Comparison VOT Production between Arabic ESL Learner and English Native Speaker

Monther Alluhaidah^1,

¹Al Rass College of Technology, Qassim , Saudi Arabia

Cite this paper:
Monther Alluhaidah. Comparison VOT Production between Arabic ESL Learner and English Native Speaker. American Journal of Educational Research. 2023; 11(2):25-33. doi: 10.12691/education-11-2-2

Abstract

This comparative case study uses voice onset time (VOT) to scrutinize whether an English-speaking native Arabic speaker may create a unique phonetic category for their L2. Many studies have studied VOT in different languages, but there is limited research on acquiring VOT of English by Arabic Learners. Therefore, this study attempts to fill the gap by focusing on the ability of an Arabic native speaker to produce English word-initial plosives in the manner of an English native speaker. This study also aims to determine whether the main assumptions of Flege's Speech Learning Model (SLM) were validated by this kind of data. Two males participated in this study, one adult advanced Saudi learner of English living in the UK and one English native speaker. The VOTs of the voiced and voiceless monosyllabic plosives were measured, followed by high vowels, all inserted in a carrier phrase. The results demonstrate that the advanced Saudi learner fails to establish a separate a VOT of English initial stops in the same way as a native speaker. Length of stay in the UK and daily use of English seem not to affect the perceptions of the differences between L1 and L2, and this aligns with the SLM expectations and findings understood through this theory. Overall, this study has contributed to understanding the field of second language acquisition regarding Arabic acoustic studies in terms of different physical properties of speech especially acquiring VOT of English. The learners' acquisition is limited despite their level and exposure, and they overwhelmingly resembled Arabic rather than English native speakers. It aligns with several hypotheses based on SLM expectations found for learners' phonetic categories unable to separate both L1 and L2 categories.

Keywords:
voice onset time (VOT) second language acquisition bilingual Arabic ESL Learner phonetic similarity English as a second language (ESL)

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