The Iraqi Student-Teachers’ Pronunciation between the Restricted RP and the Widespread GA

Abstract

One of the difficulties encountered by the student teachers of the teachingtraining institute/ Nineveh is the learners’ inability to put into practice much
of their theoretical knowledge as regards the model of pronunciation used
(as a standard) in TEFL, i.e. RP. This is so because of the sound system
operating in the learners’ mother tongue (MT) on the one hand, and their
frequent exposure to another predominant English accent, i.e. GA through
the mass media, on the other. This study aims at verifying the validity of these considerations. It consists of a two-fold experimental design: the first
is a word-pronunciation test conducted to test the proposed hypothesis; the
second is a three-item questionnaire constructed to further verify the
applicability of the hypothesis. The database for this study consists of
recorded samples from 13 student teachers of the fifth year/ Department of
English/ Teacher Training Institute- Nineveh of the academic year 2009-
2010. The results of the study suggest that the student teachers show an
approximation to GA in much of their performance though GA is not used
as a standard of pronunciation in the TEFL programmers in Iraq. The
findings show also that the Iraqi student teachers are aware of the
importance of the mass media in developing their linguistic habits. The
results obtained show that those learners are obviously exposed to a GA
type of English through the mass media which serve as a vehicle of the
American linguistic influence. This exposure to a natively spoken American
English affects, to certain extent, the learners’ phoneme realizations and,
consequently, word pronunciations.