Teaching and Learning Phonetics Obstacles in EFL Classrooms

Abstract

This study aims at finding out the main obstacles lecturers face in teaching pronunciation. It also sheds light on the stumbling blocks in pronunciation faced by EFL freshmen students at the departments of English and Translation, faculty of Arts and Letters, Cihan University-Erbil. The students at both departments study Phonetics at first stage over two semesters, so they have encountered different problems. Besides, this study tries to shed light on the main reasons lead to. The instruments used to accomplish this study are mainly two; observation and examining students on the transcription of monosyllabic and multisyllabic words. The freshmen are examined verbally and non-verbally on the consonants, short and long vowels, diphthongs, and triphthongs. Their answers have been analyzed following Sbss. The outcomes of this study reveal that some sounds are difficult to be taught due to their absence in the native language and the difficulty to deliver them to students. Moreover, it figures out which sounds are difficult for students to learn. In addition, this study also tends to pinpoint the reasons behind mispronunciation.  The causes include mother tongue interference, demotivation, decontextualization, less trained lecturers, and others.