Suprasegmental Features

2.3.3. Segmental and Suprasegmental Features

Two types of pronunciation features are discussed in the literature with regard to pronunciation teaching: segmental and suprasegmental features (Pennington & Richards, 1986; Setter & Jenkins, 2005). Segmental features are “minimal units of sound defined in phonetic term” (Pennington & Richards, 1986, p. 208). Suprasegmental features refers to the featres that organize streams of speech into meaningful units such as stress, rhythm, and intonation. Derwing et al. (1998) argues that “attention to segmental concerns benefits ESL students… A student who has received segmental training might be able to focus on the mispronounced form in a self-repetition”. (p. 407). According to Setter and Jenkins (2005),

This approach emphasizes the broader and meaningful aspects of phonology in connected speech such as stress, rhythm, and intonation rather than the isolated sounds. They argue that this approach highlights the role of context in determining phonological choices at all levels: segmental, suprasegmental, and voice-setting features. Moreover, Jones (1997) suggests a teqnique to teach pronunciation through "discovery activities". In this teqnique, students listen and try to articulate the rules based on what they have heard with the help of cues, or collaborate with their classmates to find patterns in written or spoken text. According to him, this technique has many advantages. First, it can make rules more memorable to learners as they are formulated by themselves. Second, it can increase awareness of the communicative aspects of pronunciation. Third, it can provide an opportunity for communicative practice as learners interact with their peers. Thus, this teqnique maximize the benifit for students since teaching pronunciation is done by integrating other skills to make the teaching more authentic and realistic.

Jones (1997) asserts that pronunciation teaching should provide more opportunities for the students to practice the language without much control from the teacher. Hence, it would enable the students to practice a variety of suprasegmental features through freer conversation. He argues

However, many EFL learners face difficulties with producing intelligible and comprehensible English pronunciation. Threre are several factors can affect the learning of English pronunciation. The influence of the first language "the mother tongue" plays a major role in pronunciation (Pennington & Richards, 1986). For instance, Ahmed (2011) observed that Arabic mother tongue learners of English find some English consonant sounds difficult to pronuonce. These specific consonant sounds include /p/, /d/, /v/ and /t/. He conducted a study to investigate the difficulties which Saudi learners face when pronouncing these consonamt sounds. He randomly selected eight students for the study from Najran University. The results of the study indicated that when Saudi students speak a foreign language, they tended to produce the sounds which are closet to the sounds that exist in their mother tongue that lead to pronunciation errors. Similarly, Hago and Khan's (2015) study showed that Saudi EFL leaerners unintentionally insert a vowel sound in English syllable to break up consonant clusters. The findings suggested that the interference from the mother tongue is the major factor contributing to pronunciation problems. Therefore, the difference btween first language and second and foreign language can affect the teaching of