THE REALIZATION FOR THE ENGLISH VOICELESS POSTALVEOLAR AFFRICATE /tʃ/ IN NAJDI SAUDI ESL LEARNERS PRODUCTION

• Main Author: Alqarni, Abdullah Ahmed
• Format: Others
• Published: OpenSIUC 2013
• Subjects: English; Najdi Arabic; Phonology; Postalveolar Affricattes; Second language acquisiton; Sound Substitution and ESL learners
• Online Access: https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/1082; https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2093&context=theses

The current study investigated the realization for the English voiceless postalveolar affricate /tʃ/ in Najdi Saudi ESL learners' production. The goal of the study was to investigate whether Najdi Saudi ESL learners have difficulties in pronouncing /tʃ/. Both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors were taken into consideration. Eighteen Najdi ESL learners' with different length of residency in the US were the sample of the study. Sixteen English words with /tʃ/ in initial and final position represented the instrument of the study. Data were analyzed using both SPSS and Speech analyzer software. The results showed that Najdi ESL learners have difficulties with /tʃ/, and they pronounced it as /ʃ/. Pronunciation for /tʃ/ was more difficult in word-final position than word-initial. The study also, found that learners with longer LORs produced more accurate pronunciation than learners with shorter LORs. Commonly used words were not a variable of interest, however the study showed that learners had fewer errors with commonly used words, than uncommon ones. Finally, the results provided support for theories and hypotheses such as the CAH (Lado, 1957), MDH (Eckman, 1977), and LTT (Gass and Selinker, 1994).