The impact of the mother tongue in producing different phonemes of two non-distinctive English sounds by Arabic second language learners

Abstract

Despite the same speech organs that all human beings have in common, speakers of different languages have different articulatory systems, which restrict their pronunciation and make their producing of the sounds phonologically different. This study is designed to examine the influence of the mother tongue in the pronunciation of English stop alveolar consonant sounds /t/ and /d/ by adult Arabic speakers and the potential impact of the phonemic awareness on improving their reading skill. So that this study is investigating the role of the phonemic awareness that Arabic speakers may have to recognize the non-distinctive two consonant sounds /t/ and /d/, and the probability of improving their reading skills by increasing their phonemic awareness.
The purpose of this study can be achieved by choosing a random sample from adult Arabic speakers and designing an oral reading task in order to evaluate their pronunciation of /t/ and /d/ sounds in English. The purpose of the oral reading task is to measure the imitation of /t/ and /d/ sounds in English. This method of data collection allows the examiner to evaluate the second learners’ pronunciation of the stop alveolar sounds /t/ and /d/ in English during their reading. The results will be used for more understanding of teaching English sounds system as a second language to adult Arabic speakers. Given that the research dealing with beginning reading in adult second language learning is remarkably limited (Dellicarpini, 2011), this study will contribute to the field of improving reading skill of non-native English speakers at early stages of adult learning programs.