THE PRODUCTION ACCURACY OF ENGLISH INTERDENTAL FRICATIVES IN SERBIAN PRIMARY SCHOOL ESL STUDENTS

Abstract

The primary aim of our research was to study whether and how the position of the English interdental fricatives [θ] and [ð]  in a word (initial, medial or final) affects the accuracy of their pronunciation, both in the individual word and textual context. We also studied which sounds were used as substitutions for [θ] and [ð] in the cases of inaccurate pronunciation. Moreover, we performed a comparative analysis between two age groups of primary school ESL students in order to evaluate a possible impact of training and language exposure on the production of English interdental fricatives. The obtained results show that the participants in our study most accurately pronounce the [θ] and [ð] sounds when they are placed in the final word position, with the voiceless interdental fricative [θ] being pronounced more accurately than its voiced pair [ð].  The  [θ] and [ð] sounds were mostly substituted with the Serbian stops [t] and [d] , arguably due to the universal grammar constraints. The 8^th graders showed greater accuracy in pronunciation of the [θ] and [ð] sounds in comparison to the 5^th graders, which suggests the possibly postitive effect of training and language exposure on the production accuracy of the aforementioned sounds.