Native English speakers’ perception and production of Arabic consonants

Abstract

This chapter explores adult native English speakers' ability to distinguish and accurately produce Arabic consonant contrasts and examines the relationship between learners' perception and production skills. It explores the learn ability of Arabic consonant contrasts by examining the perception and production accuracies among native speakers of English from different Arabic instruction levels. Modern Standard Arabic includes a number of consonant sounds that represent a substantial challenge for English learners. Prior research has mainly focused on exploring adult L2 learners' perception and production of novel Arabic segments independently. The production task took place first in order not to expose the participants to auditory input involving the target stimuli. Learning a second language entails, among other things, acquiring its phonology. This seems to be a feasible task for young L2 language learners who start acquiring the second language by 6 years of age and subsequently achieve native-like proficiency.