A Contrastive Analysis between Bangla and English Phonology: Some Pedagogical Recommendations

This study is a contrastive analysis between the phonological patterns of standard colloquial Bangla(an Indo-European language widely used in Bangladesh and the eastern part of India) and British English at both segmental and supra-segmental levels. This study will contrast Bangla phonological system with the English one and will attempt to point out possible difficulties that native Bangali learners might face in learning English as an L2 because according to the contrastive analysis hypothesis, structural features of the target language that are similar to those of the native language will be easy to learn while those that are different will be difficult. This study will use the perceptual assimilation model to delineate how different phonemecontrasts in English might be perceptually assimilated to Bangla phonemic contrasts by a native Bangali learner. There are distinct points of differences between Bangla and English phonological systems: differences in the vowel and consonant phonemes, syllable structures, and stress patterns. The perceptual assimilation model would be used to categorize relative difficulty levels that a Bangali EFL/ESL learner might face in perceiving and pronouncing different English phonemes depending on how those contrasts with different Bangla phonemes. Such a contrastive analysis might help pedagogical practitioners in Bangladesh to point out the aspects to be emphasized while teaching English pronunciation. In this regard, the study will propose some pedagogical approaches that teachers can use to help native Bangali learners acquire those aspects of English pronunciation that are more problematic for them. iafor The International Academic Forum www.iafor.org