The impact of mistakes at the micro level of pronunciation on the assessment of English Phonetics and Phonology II students? oral performance

Voices and Views: English language issues from different perspectives.

Departamento Editorial de la Facultad de Lenguas

Lugar: Córdoba; Año: 2019; p. 120 - 162

This study aims at determining the impact of mistakes at themicro level of pronunciation on the assessment of undergraduateEFL (English as a foreign language) students in the context ofthe subject Phonetics and Phonology II at Facultad de Lenguas(FL), Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC). More precisely,the study aims at (a) identifying the micro-level mistakes, bothsegmental and suprasegmental, that students produce duringPhonetics and Phonology II final oral exams, and (b) determiningthe impact of these mistakes on their performance assessment.To meet the objectives, the samples were collected during finaloral exams and the marks students got were registered. Then thesamples were analysed so as to identify the micro-level mistakes;the mistakes were classified following Morley?s (1994) taxonomy.Last, statistical tests were run in order to determine the impact ofmistakes on the final mark assigned to participants. Errors at thesegmental level were the most frequent ones. In fact, inaccurateproduction of vowels and consonants constituted almost 50% of the total number of identified mistakes. Mistakes made in theassignment of prominence and in the choice of intonation werethe least frequent ones. Results of the linear regression analysisshowed that micro-level mistakes had a significant impact onthe mark assigned to the participant: the more mistakes studentsmade at this level, the lower the mark they received. Lastly, themultiple regression analysis revealed that the problems in theassignment of prominence/rhythm seem to be the mistakeswhich most influenced the final mark given to students. On theother hand, the mistakes made in the production of vowels andconsonants were the ones which seem to have least influencedthe final mark students got.