A Contrastive Study of English spoken by Students coming from the Regional and the English Medium Schools

Abstract

The paper explores the interference of mother tongue in learning English as a second language. It is generally observed that the English spoken by the students coming from regional schools and those from English medium schools is different in various respects. The aim of the present chapter is to make a contrastive analysis of English spoken by these two sets of students who fall in the age group of 19 to 24 years, have Hindi as their mother tongue, and are from semi-urban background. The chapter attempts to identify errors/problems in pronunciation of English sounds in the following eight areas namely, aspirated and unaspirated sound, voiceless and voiced sound, confusion in pronunciation of /f/ and /v/, or interchange of these sounds in pronunciation, difficulty in correct pronunciation of /ө/and/ð/, /tʃ/and /dʒ/, semi-vowel /w/ confused with fricative /v/, deletion of semi-vowel /j/ in certain words, appropriate pronunciation of /r/ in three word-positions namely, before a vowel, before a consonant, and at the end of a word, and confusion or inability to appropriately pronounce sounds namely, /s/ , /z/, /ʒ/ and /ʃ/. The features of speech that are studied are Plosives - /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/, Fricatives - /f/, /v/, /ө/, /ð/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /h/, Affricates - /tʃ/, /dʒ/, Semi-vowels - /w/, /j/, and Frictionless Continuant - /r/.