AN INVESTIGATION INTO PRONUNCIATION PROBLEMS AMONG YORUBA-SPEAKING LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

This paper investigated pronunciation difficulties encountered by Yoruba-speaking learners of English with a view to determining the causes and types of error committed by Yoruba learners of English. The sample for this study were 10 Yoruba speakers of the Ibadan standard variety selected randomly. For gathering data, phonemic chart of English and Yoruba language were juxtaposed in which five consonant phonemes of English that are non-native to Yoruba language were selected and 15 words each containing the target phonemes were formed for the first four consonants while 24 words containing the target sound/phonemes were formed for the last consonant phoneme. The words were later given to our participants to pronounce and the pronunciations were recorded and transcribed according to how they were pronounced Data for this paper are analyzed using Dulay’s surface strategy taxonomy (1982) this theory classified error into four types they are : (i) error of omission (ii) error of addition, (iii) error of misformation, (iv) error of misordering. In order to ascertain the types of error Dulay et al (1982) claimed that learners may commit error by adding an unnecessary linguistic unit or omit necessary items, they may also misform or misorder them. The findings of this research revealed that Yoruba-speaking learners of English mispronounced certain consonant phonemes of English and mother tongue interference is the major contributing factor to this problem.