Pronunciations of the Past Tense Inflectional Morpheme -ed Sounds among North Border University Students: Diagnosis and Remedy

Abstract

The aim of this study is to identify university students’ -ed endings pronunciation problems in English language and to suggest ways of solving those problems. The study was conducted in the College of Sciences and Arts, Turaif, Northern Border University, KSA. The paper follows the descriptive research method. A sample of 20 English language students were selected using a simple random sampling procedure. They were instructed to complete a stem-inflectional task by listening to 15 regular past tense verbs ending with inflectional ‘ed’. The findings reveal that those university students have various pronunciation problems: cognitive problems about -ed morpheme endings, they think that every single regular past tense verb ending in ‘ed’ is pronounced as ‘d’ sound. In the light of these findings a number of recommendations have been made: teachers should always tell learners why there are different pronunciations of the -ed morpheme.