Sawsan Askoul

In the field of second language acquisition, it is widely recognized that the speech of a non-native speaker is characterised by a foreign accent. A foreign accent is defined as the pronunciation of a language that demonstrates deflections from native speech norms. These deflections may occur at segmental and/or suprasegmental levels, hence the most salient evidence of a foreign accent is found in learners’ output. The ubiquitous foreign accent is believed to be a result of many factors, including the learner’s first language interference and the age of onset of learning, among many others. Recent research has considered foreign accents to be an inevitable outcome of learning a second language at an older age, thus resulting in researchers redirecting their efforts towards studying intelligibility and comprehensibility of the second language speech instead. The goal of this presentation is to provide some examples of English native speakers who commenced learning Arabic after the age of puberty i.e. adult learners, and managed to go beyond intelligibility and comprehensibility to attain native-like pronunciation. It also aims to investigate the factors that have played a role in enabling these learners to achieve native-like competence. The secondary goal is to present the methods that Arabic teachers could utilize to bring these same factors into the classroom whilst running Arabic courses outside the language speaking community. This will consider the role of instructions in improving the learners’ second language speech in classroom settings.

Intelligible pronunciation is an essential component of communicative competence as learners who have adequate pronunciation can easily improve their speaking skills better than those who have weak pronunciation. Pronunciation is, therefore, vital to achieving successful communication. A large number of learners believe that the main difficulty they encounter when speaking a second/foreign language is pronunciation and consider this difficulty as the main source for their communication problems. Despite the fact that pronunciation is key to communicative competence, it is neglected in many Arabic teaching programmes. In view of this, the motivation for this presentation is the increasing unpopularity of the pronunciation aspect of teaching Arabic as a foreign language. This has caused a fewer efforts to be taken in improving learners' pronunciation skill despite this being quite a concern among professionals in educational environments that demand intelligible spoken Arabic. Accordingly, this presentation aims to provide both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the issue. It will present the latest data exposing learners’ perception of pronunciation instructions as well as teachers’ view on the un/necessity of teaching pronunciation and the lack of teaching materials that help them in teaching phonetic and phonological aspects of Arabic. This will be followed by discussion on the impact of pronunciation on other language skills, namely writing, reading, listening and speaking. A further focus will be on the phonetic and phonological difficulties encountered by learners such as the production and perception of Arabic sounds, scrutinising various factors and variations contributing to such difficulties and thus proposing the most appropriate methods and approaches that are recommended for Arabic teachers to tackle such challenges. This is concluded by examining how technology can help with teaching pronunciation inside and outside of the classroom and the latest technology tools utilised in language classrooms to meet pronunciation teaching and learning goals.

IThe aim of this study is to examine the production of the word-initial stop /p/ by Arabs speaking English as a second language (L2). Arabic was chosen as a counter language since its phonetic contrasts between voiced and voiceless sounds differ from English. The data was collected from 50 participants, consisting of one group of highly qualified Arabs (n= 30 bilinguals) living in London for 10 years, and two groups of baseline speakers (n= 10 for inexperienced native Arabic and native English baseline groups, respectively). The production of /p/ by late Arab bilinguals (who learned English after puberty) was elicited via three oral tasks. Acoustic analysis was conducted to measure the voice onset time (VOT) value of /p/. VOT is defined as the length of time between the release of a stop consonant and the onset of vocal fold vibration. Research shows that length of residence (LOR), level of education, quality and quantity of input and rigorous usage of L2 are more important than AOA (Age of Acquisition) in enabling L2 learners to achieve native speaker-like pronunciation of the sound /p/, although for late Arab bilinguals the overall results demonstrated that AOA is a key predictor of L2 sounds. The final results demonstrate that the production
of /p/ by late Arab bilinguals differed significantly from that produced by inexperienced Arabs. Late Arab bilinguals managed to establish new phonetic categories for English /p/ that does not exist in their language (L1). However, their production of /p/ deviated from that of native English speakers. Only nine out of 30 late Arab bilinguals were able to achieve native speaker-like pronunciation of /p/.

This study examines the way in which European Union (EU) immigration was portrayed in the British press during the week immediately prior to the EU referendum of 23rd June, 2016. The research method is based on a combination of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis, with the aim of providing both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the issue. It begins by establishing the rationale behind the proposed topic, before outlining the theoretical and methodological framework of this corpus-based approach to investigating news discourse, which includes the analysis of frequency, concordances and collocates as they occur in three national-wide, online newspapers, namely the Daily Mail, the Guardian and the BBC. Further findings in relation to DA are then discussed, followed by concluding remarks and observations concerning the limitations of this approach and the tool utilised within it.