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The Pronunciation of English by Somali L1 students in Sweden. Testing indications of phonetic transfer through Error Analysis and Contrastive Analysis

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The Pronunciation of English by Somali L1 students in Sweden. Testing indications of phonetic transfer through Error Analysis and Contrastive Analysis
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The Pronunciation of English by Somali L1 students in Sweden
Testing indications of phonetic transfer through Error Analysis and
Contrastive Analysis

Mathias Börjesson, 880412
BA Degree paper, 15 hec
Interdisciplinary Degree Project
Teacher Education Programme LP01
Supervisor: Monika Mondor
Examiner:
Report number:

Departments:

University of Gothenburg/Dept of Languages and Literatures/English

Course:

EN1C03 - English: Advanced Undergraduate Level (linguistic essay) for
General Purposes. Bachelor’s Degree Essay Project (C-level paper)

Semester:

Fall 2013

Title:

The Pronunciation of English by Somali L1 students in Sweden:
Testing indications of phonetic transfer through Error Analysis and
Contrastive Analysis

Author:

Mathias Börjesson

Supervisor:

Monika Mondor

Aim(s):

The main aim of the study is to investigate phonemic errors in relation to transfer seen from a didactic point of view.

Method(s):

This study was based on a mixed method, being both quantitative and qualitative. Contrastive Analysis and Error Analysis was used to predict and identify errors. Contrastive Analysis was mainly used to create a pronunciation test on typical Swedish and Somali difficulties. The extent and the occurrence of transfer are investigated in relation to interview findings and the students’ background.

Material(s):

The material consists of 10 Somali L1 students’ results on a pronunciation test and their answers to some interview questions. Four of the students were born in Sweden and six of them were born abroad.

Main results:

The results show that the average Somali L1 student born outside of
Sweden made approximately three times as many errors as the average
Somali L1 student born in Sweden. The errors made by all students are shown to be related to both Somali, Swedish and the Somali-Swedish interlanguage. The results also show that the Somali L1 students born outside of Sweden



References: Barkhuizen, Gary & Ellis, Rod. 2005. Analysing learner language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Benson, Cathy. 2002. “Transfer/Cross-linguistic influence”. ELT Journal Volume 56(1), 68-70. Crystal, David. 1995. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dalton, Christiane. & Seidlhofer, Barbara. 1994. Pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dras, Mark & Wong, Sze-Meng. 2009. Contrastive analysis and native language identification. Proceedings of the Australasian Language Technology Association Workshop Volume 7, 5361. Ellis, Rod. 1997. Second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. European Network of Policy Makers for The Evaluation of Education Systems (2004). The assessment of pupils ' skills in English in eight European countries 2002: a European Goh, Li-Lian; Mohamed, Abdul; Wan-Rose, Eliza. 2004. English errors and Chinese learners. Guilford, Jonathon. 1998. English learner interlanguage: What’s wrong with it?. Anglophonia French Journal of English Studies 4, 73–100. Hedge, Tricia. 2000. Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom. Oxford: Oxford university press. Johansson, Stig. & Rönnerdal, Göran. 2005. English Pronunciation: a workbook : British version. Kahin, Mohamed. 1997. Educating Somali Children in Britain. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books Limited. Light, Richard; Warshawsky, Diane. 1974. “Preliminary error analysis: Russians using English”. McKay, Sandra. 2006. Researching second language classrooms. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Mobärg, Mats. 2001. “Basic English Phonetics for Short Courses”. [Course handout]. Retrieved at http://gul.gu.se/public/pp/public_file_archive/archive.html Ohlander, Sölve. 2009. “‘Swedish’ vs. ‘Non-Swedish’. Immigrant Background and Cross-linguistic Influence in the Learning of English as a Foreign Language” Statistics Sweden. 2009. Education in Sweden 2009. Received from http://www.scb.se/statistik/_publikationer/UF0527_2009A01_BR_UF08BR0901.pdf Weinberger, Steven. 2013. Speech Accent Archive. George Mason University. Retrieved from http://accent.gmu.edu

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