The influence of English Orthography on Pronunciation of Ghanaian Esl Learners The Case of JHS 2 Learners of Teberebe MA Basic School

Abstract

Pronunciation ability is a crucial developmental skill for learners of English as a second language. This is because it has a significant impact on the performance of students in communication situations. Owing to this, it became necessary that the poor pronunciation abilities among junior high school students of Teberebe M/A basic school be investigated to ascertain the cause and propose possible measures to ameliorate the situation. It is against this backdrop that the research was conducted to ascertain how the orthography of English language contributes to the pronunciation challenges of the students and suggest measures that can be adopted by English language teachers in helping the students improve upon their pronunciation skills. The researcher employed interview of teachers and pronunciation activities of the students in obtaining the data. Using thematic analysis, the findings showed that the students articulate letters of the alphabet that are silent in words, and this creates mispronunciation. For instance, the letters [k] and [p] are articulated in the words knife and psychology respectively. The qualitative analysis also showed, regarding the research question two that teachers do not teach sound letter correspondence, and this makes the learners to lack the knowledge of the various sound-letter correspondences. The findings revealed that explicit teaching of the correspondence between sounds and their respective letter would help build the pronunciation skills of the junior high school students. The study recommended that English language teachers of the junior high schools should explicitly teach the correspondence between the sounds and the letters of the alphabet.