Problems Bangladeshi learners face in pronouncing certain English phonemes

Abstract

Bangladeshi EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners, very naturally, are expected to face problems in pronouncing certain phonemes of English since English is a stress-timed language as opposed to Bangla which is a syllable-timed language. Besides these, there are plenty of factors that are responsible for causing difficulties for Bangladeshi EFL learners in pronouncing specific phonemes of English like fricatives, affricates, diphthongs etc. The objective of this paper is to find out Bangladeshi EFL learners‘ pronunciation difficulties so that we can devise some strategies to teach them the correct pronunciations. The characteristic differences between the sound patterns of Bangla and English language cause further difficulties for Bangladeshi EFL learners. Some hypotheses are formulated stating the difficulties that Bangladeshi EFL learners might face in pronouncing complex phonemes of English. This study is divided into two parts: segmental elements and supra segmental features. Bangladeshi learners have most problems in pronouncing the fricatives, affricates, diphthongs and vowels. They cannot speak English with proper accent and many aspects of connected speech are also absent in their speech. To reduce these problems, some solutions are suggested here: teachers can devise some tongue twisters, mnemonics, minimal pairs, rhymes to minimize the pronunciation difficulties faced by Bangladeshi EFL learners.