Papers by Dr. Taif Ibrahem Al Kinany
http://www.seaairweb.info/journal/articles/, 2023
Current empirical studies indicate that Omani EFL learners encounter crucial challenges when pron... more Current empirical studies indicate that Omani EFL learners encounter crucial challenges when pronouncing consonant clusters in final position. To further seek in this line of research, the current study set out to develop a test to assess Omani EFL college students' production of consonant clusters found in the four types of inflectional suffixes, including plural 's'; third person singular 's', and possessive 's' and verbs in the past or participle formation of 'd' and 'ed'.
Twenty-five EFL college students from Oman consented to read aloud words and sentences with the different kinds of inflectional suffixes that contain consonant clusters while being audio- recorded. Results showed that the atomistic evaluation method offers objective and particular thorough assessment of the phonetic components involved. However, it takes a lot of time and requires repeated listening to samples for many students. Results also revealed that Omani EFL college students suffer from genuine difficulties when pronouncing consonant clusters in
inflectional suffixes. Differences in how participants pronounced (insertion of an additional vowel), as a repair method, in word ending position to make the difficult clusters easier to pronounce were revealed. This can be linked to the mother tongue impact because Arabic phonotactics forbid consonant clusters from appearing in the word-final position.
Keywords: inflectional suffixes; consonant clusters; atomistic testing method; phonemic production.
JIRSEA Issue: Vol. 20 No. 1, May/June 2022, 2022
Guided by the ADDIE Instructional Design model, a 7-week online module was designed to enhance th... more Guided by the ADDIE Instructional Design model, a 7-week online module was designed to enhance the grammatical intonation competency of foundation students at the University of Technology and Applied Sciences (Oman). The module was conducted with 35 level four foundation students, after which the researchers developed a questionnaire to investigate the sample students' perception of the effectiveness of the grammatical intonation module. This paper assessed the validation of the questionnaire using the experts' validity and the Rasch Model analysis of construct validity and reliability. The questionnaire investigates Omani EFL students' perceptions of a grammatical intonation module designed and applied to enhance their grammatical intonation competency. The sample of this study comprised 30 Omani EFL male and female non-major college students studying at the foundation program/the English language center/the University of Technology and Applied Sciences/Nizwa college. The experts validated the contents of the questionnaire. At the same time, the Rasch Model produced construct validity and reliability measurements using the dimensionality, item fit, and item polarity parameters and the person and item separation analysis. The study's findings indicated that the questionnaire is valid and reliable for measuring Omani EFL college students' perceptions of a grammatical intonation module.
English Language Teaching, 2022
The extant studies addressing second language phonetic perception assume that second language pho... more The extant studies addressing second language phonetic perception assume that second language phonemes are perceived to be similar to first language phonemes, and tend to be substituted by learners of English as a foreign language. This study aimed to assess the perceptual relationship between the phonemes of English and the sound units of Omani Arabic of the Al-Dakhiliyah region to discover the extent of the influence exerted by Omani Arabic on the perception of English phonemes by Omani learners. Two instruments were constructed to achieve this goal: first, the Omani phonetic system was elucidated via a questionnaire and the consonants and vowels uttered by the Omani people were archived as a phonetic dialect; second, a test was created to examine the perceptual phonetic distance between Omani Arabic and English phonemes. This investigation was designed to test the hypothesis of the revised speech learning model. The results confirmed the model’s postulation that learners instinct...
The extant studies addressing second language phonetic perception assume that second language pho... more The extant studies addressing second language phonetic perception assume that second language phonemes are perceived to be similar to first language phonemes, and tend to be substituted by learners of English as a foreign language. This study aimed to assess the perceptual relationship between the phonemes of English and the sound units of Omani Arabic of the Al-Dakhiliyah region to discover the extent of the influence exerted by Omani Arabic on the perception of English phonemes by Omani learners. Two instruments were constructed to achieve this goal: first, the Omani phonetic system was elucidated via a questionnaire and the consonants and vowels uttered by the Omani people were archived as a phonetic dialect; second, a test was created to examine the perceptual phonetic distance between Omani Arabic and English phonemes. This investigation was designed to test the hypothesis of the revised speech learning model. The results confirmed the model's postulation that learners instinctively and reflexively associate the second language sounds to the phonetic groups of their first language.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of using sitcoms, as authentic material, ... more The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of using sitcoms, as authentic material, on Omani EFL college students' phonetic competence, particularly on supra-segmental phonetic features. The sample of this study is Omani non-major English male and female college students who are studying at the foundation program-The University of Technology and Applied Sciences. A quasi-experimental study of pre-posttests was used. The intervention consisted of ten online sessions followed by oral production tasks and feedback. In each session, the students were exposed to extracts of three American sitcoms (Seinfeld, Two Men and a Half, Friends) in which they were required to role-play some of dialogues. Results revealed that sitcoms could be used as a phonetic learning tool and as an input of authentic English in EFL learning. Results also indicated that there is a significant development in Omani EFL college students' production of stress and intonation by comparing the results of pretest and posttest.
Conference Presentations by Dr. Taif Ibrahem Al Kinany
ASU CLFS 2 nd Symposium : A World of Opportunities., 2023
Research in ELT classroom has often dealt with the pronunciation skill as a subsidiary role of br... more Research in ELT classroom has often dealt with the pronunciation skill as a subsidiary role of broader language performance skills such as speaking and listening, however, during the past few years, instruction on specific features of the pronunciation skill have been reassessed and consequently fostered in many EFL programs. This presentation offers a comprehensive review of the three main branches of phonetics i.e., articulatory phonetics, auditory phonetics, and acoustic phonetics with a specific focus on research in EFL pronunciation competency. It also sheds some light on the implications of these phonetic branches in the EFL classroom, in a reasoned attempt to reconsider the role of this area of the spoken language in the teaching practice.
Books by Dr. Taif Ibrahem Al Kinany
A postulate objective in teaching Omani EFL college students at the foundation level program focu... more A postulate objective in teaching Omani EFL college students at the foundation level program focuses on the oral production competency of Omani EFL college students(Thakur,2020). The pathways prescribed textbooks taught to Omani EFL foundation-program students contain a large number of activities that are purposefully designed for students to develop their oral production of the prosodic features of English (report of Common English Language Curriculum/University of Technology and Applied Sciences, 2021). The present study intends to examine the difficulties encountered by Omani EFL college students in their oral production of English prosodic features namely sentence-intonation and stress placement, develop a software computer program to enhance their oral production of these English prosodic features, and finally test the effect of the developed software. This research study aims to: 1. Develop a prosodic test to investigate the difficulties faced by Omani EFL college students in the production of the sentence-intonation at the supra-segmental level.
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Papers by Dr. Taif Ibrahem Al Kinany
Twenty-five EFL college students from Oman consented to read aloud words and sentences with the different kinds of inflectional suffixes that contain consonant clusters while being audio- recorded. Results showed that the atomistic evaluation method offers objective and particular thorough assessment of the phonetic components involved. However, it takes a lot of time and requires repeated listening to samples for many students. Results also revealed that Omani EFL college students suffer from genuine difficulties when pronouncing consonant clusters in
inflectional suffixes. Differences in how participants pronounced (insertion of an additional vowel), as a repair method, in word ending position to make the difficult clusters easier to pronounce were revealed. This can be linked to the mother tongue impact because Arabic phonotactics forbid consonant clusters from appearing in the word-final position.
Keywords: inflectional suffixes; consonant clusters; atomistic testing method; phonemic production.
Conference Presentations by Dr. Taif Ibrahem Al Kinany
Books by Dr. Taif Ibrahem Al Kinany
Twenty-five EFL college students from Oman consented to read aloud words and sentences with the different kinds of inflectional suffixes that contain consonant clusters while being audio- recorded. Results showed that the atomistic evaluation method offers objective and particular thorough assessment of the phonetic components involved. However, it takes a lot of time and requires repeated listening to samples for many students. Results also revealed that Omani EFL college students suffer from genuine difficulties when pronouncing consonant clusters in
inflectional suffixes. Differences in how participants pronounced (insertion of an additional vowel), as a repair method, in word ending position to make the difficult clusters easier to pronounce were revealed. This can be linked to the mother tongue impact because Arabic phonotactics forbid consonant clusters from appearing in the word-final position.
Keywords: inflectional suffixes; consonant clusters; atomistic testing method; phonemic production.