IDENTIFYING PRONNCIATION LEARNING STRATEGIES OF EFL LEARNERS: A CASE STUDY OF FIRST-YEAR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AT ABDELHAFID BOUSOUF MILA UNIVERSITY CENTRE

Abstract

Pronunciation is an essential element of language learning as it reflects a fundamental part of students’ language proficiency which, in turn, affects students’ communication skill. Thus, students have to focus on their pronunciation learning throughout the implementation of Pronunciation Learning Strategies (PLS) to achieve an acceptable pronunciation level. This dissertation, therefore, attempts to identify the PLS that help English students at Mila University Centre to better learn the pronunciation of the target language (TL). To fulfill the above aim,we considered the following research questions: (1) What are the PLS which are used by English students at Mila University Centre? (2) Do PLS help learners to learn pronunciation? (3) Do learners use all PLS or focus on specific ones? and (4) Does the use of PLS reflect students’ self-reliance and autonomy? A students’ questionnaire and a teachers’ interview were opted for to collect data. The former is administered to forty first year LMD students at the Department of English at Abdalhafid Boussouf University Centre Mila, while the latter is addressed to two teachers of Phonetics of first year English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms at the same university.Afterthe analysis and interpretation of data, the results obtained from the current study confirm the research hypothes es.That is,first year Englishstudents at Mila University Centre do use various types of PLS to learn pronunciation, and its use helps EFL students to learn pronunciation. Besides, the learners rely on some PLSmore than others in the sense that our sample has a tendency to utilize memory and cognitive strategies more than the other strategies especially compensation ones which are rarely used.Finally, it is also found that the use of PLS promotes learners’ autonomy.