Abstract The ultimate goal of this thesis is to describe the patterns of errors made by Moroccan EFL learners in terms of pronunciation. In contrast to the previous accounts in theoretical linguistics which have tried to describe the linguistic competence of the native speaker, the framework adopted in this study is that of error analysis which describes the so-called phonological interlanguage of EFL learners in order to set a universal grammar of language learners, so to speak. In this regard, the spoken language of Moroccan EFL learners has been analyzed in terms of the frequency, the types, the factors, the gravity and the appropriate remedy for errors. In order to realize these procedures, mixed-method research has been adopted in order to generate the necessary oral data. The findings drawn from the current study reveal that Moroccan EFL learners display a common pattern of errors that indicate the frequent mispronunciation in vowels, and especially in diphthongs. Moreover, substitution errors are predominant in the spoken language of Moroccan EFL learners in that the schwa is replaced by other vowels due to the inconsistency between spelling and pronunciation. Other explanations provided for errors are attributed to linguistic factors such as the L1 and L2 transfer and extralinguistic factors such as the first encounter with new words and other affective factors such as anxiety. The gravity of errors depends on whether the affected speech sound is phonemic or phonetic. The appropriate remedial work that is suggested for the treatment of errors include recasts in the form of providing the correct pronunciation. In general, the findings of the current study are helpful for the researcher, the teacher and the learner in that they can understand the internal mechanisms involved in the so-called phonological interlanguage development of Moroccan EFL learners.

1. Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdallah
University
Faculty of Arts and Human
Sciences
Dhar Mehraz, Fez
Applied Language
Studies and Research
in Higher Education
Master Program
An Investigation of the Errors Made in the
Pronunciation of Segmental and Suprasegmental
Sounds by Moroccan EFL Learners in the Tertiary
Level:
The Case of English Department Students in Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah
University
Academic Year: 2015/2016
Prepared by:
Mohamed Benhima
Supervised by:
Dr. Souad Slaoui

2. Outline
General Introduction
• Chapter I : A Critical Review of the Literature
• Chapter II: Methodology
• Chapter III: Data Analysis
• Chapter IV: Discussion and Suggestions for Further
Research
General Conclusion
Bibliography
Appendices
Appendix 1: Observation
Appendix 2: Questionnaire
Appendix 3: Oral test

3. General Introduction

4. Historical Background:
Linguistic theory: Competence; First language; principles and paramters = Universal
Grammar
Generarive Phonology (Chomsky and Halle, 1968),
Naturalness Theory (Stampee, 1973), Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky,
1992)
Applied linguistics: Perfomance; Second and foreign language CA, EA =Interlanguage
phonology
Contrastive Analysis (Lado, 1945); Error Analysis (Corder
1962), Interlanguage Hypothesis (Selinker, 1972)

5. • Rationale of the Study:
1) Research has focused mainly on the written form of the language rather than the
spoken form of it (Kroll and Schafer, 1978; Keiko, 2003; Fati 2013);
2) The accuracy of pronunciation has been relegated to a secondary position due to
the growing focus on fluency in the Communicative Era (Ellis, 2008);
3) Interest has stemmed from the researcher’s own observation of mispronunciation
cases in oral presentations, seminars and classroom interaction in English classes at
university.

6. • Research Objectives:
• It is the aim of the current study to investigate the phonetic and the phonological
errors made by Moroccan EFL learners through examining their pronunciation of
the segmental and suprasegmental sounds. More specifically, the present study aims
to analyze the pronunciation errors most likely to be made in vowels and
consonants at the segmental level and in stress at the suprasegmental level.
• Research Hypotheses :
• H1: assumes that Moroccan EFL learners display a common pattern of
pronunciation errors regardless of their proficiency level.
• H2: presumes that the high frequency of mispronunciation cases is more likely to
be found in vowels and stress in the English sound inventory due to the huge
difference between the L1 (Dialectal Moroccan Arabic and Tamazight) and the L2
(French and English).

7. • Research Questions:
Q 1: What are the profiles of students who are more likely to make more errors in
pronunciation?
Q 2: How frequent do Moroccan university students make pronunciation errors?
Q 3: What are the types of erroneous pronunciation cases among Moroccan university
learners?
Q 4: What are the potential factors behind making such pronunciation deviances?
Q 5: What are the impacts of such phonological errors on the intelligibility of
communication?
Q6: What are the solutions for minimizing or treating such faulty pronunciation?

8. • Methodology
• The methodology adopted in the current sudy is that of tringualation or mixed
method research through the use of three research instruments:
• The observation: For exploratory purposes, six observation sessions were
conducted in the first, second and third year of the English undergraduate program
classes where oral interaction is prominent.
• The questionnaire: The identified areas of difficulties spotted by means of
observations were included in the questionnaire with 100 respondents and the oral
tests for more confirmatory and explanatory purposes.
• The oral test: In the oral test, a number of 30 students were asked to read a list of
words in order to elicit more data on the phonological performance of Moroccan
EFL learners and test the effectiveness of error correction.
• In general, the thesis is organized in four main chapters: Review of the literature,
methodology, data analysis and discussion as well as recommendations for further
research.

9. Chapter I: A Critical Review of
the Literature

10. • Phonological Accounts of Errors in Pronunciation: there are three accounts of
errors in phonology:
• Speech Errors in Generative Phonology (Chomsky and Halle, 1968): input;
processes; output (well-formedness, ill-formedness).
• Speech Errors in Natural Phonology (Donegan and Stampee, 1973): The
dichotomy between natural-unnatural, marked-unmarked.
• Speech Errors in Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993): the notion
of optimal-unoptimal candidates as well as the ranking and the violation of
constraints.

11. • Approaches to Phonological Errors in Second and Foreign Language
Learning: There are three main approaches to errors in second and foreign
language learning:
• Phonological Contrastive Analysis: This approach was developed by Lado 1952,
and it compares and contrasts the sound system of two or more languages to come
with similarities and differences. While the former are said to cause positive
transfer, the latter are said to cause negative transfer, which subsequently causes
errors.
• Error Analysis: This approach was developed by Corder 1962, and it came as a
reaction to CA. It has five main procedures in the analysis of errors, namely the
identification, description, classification and evaluation and treatment.
• Phonological Interlanguage: This approach was developed by Selinker 1972, and
it studies the transitional competence of second ad foreign language learners in
terms of the route and the rate for reaching a native-like competence.

12. • Phonological Error Gravity: There are two main criteria to evaluate error gravity in
pronunciation:
• Phonological Intelligibility: This deals with the extent to which errors affect the
comprehensibility of the utterances. Generally speaking, errors of phonological nature
affect communication and are more likely to result in communication failure.
• Error Irritability : This deals with the attitudes listeners hold towards errors. There are
people who tolerate pronunciation mistakes. However, there are others who do not
tolerate pronunciation mistakes.
• Phonological Error Treatment: Similarly, there are two main error treatment strategies:
Prompts: This is one of the indirect feedback strategies in which teachers just encourage
learners to self-correct.
Recasts: This is one of the direct feedback strategies wherein teachers repeat the
learners’ utterance minus the error. This is a teacher-fronted error correction technique.

13. • Previous Empirical Studies on Pronunciation Errors of Segmental and
Suprasegemental Sounds:
• Studies in Asia: The main studies of pronunciation errors were conducted in
Korea, China and Japan by Lee (1996), Zahng (2009) and Carenthurs (n.d),
respectively. The findings yielded that Asian learners make errors in four sounds /l,
r, f, h/ at the segmental level and stress at the suprasegmental level.
• Studies in Europe: Pronunciation error studies were conduced mainly in Spain,
German and France by O’Conner (1987), Moulten (1962) and Capliez (2011). The
findings general reveled that European learners encounter problems with the
alveolar trill sound.
• Studies in the Arab World: The main studies in pronunciation errors in the Arab
World were carried out by El Zarka (2013), Al-Shuaibi (2009), Ennaji et al (2004).
The findings generally revealed that the Arab world learners have problems with
the dental sounds, schwa and short vowels.

14. Chapter II: Methodology

15. • Research Objective: The objective of this research is to analyze in detail the
possible errors in the articulation of segments and suprasegments in English in
order to trace the influence of L1 and L2 on such errors.
• Research Questions:
• Q1. How frequently do Moroccan EFL learners make erroneous pronunciation?
• Q2. What are the types of the mispronunciation cases in the segments and
suprasegments of English?
• Q3. What are the reasons behind making such errors?
• Q4. To what extent do the different types of errors affect communication?
• Q5. What are the potential solutions for remedying those grave errors?

16. • Research Hypotheses:
• H0: assumes that there is no difference in the types of pronunciation errors as
students proceed in their proficiency levels due to the issue of fossilization.
• H1: presumes that errors decrease as students proceed in their proficiency level.
• H2: presumes that the high frequency of fossilized pronunciation cases is more
likely to remain in the vowels of the English sound inventory due to the huge
differences between the L1 (Dialectal Moroccan Arabic and Tamazight) and the L2
(French and English).
• Research Approach: The triangulation of quantitative and qualitative research
approaches.
• Research Design: The triangulation of ethnographic, cross-sectional and
experimental design.
• Research Instruments: Observations in 6 sessions, questionnaires with 100
students and oral tests with a subsample of 30 students in Sidi Mohamed Ben
Abdellah University.

17. The profiles of the participants: These profiles can be categorized into the
demographic, the linguistic and the educational profiles:
47%
53%
3%
40%
46%
3% 2%
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Male Female Less than 18 18-20 21-25 26-30 More than 30
The Demograpic Profile
Age Gender

18. 82%
7%
4%
7%
75%
5%
20%
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Arabic Tamazight Tarifit Tachelhit French Spanish Others
The Linguistic Profile
First language Second language

19. 40%
35%
25%
30%
10%
5%
55%
76%
24%
69%
31%
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
First year Second year Third year Linguistics Culture Literature None Yes No Yes No
Academic level Major The previous experience
with Phonetics
The familiarity with IPA
The Educational Profile

20. III. Data Analysis

21. 30%
39%
27%
4%
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
Grammar Pronunciation Vocabulary Others
Figure 4: The frequency of difficulties in pronunciation
compared with other language aspects
The Frequency of Mispronunciation

22. 9% 10%
71%
8%
2%
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Addition Omission Substitution Misplacement Others
Figure 10: A taxonomy of the different
pronunciation errors
The Types of Pronunciation Errors

23. 45%
30%
10%
22%
16%
26% 26%
30%
17%
24%
37%
23%
22%
20%
27%
25%
The lack of linguistic resources The inconsistency between
spelling and pronunciation
L1 transfer L2 transfer
First ranked Second ranked Third ranked Fouth ranked
Figure 11: The linguistic factors behind
mispronunciation
The Factors behind Mispronunciation Cases

24. 44%
17%
13%
19%
21%
14%
43%
27%
19%
34%
24% 23%
16%
35%
20%
33%
The first encounter with new
words
Teacher-induced errors Student-induced errors Anxiety
First ranked Second ranked Third ranked Fouth ranked
Figure 12: The extralinguistic factors behind
mispronunciation

25. 13%
26%
39%
22%
6%
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
Always Often Sometimes Rarely Never
Figure 13: The frequency of accepting errors in
pronunciation by English language learners
The Impact of Mispronunciation on Communication

26. Group Prompt Recast
Mean 53.80 16.10
SD 14.17 1.66
SEM 4.48 0.53
N 10 10
Figure 16: The comparison between the
prompt and the recast group.

27. IV: Discussion and Suggestions for Further
Research

28. • The frequency of mispronunciation: The most frequent errors are found in
vowels and especially diphthongs.
• The types of pronunciation deviances: Substitution errors are the common type of
errors besides the faulty addition or faulty omission of speech sounds.
• The factors behind mispronunciation: linguistic factors such as negative transfer
and overgeneralization are more predominant than extralinguistic factors such as
anxiety and self-confidence.
• The impact of mipronunciation on communication: The mirponunciation of
phonemes has a negative impact on intelligibility, whereas the mispronunciation of
allophones affects only the listener’s attitude.
• The most effective error treatment strategy: Recasts in the form of repeating
students erroneous pronunciation minus the error has more effeciency than just
prompting students to self-correct as the former lead to concsousness-rasing, and
hence, to intake and acquisiton.

29. • As brief recommandations and suggestions for further research, there should be:
 The development of action plans by university teachers of spoken English to preemptively
prevent the occurrence and, hence, the fossilization of mispronunciation among English
Department students in the tertiary level;
 The concentration of students on the English vowel system at the segmental level and stress at
the suprasegmental level in order to avoid mispronunciation;
 The adoption of intervention strategies in the forms of prompts and recasts in pronunciation
error treatment in order to avoid phonological fossilization;
 The orientation of research towards corrective feedback both in the spoken and written form
of the language.

30. General Conclusion

31. • Summary of the methodology: This study is based on triangulation through the
adoption of quantitative and qualitative methods. It makes use of the observation with in
six English sessions. It also uses 100 questionnaires with English Department students at
Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University. Oral tests are also used in the current study for
more reliable and representative data.
• Summary of the findings: The findings revealed that the most frequent errors are found
in the pronunciation of vowels. Especially vowel lenghth, diphthongs abnd schwa. The
most frequent types of errors are replacement errors in which schwa is errenously
substituted with /e/, /a:/ and /ɔ:/ as in /ebaut/, /fɔ:netiks/ and /ma:tiəriəl/. The
inconsistency between spelling and pronunciation has been found to be the main reason
behind such faulty pronunciation. Phonemic errors were found to impair intelligibility in
contrast to phonetic error. Finally, recast was found to be very effective in error
treatment.
• Research limitations: Amongst the limitations of this study are the shyness of studens
to be recorded, the quality of voice recording, the exauhstive transcription of speech
sounds.
• Recommendations: From the above, it is reomended that teachers of spoken English
courses take into account the findings of this study to come up with action plans for their
learners in order to avoid the aforementioned pronunciation problems.

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37. Appendices

38. Appendix 1: Observation

39. Appendix 2: Questionnaire

40. Appendix 3: Oral test