Challenges in Teaching English Pronunciation in Indian Classrooms: Between Sounds and Silence

Abstract

English pronunciation continues to pose challenges in Indian classrooms, creating a gap between communicative intent and intelligibility. This study examines these challenges through the lens of “sounds” (segmental features such as vowel length and consonant contrasts) and “silence” (suprasegmental features such as stress and intonation). Focusing on undergraduate learners in an urban aided college with intermediate proficiency but little sound awareness, the research draws on classroom recordings, reading tasks, and teaching observations, supported by existing literature. Findings reveal errors shaped by mother tongue influence and limited phonetic training, including vowel length confusion, consonant substitutions, syllable-timed rhythm, and flat intonation. The paper also reflects on teachers’ difficulties in integrating pronunciation into instruction in resource-limited contexts. It concludes that targeted, context-sensitive strategies can bridge the gap between accurate articulation and expressive prosody, thereby improving oral proficiency in multilingual environments.