CC BY
75
УДК: 372.881.1 ГРНТИ: 14.35.09 DOI: 10.32415/jscientia.2019.05.06
SOME ARABIC PHONEMES AS THE PROBLEMATIC ONES FOR ENGLISH - SPEAKING LEARNERS OF ARABIC: THE REASONS AND THE POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
M. L. Swanson
The United States Naval Academy
589 McNair Road, 21402 Annapolis, MD, USA
E3 Swanson Maria - swanson@usna.edu
The current paper touches up the reasons of difficulties that the English-speaking Learners of Arabic face in the pronunciation of some phonemes. The author explains this phenomenon through the description of the mechanism of formation of similar sounds in Arabic and English and the problematic sounds for English-speaking Learners. She also gives a brief comparative analysis of Arabic and English phonemes that are mistakenly perceived by students as identical. This paper also analyzes the challenges of English-speaking Learners related to the pronunciation of Arabic phonemes that are absent in English. In addition to the theoretical part, the article contains practical recommendations aimed at solving the difficulties associated with the setting up the correct pronunciation of this category of students. In addition to the exercises targeted at setting up the correct pronunciation, the author provides the lesson plan, containing various activities for resolving this issueThis work also briefly highlights issues related to the uneasy situation in the field of teaching pronunciation as one of the aspects of learning Arabic in the United States.
Keywords: teaching pronunciation, Arabic, practical solutions, lesson plan, foreign language pedagogy, emphatic sounds, pharyngeal sounds.
РЯД ПРОБЛЕМАТИЧНЫХ ФОНЕМ ДЛЯ АНГЛОГОВОРЯЩИХ СТУДЕНТОВ, ИЗУЧАЮЩИХ АРАБСКИЙ ЯЗЫК. ПРИЧИНЫ И ВОЗМОЖНЫЕ РЕШЕНИЯ
М. Л. Свансон
Военно-Морская Академия США
США, 21402 г. Аннаполис, штат Мериленд, МакНейр Роуд, 589 И Свансон Мария Л. - swanson@usna.edu
В данной статье рассматривается вопрос о сложностях англоговорящих студентов, изучающих арабский язык, в произношении ряда фонем. Автор объясняет данное явление через описание механизма образования проблематичных для англоговорящих учащихся схожих звуков в арабском языке, а также дает краткий сравнительный анализ фонем в арабском и английском языках, неверно воспринимаемых учащимися как идентичных. В данной работе также анализируются проблемы, с которыми сталкиваются англоговорящие учащиеся в произношении фонем, отсутствующих в английском языке. Помимо теоретической части, статья содержит практические рекомендации, направленные на решение сложностей, связанных с постановкой правильного произношения у данной категории студентов. Кроме того, в статье кратко освещаются вопросы, связанные с непростой ситуацией в области преподавания произношения как одного из аспектов изучения арабского языка в США.
Ключевые слова: преподавание произношения, арабский язык, практическое решение, преподавание иностранного языка, план урока, эмфатические звуки, горловые звуки.
Our speech consists of sequences of vowels and consonants organized in a system, so their mispronunciation leads to the mutual misunderstanding of a speaker and his/her counterpart, which might be misinterpreting or missing a word, or a complete sentence, or even a paragraph loss. That is why it is so important to learn the correct pronunciation from the early stages of learning foreign languages.
The correct pronunciation is especially critical for English speaking students of Arabic (we use the terms "L2 students" and "L2 learners" instead of it further in this article) enrolled into Islamic religious schools, and practice reading The Holy Quran and other texts and prays in the Arabic, peculiarly if they want to become religious leaders.
This aspect is also extremely important for L2 students, who are preparing themselves for a career of a broadcast reader, or a top-level translator.
If the number of academic studies articles about teaching pronunciation for L2 learners of English counts hundreds of works, the ones for L2 learners barely exist.
This is explained by the special attitude to this language, which for many centuries has been taught at the non-religious
schools mostly as a language of literature, research, and an example of one more Semitic language, in addition to the Hebrew. Naturally, teaching its pronunciation has been one of the lowest priorities. The situation started to change fast in the U.S.A. from the beginning of the 1960s, and has radically altered after the events of September 11, 2001.
But even nowadays, when Arabic is intensively taught mostly for the communication purpose, mistakes in pronunciation may lead to language misinterpretation, misunderstanding or words loss, teaching it remains the less pedagogical priority, falling far behind teaching grammar and literacy [e.g. 36].
Teaching Arabic pronunciation has been either completely neglected, superficially outlined, marginalized, or deprioritized in Burnham's term [14].
For example, Schultz has recommended to spend around 12% of class time for phonetics and calligraphy during the first semester, and not to spend any time on this aspect further [41, p. XI].
Since its share in teaching is dramatically disproportionate to teaching grammar, vocabulary, and culture, L2 learners commonly can achieve the level of a native-speaker in
morphological and syntaxes structures [22], but likely fail in doing so in L2 phonology [17, 38].
Though some attention to the practical solution of this issue has been paid [1, 15, 5, 34, 17, 37, 46, 47], Rifaat [35] has noticed the two main trends still predominating in this area. The first one is a practice without presenting any formal or explicit information about the elements of Arabic pronunciation [12, 13, 25, 29, 11, 39, 41]. The second trend is a brief outline of Arabic phonetics and phonology confined to only segmental features [28, 2, 22, 40, 42, 44].
As of today, Odisho's [32] course for teaching Arabic pronunciation is, in Rifaat's opinion [35], the only one, which is practical in nature and makes the segmental phonetic description of Arabic. But the prosodic features there are mentioned very briefly.
At the same time, the overwhelming number of works devoted to the Arabic pronunciation still carry researching character, such as [31, 9]. Most of researchers have expressed their concern about the urgent pedagogical needs of this aspect, particularly the lack of educational materials for teaching pronunciation, professionalism and attitudes of instructors of Arabic, which do not resolve this issue.
This paper attempts to contribute to the much-needed practical instructions and adds to the exercises for L2 Arabic educators and L2 learners.
Semitic languages have a consonant system that is different from most of other languages for several reasons.
Since about one-third of Arabic consonants cause various difficulties in their pronunciation for L2 learners, I limit my research with only several phonemes that belong to several groups according to the place of their articulation.
In order to do this, I give a brief description of the mechanism of the articulation of the targeted by me phonemes, compare them to the ones that L2 learners usually produce instead, and propose several pedagogical solutions and exercises for teaching the correct pronunciation of these sounds.
1. The description of the problematic for English L2
learners of Arabic:
1.1. The emphatic sounds
They are characterized by the two points of articulation, the primary one that is located in the dento-alveolar area and the secondary one in the upper region of the pharynx [4, p. 599]. There are four consonantal articulations in Arabic that belong to this group. All of them are coronal / s, t, d, S / (the last one is often pronounced like /z/ and have the their non-emphatic allophones in Arabic (s, t, d, and S), like /ti:n/ "figs" -/ti:n/ "mud", /sabb/ "he swore" -/sabb/ "he poured", /dall/ "he showed"-/dall/ "you stay/he stayed", / Sal/ 'he humiliated" -/z^l/ 'he stayed" (examples are taken from [47]).
According to the place and the manner of articulation the emphatic consonant are described as the following: /s/ is voiceless, velarized, and fricative; /t/ is voiceless, velarized, and plosive; /d/ is voiced, velarized, lateral, fricative and /S/ is a voiced, velarized, and fricative. The other important feature of this group of consonants is their secondary articulation, that has been defined by him as the presence of the two places of the tongue articulation for each of the four emphatic phonemes. Ladefoged and Maddieson define it as "an articulation of a lesser degree of stricture accompanying a primary articulation of a higher degree" [27, p. 354]. This last feature makes consonants sound different from their non-emphatic counterparts.
The medieval grammarians used the term '?itbaq' "the
covering of a lid", while giving the characteristics of these sounds. STbawayhi described the process of formation of the emphatic sounds as the following:" If you place the tongue at the point of articulation of these four consonants, the tongue is covered ('intabaqa) from the point up to the part of the tongue, which is placed in front of the upper palate, with a raising towards the palate. If you place the tongue [in this fashion] the sound...is compressed (mafisu:r) between the tongue and the palate down to the place [of articulation of consonant]" [20, p. 27].
Gairdner has added to that definition more details, saying that "the most prominent feature of this process is the raising of the back of the tongue to the soft palate" [19, p. 250], when its blade is soft, raised and spread, and when the middle part of the tongue is also raised though it is lower than the back one.
Modern linguists use the term 'velarization' [18, p. 20; 32, p. 633], or 'emphasis' [48, p. 47] instead of '?itba:q'. O'Grady had defined this process as the one, when sounds are produced with the tongue touching or near velum [32], while Gairdner gives more details in his description of this articulation, saying that the back of the tongue in production of these sounds is raised towards the back of the velum, i.e. the extreme back of the palate, when the tongue fills the mouth [18, p. 20].
Another special feature of the emphatic sounds in their 'tafXi:m' ("thickening, magnifying, enlargement, emphasizing"). Jacobson [26], has considered it to be the distinctive one in a language featuring system.
In addition to the four emphatic consonants mentioned above, the phonemes /q/, /g/ and /x/ stay in this category, forming a class mustaialiyah' [9]. The phonemes, that belong to it, are produced, according to Ibn JinnT, by "raising of the back of the tongue towards the soft palate when they are pronounced" [24, p. 62].
1.2. The trilled /r/
It is a voiced and dento-alveolar consonant patterns with the so-called primary emphatic. At the same time, it appeared in Arabic as emphatic and non-emphatic sound, depending on phonemic environments. [6, p. 49]. Its articulation occurs through loosely holding the front part of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, so that flow of air between them creates the motion, which alternatively sucking them and blowing them apart.
1.3. The pharyngeal (guttural) sounds
The three consonants classes of the vertical dimension of articulation (uvulars, pharyngeals and glottals), are confusing to L2 learners, as the places of formation of the uvulars and the glottal sounds lay close to the formation of the problematic to them pharyngeal ones. Students tend to mix up between these unfamiliar to them sounds to the ones, which place of formation in English is close to them.
So, they pronounce the English voiceless glottal fricative /h/ for most of the Arabic sounds articulated in the vertical dimension (described in 1.4.), as /h/ is the only one glottal sound that is present in their native language.
The distinctive feature of the uvular, pharyngeal and glottal sounds from the rest the Arabic consonants is the place of their formation that is called the horizontal dimension (from the bilabials to the velars).
Another typical feature of the vertical dimension phonemes is the involvement of the root of the tongue and the back wall of the pharynx in their production, so the glottal articulation involves the glottis. The back moving of a tongue is the one of
the specifics of the Semitic languages, though it is not the most common position in Semitic languages [32, p. 38].
1.4. The Arabic vertical dimension consonants
This group includes the uvulars, /X/ (voiceless, fricative), /g/ (voiced, fricative) and /q/ (voiceless, plosive).
The emphatic sounds can be compared to the gutturals ones to which he attributed /q, X/ and /g/, which are also called hurufu-l-halq' ("the throat letters"). The middle vertical dimension consonants are the voiced and the voiceless fricatives /?/ and /fi/. They are pharyngeal sounds, that are also articulated in the upper part of the pharynx (oropharynx), and do not spread the emphasis, that is typical for the Semitic languages [32, p. 38]. This class of phonemes is produced "through the modification of airflow of the pharynx by retracting the tongue or constricting the pharynx" [33, p. 625], as it has already been mentioned above.
At the same time, the discussions about the nature of constriction of the pharyngeals do not stop. They have occurred as a result of the opposite conclusions that were made after the X-rays speakers tracking done by Al-Ani [3] who has decided that /?/ is articulated in a lower location of the pharynx than /h/, meanwhile Delattre [16] has got the opposite results, and Ghazeli [21] has claimed that these two phonemes were produced in the same location. The "compromising" definition has been proposed by Ladefoged and Maddieson [27], according to which the pharyngeal fricatives in Arabic and Hebrew have been considered to be the epiglottal approximants.
The unaspirated plosive glottal stop /?/ and the voiceless glottal fricative /h/, belong to the glottal (laryngeal) group of articulation produced in the lower part of the pharynx (the glottis). The glottal stop /?/ occurs as a result of a very quick opening and closing action, and that is why it is neither voiceless, nor voiced.
2. Difficulties in teaching pronunciation
2.1. The system of education
Nowadays the most common textbooks for learning Arabic in the U.S.A. [12, 13, 7, 41, 45] pay the same level of attention to sounds, as it is typically given in modern textbooks for learning English as L2, which especially focus on problematic for L2 learners sounds.
But the authors of the Arabic textbooks limit their explanations to vague and general comments about the need to develop the special awareness of the importance of pronunciation, such as "it is necessary to form good habits from the start [and] that all the language skills are important" [12, p. IX]. They also overwhelm Arabic language beginners with the information about various dialects [12, p. XI] by asserting that the difficulties in pronunciation "can only be overcome by exposing [learners] to as many varieties of Arabic language as possible" [46, p. 308], which leads to further confusing and even discouraging of L2 learners.
Part of the problem lays in the requirements for students of Arabic that was put forward by the ACTFL, that even has not even mentioned correct pronunciation between students' oral proficiency requirements [34, p. 1-11].
2.2. Lack of professional knowledge with L2 instructors for
the pronunciation instructions
Teaching this complex area cannot be limited to a mechanical process of learners' repeating the correct words/ phrases after instructor or a record, though many L2 educators still tend to this way of instructions.
But teaching pronunciation is a skill and an art, "that
requires both knowledge about the underlying process of speech production in human beings and the hands-on expertise in the methodology and techniques of teaching pronunciation" [31, p. 17].
That is why L2 instructor must possess the basic knowledge of phonology, in addition to the pedagogical skills for teaching this aspect properly and clearly to students, who do not necessary have even a basic knowledge of phonology. The last aspect can also be applied to L2 instructors of Arabic, many of whom acknowledge their limited competence in Arabic phonology and lack of academic and pedagogical knowledge about pronunciation in the target language. Yunis and Sheykh [43, p. 20] point out to the high demand for language teachers for providing advanced teaching methods.
The position, occupied by many L2 instructors of Arabic, treats developing the phonological abilities of their learners negatively. They claim, that pronunciation instruction is exhausting, boring, too difficult, takes too much time from teaching other language aspects, and is not needed beyond the low beginner level [38]. It is also teachers' time-consuming activity, as they are forced to create special exercises due to the lack of materials (ibid.)
In addition to this, the most common mistake of the Arabic language instructors is attempting to cover all the sounds and thus giving an equal emphasis to all of them [5, p. 10].
3. The mechanisms of the typical mistakes of L2 Learners
of Arabic
3.1. The emphatic consonants
The consonants /s/ (voiceless, post-dental, sibilant) and /t/ (voiceless, postdental, stop), selected by us as examples for the current paper, have an emphatic value which makes the neighboring segments emphatic, too. Hussein [23, p.1] gives the examples of the pronunciation of the words /musta{i:l/ "rectangle", where the sound /t/ is emphasized and converted into its allophone /{/, and the word /mustahi:l/ "impossible," where /t/ is not emphasized. Furthermore, when a L2 learner is asked to write a word /sada/ 'hunted", s/he writes the emphatic allophone /d/ for /d/, for a word /mis{ara-h/ (a ruler), s/he is looking up for a root /s/-/t/-/r/ ) and while writing the word /mustawa:/ s/he would tend to replace the non-emphatic /s/ by /s/ (ibid.).
Thus, the problem lays in a students' tendency to replace (consciously or unconsciously) the emphatic consonants of the target language with their non-emphatic counterpart and viceversa.
This common omission lays in the place and mechanism of their articulation. As it has been explained by Hussein [23, p. 2-3], the difficulty in pronunciation and recognition of such sounds lays in using pharynx in different languages: it is an inactive articulation area in English, meanwhile it is the secondary one for producing /d/, /s/, /{/ that are dental-alveolar and for /3/ that is dental in Arabic.
That is why L2 learners need to get used to the new for them articulation mechanism, that involves the tri-movement of the tongue: the rising of the apex towards the place articulation, its back moving towards the soft palate and the retraction of the dorsum of the root of the tongue, i. e. the velarization process.
3.2. /r/
Arabic /r/ is different from the English one, as it alveolar and rolled in Arabic, and post alveolar and central approximant in English. That is why the speakers of English, who have not previously studied any language that has the similar /r/ (such as
Spanish, or Russian) as the Arabic has (and which is "a multiple flap...of the tongue tip against the alveolar ridge...[and] a ballistic motion that the speaker can start or stop without controlling what is going on" ) [15, p. 16], tend to replace it by putting their tongues in the habitual position for English /r/. 3.3. The vertical dimension consonants L2 learners experience difficulties with the pharyngeal phonemes as /^/, /?/ and with the /?/, tending to replace the pharyngeal fricative voiceless by the glottal fricative voiceless unaspirated /h/, or by the pharyngeal fricative voiceless /h/, they also often the pronounce the plosive glottal stop /?/ instead of the pharyngeal fricative voiced /?/. The explanation of this common mistake lays, like in the previous cases, in the replacing the place and the mechanism of articulation of sounds in Arabic with the ones habitual to them. Hussein [23, p. 2-3] explains the difficulty in pronunciation and recognition of them mentioned above sounds by different using of pharynx in different languages: it is an inactive articulation area in English; meanwhile it is the main place of articulation for /V and A/ [10, p. 121].
Such replacement happens as the glottal consonants are the closest ones to the pharynx, according to Al-Ani [3], Delattre [16], and Ghazeli [21], among others, who have come to the same conclusion, using different devices for data collection.
4. The solutions for the articulation of some of the challenging sounds
In order to solve the inevitable difficulties in pronunciation that especially arise during the first stages of L2 learners (which usually remain unfixed on the following stages), we propose the following steps of solution:
4.1. To make clear to non-linguists explanation of the mechanism of pronunciation of the Arabic sounds through showing to L2 leaners the picture, or the video of the vocal tract with places of articulation, and give simple explanation of the mechanism of the production of: the challenging for the sounds.
4.1.1. The emphatic group
Emphasis in generally is defined as a secondary articulation involving the back of the tongue. It accompanies a primary articulation at another point in the vocal tract. In Arabic the emphatic consonants are pronounced by placing the end of a tongue on behind the alveolars for /d/, or on the alveopalatal part where your top central incisors meet the gums for /t/,) and dropping the rest of the tongue as low as possible and it should be toward the front and close to the roof of the students' oral cavity. These sounds are pronounced with an air pressure in the oral cavity meanwhile their counterpart are not; when we pronounce the emphatic sounds we round our lips, meanwhile when we pronounce their counterparts, our lips flatten into a small smile (alveolar plosives or fricative), when we pronounce the emphatic sounds, our tongue curves width-wise a bit, but when we pronounce their counterparts, it stays flat.
One more tip is paying attention to the sounds of all vowels neighboring to these emphatic sounds, the most noticeable of which are 'alif and fatahah [12, p. 58], as alif after the emphatic sound will be pronounced like /o/ in hot, and it will be pronounced like /a/ in hat after its allophonic counterpart [15, p. 16]. In /da:/, /da/, /du:/, /du/, /di:/ and /di/ the emphatic /d/ before /u:/ and /i:/ does not sound as clear, as before /a:/ and /a/, and it is unclear before /u/ and /i/, and sounds like unemphatic /d/. The phenomenon of affecting of the emphatic consonants condition their neighboring sounds, both vowels
and consonants, "sometimes the whole word" [4, p. 600] is explained by the presence of the '?itbaq' ("velarization, or spreading") mentioned above.
Thus, the best solution is to teach students the distinguishing of emphatic and nonemphatic sounds, is checking the surrounding of these vowels. Students must constantly train their 'ear sentivity' as the difference between /a/ and /o/ might seem very slight one for many of them, considering the wide variety of colloquial pronunciations in English. Cowan in his practical pronunciation guide has recommended L2 instructors not to even try to convince students that the syllable /{a:/ sounds different from the syllable /ta:/ because the first sound in the first syllable is emphatic. He has noted, that L2 learners "may agree with [the instructor] politeness' sake, but deep down they will think [he/she is] crazy, or deaf" [15, p. 16-17].
Also, remembering such words as told, Tokyo (for t) while pronouncing the emphatic sounds, might be helpful [1, p. 2].
It is also beneficial to refer to comparisons of the paired sounds, like /s/ has a whistling sound, while /s/ has a hissing sound [1, p. 2].
4.2. The articulation of /r/
The understanding of the mechanism of its pronunciation in Arabic and its difference from the English one together with the articulative gymnastics resolve this issue.
The most common reason of mispronunciation of the Arabic /r/ is an absence of lifting L2 student's tongue up. The tip of his/her tongue is curled down and doesn't rise, like in English.
The recommended exercises are:
Training the tongue in front of a mirror by lifting it up and down behind teeth, so L2 learner can get used and become comfortable with the new position of the tongue.
The next step is the strengthening the tip of the tongue which can be done by using a handkerchief, rubbing a tongue between fingers, or pushing the tongue through the teeth.
-"Brush" exercise: L2 bites his/her tongue and then pushes it through the teeth. The blood flow in the tip of the tongue strengthens it.
-"Nut", or "Candy" exercise: L2 learner imagines, that his/ her tongue is a candy/a nut and pushes it against a cheek, so the tongue becomes stronger.
-"Tasty Jam" L2 student opens his/her mouth in a smile, pulls out a tongue, making its shape as a cup. Then he/she slowly licks his/her upper and lower lip.
4.3. The uvulars, pharyngeals (gutturals) and laryngeals
We recommend to the educators to limit themselves with
the explanation of the place of formation of the pharyngeals and laryngeals (the different part of a throat) and the uvulars (the back of the tongue near or across uvula), and ask students to touch their throats while pronouncing the pharyngeals /h/ and A/, the laryngeals /h/ and /?/ and uvulars and /g/. Like in 3.1., L2 the instructors might also use the pictures with the organs of speech, where every Arabic sound is marked according to its place of formation, as well as showing video clips about the mechanism of the formation of each problematic sound.
4.5. The next step in teaching the difference between familiar and new sounds, is comparing these sounding in pairs and bring up the examples from the surrounding students natural sounds. Such approach works even better and faster, than deep theoretical explanations.
For example, /d/ has been compared by medieval Arabic linguists to the sound that doves make, /h/ might be compared
to the sound made by someone, who is fogging a pair of glasses before cleaning them [12, p. 31], could be an imitation of the sound of snoring, and /g/ could be the one of someone garaging throat.
While making explanations about such sounds, as /^/, L2 instructor might experience another difficulty while making students pronouncing it, as it is considered to be vulgar in American society, but it is absolutely socially acceptable to pronounce it in the formal atmosphere of the classroom since it is not vulgar in Arabic [15, p. 22]. Brustad, Al-Batal, and Al-Tonsi [12, p.75] propose teaching A/ based on pronunciation of /h/ that stays in the same category as A/ (fricatives) and after the clear explanations does not cause students' problems in pronunciation.
To make students pronounce this sound, they recommend making the unvoiced /h/ voiced, and to make "a deep, throaty sound instead of a breathy sound" (ibid.).
Another way to teach the phoneme A/ is to ask learners to imitate the beginning of a burp that usually rises a lot of fun between the young learners. Again, the teacher must explain that this sound is not considered to be vulgar in Arabic; moreover, the Arabic linguistic tradition acknowledges it as the one of the most beautiful and distinctive Arabic phonemes.
4.3. The glottal stop /?/
Students must be told that they make this sound in English when they pronounce words that start with a vowel, like 'our', 'if', 'it' or between vowel sounds in a phrase such as "sea-eagle", or "oh-oh", or "Jaffa oranges" [15, p. 23]. The educators must ask students to say these words aloud and to pay attention to "the catch" (ibid.) in their throat when they pronounce the first vowel as the first step. The other way to teach this sound is the sound that someone would make, if he/she hits himself with a fest into a chest, etc.
Then the learners must be given the simplified theoretical definition of hamza, for example: hamza is the obstruction airflow in the vocal tract when the voice cords tight together and do not let the air go through them.
5. Repetition and Training
L2 learners must not only memorize the new movement of their muscles involved in the formation of the problematic sounds, but also regularly train these muscles. The good exercise for this purpose is contrasting the familiar movements in the articulation of English sounds, to the new ones, or a repetitive imitation of the familiar to L2 learners sounds from their surroundings.
The general recommendation to all students who start learning the Arabic pronunciation, is not to try to self-study the Arabic sounds by themselves, or use online resources, but to seek for help from some educated native speaker, or an experienced Arabic linguist.
6. Lesson plan
In this part we provide an example of a lesson plan, where we describe the steps, which might be done for to achieving the correct pronunciation.
Step One: Sounds Description
At the beginning, the teacher explains to students how to articulate sounds and what organs of speech are used for it, s/ he can use a diagram, or a video with the articulation organs and show how different sounds are produced, and places of articulation.
Then L2 instructor must notice, that L2 learners must not encounter on the way of their pronunciation in their mother tongue, while pronouncing many Arabic sounds. It is also
useful to involve such device, as ultrasound machine, that will demonstrate to the students the places and mechanisms of articulation.
Step Two: pharynx muscular motivation
As it has been noticed above, the main reason of L2 learners' mispronunciation is replacing the sounds, that are new for them by the ones from their mother tongue, or very close to them.
Since none of the emphatic or uvular, pharyngeal or glottal sounds has an equivalent in English, except for /h/ in some surrounding (for instance, /h/ can be compared in the word 'house'), the next step in teaching the correct pronunciation in Arabic is the preparation of students' muscles for the uncomfortable and new for them positions for producing these sounds. They must do the recommended exercises several times a day for several weeks until they get used to the pronunciation of the phonemes, that are new to them.
Hussein [23, p. 4] has proposed exercisers that are aimed to the irritation of speakers' pharynx, larynx and the tongue root by using a tongue depressor.
Brustad, Al-Batal, Al-Tonsi [12, p. 31] have developed several some exercises for this purpose. They stimulate the muscles that are not used for production English sounds, and enable students to be aware of "what these muscles can already do" [ibid]. Though Brustad, Al-Batal and Al-Tonsi [ibid.] only give a number of exercises for the developing of the pronunciation of the sound /^/, it can be also a good preparation for the pronunciation of the sound /g/.
Step Three: minimal pairs
Minimal pairs are the ones of words, that have all the similar sounds, except for one.
The instructor needs to draw students' attention to the contrast between the emphatic and non-emphatic sounds by showing to the learners the educational clips or using ultrasound machine or pictures, and explaining the difference between emphatics and non-emphatics consonants first, and then to master the difficult for learners sounds by changing the easy and familiar phonemes to the new ones in the same surrounding of the other sounds.
Abdallah proposes reading a list of minimal pairs by teacher first, asking students to point out which words were read [1, p. 2], and then asking students to read these words aloud.
It is not necessary to give translation of all words, but it might be useful to give a translation of several pairs in order to emphasize the difference in meaning by just changing one letter [ibid.].
The other advice to learners is recording their reading, so they could while reading a text and parallel, or following-up listening, realize the difference between what they hear and what they say.
Step Four: Tongue-Twisters and Proverbs
Teachers can prepare some tongue twisters with the words, that contain challenging sounds. He/she might run a competition between students, checking who would read the tongue-twisters better, or ask students to prepare reading them at home.
Proverbs are also a good base for learning the Arabic problematic sounds, as their rhyme and combination of sounds help students to feel them sharper and to learn them faster.
Further activities:
(1) Students are asked to choose the correct image, according to the sound they hear, or a word containing this sound;
(2) Students might also do such activity as completing sentences, when they read a sentence and complete it by looking at the picture that has the missing word. The missed words must contain one of the difficult sounds (optical reading)[1, p. 3].
As most of words, that have difficult sounds in the minimal pairs are usually unfamiliar to the beginners in Arabic, we would recommend providing pictures, illustrating the meaning of the words with its translation into Arabic, as it will increase the understanding of l2 learners of the importance of correct pronunciation, and will bring into the classroom some entertainment atmosphere, which usually contributes to the successful learning.
Another variant of this exercise might be just giving L2 learners the minimal pairs with their translation into English, and ask them to build sentences using both words, paying the special attention to their pronunciation.
It is essential for students to find root of every word they learne. It will help them to differentiate between originally emphatic consonants and their counterparts, that are used due to their presence [23, p. 5].
Weekly meetings with the educated native speakers are very helpful in being accustomed to the problematic sounds.
REFERENCES
Conclusion:
The staff of modern American language schools has a minimum amount of linguistic knowledge and has undergone under minimal teacher training, on one hand, and does not pay sufficient attention to the issue of teaching correct pronunciation, on the other.
Yet, since it is easier to students to learn how to do this at the earlier stages of studying Arabic and to be corrected on the further stages as incorrect pronunciation and to avoid the misunderstanding, it is important for Arabic language educators, while teaching phonology, morphology and other essential items competence, to posses the knowledge of "how to plan, implement and manage instruction, pay equal attention to the function and form of the language in presentation, practice and application [to] develop all skills" [7, p. 412] to have the basic knowledge of Arabic and English phonology, and to be aware of the latest approaches, methods and techniques in teaching, in order to teach the pronunciation correctly. The lack of sufficient prioritization to pronunciation will lead to the more important and common problems, the long-term solution of which will take a lot of an Arabic class time.
The materials provided in the current paper can also be used for the further researches in the phonological and pedagogical areas.
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Received: 07.04.2019
