English Pronunciation and Stress Deviations in Tanzania

Abstract

Difficulties in spoken English teaching/learning in Tanzania and the rest of Eastern Africa is one of the most neglected pedagogic areas.  Difficulties in pronunciation, principally involving consonant ad vowel articulation on one hand and stress on the other, are here identified and focused upon.  The principal causes of vowel pronunciation difficulties are:  failure to recognise and produce contrasts critical for making an adequate number of vowel contrasts that would enable learners and speakers to communicate effectively in English (e.g. between the 20 RP vowel phonemes – the implicit pronunciation teaching target model), viz.  (a) distinctions between monophthong and diphthong, (b) tongue part and height contrasts: i) close-mid-open, (ii) front-central-back and (c) long-short contrasts, and (d) presence/absence of lip-rounding.  It is proposed that the target model should be made explicit and that both ELT teacher training and the teaching of spoken English need to be clearly and overly based on it.  The word stress difficulties faced are chiefly caused by: (i) false generalizations, (ii) ‘penultimitis’ and (iii) ignorance:  not knowing that, unlike in Swahili, there is no general rule for word stress in.  However, it appears that all these are ultimately traceable to the teacher, who has in many cases had no formal preparation to teach spoken English.