Examining the contribution of phonology to develop students’ proficiency in speaking English at secondary schools case study of Kayonza District

Abstract

Various education stakeholders believe that, albeit language is not everything in education, however; without language everything is nothing in education. Indeed, speaking English impeccably requires correct sounds pronunciation for accurate communication. Lack of phonological awareness befalls this communication. The scheme of this research was to assess the level of pronunciation skills of secondary teachers and their students by looking for challenges that hinder them from teaching and learning phonology to set strategies to teach correct pronunciation skills. To reach this, a mixed research design was applied both quantitatively and qualitatively, to pull in data for examination of pronunciation pitfalls causes of four schools in Kayonza district. Thus, one hundred respondents (teachers and students) were purposively sampled from the school population of 8, 943. Observations, questionnaire, and interviews measured the levels of pronunciation of teachers and students. One category of data was quantified and analyzed statistically with SPSS, while qualitative data were dissected thematically to sort out key points related to English sounds articulation. Out of this route, on the whole, results reveal the relationship between pronunciation and speaking skills is statistically significant with a regression mean square of 13.342 and residual mean square is .133; while F is100.048, F value is bigger than F critical value. This suggests a highly positive correlation between variables which is significant with a P value that levels at .000b. Therefore, mispronunciation of vowel sounds and consonant sounds of teachers and students is obvious in the schools surveyed. Based on these findings, henceforth; teachers should overcome their challenges by adopting strategies that substantially spearhead teaching pronunciation skills in English language context. For smooth communication in a classroom, it is imperative for a teacher, and any party involved in the conversation, to correctly articulate English sounds according to the two fundamental laws of pronunciation: the place of articulation versus the manner of articulation in the vocal tract, with theoretically and practically abide by the International Phonetics Association through authentic imitation of standard English sounds. Otherwise, no communication improvement will take place, and thus; students will learn wrong word sounds that ring up un-English in the ears of English natives.