Assessing EFL Learners Ability in the Recognition And Production of Homophones

Abstract

This study deals with the orthographic processing ability of homophones
which can account for variance in word recognition and production skills due to
phonological processing. The study aims at: A)Investigating whether the students
can recognize correct usage and spelling comprehension of different homophones
by using appropriate word that overlapped in both phonology and orthography.
B)Assessing spelling production word association to the written form of the
homophone in the sentence comprehension task. To achieve these aims, two tests
have been conducted and distributed on 50 students at first stage at the College of
Education(Ibn-Rushd) for the academic year 2010-2011. The two tests are exposed
to a jury of experts for the purpose of ascertaining their validity. The split-half
reliabilities (Spearman-Brown corrected) from this task were .93 and .82,
respectively to calculate their reliability coefficient. The results show that there are
statistical differences between the two tests: the recognition test and the production
test show that the testees have achieved better performance in the recognition
test(75%)than in the production test (25%) .