Acoustic Analysis of Pronunciation errors of High School Students of Sheikhupura

Abstract

A journey towards learning English as a Foreign Language is a hard task for every student at the age of Secondary School, especially the Public Sector. There are many effective filters involved as a hurdle in their learning process. It is deeply observed that reading and writing are given emphasis but communication skills are always kept behind. It is a common phenomenon that learners of L2 English make errors on the way of learning a new set of characters. Proper methods of teaching and learning material can overcome these errors but the errors in pronunciation of students seem a hurdle which hardly known by the students and even the teachers themselves. For this purpose, an extensive phonemic study of English Language is conducted to investigate the pronunciation errors which are occurred by the strong influence of Punjabi Language. The focus of this study is on pronunciation errors of matriculation level students from the five public schools in Sheikhupura. The data is collected in the form of audio recordings which are later analyzed through acoustic analysis with the assistance of PRAAT software showing those phonemes which enter from Punjabi. The results showed significantly prominent errors in the speech sounds of Punjabi speaking students in observation and in the recordings. This study will help future learners to know these errors and avoid them for better competency.