Analysing the Difficulties Encountered by Basic Schools in some English Consonant Sounds and Clusters: Teachers’ Perspectives

Abstract

This study aims at analysing the difficulties encountered by Sudanese government schools’ pupils in pronouncing some consonant sounds and clusters. The participants of the study are 20 teachers at Al Izba Basic School for Girls-Al-Amlak-Khartoum North. The study pursues descriptive analytical method. A questionnaire was used as tools to obtain data from teachers. The results show that the majority of Sudanese EFL basic school pupils mispronounce the consonant sounds and clusters which do not exist in Sudanese spoken Arabic. Based on the findings, the study revealed that some factors have negative impact on pronunciation, such as the sound systems differences between English and Arabic, inadequacy training in phonetics and phonology, in addition to irrelevancy of the syllabus to the Sudanese pupils' needs. Accordingly, the study concludes with some recommendations.