ENGLISH FRICATIVE ACQUISITION AMONG UZBEK EFL LEARNERS: A SYNTHESIS AND THEORETICAL REINTERPRETATION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66345/stj.6503Keywords:
Uzbek EFL learners, English fricatives, interdental fricatives, markedness, perception and production, orthographic influence, pronunciation teaching.Abstract
. This article re-examines previous findings on Uzbek English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ acquisition of English fricatives, with particular attention to interdental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ and their relationship to alveolar and postalveolar fricatives. Rather than presenting a new experimental dataset, the article develops a professional synthesis and theoretical reinterpretation of two related studies: a focused 2024 study on the production and perception of English interdental fricatives by native Uzbek speakers and a later dissertation-based investigation of six English fricatives. The article compares the findings of these studies with broader research on L2 speech learning, markedness, orthographic influence, and the perception-production interface. The earlier study reported higher production than perception for /θ/, /ð/, /s/, and /z/, whereas the broader dissertation found that perception exceeded production across six fricatives. This apparent inconsistency is interpreted not as a contradiction, but as evidence that the perception-production relationship is sensitive to task design, phoneme scope, learner background, and the salience of orthographic information. The analysis argues that markedness affects Uzbek learners’ production more strongly than perception, while near-sound availability and Uzbek orthographic transparency shape both substitution patterns and perceptual confusion. The article also discusses methodological development from a narrow interdental-fricative focus to a broader fricative-system approach, highlighting how Uzbek EFL pronunciation research has evolved from identifying errors toward explaining acquisition mechanisms. The paper concludes with implications for pronunciation teaching, curriculum design, and future research in Uzbekistan
Downloads
References
1. Abduazizov, A. A. (2007). English phonetics (3rd ed., R. Alimardonov, Ed.). Musiqa Press.
2. Aminjonov, A. (2021). Pronunciation improvement on four English vowels spoken by Uzbek learners [Master’s thesis, Kangwon National University, Republic of Korea].
3. Aminjonov, A. A. U. (2025). Uzbek learners’ acquisition of English fricatives: Comparison between production and perception [Doctoral dissertation, Kangwon National University, Republic of Korea].
4. Aminjonov, A., Tulanboev, M., Isroilov, M., & Kim, J.-M. (2024). Production and perception of English interdental fricatives by native Uzbek speakers. The Journal of Foreign Studies, 68, 35-64.
5. Baratova, G. F. Q. (2021). Identification of errors in students’ pronunciation using the principle of approximation in the teaching of pronunciation, the study of the negative impact of the Uzbek language on their origin and the elimination of existing pronunciation problems. Current Research Journal of Philological Sciences, 2(10), 27-31.
6. Barry, W. J. (1989). Perception and production of English vowels by German learners: Instrumental-phonetic support in language teaching. Phonetica, 46(4), 155-168.
7. Bassetti, B., Escudero, P., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2015). Second language phonology at the interface between acoustic and orthographic input. Applied Psycholinguistics, 36(1), 1-6.
8. Best, C. T. (1995). A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research (pp. 171-204). York Press.
9. Brannen, K. J. (2011). The perception and production of interdental fricatives in second language acquisition [Doctoral dissertation, McGill University, Canada].
10. Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., & Goodwin, J. M. (2010). Teaching pronunciation: A course book and reference guide (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
11. Eckman, F. R. (1977). Markedness and the contrastive analysis hypothesis. Language Learning, 27(2), 315-330.
12. Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research (pp. 233-277). York Press.
13. Haspelmath, M. (2006). Against markedness and what to replace it with. Journal of Linguistics, 42(1), 25-70.
14. Mousa, A. (2014). Acquisition of the inter-dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ in ESL/EFL and Jamaican Creole: A comparative study. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 4, 38-47.
15. Rakhmonova, A. U. (2017). Some common-faced lingual problems in learning English language by Uzbek students. Ucheniy XXI Veka, 37.
16. Rivera, J. L. (2019). A study conception about language similarities. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 9(2), 47-58.
17. Seo, M., & Lim, J. (2016). Korean EFL learners’ production and perception of English sound contrasts. Foreign Languages Education, 23(1), 111-132.
18. Sheldon, A., & Strange, W. (1982). The acquisition of /r/ and /l/ by Japanese learners of English: Evidence that speech production can precede speech perception. Applied Psycholinguistics, 3(3), 243-261.
19. Tukhtasinova, Z. M., & Zokirova, G. V. K. (2016). Common pronunciation mistakes of Uzbek learners in speaking English. Young Scientist, 11(115), 1719-1720.
20. Tulanboev, M. S. (2023). Production and perception of interdental fricative sounds in English by Uzbek learners [Master’s thesis, Kangwon National University, Republic of Korea].
21. Yavas, M. (2011). Applied English phonology (2nd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.
22. Zhang, Y., & Xiao, J. (2014). An analysis of Chinese students’ perception and production of paired English fricatives: From an ELF perspective. Journal of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics, 18(1), 171-192.
