THE INFLUENCE OF FIRST LANGUAGE AMONG ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDENTS WITH TAMIL BACKGROUND WHILE PRONOUNCING ENGLISH WORDS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Abstract

This study investigates the problems in pronouncing and understanding English words experienced by the learners whose first language is Tamil. In other terms to find the problematic sounds that cause challenges and to find out techniques that may help the Students With Tamil Background (SWTBs) to improve their intelligibility and thereby pronunciation as well. The subjects for the study were 42 students from Sadakathullah Appa College, Tirunelveli (SAC) who study English Phonetics as one of their major courses. They listen to the videos of the Natives and Indian speakers as well in the language laboratory as part of the Major Courses.

The tool used for collecting the data was a structured Questionnaire. The data collected were analysed statistically. The findings of the study revealed that the Tamil students of English whose state is Tamil Nadu had problems with understanding certain English sounds. They find it easy to replace the RP sounds such as /ʒ/, /z/ and /ʃ / with /s/ that is commonly used in their L1. Based on the findings, the study concluded that factors such as interference of the First Language (L1), militate against the students’ competence in terms of intelligibility and pronunciation. The conclusion of this study aims at recommending curricular and pedagogical approaches and modern methods for improving competence in terms of pronunciation. The Study also suggests the practical need of having some valuable Assessment Standard/Model against which the pronunciation performance of the learners (SWTBs) may be evaluated.

Keywords: English Pronunciation, First Language, influence, Tamil students, intelligibility, pronunciation, modern technology.