The present study focuses on students at two Swedish secondary schools and the pronunciation errors that are the most prominent during reception and production of specific speech sounds. The primary focus of this degree paper is to establish whether or not certain speech sounds such as e.g. the /tʃ/ sound, which do not occur in the Swedish language in initial position are difficult or not and whether or not they act as an obstacle for Swedish students learning English as their L2. The aim was to establish which specific pronunciation errors that occurred in the L2 language classroom. Since this was the aim, primarily quantitative studies were carried out at two secondary schools in southern Sweden. The results from the four different tests show that the tested Swedish L2 students seem to have a greater difficulty with speech sounds placed in initial position than in final position of a specific word. According to this degree paper this is due to the fact that the Swedish language does not have an equivalent to the difficult speech sound in initial position, therefore making it difficult and often resulting in negative transfer from the L1. Furthermore, the English sounds that posed the biggest problems for the students were ones that sometimes can be found in the Swedish language. These sounds were very similar to native sounds creating a challenge for the Swedish students when perceiving and producing the English sounds. However, it was shown that when these sounds were presented in a context, they proved to be less challenging for the students to receive and produce. Moreover, although the syllabus only mentions that communication should be functional, there still needs to be an element of focus on form in order to become a proficient language user.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-32834 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Centerman, Sofi, Krausz, Felix |
| Publisher | Malmö högskola, Lärarutbildningen (LUT), Malmö högskola/Lärarutbildningen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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