University Students' Incompetence in Dividing Oral Contexts into Sound Prosodic Units

Abstract

This research paper intends to explore the Sudanese university Students' incompetence in dividing some selected syntactic structures into proper prosodic units while speaking or reading aloud. This study takes on the descriptive analytic method and the quantitative research is used to analyze the numerical data and compare the scores obtained. To achieve the aim stated above, the researcher selected a sample of 50 third year English language students from Sudan University of Science and Technology and Al-Neelain University to represent the target linguistic community of the study. Then a diagnostic production test consisting of (9) items was conducted to measure the study assumption. When statistical analysis carried out, the obtained findings showed that students’ verbal production regarding most of the test items was poor. The paper suggested that, if data from larger and more varied samples are collected; further studies may obtain more accurate results.