Difficulties encountered by advanced Iraqi learners in identifying English homophones

الملخص EN

This study examines the phonological abilities of Advanced Iraqi Learners (AIL) regarding the identification of English homophones.

It falls into two parts.

The first part of the study is devoted to shed light on English homophones, and how they are represented in speech production.

Besides, the problems the properties of homophones cause to Advanced Iraqi students.

To check our student's abilities with respect to English homophones, a test was designed, this is the second part of the study .

The test consists of two written questions, the content of which is taken from different sources, each of which is supposed to test two things : the production as well as the recognition of the English homophones.

The first test is organized in a way that it could assess the phonological properties of homophones.

Thus, in this test, subjects are asked to give the other word.

In the second test, the subjects are asked to choose the right homophone from the multiple choice items.

In order to get further information from the results, the raw scores were subjected to a relevant statistical technique.

This statistical technique that is used in this study is called “The Analysis of Variance test”, the ANOVA test.

It has been found out that fourth–year students do face difficulties in the identification of English non-contextual homophones.