Abstract:
This study was an attempt to investigate the effect of vowelrecognition
training on beginner and advanced Iranian ESL
learners. A total of 36 adult Iranian ESL learners (18
advanced and 18 beginners) who were students of various
majors at Memorial University (MUN) were recruited for the
study. Advanced participants had the experience of living in
Canada for at least three years while beginners had lived in
Canada less than six months. The study commenced with a
pre-test to verify the participants’ awareness of English vowel
sounds. Predictably, advanced participants were superior to
beginners in terms of English vowel awareness. After the pretest
administration, participants of both groups underwent a
five-week vowel-recognition training course (focusing on all
English vowel sounds). At the end of the vowel-recognition
training program, the 80-item multiple choice test which had
been once used as the pre-test was conducted again. The
findings revealed that both beginner and advanced
participants’ performance was improved on the second
administration of vowel-identification test due to the intensive
vowel-recognition training program. It is also revealed that
formal instruction of English vowels had raised the beginners’
English phonetic knowledge to that of advanced learners.
Moreover, it was shown that phonology of the participants’
first language (i.e. Farsi) did have an impact on the acquisition
of second language phonological features.
Machine summary:
"The findings showed that advanced learners, like the beginners, outperformed on the second administration of the test in recognition of all the English vowel sounds and as it can be discerned, their means for present vowels were higher than that of theirs for missing vowels in Farsi (pre-test: 58 > 48, post-test: 75 > 71) on both of the test administrations; this suggests the role of participants’ L1 in acquisition of L2 phonological features (missing vowels in Farsi are distinguished with an asterisk).
Mean scores of the beginner and advanced participants on vowel- identification post-test In fact, vowel-recognition training was shown to have the potential to extend the beginner ESL learners’ English phonetic knowledge to that of advanced ESL learners.
5. Conclusion The findings showed that not only both beginner and advanced Iranian participants’ performances were improved under an intensive vowel- recognition training program on the second administration of vowel- identification test, but also the fact that formal instruction of English vowel- recognition can raise beginner ESL learners’ English phonetic knowledge to that of advanced ESL learners.
The experiments reveal that beginner Iranian ESL learners receive more benefit from vowel-recognition training program, even though their exposure to natural flows of English during their residence in Canada was much less than advanced participants who had experienced living in Canada for a longer time and daily interactions with native English speakers."