ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH DENTAL FRICATIVES /θ/ AND /ð/ BY YOUNG LEARNERS OF ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE2
Keywords:
second language acquisition, pronunciation, consonants, dental fricatives, substitutionAbstract
This study deals with the acquisition of English dental fricative sounds /θ/ and /ð/ by young Serbian learners. It consists of two parts, the theoretical part and the research. The aim of the study is to analyse the potential relation between perception and production language processes, to analyse the nature of possible substitutions of dental fricatives by L1 sounds and to analyse the reasons for the particular learner’s choice of the substitution. The study consists of two tasks, perception task (listening) and production task (speaking). The findings of the perception task confirm that young learners have developed the ability to perceive a foreign language well. The production task shows that although they have a good ability to perceive the phonological level of the language, students still face problems with the production of non-native sounds. The participants were far more apt not to produce /θ/ and /ð/ as they really are than to perceive these dental fricatives. The most prominent substitution sounds appear to be /t/ and /f/ for voiceless and /d/ for voiced dental fricative. The production task also includes statistical data on substituting sounds calculated using relevant statistic methods for small samples.
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