فاطمه نعمتی

Despite the importance of intelligible pronunciation in successful communication, little research has been carried out in this regard compared to the other areas of L2 learning, especially in the case of Iranian learners. Thus, the present study aimed at examining the impact of training and its order on learners’ pronunciation with a focus on both perception and production of the dental fricatives. It also tried to investigate the possible substitutions that Iranian EFL learners make for the dental fricatives. Ninety students participated in the present study; two groups received training each one with a different order of presenting the perception or production exercises and a control group which received the traditional training without any specific focus on pronunciation. The participants’ perception was assessed using a transcription task and an AX category discrimination task. Their production was captured using a set of flashcards containing a word list in written and picture form. The results indicated that while the training did not improve learners’ perception, it resulted in a significant improvement of production in intervention groups in general with a tendency towards the superiority of the perception-first type. The results also revealed that the substitutions made by Iranian learners were in line with a majority of the previous studies. These findings suggest that incorporating explicit phonetic instruction into the EFL classroom practice results in an improvement of learners’ intelligible pronunciation and as a result enhances their success in communication.