Mother Tongue Interference in English Pronunciation Among Grade 10 Special Program in the Arts Students: A Phonetic Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69569/jip.2025.706Keywords:
Bisaya pronunciation, English pronunciation, Grade 10 SPA students, Mother tongue interference, Phonetic analysisAbstract
Pronunciation is crucial for effective communication, as it helps deliver a message clearly. It involves learning phonetics to produce sounds appropriate for a specific word. Guided by the Contrastive Analysis theory of Robert Lado and the Interlanguage Theory of Larry Selinker, this study aimed to identify the level of proficiency in Bisaya and English pronunciation, as well as the interference from the mother tongue on English pronunciation. A quantitative, causal-comparative design was employed among 50 SPA students. Pronunciation tests adapted from Wilhelmi (2024) in English and validated Bisaya pronunciation with topographical terms were administered to the students and evaluated by language teachers to check their correctness. The results indicated that students were advanced in pronouncing Bisaya, while beginners were advanced in pronouncing English words. The students have difficulty pronouncing English words, which is attributed to interference from their mother tongue. The familiar sounds from Bisaya phonetics that interfered with pronouncing English words were vowel monophthongs /ɑ:/, /ɪ/, /u:/, /ʊ/, /e/, consonant /b/, and diphthong /aɪ/. In contrast, the English sounds that the students mistakenly uttered included vowel sounds /ə/, /e/, /ʌ/, /i:/, and/æ/, as well as consonants/v /v/v/v/, /f/, and /z/. Lastly, there is a significant difference between the mother tongue and English pronunciation scores.
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