Towards Demystifying Students’ Phobia for Phonetics and Phonology: Digital or Analogue Instructional Strategies?

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of phobia on analogue and digital interactive instruction on students’ performance in phonetics and phonology. Phonetics and phonology facilitate enhanced speech proficiency among pre-service English teachers preparing to teach in Nigerian primary and secondary schools. In addition, this study considered the impact of digital-based pedagogy on students’ disposition to eliminate students’ phobia of phonetics and phonology. The population comprised all part 1 students studying English as a course in Nigerian colleges of education located in the southwest. The study adopted the quasi-experimental research design of the three-group pretest-post-test type. The study used Multi-staged sampling procedures in selecting a sample size of 90 students due to the seating capacity of language laboratories. As a result, 33 and 34 students were distributed to the experimental and experimental groups, respectively, while the control group comprised 33 students. Data was retrieved with two research instruments: Spoken English Performance Test (SEPT) and the Students Disposition Questionnaire (SDQ). A relatively high-reliability coefficient of 0.78 and 0.82 was obtained for SEPT and SDQ, respectively. Descriptive statistics answered a research question for the study, while the only hypothesis formulated was tested at a 0.05 level of significance. The findings, among others, highlighted the significant potency of digital instructional strategies in demystifying students’ phobia of phonetics and phonology.