The Effect of Listening and Imitation on Learners’ Consonants Pronunciation

Abstract

The current research confers the problem of poor consonants pronunciation in English as foreign language first year students speaking at AbdElhafidBoussouf University center, Mila. It aims chiefly at investigating the effect of listening to and imitating native speakers on learners‟ consonants pronunciation. To meet this aim, a mixed-method procedure has been adopted. This latter is a combination of a descriptive qualitative questionnaire and an empirical quantitative experiment. The questionnaire has been administrated to teachers in charge of first year Oral Expression atthe same university. It seeks to look over and analyze their points of view about the usefulness of providing EFL students with native models to listen to and imitate when teaching pronunciation. The empirical study has been carried out with first year EFL students in the department of English. It aims at examining the effectiveness of listening and imitating activities on their pronunciation of certain consonants.The results obtained from both tools confirm the main hypothesis “If learners listen to and imitate native speakers, their consonants‟ pronunciation would be improved”.