Interference of First Language in Pronunciation of English Segmental Sounds

This research was aimed at investigating the interference that occurs in the speaking of English by EFL learners. When students are unfamiliar with new words and they attempt to pronounce them without prior knowledge on how to pronounce them correctly, they may produce errors and may even fossilize such errors. Thus, the teachers are advised to halt the repetition of such errors and direct the students to practice correct pronunciation. This research was focused on investigating the interlingual errors that the students produced as a result of the interference and at finding solutions as to how to avoid such interlingual errors through methods that can be applied by their teachers. To achieve these purposes, the writer applied a process method. First, collecting data in the field, then selecting samples, separating them into sound classifications and comparing the English pronunciation of the samples taken using phonetic transcription, and finally, analyzing the data using phonological theories. The findings showed that mispronounced sounds resulted from the interference are as follows: [ph], [th], [kh], [f] for grapheme “ph”, [v], [θ], [ð], [z] for grapheme “s”, [ʃ], [ks] for grapheme “x”, and [iː], [uː], [æ], and [e]. Therefore, teachers are recommended to apply the Audio-lingual Method, the Phonetic Method, pronunciation drills, Behaviorist Learning Theories (sound imitating), and Phonic-based Approaches to improve the students’ pronunciation of the consonant and vowel sounds. They are recommended to implement the given methods to ensure that their students to pronounce the sounds correctly in order to avoid the interlingual errors caused by the interference of their L1