Perceptions of English Segmental Phonemes by Ethiopian EFL Learners Speaking Amharic as a First Language

Abstract

This study investigated native Amharic speaking Ethiopian EFL learners’ detection and recognition of English segmental phonemes, which are foreign to their first language Amharic, and yet that are used distinctively and functionally in the target language input. The study targeted English vowels and consonants tentatively predicted as contrastive based on problem areas of English pronunciation for Amharic speaking learners. These are short vowels /æ, ʌ, ə, ɒ/; long vowels /i:, a:, ɔ:, u:, ɜ:/; diphthongs /eɪ, aɪ, ɔɪ, aʊ, əʊ, ɪa, eə, ʊə/; and consonants /q, ð/. Sixty undergraduate students who speak Amharic as native language participated in this study by completing forced auditory tasks after listening to audio stimuli that presented target sounds in minimal pairs. The result showed that overall, English segmental phonemes that are foreign to the native language Amharic still exert severe perceptual difficulty for the learners even after more than twelve years of learning English. The findings also considered communication constraints that could stem from the learners’ difficulty to distinguish foreign English phonemes, and to make meaning out of them in spoken English. This was evident in the learners’ considerable failure to recognize the most familiar words in English when presented with English segmental phonemes. Findings of this study support particular attention and focus in EFL teaching on English pronunciation aspects which are foreign to the learners’ native language, the importance of balancing perceptual as well as productive skills, and the need for developing L1-based, and empirically informed pronunciation syllabus for Ethiopian learners rather than using generic and intuitively produced pronunciation training materials.