The supposed sociolinguistic register of the Slovenian language to be used in the classroom by teachers is the literarily standard language. Pupils learn about the register by design and through the teacher's example. This includes mastering the rules of orthoepically and their application. Correct literary pronunciation is important in several spoken situations, including reading which will be the focus of our research. A common orthoepic error made by students, teachers, pupils, and even schooled speakers is the mispronunciation of the prepositional phoneme [in/at] as a labio-dental phoneme.
In the theoretical part, we will further define the literary genre of the Slovenian language, orthoepically, and the phoneme /v/. We will also present some theoretical basics of reading and reading fluency.
In the empirical part, we will present a study we conducted among 4th-grade pupils of a Slovenian primary school and students of classroom teaching at the Faculty of Education in Ljubljana. In the first stage of the study, we analyzed how well pupils read the proposition [in/at]. Then, for one month, we carried out exercises with pupils from the experimental group to improve reading fluency and encourage correct pronunciation of the proposition [in/at]. After the exercises, we carried out another test and compared the pupils' results from the experimental and control groups. In the second stage of the study, carried out among primary education students, the participants were first asked to read aloud a text, record themselves, and send us their recordings. Afterward, they completed a short questionnaire about their knowledge of orthographic theory and their attitudes towards the correct pronunciation of the [in/at] pronunciation.
The results of the student survey showed that few Year 4 students pronounce the preposition v correctly. Following regular practice by the experimental group, the accuracy of the v reading improved significantly compared to the control group. The students also improved their reading fluency performance. In the study, we also found that students found it easier to follow the rule that the proposition [in/at] should not be pronounced labio-dentally but more difficult to follow the rule that the proposition [in/at] should also be connected to the following word. Students with better-developed reading fluency had much less difficulty with this compared to students with poorer reading fluency.
The results of the survey conducted among primary education students showed that the students are familiar with the correct pronunciation of [in/at], can choose the correct phonetic spelling, and identify labio-dental mispronunciation correctly. The analysis of the reading recordings showed that despite the students' theoretical knowledge, improper labio-dental pronunciation is still present in their reading. We could not prove a correlation between the correct reading of the [in/at] proposition and a better knowledge of orthographic theory, based on the average scores in Slovenian Language 1 and Slovenian Language 2 classes. However, we have confirmed that there is a statistically significant relationship between the number of mispronounced [in/at]'s and the year of primary education study. Most students answered that they try to read the [in/at] preposition correctly and that they do not notice the error in other speakers. Even fewer are bothered by it. All of them consider it important that as future teachers they try to avoid this error. Not everyone expects correct pronunciation from their students.
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