• Dr. Ahmad M. Al-Samawi

  Author

The study was carried out to investigate the effect of using Arabic vowel points (harakaat) on
one-syllable English words of three consonant clusters in initial and final positions. Four lists
words were developed: two with harakaat in initial and final positions and two without harakaat.
It was hypothesized that the use of these harakaat would result in better pronunciation of these
words by Arab students. The t-test (T(39) =2.807, P<0.01) showed significant differences
between the mean of words with harakaat and the mean of words without harakaat, favoring
writing words with harakaat. All subjects benefited from these harakaat in different degrees. The
t-test for a supportive hypothesis related to initial position was significant beyond level p<05
(T(39) =3.029) suggesting that writing English words with Arabic harakaat leads to better
pronunciation of these clusters in initial position. The t-test for another supportive hypothesis
related to final position, however, showed no significant difference between writing consonant
clusters in final position with Arabic harakaat and writing them without harakaat
(T(39)=1.964). Results have implications to contrastive phonetics and language teaching in
general.

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