Raising Phonological Awareness to Rectify the Misarticulation of Plosive Consonants Among Adult EFL Learners

Abstract

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) speakers often face difficulties producing certain English phonemes correctly when they live in a non-English-speaking country. The sounds /p/, /t/, and /k/ are among the most common articulation problems Saudi EFL learners have to encounter. In adult learners, the speech habits formed during the early years become "fossilized" and affect the acquisition of correct pronunciation. Therefore, recent research investigates the effectiveness of targeted phonological awareness training on improving these hard-to-articulate phonemes among adult Saudi EFL learners at the tertiary level. To address this issue, this study conducted a four-week experimental teaching session that involved improving phonological awareness with explicit teaching of the Voice Onset Time (VOT), and the precise place and manner of articulation of the sounds in question to twenty pre-medical Saudi EFL learners. This was enhanced through repetitive practice of the targeted phonemes, use of minimal pairs, and extended, reading aloud of passages. The results showed that participants were able to identify their pronunciation errors and articulate the target sounds in isolated words and in continuous speech. There was also an overall improved oral fluency of the test participants in their English production, possibly indicating that the phonological awareness approach could have wider benefits beyond the simple articulation of phonemes.