Investigating the Difficulties Encountered by Iraqi EFL University Learners' Performance in The Pronunciation of Morphophonemic Changes at College Level English Department

Abstract

This study is mainly concerned with the morphophonemic changes as one of the of the common and essential processes in the English derivation on the one hand , and as a problematic area for English language learners on the other hand . This study aims at investigating the difficulties encountered Iraqi EFL university learners in their pronouncing of morphophonemic changes . To achieve the aim above the present study hypothesizes that : the learners do not encounter difficulties in the pronunciation morphophonemic changes . The hypothesis has been verified through adopting a diagnostic test of two questions . The test has been applied to a sample of 140 Iraqi EFL learners at their fourth year from department of English , College of Education ,University of Wasit during the academic year 2010-2011.Then the subjects' responses have been collected and analyzed to draw the findings of this study. The analysis gives the following results : 1-Iraqi EFL university learners face difficulties in the pronunciation of morphophonemic changes as the highest rate of their incorrect responses in Q1 , Q2 ( 66.7,58.67 ) which outweighs the rate of their correct responses (33.7, 41.33). 2-The students face more difficulty at the production level than the recognition level. In the light of the results , certain recommendations and suggestions have been put for further studies.