were found. The
classroom study conducted by XZY revealed that recasts may be far better than
prompts when it comes to the improved performance of students (Saito, 2014).
Various learners in
the classroom need help and should be taught how to prevent themselves from
communication errors and pronunciation issues. For this purpose, a lot of
corrective feedback needs to be provided to them besides prompts and racists,
both of which may not prove to be fruitful in some circumstances. The gap
between communication errors and recognition of words needs to be filled as
soon as possible. If this is not done, then soon students or learners will lose
their hope, feel restless, and may fail in their exams. This can be a big
threat to the entire institute or education system. It is obvious that oral
proficiency plays a vital role in language curriculum, but the concern is how
learners can pronounce different words and improve the communication skills
(Kirgoz & Agcam, 2015).
Work Cited:
Kirgoz, Y., & Agcam, R. (2015). Teachers’
Perceptions on Corrective Feedback in Turkish Primary Schools. Procedia
- Social and Behavioral Sciences, 192, 574-581.
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.06.096
Naeimi, A., Saeidi, M., & Behnam, B.
(2018). Immediate Uptake of Phonological Corrective Feedback in Language
Learning and Retention. Education Research International, 2018,
1-11. doi:10.1155/2018/2579421
Foote, J. A., Trofimovich, P., Collins, L.,
& Urzúa, F. S. (2013). Pronunciation teaching practices in communicative
second language classes. The Language Learning Journal, 44(2),
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Lee, A. H., & Lyster, R. (2015). The
Effects Of Corrective Feedback On Instructed L2 Speech Perception. Studies
in Second Language Acquisition, 38(01), 35-64.
doi:10.1017/s0272263115000194
Saito, K., & Lyster, R. (2011). Effects
of Form-Focused Instruction and Corrective Feedback on L2 Pronunciation
Development of /ɹ/ by Japanese Learners of English. Language Learning, 62(2),
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Saito, K. (2014). Variables affecting the
effects of recasts on L2 pronunciation development. Language Teaching
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Pawlak, M. (2012). The Effect of Explicit and
Implicit Corrective Feedback on Eliminating Pronunciation Errors. Second
Language Learning and Teaching Teaching and Researching English Accents in
Native and Non-native Speakers, 85-101.
doi:10.1007/978-3-642-24019-5_7
Sheen, Y. (2011). Pedagogical Perspectives on
Corrective Feedback. Corrective Feedback, Individual Differences and
Second Language Learning Educational Linguistics, 39-51. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-0548-7_3
Ning, Y., Wu, Z., Jia, J., Meng, F., Meng,
H., & Cai, L. (2015). HMM-based emphatic speech synthesis for corrective
feedback in computer-aided pronunciation training. 2015 IEEE
International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP).
doi:10.1109/icassp.2015.7178909
Darabad, A. M. (2014). Corrective Feedback
Interventions and EFL Learners’ Pronunciation: A Case of –s or –es Ending
Words. International Journal of Learning and Development, 4(1),
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Tomczyk, E. (2013). Perceptions of Oral
Errors and Their Corrective Feedback: Teachers vs. Students. Journal of
Language Teaching and Research, 4(5).
doi:10.4304/jltr.4.5.924-931
Griffiths, L., & Higham, P. A. (2017).
Beyond hypercorrection: Remembering corrective feedback for low-confidence
errors. Memory, 26(2), 201-218.
doi:10.1080/09658211.2017.1344249
Huang, X., & Jia, X. (2016). Corrective
Feedback on Pronunciation: Students’ and Teachers’ Perceptions. International
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doi:10.5539/ijel.v6n6p245
