AN ANALYSIS OF IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS’ PRONUNCIATION ERRORS

An individual who is engaged in learning a second language is prone to transfer some L1 features, ranging all the way from phonological to pragmatic, into the L2 either intentionally or unintentionally. Accordingly, this study set out to focus on the phonological transfers and the pronunciation errors which are made by Iranian learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). To achieve a clear understanding of such errors, the researchers randomly selected 300 male and female EFL learners attending general English courses. The data were collected through participants’ self-reports, teachers’ reports, and learners’ performance on a reading aloud task which were recorded for further analyses. Qualitative data were analyzed inductively through content analysis. Based on the results of data analyses, the researchers were able to compile a final list of the errors including the definition of the errors and the degrees of explicit recognition of those errors as stated by the teachers and learners. Some of the most frequent errors were replacing those sounds which are absent in Persian (/w/, /?/, /?/, /?/, /?/) with those present in Persian, replacing short vowels with long vowels, difficulty in producing diphthongs, and difficulty in producing consonant clusters. It was also observed that there is a significant and positive relationship between the pronunciation knowledge of teachers and that of learners (r = 0.701, p < 0.05) as estimated by self-reports. However, the observed gap between the knowledge of teachers and that of learners suggested that possessing a high degree of pronunciation knowledge by teachers cannot guarantee the same level of this knowledge among learners. It was, therefore, concluded that in the Iranian EFL context, pronunciation instruction calls for a serious reconsideration.