ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION ERRORS AMONG SLOVAK LEARNERS

In the pedagogy of contemporary foreign languages it is important to keep in mind the fact that learners study foreign languages to use them in their lives. They may plan to live abroad where without the native language it would be difficult to live or they prepare for a future career where another language would be useful. Therefore the goal of the teaching process is for learners to achieve intelligibility and efficiency. To accomplish such goals students need to achieve the level of L2 proficiency in grammar as well as vocabulary, part of which is having accurate pronunciation; therefore teaching pronunciation is undeniably important. The teacher's responsibility lies in making the lessons interesting and appealing while explaining facts in context so that they relate to real life. Proper pronunciation as apart of language study gives students "communicative efficiency" (Harmer 1991, p. 21). The main aim of this article is to focus on the English pronunciation errors of Slovak learners. A group of learners have been observed and several valuable findings gathered. Based on the results, pronunciation errors were grouped into several classes on the basis of their origin. The research also pointed out several factors of which teachers should be aware when teaching English pronunciation.