The Production of Weak Forms by Iraqi Secondary School Teachers
Abstract
The present study sheds light on the production of weak forms by Iraqi Secondary School Teachers (ISSTs). A weak form is one of two possible pronunciations for a word in the context of connected speech. It is the result of a word being unstressed (Crystal, 1991). This study aims at presenting and identifying the different weak forms that are found in standard English. It explains the rules of using weak forms. Moreover, the study aims at testing the teachers (ISSTs) linguistic performance in their attempt to produce weak forms according to the variable of age - both on the sentence level and on the utterance level. So, (45) teachers were tested. These were divided into three groups: Young (25-36), middle-aged (37-49) and old teachers (50 years and over).Their speech has been recorded, listened carefully and then analysed.It is found that those teachers face difficulty in using weak forms. They often tend to use strong forms and they neglect to apply the correct rules of using weak forms. Moreover, it is observed that young teachers followed by old, used more weak forms than middle-aged teachers.