Difficulties encountered by Albanian students while pronouncing English minimal pairs

Abstract

Many foreign language learners encounter difficulties in pronouncing English language sounds, which potentially leads to misunderstanding in oral communication. Sometimes, the Albanian learners find pronunciation quite tricky when learning English language because they have to replicate lots of new strange sounds that are completely unknown to them. The present paper tackles the difficulties of producing English sounds with focus on minimal pairs, which is not an easy task, especially when the learners are not exposed to the native speakers in their environment. This research focuses on pronunciation errors with the minimal pairs committed by students of English language who study at the University of Vlora in Albania. As an experienced teacher of English Language in Albania, I have had the opportunity to observe the difficulties the Albanian speaking learners usually face in learning English pronunciation and what I have concluded is that Minimal pairs bear great benefits in pronunciation teaching and learning. There were 20 students who participated in this research and all of them had been studying English Phonology for a semester at the university. We selected six minimal pairs [i] vs. [i:], [e] vs. [ꬱ], [u] vs. [u:], [ꓥ] vs. [a:], [ͻ] vs. [ͻ:], [w] vs. [v] and prepared a test for the students. The data were collected and the findings revealed the difficulties the students faced these six minimal pairs.