Arab Educational Information Network

There were several research studies conducted on the VOT of voiceless stops of L2 English but little has been devoted to the acquisition of voiced stops of English by native Arabic speakers in particular adult Saudi learners. This study explored how stops were produced within the context of certain vowels; the focus was put on native Arabic speakers in general then on Saudi learners of English whose VOT was compared with English native speakers. In this respect, 20 Saudi learners of English and 20 monolinguals (10 English and 10 Arabic monolinguals) had been selected to take part in this study. The results showed that the vowel following a stop did not have any effect on the learning of VOT unlike what was predicted in Johnson and Babel (2010). Although the learning appears less rudimentary as only two participants have learnt [b] but none of them had learnt [g] or [d], there were signs of learning among the participants. The path of learning showed that English coronal stops appeared to be the most difficult for the learners. (Published abstract)