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,
ÊŠÉ™/; and consonants /ï±, 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.
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