TEFL Nehe

Learning a new language is always a challenge in many ways, and students face difficulties regarding speaking, writing, understanding, grammar and pronunciation. Most students find the latter the most difficult while studying english. Speakers of different natonalities usually make specific pronunciation errors – in this article, I chose to focus on the pronunciation problems of Hungarian speakers. Hungarian language belongs to the finno-ugric language group. Since it is a non-Indo-European language, it is quite different from all the other languages spoken in Europe. Therefore it is often hard for Hungarians to learn foreign languages (such as hungarian is a very difficult language to learn for foreigners) english, which is probably the most frequently tought foreign language in Hungary, is no exeption. Most Hungarians agree that english is not an easy language to learn, and almost every student has difficulties with the pronunciation - especially because Hungarian, unlike english, is a phonetic language. There are several sounds in the english language that do not exist in Hungarian, and because of this they are often pronunced the wrong way. A common problem is the pronunciation of the dental fricatives /?/ and /ð/ ( just like in the words «thick», «the» or «clothe») which are often replaced by /s/, /d/ and /z/ (sounding like «sick», «de» or «close») A tipical error is the pronunciation of /w/ and /v/. Many Hungarians substitute these two since their native language lacks the phoneme /w/. Sometimes even hypercorrection occures, when speakers substitute /w/ for /v/ in instances where the latter is actually correct. The pronunciation of the sound /?:/ can also be a problem for Hungarian speakers, and it can be replaced by /??/ (eg. bought can sound more like boat). Often /i:/ is pronounced instead of /? /, just like beat instead of bit. The sound /æ/ does not exist in Hungarian either, and some speakers find it hard to pronunce it the right way. Sometimes the sounds /?k/ and /?/ are substituted at the end of words and also silent letters such as /r/ and /h/ are often prononced. A bigger problem is, in my opinion, intonation and stress. In the Hungarian language, primary stress is always on the first syllable of the words, wich, as we know, is very different from english practice. Many Hungarians, while speaking english, just keep on with the same accentuation as they would speak their mother tounge. The same applies to pitch and the melody of the language. Hungarian uses a flat tone without a lot of variance in the stress and pitch of words, and producing of fall-rise and fall patterns is not an easy task for Hungarians. Probably the main reason for struggling so much with pronunciation is the lack of exposure to the english language. All tv programs and moovies are dubbed into Hungarian, and most of the people never meet any native english speakers. In fact, many students hear english for the first time at school, where the teaching practice is not always very effective. Unfortunately, many english teachers do not include enough pronounciation work into their lessons, as this aspect of language teaching is probably the most neglected one (as it is in many other countries). Lessons are often teacher centered and the students do not have enough possiblity to use the language and speak, which in many cases leads to a lack of confidence. In my opinion, extending the practice of efl teaching at schools could be a solution to this problem, and of course, a lot depends on the individual student – anything can be accomplished with persistence and practice. Sources: Hungarian language, Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_language Non-native pronunciations of english, Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-native_pronunciations_of_english#Hungarian Nádasdy, Ádám: Background to english pronunciation. Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest (2006) Slavic and Eastern European Accents in english http://www.pronunciationlondon.co.uk/slavicaccents.html Ted Power: english Language Learning and Teaching Hungarian language backgrounds http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/l1hungarian.html