Effect of Phonological and Phonetic Interventions on Proficiency in English Pronunciation and Oral Reading

Abstract

The current research aimed to know the effect of phonological and phonetic interventions in enhancing proficiency in English pronunciation and oral reading among teacher trainees. This study was of single-group pretest and posttest intervention designs. The sample size was selected through a stratified random sampling technique from teacher training colleges in Bengaluru. Two hundred and seven teacher trainees with L1 proficiency were chosen proportionately from Bangalore strata and orientated. Participants (N = 32) enrolled voluntarily in the intervention program for 20 hr. Intervention modules on phonology and phonetics were developed by the researcher and a segmental approach was adopted to teach modules in 20 sessions. After every session, the participants were allowed to record the modules in Audacity, a multiaudio recorder application. The recorded modules were interpreted, and scores were determined on number of intelligible words pronounced by the participants. Further, it was validated by the experts to authenticate the determined scores. The researcher applied oscillographic and observation methods to analyze the participants’ progress in pronunciation and oral reading proficiency levels during the experiment. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to test the impact of intervention between the pretest and posttest (before and after intervention). The hypotheses testing revealed the difference between preintervention and postintervention scores in phonological and phonetic awareness and oral reading among teacher trainees, and the sig. value is less than 0.05 across all the attributes. This study insists that English phonology and phonetics must be a crucial part of the English language teaching (ELT) curriculum and highlights that teachers must be able to spot the most appropriate pronunciation teaching and train the students of English as a foreign language (EFL) with intricates of intelligible pronunciation. This study navigates the need for language proficiency among teacher trainees, especially in English pronunciation and oral reading, and substantiates the evidence that effective intervention and teachers’ knowledge of pronunciation enhance proficiency levels in pronunciation and oral reading among teacher trainees. Finally, it hopes that B.Ed colleges and teacher educators will be beckoned to use technology-integrated intervention to teach phonology and phonetics.