Effectiveness of Intuitive-imitative Approach versus Analyticlinguistic Approach in Teaching Problematic Consonants to Iranian Students

Effectiveness of Intuitive-imitative Approach versus Analyticlinguistic Approach in Teaching Problematic Consonants to Iranian Students

Every language chooses and uses a limited number of vowels and consonants from the list of all the sounds humans can produce. This means that some sounds are absent in every language. It turns into a problem when one is learning a new language. For Iranian EFL learners, the three consonants //, //, and /w/ which are totally absent in Persian are really problematic. Therefore, this paper aims at investigating the effectiveness of intuitive-imitative and analyticlinguistic approaches on instruction of these consonants to Iranian high school students. Participants are 24 grade two high school students, studying in two classes in Shahrekord. In one class, these were taught using intuitive-imitative approach, and in the other using analyticlinguistic approach, then both groups have been audio-recorded reading a text containing words with these consonants. The results of the independent sample t-test indicated that there is no significant difference between //, //, and /w/ mean production scores of intuitive-imitative and analytic-linguistic groups. However, the authors suggest starting teaching with intuitive-imitative approach to make students more motivated to pay attention, and then continuing with analyticlinguistic approach to make students acquire the exact pronunciation.