Investigating English Pronunciation Difficulties among Sudanese English Teaching Staff

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating the difficulty of English pronunciation among Sudanese native speakers of Arabic (SNSA). The study adopted descriptive analytical method in order to elaborate and analyze the causes of the problem via statistical analysis of the gathered data. The samples of the study were teaching staff at some Sudanese universities in Khartoum State, who are teaching English as foreign language (EFL) at tertiary levels. The samples were selected randomly from different universities. To obtain the necessary data for the study, the researcher used only one tool that is a diagnostic test for the teaching staff as the tool of the study. The researchers designed a diagnostic test which consists of 45 phrases / sentences and which is confined to the research hypotheses, to be read aloud by means of audio recording. Data have been collected, analyzed, and discussed in order to answer the research questions and verify the hypotheses. The collected data were computed by means of percentages. The analysis of the collected data reveals that SLs of EFL find difficulties when pronouncing most aspects of English language such as, English assimilation, weak forms, elision, English alveolar sounds /t, d, s, z/ and clusters. Based on these results, the researcher made some recommendations for improving English pronunciation of SNSA and suggested further studies.