Attitudes Towards Pronunciation of Seeu Students

Attitudes Towards Pronunciation of Seeu Students

MIRTOSKA, Jasmina
LOCI, Emrije Agai

Key words:tenses, adverbs, transfer, spontaneous speech ABSTRACT Since proper pronunciation and the awareness thereof is one of the main purposes of the first semester undergraduate course Phonetics and Phonology at the South European University, Macedonia; this study focuses on the attitudes of students towards student and teacher pronunciation at the same university. The study examines the importance of the students’ own language competence in pronunciation in comparison with that of their teachers’. For this paper, 53 first year undergraduate students have filled out a 5-scalle questionnaire expressing their beliefs about student and teacher pronunciation in comparison to other competences like grammatical knowledge and teaching skills. Additionally 20 of them have been involved in recorded individual interviews. The oral interview provided insight into their opinions about their own and the teachers’ pronunciation as well as the progress made in the pronunciation course they have completed Phonetics and Phonology in their first semester. This course has the aim to raise their awareness of proper pronunciation by introducing, practicing and testing them on segmental and suprasegmental features like: transcription, stress patterns, intonation among others. The analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data showed constancy in the answers and attitudes of the students towards their own and their teachers’ pronunciation. The data showed that the students had high expectations of their teachers in term of pronunciation. This study also tests whether the high regard for proper student and teacher pronunciation correlates with their Phonetics and Phonology final course grade.

Article
PeerReviewed

IBU Publishing

2013-05-03

1812