Schwa in the Sound Production of EFL Freshmen: Heavily Accented English

Résumé

Pronunciation of words with schwa sound is a challenging task for many EFL learners, as it constitutes a major source of mispronunciation and foreign sounding. EFL students, mainly with limited exposure to native-speakers speech, fail to notice the behavior of this sound in many orthographic aspects of words. Consequently, their spoken output becomes replete with deviant forms. This paper, hence, aims to explore how EFL freshmen perceive the different orthographic representations of schwa in words. It also attempts to assess the extent to which these students are able to pronounce words with schwa occurring in different positions. To collect data, a pronunciation test was administered to 53 freshmen. Findings confirm that EFL freshmen confuse vowel letters with reduced vowel sounds. Additionally, the transcription inaccuracies made reflect the participants’ habit of pronouncing English words with an accent most typical of French language. Correspondingly, this paper concludes with some pedagogical implications.