Journal of Critical Reviews ISSN- 2394-5125 Vol 7 , Issue 9, 2020 CONTRASTIVE PHONOLOGY OF PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEMS OF PERSIAN AND ENGLISH FOR PEDAGOGICAL PURPOSES Akbar Solati * North Khorasan University of Medical Sciences, Bojnurd, Iran E-mail: [email protected] *Corresponding Author E-mail: [email protected] Received: 23.03.2020 Revised: 20.04.2020 Accepted: 24.05.2020 Abstract The present study aims to compare and contrast the phonological systems of Persian and English for pedagogical purposes. The consonants and vowels of the two languages are described, compared and contrasted to provide information about the facts of the phonological systems of English, to find the similarities and differences between the two systems and henceforth the potential areas of difficulty in teaching English to Persian learners of English. This study attempts to help teachers and textbook writers to anticipate the phonological problems that Persian students of English are likely to face while producing utterances in English. It also attempts to help Persian learners to improve their English pronunciation and spelling. Keywords: Phonological system, Contrastive phonology, Persian learner, Pedagogical purpose. © 2020 by Advance Scientific Research. This is an open-access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.31838/jcr.07.09.166 INTRODUCTION easy and difficult items of second language learners. Therefore, a Almost all phonologists agree that phonology is phenomenon rather new area called "Contrastive Phonology (CP)" was different from phonetics, looking at the latter as a field involved in presented. "…describing the speech sounds that occur in the languages of the world" (Ladefoged, 1975, p.1; cf. Bronstein, 1960). Thus, This study tries to provide a qualitative analysis of phonological phonology is often said to deal with the systems and patterns of systems- i.e., consonants and vowels- of Persian and English for sounds which occur in particular languages. In more recent years, pedagogical purposes. It investigates how much phonological developments in the field of phonology have led it to a broader systems in Persian and English are similar or different and where area whereby the descriptions and explanation of the first is the problematic area in the production of these sound systems language are used to account for those of the second language for learners of any of these languages. Pedagogically the results pronunciation behavior. The reason is our involvement in two sets can be processed to be used in teaching pronunciation, spelling, of phonological categories; L1 and L2. Intending to learn the material development, and testing. pronunciation and spelling of a second/foreign language poses different problems which are not so seriously faced while LITERATURE REVIEW acquiring the phonology of a first language. Based on the CA assumption, the aim of CP is to analyze the differences between the sound patterns of any two languages, When we compare two languages, we are doing Contrastive prepare the land for a systematic error analysis, and tries to Analysis (CA). In fact, a set of procedures to compare and contrast correct the pronunciation problems of a second/foreign language the linguistic systems or subsystems of languages so as to learner. Yarmohammadi (1995, p. 19) defines CP as ''the process formulate their similarities and differences is known as CA. Gass of comparing and contrasting the phonological systems of and Selinker (2008, p. 96) defines CA as “a way of comparing languages to formulate their similarities and differences''. It is in languages in order to determine potential errors for the ultimate the area of phonology that as Ringbom (1994:738) claims "the purpose of isolating what needs to be learned and what does not predictions of CA work best". Richards (1971) also asserts that need to be learned in a second language learning situation”. In "studies of SLA have tended to imply that contrastive analysis may other words, as Mirhassani (2003) states, CA reveals similarities be most productive at the level of phonology (p.204)". As this study and differences between languages, describing and predicting aims for pedagogical purposes, the definition stated by Eliasson difficulties in foreign language learning and finally developing (1984, p. 7) is succinct "as most commonly understood, materials for language teaching. According to Fallahi (1991, p. 30) contrastive phonology compares phonological properties of two “the application of CA for English programs has to be a matter of languages in order to determine areas in phonological system of great importance in Iran because the L1 interference is quite one language which may create learning difficulties for speakers noticeable in an EFL environment”. Krzeszowski (1981, p.33) of the other language". Kohler (1971, p. 83) also provides the same states the term contrastive was first introduced in phonological kind of definition given by Eliasson (1984). Kohler says that "the studies, then extended to cover pedagogical comparative studies. aim of contrastive phonology seems to be straight forward and It is on this level of language i.e. phonology, that CA has shown to logical: it is to analyze the differences in sound structure between be more efficient. Richards (1971, p. 204) suggests that "studies of languages and thus lay the foundation for a systematic and second language acquisition have tended to imply that contrastive illuminating error analysis and correction of pronunciation in analysis may be most predictive at the level of phonology, and least foreign language learning". On the word of Eliasson & Kohler, in a predictive at the syntactic level". As a matter of fact, as Bugarski pedagogical CA, differences between the two systems are (1991, p. 73) mentions, "CA, in modern sense of this term, started highlighted and similarities are to some degree disregard. As out as the comparative study of grammatical and phonological stated by Yarmohammadi (2002, p. 23-24) a classical CA consists systems of pairs of languages for pedagogical purposes". That is of four steps: (1) Description; (2) Juxtaposition; (3) comparison why the direction of many studies was mostly led towards (4) prediction. These steps are relevant for all aspects of language contrasting the phonological systems of any two languages to find Journal of critical reviews 893 CONTRASTIVE PHONOLOGY OF PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEMS OF PERSIAN AND ENGLISH FOR PEDAGOGICAL PURPOSES structure: namely syntax, lexicon, phonology, pragmatics and In English and Persian with deep orthography, there is an indirect discourse. relationship between spelling and pronunciation and there are so many irregular and unusual pronunciation patterns. So, spelling As the phonological level is aimed in this study, Gui (1978) has and pronouncing the words is one of the main challenging for the compared Chinese sound system with English, based on learners of these languages. Due to the lack of research in this field phonemes, tone, intonation, etc. He (2002) and Wei (2003) did a on Persian learners of English for pedagogical purpose, this study comparison on Chinese and English word stress patterns. As is conducted to describe, compare and contrast the sound system Persian learners of English concerned, Wilson and Wilson (2001) of English and Persian and it also draws the differences and highlighted the most common pronunciation errors produced by similarities of the Persian sound system and that of English. Persian speakers and asserts that the vowels, consonants and Pedagogically the results can be processed to be used in teaching diphthongs which are not shared in both languages can become pronunciation, material development, and testing. problematic for Persian speakers. Hall (2007) in her study to investigate "phonological characteristics of Farsi speakers of COMPARISON BETWEEN PERSIAN AND ENGLISH SOUND English and L1 Australian English speakers’ perceptions of SYSTEM proficiency" showed that the phonemes and consonant clusters The first step in executing a CA is to provide description of the absent in the Persian sound system and syllable structure make aspects of the languages to be compared. Krzeszowski (1990, p.35) problem for Persian speakers of English to a varying degree. states "no comparison is possible without a prior description of Seddighi (2012) examined Iranian EFL pronunciation errors elements to be compared therefore; all contrastive study must be through L1 transfer. The result revealed that Persian English founded on independent descriptions of the relevant items of the language learners confront considerable problems in areas that languages to be compared. The fundamental demand is that they are absent in their mother tongue. Navehebrahim (2012) should be made within the same theoretical framework". In this researched the pronunciation of language learners of English in study a descriptive taxonomic framework is used to describe the Persian background and highlights that “some Iranian learners do sound systems of Persian and English. not have a fixed idea of English sound system and unfamiliarity with the English phonological rules is one of the factors that affects Persian and English, though belonging to the same language family learners’ errors in pronunciation (p. 524)”. Solati (2013) examined (Indo-European), are very different in alphabet, sound system and the nature of Persian learners' spelling errors in learning EFL and syllable structure.