EFFECT OF PODCASTS ON THE IGBO LEARNERS OF ENGLISH PHONETICS (Published)
This paper studies how increased input, especially, podcasts can affect students’ pronunciation. The study is cast within the theoretical framework of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH), which predicts that in situations where the structures in the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) differ, there may be difficulties in learning such structures. Postgraduate students taking General Phonetics in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka were used for the study. Some of the speech sounds found in the English language which are not in the Igbo language formed our focus. A total of seventeen sounds were used for the test. A pre-test was administered to the students to learn their abilities before the lectures began. The students were later split into two; those that were exposed to lectures only (henceforth, control group) and those that were exposed to both lectures and podcasts (henceforth, test group). After a period of three months, the two groups were administered a post-test. The results of this study showed that exposure to podcasts had a significant effect on the realisation of 13 of the 17 selected phonemes.
Keywords: Podcasts, Post-test, Pre-test, Pronunciation
