An Analysis of Pronunciation Error Committed by Sinhala Speaking Learners of French

Abstract

The present research analyzes the pronunciation errors made by Sinhala speaking learners of French. The study is based on the assumption that the pronunciation errors were systematic and they reflect the interference of the learners�?? native language. The fundamental research question of this project is to study to what extent L1 of the speaker influences the acquisition of French in terms of acquisition of pronunciation. The thirty advanced participants were recruited using the random sampling method. By the time of the study, the subjects were studying French as a foreign language for their Bachelor of Arts Degree at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. The participants were from a homogenous linguistics background. All participants speak the same native language (Sinhala) and they had completed their secondary education in Sinhala medium during which they had also learnt French as a foreign language. The subjects were asked to read a list of words and sentences and the recording was conducted individually in a quiet classroom using a battery operated audio tape recorder and a 120-minute blank cassettes. Each recording approximately took fifteen minutes. Before the recording process commenced, the subjects were requested to familiarize themselves with the words and sentences by reading them several times. Each subject was required to read at a normal speed. After the completion of recording, the recordings were replayed to identify common errors which were immediately transcribed using the International Phonetic Alphabet. Results demonstrate that Sinhala speaking learners face problems with French nasal vowels (�?��?, �?��?, �?��?, �?��?) and French initial consonants clusters (t�?, p�?, k�?, g�?, sk, ps, mn, kz, dz, d�? and vk) and medial clusters. The learners also exhibit errors which occur because of their second language (English) interference.