Producing Sounds in Contact by Raising Awareness of Final -ed Consonant Clusters in English Daniel Romero 1 , Cristina Crison 1 , Joaquín Romero 2 1 Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain, currently at Universidad Técnica de Ambato, Ecuador, 2 Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain, 1 ds.romero@uta.edu.ec, 2 joaquin.romero@urv.cat Abstract This research work studies the production of final consonant clusters in English regular verbs past forms and their link with initial vowel sounds of following words. The study was carried out in Tarragona, Spain, with 20 Spanish-Catalan native speakers of first year of Bachillerato. The aim was to provide instruction on splitting the final consonant cluster of a word and linking it to the following initial sound by raising awareness of the pronunciation of -ed endings in past verbs. The investigation responds to two main questions 1) To what extent does pronunciation awareness of final consonant clusters have an impact on producing -ed endings in past regular verbs?, and 2) What is the impact of providing instruction on splitting the final consonant cluster and linking it to the following initial vowel sound? The data was gathered by recording participants while reading 10 sentences and 10 verbs, before and after a treatment, and analyze with PRAAT. Results show a noticeable improvement in the correct production of the past forms of regular verbs by the control and experimental groups, as well as a more native-like pronunciation when linking consonant clusters in -ed endings and initial vowels sounds in the experimental group. Keywords: consonant clusters, -ed endings, sounds in contact 1. Introduction Given the influence of pronunciation on the perceived speaking proficiency of a foreign learner's speech, it is important to give special consideration to pronunciation awareness in the EFL classroom as a means to maximize the acquisition of this crucial aspect of language learning [1]. One way to achieve this goal is through explicit teaching of any given pronunciation issue. In order to raise awareness, students are expected to recognize details of L2 articulation, so that they will be able to “feel” and distinguish pronunciation features [2]. In the case of this study, the target features were voiced and voiceless consonants, specifically the voiced/voiceless distinction in -ed consonant clusters. Regarding explicit pronunciation teaching, two approaches are commonly used: one with suplementary materials, and one with an integrated focus [3]. Because of the nature of the present study, a bottom up instruction approach with supplementary materials was applied. Most learners are not able to recognize mispronunciations or whether or not their pronunciation is native-like. This is evidenced in the case of the English regular past -ed morpheme. The mispronunciation of this inflectional suffix might cause communication failure given that the correct message, i.e., verbal tense, might not be accurately conveyed. For that reason, explicit English language instruction should include the pronunciation of the regular past -ed morpheme. Students should be able to identify the correct use of the sounds /t/, /d/, /ɪd/, based on the rules for their pronunciation. This should be done by enhancing learners’ awareness and production of the -ed morpheme. The simple instruction of recognizing the voiced and voiceless sounds by touching one’s throat to feel the vibration of the vocal cords can help learners choose the correct sound to pronounce the past form of regular verbs. It is true that not all learners react or respond the same way to particular stimuli and that some students are able to acquire a high degree of pronunciation accuracy without receiving specific instruction [4]. However, for a majority of learners simply listening to an accurate model is not sufficient and intensive practice is needed to acquire problematic sounds [5]. In addition to the pronunciation of past -ed morphemes in isolation, this study also takes into consideration connected speech, in this case between the final consonant in the -ed ending and the initial vowel sound of a following word. This introduces an additional level of difficulty but, at the same time, an opportunity to focus on the -ed morpheme by raising awareness of the need to link the consonant sound ISAPh 2018 International Symposium on Applied Phonetics 19-21 September 2018, Aizuwakamatsu, Japan 110 10.21437/ISAPh.2018-20