First-Year University EFL Learners’ Interpretability Of Unfamiliar And Difficult Words As Affected By The Cross-Phonological Influence Of French On English. (Case Of Ibn Khaldoun University, Tiaret)

Abstract

Cross-linguistic influence of a code on another is widely researched in many ways, including one of the phonological variety; yet when it comes to the French code’s influence on English pronunciation in Algeria, it is not that widely explored. This work focuses on the EFL learners’ level of interpretability as affected by cross-phonological influence, targeting unfamiliar and difficult words specifically. It questions whether L2’s (French) influence on L3 (English) in the Algerian instructional context affects how students pronounce unfamiliar and difficult words, and it gauges interpretability. The study uses a descriptive analytical approach where first-year English university learners are the focus belonging to Ibn Khaldoun University in Tiaret in the faculty of letters and languages, department of English. The research collects data through recordings of students reading lexical items that are unaccustomed to them, and analyzes the level of reliance on L2’s influence to pronounce these L3 items; and then a fluently speaking EFL teacher is used as a guide to assess the interpretability of some learners’ pronunciations of such words that are new to them. The results indicate a heavy reliance on phonological elements of L2 in pronouncing unfamiliar items in L3 which may result in interpretability issues at the level of first-year university EFL learners, indicating the possibility that the cross-phonological influence of French as L2 on English as L3 affects first-year university EFL learners’ pronunciation of unfamiliar words significantly enough to affect the interpretability of these students.