Effectiveness of Minimal Pairs in Teaching Phonemic Transcription

Most foreign learners often complain against the unpredictable pronunciation of English words. Perhaps this unpredictability of English pronunciation makes it something insurmountable for foreign learners of it. Though it is almost impossible to speak English like its native speakers, yet it can be improved toa great extent. This can be achieved by teaching learners phonemic transcription. It means a teacher can help his students tremendously by making them aware of the essential features of the English sounds. Despite its immense utility, it is not easy to help students achieve the mastery of phonemic transcription. It is mainly because of the phonological richness of English, especially its vowel sounds. The present study is an experimental study in its nature in which the Pakistani learners of English studying at Diploma level were taught phonemic transcription with the help of minimal pairs. There were 60 students in all who were randomly divided into Experimental Group and Control Group and the members of the former group were given the novel treatment;teaching of phonemic transcription with the help of minimal pairs. Since the study subjects were doing this subject, called Phonetics and Phonology, for the first time in their whole academic career and naturally they did not have any idea and recognition of the English phonemes, they were not pretested. Another reason for not pretesting them was their almost equal proficiency in the target language. The results of the posttest showed that the members of the Experimental Group outdid the members of the Control Group since they (experimental group) were taught the art of phonemic transcription through a novel method. The success of the study suggests that English pronunciation can be made less challenging as well as more interesting if teachers are willing to be more adventurous. This is only possible when someone is ready to say goodbye to the traditional methods of teaching pronunciation.