Phonetics is a branch of linguistics studying the speech of sounds and sound structure of language (syllables, sound combinations, patterns of speech sounds in connection string). Organs of speech are arranged among all nations equally, but each language has its own peculiarities in the structure of sound, its methods of pronunciation of sounds and phrases (1).
The first thing that anyone comes across when starting to learn a foreign language is reading and pronouncing of the sounds and words. However, many Russians, who begin to learn the English language, face such a problem as a complex sound composition and the sounds that do not exist in the Russian phonetic and articulation systems. Mispronunciation can lead to confusion and, in some cases, to conflicts with a native speaker.
In the short frames of our research we interviewed 25 bachelor linguist students of the Humanitarium Phaculty of Komsomolsk-on-Amur State Technical University. The aim of our interview was to find out the most difficult sounds in the process of learning of the English pronounciation and the ways of eliminating these difficulties. Having conducted this experiment we received the following results.
According to the results of the interview the most difficult sounds in pronounciation are:
1) [ð - θ] - in case of replacement of the sounds into [z] or [s] the words change their meanings that leads to misunderstanding – bathe – base; think – sink – 57 %.
2) [r] - r in case of replacement of the English sound [r] into the Russian [р] smooth pronunciation of the word ‘rabbit’ [ ræbit] is lost, resulting in communication complexity – 14%.
3) [w] - w in case of replacement of the sound into the sound [v] the word ‘wine’ [ wine] turns out into ‘vine’ [vine] – 9%.
The remaining 20% of the respondents stated they have no sound difficulties in pronunciation. Similarly, to eliminate these problems 80% of the students practice a lot, and 20% of them use audio and video to solve the difficulties they have in the process of learning.