Abstract:
Natural speech in any language is made up of many components like lexical,
grammatical and phonological, but the phonological component remains the most
significant. That is because language is basically a group of sounds which man began
to use for verbal communication ever since there was no any knowledge about writing
in the world. The study aimed at investigating the phonological problems encountered
by EFL university students in their attempt to perceive natural-speech English. The
study also aimed to rank these problems according to the level of difficulty they cause
for students in their perception of natural speech, and to suggest certain techniques
that can help in solving them. The study adopted the descriptive analytical method.
The sample comprised (40) students chosen randomly and (10) teachers selected
purposively from the Department of English, Faculty of Education -Hantoub,
University of Gezira. Two tools of data collection were used : a diagnostic listening
test for the sample of students, and a questionnaire for the sample of teachers. The
resultant data were displayed in tables and then analyzed manually through
percentage. The most important findings reached by the study were that most EFL
university students (64.7%) have phonological problems trying to perceive naturalspeech
English, that speech rhythm and prosodic stress are the most difficult
phonological features for the students causing (77.5%) of them not to succeed in
perceiving natural-speech English, that the least difficult feature which is weak forms
causes problems for (53.8%) of the students, and that effective perceptual techniques
for solving the problem of the study according to (96.7%) of the respondents to the
questionnaire include listening comprehension, dictation, note-taking, listening to
English radio stations and TV channels, and more teacher's use of English during
classes. In the light of these findings, the study recommends that EFL university
departments should allocate courses for listening comprehension which focus on
phonological features of natural-speech English, that teachers should increase their
use of English during lectures to give their students more practice in listening, and that
students should devote some of their time to listening to English auditory mass media.
The study suggests that other researchers may investigate the role of phonetic mimicry
as well as the role of dictation and note-taking in developing listening skills in EFL
university students.