Investigating the Difficulties Facing Sudanese Students in Pronouncing Weak and Strong Syllables Al-Neelain University

Abstract

This research tries to shed the light on the Difficulties that Face Sudanese Students regarding the Pronunciation of Weak and Strong Syllables. The data collection took place at English department, faculty of arts, Al-neelain University. The problem of the research is projected by Sudanese students who are learning English as a foreign language who face difficulties in learning how to pronounce weak and strong syllables and where these syllables occur in English. The research adopted the descriptive method. The study aimed to investigate student’s awareness of English syllables structure. And to identify the problematic areas in learning English syllables by Sudanese students. The research hypothesized that students are not able to identify English syllables structure, students are not able to differentiate between short , long and diphthongs while pronouncing words. And students can not differentiate between strong and weak syllables while speaking English. The main results show that the majority of students have shown poor performance as to the basics of pronouncing functional words (the weak and strong forms). The main recommendations are that teachers of English language at the universities should raise students’ awareness about the use of strong and weak forms, also they should devote more of their time for training students in producing strong and weak syllables by giving them exercises on pronunciation practice.