Title: Difficulties faced by Pakistani students in pouncing English words, their factors and solutions

Class: MA English (Previous) (Morning)Semester: FirstPrepared By: Syed Arif AliSubmitted To: Ms Shama ZamanDated: 1st October, 2009

Abstract

Communication is an essential need of in daily life and pronunciation makes it better and

pleasing for the listener. Every language has different sounds and people have a strong

impact of the speech-sounds in pronunciation of words. People face troubles when they

try to speak other languages. In the same way, Pakistani English speakers have certain

difficulties such as recognition of English sounds, connecting the sounds with each other,

difference between spelling and sounds, multiple sounds of the same letters, and

understanding of intonation and stress. There are a lot factors which cause these

problems. They include bad schooling system, unskilled teachers, transliteration, impact

of regional language, role of electronic media and unmotivated behaviour to learn and

rectify. There are certain solutions to these problems like training the teachers, learning

the standard phonetics, and its consistent practice.

Introduction

It is indispensable in our daily life to live without communication. People need to talk to

each other to convey their thoughts and to execute the daily life works. We can say that

we need communication to move further in our life. It is clearly observed that even the

people who are not bestowed with the ability to speak, they need communication, and

they have their own ways to express their thoughts. In short, the significance of

communication can not be ignored at all.

In case of people who have been gifted with the ability to talk, communication is much

easier. But here the question rises that it is really about only communication. If so, then

what is the significance of verbal communication when the deaf and dumb people can do

it as well. Here it is important to understand the role of pronunciation in communication

which makes the difference.

Pronunciation is an aspect of verbal communication which makes it more effective and

attractive. Therefore, the significance of pronunciation becomes highly considerable in

the process of verbal communication. Speakers of a particular language have a very deep

and strong impact of the sounds of the alphabet on their pronunciation. There are certain

sounds which every language possesses. Most of the sounds which a language has seem

to be similar, but they are not pronounced in the exact manner. There are certain

differences in pronunciation. Therefore, when a person speaks any non-native language,

he has to face certain sound difficulties. For example, the Japanese do not have the sound

of ‘r’ in their language. Therefore they have to use an alternative sound available in their

language according to their convenience. While pronouncing the sound ‘r’, they

pronounce ‘l’ sound. Similarly, the Arabic language does not have ‘p’ sound and they

replace it with ‘b’ sound. But there are many other factors present which affect the

mispronunciation of sounds.

In case of Urdu language, there is no lack of any sound, and the speakers of Urdu have

the ability to pronounce almost every sound present in other languages. It is observed that

the Pakistani students are very good speakers of English language and can pronounce all

the sounds of it. However, a lot of Pakistani English speakers are observed

mispronouncing the certain sounds and even the particular words of English language.

Therefore it is necessary to understand the definition of good pronunciation.

What is Good Pronunciation?

Since there are many languages and every language has its own particular feature of

pronunciation, there are no exact parameters to check its validity, and the same applies

for English. However, people agree on some general points to clarify the definition of

good pronunciation. If the pronunciation of the speaker is understandable and falls under

the rules of Standard English in terms of proper phonetic rules, it is considered as good

pronunciation. But it should not be confused with the intention of just conveying the

message to others whatsoever it takes. On the other hand, if the pronunciation of the

speaker is not understandable and hinders the meaning, then it is considered as bad

pronunciation.

It is important to clarify the meaning since there are many words which have too similar

sounds that it becomes difficult to differentiate between them when someone utters these

words because of unclear pronunciation. For example, one may listen to ‘be’ as ‘we’

because of pronunciation of ‘w’ as ‘v’.

Problems Faced by Pakistani English Speakers

It is not difficult at all to find people with mispronunciation of English words in Pakistan.

They really go through tough time when it comes to good and proper pronunciation of

English. Some of the major difficulties of pronunciation are listed below:

Recognition of English Sounds

Unluckily, Pakistani students do not get enough chance to go through proper study of

English speech-sounds. Therefore they do not recognise them properly. Instead they try

to match them with speech-sounds of Urdu which ultimately corrupt their pronunciation.

Speech Organs

The sounds of English and Urdu are certainly different from each other. The Pakistani

students mix them up and try to shape their speech organs according to sounds of Urdu

while pronouncing English sounds which distorts it.

Connected Speech

It is a craze to speak fluently among Pakistani students. While attempting fluency is

speaking skill, they become unconscious of the rules of connected speech and make

mistakes in pronunciation unwittingly.

Connecting The Sounds

It is evident that a word has many sounds in it and it is completed by joining the sounds

properly. Therefore it is necessary for the students to know how to join them together by

clearly understanding how and where to join the sound to the next sound.

Difference between Spelling and Sounds

There are plenty of words in English language which have silent letters. So the Pakistani

students unknowingly pronounce these silent letters which obviously make them

mispronounce the words.

For example:

Knife, knowledge, knave, kneel have ‘k’ silent which should not be pronounced at all.

Multiple Sounds of the Same Letters

It is also a noticeable difficulty in pronunciation that there are many letters and

combinations of letters which produce numerous sounds at different places.

For example:

‘ch’ produces three sounds as ‘ch’, ‘k’, ‘sh’.

Similarly, ‘c’ produces two sounds as ‘s’, ‘k’.

Rhythm of Speech

Spoken language has a particular rhythm which includes stress and intonation. Stress is

the emphasis placed on a sound or syllable by pronouncing it more loudly or forcefully

than those surrounding it in the same word or phrase.

Intonation is the rising or falling pitch of the voice while pronouncing a word or syllable,

or the pattern of speech.

Factors of Mispronunciation Amon Pakistani

Students

Where there is a problem, there is a factor of it as well. Just like the problems, there are

many factors of mispronunciation too. Most of the factors are based on misconception

and unawareness pertaining to English language. Some of the major factors are listed

below:

Education System

The education system of Pakistan is the basic factor of mispronunciation among Pakistani

students and sub-standard schooling and many other problems existing in society. Well,

there are schools which educate their students very properly, but they a few in number.

On the other hand, there are many academic institutions which provide sub-standard

education. Therefore the basic problem is the dual education system which privileges

some students and others remain empty-handed.

Untrained and Unqualified Teachers

As it is an open secret that there is corruption in education system, they recruit the

teachers who are not qualified enough to teach. Now there is no chance for the students to

learn correctly or rather learn at all. When the teachers themselves would not be aware of

the correct phonetics, how could they teach their students? Now it is obvious that they are

going to transfer poor and wrong information to the students.

Transliteration

Since Urdu is the mother-tongue, they are in the habit of using Urdu sounds. This

repetition of pronouncing English sounds in Urdu style consolidates the

mispronunciation.

Impact of Regional Language

Students belonging to different provinces have the strong impact of their regional

language as Urdu speakers have.

‘Got the meaning?’ Group

‘Got the meaning?’ group is consisted of the people who have no serious intention and

motivation to learn and more importantly rectify themselves. They only focus to convey

the meaning to the listener. They also consider learning proper English a waste of time

saying that what they have learnt is enough for them to communicate. They do not pay

attention to articulation, but communication.

Influence of Electronic Media

According to the social learning theory, a person learns from its surrounding. What he

watches and observes, he imitates it. The same situation applies in case of learning

pronunciation. Media is undoubtedly a great source of learning. Watching movies,

playing games and listening to songs is a common hobby of students, and many students

especially watch movies and listen to songs to improve their English. Here the role of

media becomes negative in their way to learning correct pronunciations. Hollywood has a

huge host of performers who belong to many other non-English countries. Students are

unaware of the real nationality of the very actor and start imitating them. If the actor uses

wrong pronunciation such as Jackie Chan, Salma Hyke, who come from non-English

courtiers, they imprint on the minds of the students and they fall victim of

mispronunciation. Besides this, the black Americans are notorious for using very bad

language; students also imitate their accent which utterly brings distortion.

Solutions to Surmount the Difficulties of

Mispronunciation among Pakistani Students

1. When it is not that the pole is crooked at the bottom, one would not try to

straighten it from the top. Therefore, when it is a known fact that there loopholes

in the education system, it is advisable to first identify and then remove the

problems. The first step which must be taken now is to recruit the qualified

teachers and further provide them training sessions to enhance their English

pronunciation skill.

2. Now it is the duty of students to seek good teachers and guides that can help them

to learn phonetic symbols with proper sound practice and recognition.

3. Media does play a vital role in learning. Students should take advantage of it

positively. In order to learn, they are supposed to watch Standard English news

channels like BBC and CNN and talk shows which have informative subjects and

educated guests. To watch movies, they should consult with people who have

knowledge of English movies which have good English such as ‘My Fair Lady’.

This movie presents a parallel picture of standard and poor English.

4. The golden rule to learn anything is practice, as it is a famous saying that practice

makes man perfect. The more you practice, the better it is. But students must

make it a daily routine to practice the pronunciation, not a weekly since it will

bear no fruit. Side by side students should maintain a proper record of practice so

that they can find whether they are improving or not.

5. It would be very fruitful for you if you can find English native pretenders to

practice wit. It is now quite easy to find native English speakers on the internet.

Beside there are many websites also working which provide pronunciation

practice tests, exploit them too.