Sound-letter Non-Correspondence Vis-a-vis Deviation in Spoken English among Secondary School Students in Nnewi Educational Zone

Abstract

The English language occupies a prominent position in the nation’s life. It is the language of education and by extension, the language of the classroom. Most of the subjects at the different levels of education in Nigeria are taught in English. Unfortunately, many students still perform poorly in spelling and pronunciation. The research tries to find out why students perform poorly in these aspects of spoken and written English. Three secondary schools in Nnewi North Educational zone were used for the study. Data were collected through an unobtrusive observation, spelling tests and an unstructured interview. Contrastive Analysis theory was used in the analysis of data. The findings from the study reveal that the problems were due to faulty learning, over generalization, poor foundation, lack of interest, mother tongue interference, fossilization, negative transfer and lack of motivation. The paper proffers solution on how to reduce students’ problem of spelling and pronunciation errors in spoken and written English to the barest minimum.