Relatore Chiar mo Prof. Graziano Serragiotto Correlatore

2.4. Motivation and Attitude 
Motivation is another essential factor that influences the success in pronunciation learning. 
According to Balboni, it constitutes the energy responsible for the memorisation of new information 
and it is vital for the acquisition of a second language (Balboni, 2012). There is a strong link between 
motivation and attitude. 
ɑs ɜenworthy, claims, “in many studies of attitude and motivation in 
language learning, it has been shown that those learners who show positive feelings towards the 
speakers of the new language tend to develop more accurate, native-
like accents.” (ɜenworthy, 1990: 
8). This happens because learners demonstrate integrative motivation, which means that they are 
“willing to be integrated into the new speech community” and “are genuinely interested both in the 
speakers and in their culture” (ɜenworthy, 1990: 8). 
2.5. The Native Language 
ɑvery and Ehrlich claim: “learners of a language speak the target language in a different way: 
sometimes slightly different and sometimes highly different than the native speakers do, which we 
call foreign accent, the nature of which is determined to a large extend by a learner’s native language” 
(Avery and Ehrlich, 1987: 9). The native language is an important factor that affects the learning of 
pronunciation. The term cross-linguistic transfer 
refers to when “a person who knows two languages 
transfers some aspect from one language to another”, and “what can be transferred depends, among 
other things, on the relationship between the two languages” (Cook, 2008: 76). This phenomenon 
does not concern only individual sounds but also “combinations of sounds and features such as 
rhythm and intonation” (ɜenworthy, 1990: 4). ɑs ɜenworthy claims, “there has been a great deal of 
research in which the sound systems of English and other languages are compared and the problems 
and difficulties of learners predicted” (ɜenworthy, 1990: 4). Concerning individual sounds, Cook 
mentions the work of Fred Eckmann et al., who have identified three possibilities: 
a)
“the first language has neither of the contrasting L2 sounds”, therefore learners have 
to “learn two new phonemes from scratch”; 
b)
“the second language has one of the L2 sounds”, therefore “learners have to learn an 
extra phoneme”; 

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c)
“the second language has both sounds as allophones of the same phoneme”, therefore 
learners “ have to learn that what they take for granted as alternative forms of the same 
phoneme are in fact different phonemes in English
”
(Cook, 2008: 76). 
ɑccording to ɜenworthy, “the more differences there are, the more difficulties the learner will 
have in pronouncing English” (ɜenworthy, 1990: 4). In fact, according to Gimson, “teaching should 
obviously be concentrated on those features of English which are not found i
n the learner’s native 
language
” (Gimson, 1989: 318).