Methodology

This analysis was done in a mixed method research with emphasis on qualitative data. It is a non-experimental research where 27 students participated and were picked out taking into consideration that they were enrolled in the 5^th semester and were taking pre-intermediate English subject in BA in Languages at Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco in the school year 2019-2020.

The data was taken using a test made by the author divided in two parts; open questions to have a general idea about the content they have learnt in class, the topics they find more difficult to learn, to know if their pronunciation has improved, which are the phonological components for a good pronunciation and what are the strategies to improve the pronunciation.

The second part were practical exercises that measured oral, written and listening phonetic and phonological skills. It had three practical exercises. The first exercise was listening comprehension. Students listened seven pair of sentences, both containing homophones then, they were asked to write them in a chart. In the second exercise, students were given 32 words which had one or two letters in bold, they were asked to associate those letters into the correct phonetic symbol in a chart. The last exercise, was a conversation which ten students read it individually.

The first exercise was taken from the book “English pronunciation in Use book elementary” page 137 exercise E8. The second exercise was made by the author focusing on the phonemes students have had more difficulties to produce. The third exercise was also taken from the same book exercise D28.

In the first question, students were asked what were the topics they have worked during the semester. 70% mentioned consonants, 74% said vowels, 22% answered place of articulation and a 14% said diphthongs. Therefore, students might have known most of the consonants and vowels provided in the second part of the test.

To sustain that, in the second question, students wrote the topics in a scale of which were found as the most difficult to learn to the easiest one. The results were that vowels and phonetic transcriptions were the most difficult topics in the class. However, for students the easiest topics to learnt were consonants and vowels.

In question number three, the question asked was if their pronunciation has improved during the course; significantly, moderately, almost nothing or nothing. 47% of students said that their pronunciation has improved significantly, whereas a 53% said almost nothing.

After that, in question number four, students described the correct components they need for a good pronunciation. Some of them mentioned; consonants, vowels, diphthongs, and to know the place of articulation of those phonemes.

In the last question, students were asked the strategies they consider will help to improve their pronunciation; 66% of the answers correspond to do more practical exercises such as worksheets or book exercises, followed by a 10% that suggest study more by their own, the 7% said that they must read more as well as listening to music, a 3% answered that using mobile apps can help. The results are shown in Figure 1.

Source: by the author.

Figure 1 Strategies students suggest can improve their pronunciation.  

Second part of the test: practical exercises

The second part of the test was to detect the phonemes students are producing orally and written as well as those which they trouble with. This part was made of three practical exercises; identify homophones, identify a phonetic symbol in a word and reding sentences.

The first exercise was associated with oral comprehension where students differentiated homophones. Students listened to two phrases that contain a homophone, they wrote the pair of homophones into a chart. A total of seven pairs of homophones were listened which means, 14 words in total. Correct answers were taken into consideration if students could distinguish both words. Figure 2 shows the phonetic transcription of the homophones students listened to.

Source: by the author.

Figure 2 Pair of homophones listened.  

The pair of homophones most identified by 15 students were where and wear with the phonetic transcription /wɛr/ also, 15 students could write both words; see and sea with the phonetic transcription /ˈsiː/, 11 students identified the words know and no represented by /noʊ/. In contrast, two students recognized the words with the homophones hear and here. The pair of homophones that were just once identified check and cheque /tʃɛk/ and /noʊ/ in new and knew.

Despite the pair of homophones considered, individual words were also counted. The findings showed a big difference between recognizing one word and the two of them. Six students were able to write the pair of the phoneme /aɪ/ versus 12 students that could write at least one word. Another large number of students differentiated the phoneme /tʃ/ where 20 of them wrote one of the two words.

In the second exercise, students aimed to recognize the phonetic transcription of a letter. They were given 32 words with one or two letters in bold, that letter must be associated to a phonetic symbol, the symbols were written in a column of a chart, 11 symbols were taken into account; seven diphthongs and four consonants. In total each symbol must have three words written down. It was expected that the 27 students associated the three words with the correct symbol. Chart 1 refers to the exercise students answered and Figure 3 shows the phonetic symbols and the number of words out of 81 that students wrote correctly.

Source: by the author.

Figure 3 Written phonemes recognized.  

The results were that students could identify the phonemes /ŋ/ and /ai/ the most, with 68 and 42 respectively. The /t/ got 44 correct words against /θ/ and /ð/ with 34 each. The most difficult diphthong to identify was /eə/ with 30 correct answers, similar to /aƱ/ with 34 of the totals of words.

In the last exercise, ten students were selected randomly to read pieces of conversations, this last exercise was recorded. The letters in bold are the ones analyzed; emphasizing the representations of the letter t, o, and u. Text 1 shows the conversation students read, and figure 4 the findings.

Students showed self-confidence and fluency while reading it, vowels and some diphthongs were well pronounced. For instance, the letter t at the beginning of the words; two and this with the phonetic transcription of /t/ and /ð/ the ten students articulated both symbols correctly. However, in the word father, the middle t /ð/, 7 students could pronounce /ð/ while the rest pronounced /r/, and think using the symbol /θ/ was pronounced by 3 students, whereas the 7 students pronounced /t/.

Following with the letter o that has different sounds as in the words borrow, your and course, 7 students pronounced the symbol /ɒ/ in the word borrow and 6 students the symbol /ə/ in the word your, half of the student pronounce /Ɔ:/ in the word course, whereas the other students that couldn’t articulate /ɒ/, /ə/ and /Ɔ:/ pronounced the o as their mother tongue Spanish.

Last, the representation of the letter u has gotten different sounds as in the words you, house, hundred, and famous, the ten students pronounced the word house with the correct phoneme represented by the o, /aʊ/, 7 of the students pronounce the phoneme /ə/ in the word famous, whereas a little number of students could pronounce the phonemes of /u:/ represented in the o in the word you and /ʌ/ in the word hundred. The representation of u that wasn’t pronounced as their phonetic transcription were pronounced as in Spanish.