Abstract
CAH claims that (dis)similarities between two languages determine the level of difficulty or ease second language learners would encounter.This came up as a result of the practice of comparing languages. A number of models that will assist in predicting such areas have been developed. One of such models is Prator’s (1967) Hierarchy of Difficulty. This paper therefore employs Prator’s predictive power in order to contrast the English and Hausa pure vowels. The aim is to predict areas of difficulty and/or verify the difficulty levels. The researcher used relevant phonology textbooks of both languages (i.e. Gimson’s ‘Pronunciation of English’ and Mu’azu’s ‘TsarinSauti da Nahawun Hausa’) for better distribution of the sounds into appropriate levels. A short story was composed for Hausa ESL learners in pronouncing the English pure vowels. The researcher composed the story with the theme, “Leaning English Pronunciation”. The story was read three (3) times by the students while the researcher recorded their voices. The third recordings were listened to and the actual realisation of the individual sounds by the students was recorded and analysed. The researcher assumes that in the third reading, the students already became familiar with the words in the story. Consequently, their pronunciation in the third round is supposed to be natural. It is found that the predictive power predicts some levels of difficulty. For instance, the vowels /ÊŒ/, /æ/, /Éœ:/ and /É™/ were predicted to be more difficult to learn by Hausa ESL learners as compared to /u/, /e/, /i:/ etc. which are present in the Hausa sound inventory. However, the difficulty levels are not enough to predict the mispronunciations made by the Hausa ESL learners in pronouncing English words. The mispronunciations are majorly caused by the disparity in the English pronunciation and spelling of words.
Keywords: Predictive Power, CAH (Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis), ESL (English Second Language), SLA (Second Language Acquisition)Pure Vowels, Hierarchy of Difficulty.
