English Language And Weak Form Essay

Abstract

This study is an attempt to investigate the impact of M.A English students’ ability to process some aspects of connected speech on their overall ability to understand naturally spoken English. The main concern is to evaluate the students’ performance in listening to the weak forms of grammatical words. Classroom observation will reveal that students seem to have problems in perceiving them as a result of the language teachers’ focus in teaching such forms on the productive level rather than on the perceptive one. Furthermore, these forms are seldom used in the speech of teachers and the students lack awareness and training. Through a listening test, we will try to depict the comprehension level of students regarding these forms and

These function words are such as auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, personal pronouns, etc, all of which are in certain circumstances pronounced in their strong forms but which are more frequently pronounced in their weak forms. The use of weak forms makes for fluency and economy of speech.

A weak form of a word is generally distinguished from a strong form either by a difference of vowel-sound, or by the absence of a sound (vowel or consonant), or by the difference in the length of a vowel.

There are three main reasons for the use of weak forms.

1. The proper use of weak forms is essential for a correct pronunciation of English.

2. An all-strong form pronunciation gives the impression that unimportant word and syllables are being given undue prominence. Thus such pronunciation sounds unnatural and foreign sounding to native speakers of English.

3. Speakers who are not familiar with use of weak forms find it difficult to understand native speakers of English who do use the weak forms. Learners of English language need to learn about these weak forms to help them to understand what they hear. English Phonetics and phonology (adapted from Peter Roach, 1998)

1.1 What are Weak & Strong