Phonetic and Phonological Problems Encountered by the Bengali Speaking Efl Learner: How Can They be Overcome?

Introduction

To verify bidding of a second/foreign language, the individualist formally learns mainly the base skills of the candid module ? listening, speaking, datum and writing. And representation and speaking, a acceptant and a arable power respectively, unavoidably depend on module to a material extent. Tench (1981: 1) justifiedly maintains -

Pronunciation is not an nonmandatory player for the module learner, whatever more than grammar, noesis or whatever added characteristic of module is. If a learner’s generalized intend is to call understandably to others in added language, a commonsensible module is important.

However, patch acquisition the module of an L2, the individualist ofttimes confronts assorted phonetic and phonological problems that apparently disadvantage his/her acquisition and finally preclude him/her from feat cod generalized skillfulness in the effort and modality skills of the candid language. This phenomenon is also plain in the acquisition of module of arts as a external module (EFL) by the Asiatic call learner.

Both as a individualist and a teacher-researcher of EFL, I hit had applicatory undergo of and the possibleness to notice the difficulties that the Asiatic call individualist commonly faces in acquisition arts pronunciation. arts is a non-phonetic module since there exists no one-to-one proportionality between the graphemes (the letters of the alphabet) and the sounds actually perceptible and perceived. But the Asiatic call EFL learner, especially the easy digit mostly endeavours to see pronunciations of text by hunting at their spellings, and consequently learns mispronunciations of whatever of them, for example, adjective, adjustment, future, knee, knowledge, lamb, comb, lieutenant, calm, palm, pneumonia, psychology, Wednesday, and so on. This mainly happens cod to the ingest of nonfunctional bilingual dictionaries display whatever criminal pronunciations in the learner’s care tongue, faults in teaching, passivity of the pedagogue to how the individualist learns pronunciations of newborn and arduous text and the teacher’s demand of training. From the phonetic and phonological standpoint, the Asiatic call EFL individualist commonly faces difficulties in, firstly, ‘speech production’ close which articulator(s) to ingest how to enunciate which call good and how to ornament call sounds to intercommunicate message and, secondly, in ‘speech perception’ including how to obtain which call sound(s) to comprehend meaning. The difficulties sure hit earnestly perverse gist on his/her feat the call and representation skills of EFL.

The inform essay thence purports to be an seek to become the mass pivotal issues -

a. identification of the field phonetic and phonological problems confronted by the Asiatic call EFL learner,

b. detection of the causes of the problems, and

c. suggestions for activity the problems as substantially as ensuring the uncreased and highest acquisition of EFL pronunciation.

Problems attendant to monophthongs

The arts module has dozen monophthongs or clean vowels ? fivesome daylong /¡: a: ?: ? u:/ and heptad brief /I e æ ? ? ? U/. The Asiatic call EFL individualist mostly finds the daylong monophthongs of the arts language, for example, in the text ? sheep, part, bird, short, cool, and the like, earnestly questionable since his/her care ness does not hit them and he/she is not course habitual to differentiating between brief and daylong monophthongs. To accent an supply or impart assorted attitudes and emotive effects, Asiatic vowels are sometimes lengthened to whatever degree. Nonetheless, good size in the Asiatic module is a phonetic aspect, not a phonological digit as in the arts language.

The antonymous monophthongs, much as /I/ in ‘ship’ versus /¡:/ in ‘sheep’, /e/ in ‘men’ versus /æ/ in ‘man’, /?/ in ‘cut’ versus /a:/ in ‘cart’, /?/ in ‘pot’ versus /?/ in ‘port’, /U/ in ‘full’ versus /u:/ in ‘fool’ and /a:/ in ‘bard’ versus /?:/ in ‘bird’ also ofttimes drive material problems in the learner’s joint as substantially as representation of utterances because the disagreement between them is not that much exercised in the Asiatic language. Moreover, the Asiatic utterer cannot easily and correct enunciate the mid, bicentric and brief monophthong shwa /?/, as in the prototypal syllables of the text ‘ago’, ‘today’ and ‘perhaps’, since this phoneme is abstracted from his/her prototypal module and receives lacking or no act in teaching.

In addition, the Asiatic call individualist is subconsciously utilised to articulation of vowels without whatever bone harmonised in his/her care tongue, for instance, the prototypal good in the eloquent ‘kada’ /k?nð?/(weeping) or the good in the eloquent ‘chad’ /??nd/ (moon) existence understandably nasalized. Nasalization of vowels in the Asiatic module is a phonological feature as it apparently produces message disagreement and/or differentiates between words. This bourgeois occasionally affects his/her module of arts vowels devoid of nasalization.

Problems attendant to diphthongs

The Asiatic call individualist has difficulties in pronouncing as substantially as perceiving arts diphthongs mainly cod to his/her care ness interference. The arts module has octad diphthongs / I? e? u? eI aI OI au ?u /, apiece of which is a compounding of digit monophthongs digit sailing into the added and course individualist than a clean vowel, whereas the Asiatic module possesses cardinal lawful diphthongs which are characteristically assorted from and shorter than the arts ones. As a consequence, he/she pronounces exclusive the prototypal conception of a diphthong and makes it same to a monophthong. For example, ‘late’/leIt/ is perceptible same ‘let’ /let/. Hasan (2000: 66) justifiedly comments -

They mispronounce most of the arts diphthongs; they change to wage these sounds their cod size as they ofttimes enunciate exclusive the prototypal surroundings of the good and country no obey to the second, thusly the arts diphthongs cease to be sailing sounds in their pronunciation, e.g. for arts /e?/ and /?U/, they mostly ingest the Bangla clean vowels /e/ and /?/ respectively.

This refer of coequal of phonemes in the arts module apparently affects the learner’s modality and incisive noesis and sure results in Brobdingnagian fault and misunderstanding.

Problems attendant to consonants

As the Asiatic call individualist is course habitual to articulating Asiatic consonants which are assorted from arts consonants in whatever respects, he/she finds the pronunciations of a variety of arts consonants arduous in both creation and perception.

The Asiatic module has as whatever as note plosives, whereas the arts module has exclusive sextet /p b t d k g/. The Asiatic call individualist uses both aspirated and unaspirated sounds in his/her care ness as it has removed aspirated and unaspirated phonemes differentiating between words, much as ‘pul’ /pUl/ (bridge) versus ‘phul’ /phUl/ (flower), ‘tok’ /t?k/ (sour) versus ‘thok’ /th?k/ (cheat) and ‘kal’ /k?l/ (tomorrow) versus ‘khal’ /kh?l/ (canal). But the arts module has no same aspirated plosives, and its unarticulate plosives /p t k/are aspirated in the initial duty of the heavy syllable, for example, in ‘pin’ /phIn/, ‘time’ /thaIm/, ‘come’ /kh?m/, etc and unaspirated in added positions, for example, in ‘tip’ /tIp°/, ‘meet’ /m¡:t°/, ‘make’ /me?k°/, etc. Consequently, the Asiatic call individualist cannot just enunciate the aspirated allophones of arts unarticulate plosives /p t k/and faces travail in both conveying and receiving information.

The Asiatic call EFL individualist cannot just eloquent and modify comprehend the arts inter-dental fricatives /?/ and /ð/ as in ‘thing’ and ‘this’ respectively since there are no inter-dental fricatives in the Asiatic language. Rather, he/she uses Asiatic dental stops instead of arts inter-dental fricatives. It is also seen that he/she mostly pronounces Asiatic aspirated bilabial stops /ph/ and /bh/ in locate of arts labio-dental fricatives /f/ and /v/ as in ‘fan’ and ‘van’ respectively because the Asiatic module does not hit whatever labio-dental fricatives. Similarly, he/she mostly uses Asiatic consonant flex stops in locate of arts consonant plosives /t /and /d/as in ‘test’ and ‘dust’ respectively. This happens owing to the epilepsy of consonant plosives same arts /t /and /d/from his/her care tongue.

It is also plain that the Asiatic call individualist is commonly lacking of differentiating between the arts communicatory consonant soft /z/ as in ‘zoo’, communicatory palato-alveolar consonant /d? / as in ‘Jew’ and communicatory palato-alveolar soft /? / as in ‘pleasure’ since these sounds are not acquirable in the Asiatic language. Further, the arts approximants /w/ and /j / as in ‘war’ and ‘year’ respectively are questionable to the Asiatic call EFL learner. He/She cannot aright eloquent them as they are not inform in his/her prototypal language. As a result, on the digit hand, his/her module appears to be non-English and/or unintelligible, and on the other, he/she ofttimes fails to comprehend the sounds produced aright by a autochthonous utterer or somebody else.

That is, the arts consonants which are abstracted from the Asiatic module and obtain depleted act in doctrine and upbringing are arduous to the Asiatic call learner, and thusly hit substantially perverse gist on his/her module as substantially as perception.

Problems attendant to pronounce and intonation

Stress and prosody are digit candid aspects of the module of arts text and utterances since they action phonological functions. Stress effectuation prominence in module ordinarily produced by quaternary factors ? ‘loudness’ of voice, ‘length’ of syllables, ‘pitch’ attendant to the oftenness of ambiance of the communicatory folds as substantially as to low/high talk and ‘quality’ of vowels functional severally or in compounding (Roach 2000). arts text in separation or in adjoining call course obtain pronounce that yet results in prosody carrying aggregation over and above that which is spoken by the text in the utterance. Hence, arts is a stress-timed module possessing a call periodicity in which the heavy syllables hap at coequal intervals of happening (Richards et al. 1985). On the contrary, the Asiatic module is a syllable-timed module having a call periodicity in which every the syllables hap at coequal intervals of time. This disagreement between the digit languages causes avid travail to the Asiatic call individualist of EFL, especially in placing pronounce on the correct syllable and using the pertinent tone, and thusly hampers the coding and coding of information.

The Asiatic call individualist confronts goodish problems in distribution pronounce within arts text because, on the digit hand, arts pronounce positioning varies according to grammatical categories, for example, ‘abstract’, ‘conduct’, ‘contract’, ‘contrast’, ‘import’, ‘incline’, ‘insult’, ‘perfect’, ‘present’, ‘produce’, ‘rebel’, and so forward as verbs receiving pronounce on the ordinal syllables and as nouns on the first, and on the other, he/she is utilised to distribution pronounce nearly invariably on the prototypal syllable of every eloquent in his/her prototypal language. Moreover, the arts words, for instance, ‘introduce’, ‘photographic’, ‘examination’, excavation’, responsibility’, and presently which obtain both candid and alternative pronounce are arduous to the individualist and restrict his/her module as substantially as representation of speech.

Unlike the Asiatic language, the arts module has brawny and anaemic forms, much as articles (a, an the), pronouns (he, she, we, you, him, her, them, us), auxiliaries (do, does, am, is, are, have, has, had, can, shall, will), prepositions (to, of, from, for, at), and conjunctions (and, but), which are commonly short in adjoining speech. For example, ‘the’ /ð¡:/ is perceptible /ð?/ before consonants and /ðI/ before vowels in adjoining call if it is not heavy for whatever limited reasons. As the Asiatic call individualist is not habitual to using much forms in his/her care tongue, he/she sure finds them questionable in both creation and reception.

Finally, intonation, conception of the suprasegmental phonemics of English, is essentially constituted of the ascension talk ? a shitting from a modify movement to a higher one, e.g. ´yes /´jes/ verbalised in a asking behavior ? and the dropping talk ? digit which descends from a higher to a modify pitch, e.g. `yes /`jes/ said in a definite, effort manner, and plays multifarious unavoidable functions in the arts language, much as attitudinal function, i.e. conveying emotions and attitudes, accentual function, i.e. the positioning of the medication syllable indicating the pore of the information, grammatical function, i.e. the unification between the talk organisation and units of grammar, and appendage function, i.e. tending centering and the conception on informal behabiour, which hit lowercase connexion to the Asiatic language. It is country that the Asiatic call individualist of EFL faces travail in mastering arts prosody cod to care ness trouble and lacking training, and his/her call then sounds eery and modify unintelligible.

Conclusions and suggestions

The above analysis, rendering and demo hit understandably revealed that the Asiatic call EFL individualist encounters assorted phonetic and phonological problems resulting from threesome base causes ? (a) the differences between the care ness and the candid language, (b) care ness trouble (MTI) and (c) the imperfect and lacking doctrine of EFL pronunciation. Therefore, we hit to become and turn these causes with a analyse to change the phonetic and phonological difficulties, on the digit hand, and ensuring the uncreased and prizewinning acquisition of EFL module on the other.

The problems caused by the differences between the phonetic and phonological elements of the learner’s care ness and those of the candid language, MTI and/or the imperfect and lacking doctrine of EFL module crapper be low and resolved to a material extent by befittingly treating them in the doctrine gist that candid deals with multifarious act aspects including the phonetic and phonological ones. Hence, the learner’s needs and wants, especially those generated by the differences between his/her prototypal module and the candid module as substantially as MTI hit an essentially candid traffic to syllabus design, pedagogue fittingness and training, materials development, ingest of equipment and the investigating tool. In this regard, Haque and Maniruzzaman (1994: 79) stop -

… the learners’ needs and wants staggeringly curb the full collection of doctrine materials, aids and equipment and the covering of doctrine techniques and strategies, the job of room activities and most importantly, the method of doctrine and the cerebration of the syllabus.

In added words, every the components of the doctrine gist hit to verify statement of the factors that module support the individualist overcome the phonetic and phonological problems and meliorate his/her effort and modality ability.

Firstly, the syllabus should needs include the phonetic and phonological items that the individualist needs to see and/or finds problematic. And they should be unreal in the visit in which he/she module prizewinning see and interiorise them in visit to ingest them accurately and fluently in his/her creation and representation of call in actual chronicle situations. Corder (1973: 296) justifiedly contends -

A ended syllabus is the coverall organisation for the acquisition process. It, too, staleness take what components, or acquisition items, staleness be available, or scholarly by a destined time; what is the most economical ordering in which they are learned; what items crapper be scholarly “simultaneously”; what items are acquirable from stock, i.e. already known; and the full gist is observed by considerations of how daylong it takes to display or see a factor or item. The gist is low incessant investigating by effectuation of hit checks, or tests and examinations.

It is advisable that the syllabus should prototypal take the phonetic and phonological items to foregather the learner’s needs and wants, and then visit them according to their travail take and priorities in communication.

Secondly, the pedagogue has to hit a complete noesis of the phonetic and phonological facets and a solidified bidding of the representation and call skills of the candid module since a pedagogue with a noesis of phonetics is in a meliorate duty to see and set module problems, devise remedies for them, and appendage them in collection than a pedagogue without much noesis (Tench 1981). In addition, he/she should hit competent skillfulness in and undergo of antonymous analysis, needs analysis, syllabus design, materials development, doctrine methods, ingest of equipment and testing. This is because the pedagogue is the correct mortal to supply the individualist with the aptitude of captivating the domain of his/her possess learning.

Thirdly, the materials to be matured to inform the questionable phonetic and phonological elements of the candid module hit to concord with the learner’s needs and interest. That is, they should be germane and useful, and support the individualist to see at assist and amend confidence. They should also attain gist finished article of topics, illustrations and activities, difference of activities and sources, captivating show and captivating content, and thusly hit a perceptible gist on the individualist (Tomlinson 1998). Furthermore, they should visit and assist individualist self-investment, and wage the individualist with opportunities to ingest the arduous phonetic and phonological items to attain anecdotal purposes. And the individualist should be provided with and unclothed to the materials by employing captivating and multipurpose effectuation and equipment, much as well-written books, colourful posters, charts and handouts, audio-visual aids, OHP, transmission projector, and so forth.

Fourthly, the individualist should be helped to prizewinning see what he/she needs to learn. This gives uprise to the meaning of choosing and employing the pertinent doctrine method including germane materials, comely doctrine techniques and engrossing room activities. Having become to the actualisation that apiece individualist has his/her possess style, personality, needs, and so on, it follows that a azygos doctrine method strength not be pertinent and competent for every the learners in the classroom. As a result, the past way has been towards eclecticism, choosing materials, techniques and room activities from assorted sources (Maniruzzaman 1998).

Fifthly, to attain the end, both dominated upbringing and anecdotal upbringing as existence unessential (Maniruzzaman 2004) crapper be utilised in the classroom. To carry dominated upbringing in doctrine the phonetic and phonological elements, much as phonemes, eloquent stress, vocalization stress, and so forth, activities crapper be designed rulewise and implemented in a gist with assorted stages. For example, to inform whatever portion phonemes, prototypal of all, the individualist should be unclothed to a variety of text containing the phonemes. Then the phonemes crapper be exhibited by using a interpret or an OHP. After that, we hit to vindicate how the phonemes are jointed by which call organs. To wage the account up to the learner’s satisfaction, we crapper modify judiciously ingest the learner’s care ness (Maniruzzaman 2003). Afterwards, pertinent and engrossing production (as in Baker 1981) crapper be conducted prototypal severally and then chorally with a analyse to serving the individualist hit decent upbringing and verify quality as substantially as fluency. In this connection, Tench (1981: 108) postulates -

The base strategy is copy of utterances (sentences, phrases, etc), supplemented by upbringing in limited difficulty areas. Such upbringing ? most of it crapper be titled production ? is fundamental, because most module problems refer upbringing the meat of call (and the ears) to do things that they are not utilised to doing.

However, as dominated upbringing having machinelike drills haw sometimes be dull and as this refer of upbringing cannot secure the learner’s anecdotal ability, we should refer the individualist in whatever meaningful, purposeful and anecdotal activities, much as role-play, unify impact and assemble impact to ready the individualist impelled and attain acquisition exciting.

Sixthly, the investigating helper has to be constructed and misused in much a behavior that the individualist module neither retrograde need nor undergo whatever phobia, and the watch module be served well. Before the move of the EFL module doctrine programme, a positioning effort crapper be presented to variety discover and locate the learners into whatever uniform groups, or to locate them at the initiate of the doctrine information most pertinent to their abilities (Hughes 1989). Then action tests crapper be administered to compile grounds during, or at the modify of, the information in visit to watch whether and where advancement has been prefabricated in cost of the goals of acquisition (McNamara 2000). Besides, characteristic tests crapper be utilised during the information in visit to analyse the advancement of learning, efficiency of doctrine and power of the materials and equipment, and thusly to refer their strengths and weaknesses and alter change to them if needed. And a generalized skillfulness effort has to be presented at the modify of the information to ascertain how farther the individualist is healthy to ingest what he/she has scholarly to transmit in his/her actual chronicle situations.

Finally, module doctrine crapper be desegrated as much as doable with the rest of the items constituting module teaching, much as grammar, vocabulary, conversations, style, function, and the like. Nevertheless, module problems should sometimes be taught severally for primary tending and upbringing resulting in quality and fluency.

Acknowledgement

This essay is a revised edition of the article presented at a seminar in the Department of arts at East West University, Dacca on 24 Nov 2005. I am glad to the avid conference for their engrossing questions and shaping observations tributary to the writing of the article. My primary thanks go to Professor Dr. Fakrul Alam chairing the seminar for his consultative comments and big suggestions.

Works Cited

Baker, A. Ship or Sheep?: An Intermediate Pronunciation Course. Cambridge: metropolis University Press, 1981.

Corder, S. P. Introducing Applied Linguistics. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1973.

Haque, S. M. F. and M. Maniruzzaman. “Needs analysis: problems and consideration.” Harvest: Jahangirnagar Studies in Literature, 12 (1994): 79-88.

Hasan, A. D. “Problems of doctrine arts good system.” ELT: Directions and Orientations. Rajshahi University: Department of arts (2000): 63 – 69.

Hughes, A. Testing for Language Teachers. Cambridge: metropolis University Press, 1989.

McNamara, T. Language Testing. Oxford: metropolis University Press, 2000.

Maniruzzaman, M. “The SL/FL room and the individualist learner.” Harvest: Jahangirnagar Studies in Literature, 14 (1998): 87-102.

- – - . “The ingest of the care ness in the EFL classroom: learners’ reaction.” Harvest: Jahangirnagar Studies in Literature, 18 (2003): 43-58.

- – - . ‘Teaching pronounce positioning within the arts word.” Harvest: Jahangirnagar Studies in Literature, 19 (2004): 55-65.

Richards, J., J. Platt and H. Weber. Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics. England: Longman Group Limited, 1985.

Roach, P. arts Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge: metropolis University Press, 2000.

Tench, P. Pronunciation Skills. author and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1981.

Tomlinson, B. Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge: metropolis University Press, 1998.