Analysis of Persian EFL Learner's Pronunciation of English schwa: Using Acoustic Phonetics for Pedagogical Purposes

Acoustic analysis of speech sounds in Phonetics has been served different purposes, of which pedagogy is. Second language learners are said to usually substitute unfamiliar vowels with more similar ones in their own language. Since correct pronunciation is very important in establishing effective communication, acoustic properties of unfamiliar and controversial American English / / pronounced by Persian EFL learners have been studied in this paper. To do this, acoustic parameters of the first three formants of [ә] and the similar often substitutable vowel [e] were measured after being taped and were compared with the native American English pronunciations of these two vowels. The acoustic measurements revealed significant differences between F1 and F2, but F3, of the [ә] tokens of the native English speaker and those of the Persian learners while all three formants of [e] tokens showed significant differences. Finally, in cases where formant frequency values were significantly different between the two languages, some pedagogical suggestions were made on the basis of the acoustic considerations for articulatory improvement.