Effect of Native Speaker's Pronunciation on Understanding the Speaker's Message

Abstract

This study attempts to investigate the effect of pronunciation on understanding the speaker’s message, which is conducted at Ahfad University for women. The researcher noticed a real problem in students’ listening comprehension; they misunderstand the spoken language of native speaker, so the objective of the study to provide a practical and experimental study of listening skill problem and it is characteristics. Three hypotheses were assumed: First conventional Labs using audio aids have positive effect on students’ listening comprehension. Secondly teaching connected speech enhances students’ listening comprehension. Thirdly, different Pronunciations of American and British vocabulary's models affect listeners’ understanding. Analytical experimental method was followed to prove or disprove the first and second hypotheses. Non probability convenience sample is used to collect the data for the first and second hypotheses while probability random sample is used for the second and third hypothesis. To collect the data for the first hypothesis, the researcher selected two groups: experimental group and control group. They both utilized from the same environment except the lab which is exclusively aided for the experimental group. The experiment took 60 credit hours. For the second hypothesis “Teaching connected speech enhances students’ listening comprehension” the same students were selected to collect the data using observational check lists. Teacher’s questionnaire was used for the third hypothesis “different Pronunciations of American and British vocabulary models affects listener understands” here the questionnaire is used to collect the data. The collected data from the mentioned instruments: tests, observation and questionnaire check list have been analyzed, tested and interpreted using SPSS software aided with tables and charts. After analysis of the result, the study came out with the following findings: First, there are statistical differences between the experimental group’s and control group’s performance, accordingly conventional Labs using audio aids have positive effect on student's listening comprehension. Secondly, there are statistical differences in students’ performance before teaching connected speech and after the experiment, when Learners achieved a remarkable progressing and development in listening comprehension in all aspects; accordingly, teaching aspects connected speech enhances students’ listening comprehension. Thirdly, different pronunciations of British English and American English vocabulary confuse listeners’ understanding, when a word of the first model pronounced differently from the second model and vice versa also is proved.