The purpose of this study was to identify and analyze difficulties experienced by Kuwaitis in the pronunciation of English vowel segments. The data were collected through tape-recorded interviews with 66 male Kuwaiti students in the College of Commerce of Kuwait University in 1988-1989. The researcher and an American professor of linguistics at the Florida State University analyzed the data by identifying segmental deviations from the pronunciation of the vowel segments acceptable to native speakers of English. They listened to the tapes and marked down the correct and incorrect pronunciation of the vowel segments as they occurred in the students' English speech. / Scores from the analysis were displayed in tables showing each vowel segment, total number of errors and correct pronunciation, and vowel segments ranked in order of difficulty according to percentages of errors related to the total number of occurrences. Also, a series of chi-square goodness of fit computations were conducted on the findings to determine whether the ratio of difficult to easy for each vowel segment was statistically significant. / The findings showed that the English vowel segments /e, ae, $\partial$, a, uw, u, ow, $\supset$/ constituted areas of serious pronunciation difficulty to the Kuwaiti students of ESL/EFL. In particular, with the English sounds /e/ as contrasted with /i/, and /ow/ as contrasted with /$\supset$/, the mispronunciation of the Kuwaitis would result in a change in meaning. These problems might be attributed to interference from the native language, improper instruction, and insufficient linguistics training of the English teachers. / Pedagogical implications and recommendations are offered to assist English language teachers in Kuwait to implement teaching techniques that lead to better acquisition of English vowel segment pronunciation by Kuwaitis. They are also offered to help teacher training program staffs and curriculum experts reduce future problems, and design instructional materials that would improve the teaching of pronunciation of English vowel sounds. Also, suggestions for further research relevant and complementary to this study are offered. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-02, Section: A, page: 0492. / Major Professor: Ernest A. Frechette. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_78169 |
| Contributors | Alqazweeni, Ali., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 95 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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