A Study of Consonant Clusters in an EFL Context
Keywords:
pronunciation, consonant clusters, transfer, EFL learnersAbstract
The objective of the present study was to provide answers to the questions
whether Persian learners of English would have the same number of vowel
insertions in the initial and final consonant clusters and also to see if the
phonological system of the Persian students' mother tongue would have any
effect on their learning of the pronunciation of the initial and final consonant
clusters. To this end, sixty female intermediate EFL learners were administered a
pronunciation test. The analysis of the participants' performances in the test
showed that the number of vowel insertions they had in the initial consonant
clusters was not the same as that of final consonant clusters, and using a chi
square displayed that the problem of vowel insertion was found to be much
more severe with initial consonant clusters as the participants highly added
vowels to such clusters. Furthermore, it was found that Persian language's
syllable structure does really affect the learning of consonant clusters (i.e.
transfer from mother tongue).
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