| Summary: | Many foreign language learners encounter difficulties in pronouncing English language sounds, which potentially leads to misunderstanding in oral communication.The pronunciation teaching strategy of minimal pairs has long been considered as an effective technique that may address this issue. This study, therefore, investigates the extent to which minimal pairs can improve the pronunciation of English consonants among Yemeni learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Five English phonemes were selected (i.e., /p/, /v/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/ and /ŋ/), which are commonly found to be
problematic among most Yemeni EFL learners. A pretest-posttest quasi-experimental research design was adopted in the study involving ten male undergraduate students in an experimental group. Drills on minimal pairs were applied throughout a period of five weeks’ intervention. The results showed significant improvement in the pronunciation of problematic English sounds, with the percentage of pronunciation difficulties being decreased from the pre-test to post-test results. It was concluded that the teaching strategy of minimal pairs is an effective way that could solve to some extent the pronunciation problems among Yemeni EFL learners. The findings have some pedagogical contributions in pronunciation teaching and learning, particularly dealing with English sounds in foreign language settings.
|
|---|