 The most common problems students in Italy face when learning English. According to the F English Proficiency Index, in the year 2017 Italy ranked last, among European countries, in English proficiency skills. Being an Italian myself and having studied foreign languages up to my master's degree, I have progressively grown aware of the main factors which cause Italy to perform so poorly. Other than grammatical gaps, which are not to be analyzed in this context, I have noticed how the extremely limited exposition to spoken words can affect not only the student's ability to understand and follow conversations or arguments, but even the possibility for them to be understood when trying to speak. Lack of proper inflection and correct pronunciation During my university years, I have been working and studying in close contact with Italian people whose English proficiency was high, or, at least, higher than average. Despite a correct grammatical and syntactic development of the sentences, most of these people lacked two elements which, in my opinion, are essential, a proper inflection and a correct pronunciation of several phonemes. Whereas inflection is something that usually comes naturally after a regular exposure to the language, a correct pronunciation of the phonemes should be properly practiced through drilling exercises. Many English classes in Italian schools lack this approach. Grammatical correctness is often considered more important than everything else. I would therefore like to analyze the most frequent pronunciation problems foreigners might face in my country of Italy when talking to someone in English. Rolling slash r slash Let us start with a more stereotypical observations. First of all, the slash r slash issue. In Italian, the slash r slash is rolled. Not as strongly as in other languages, such as Finnish, but it is. Although I believe that it is more difficult to reproduce a rolled slash r slash for someone who naturally uses a smooth one, reproducing the smooth British or American slash r slash can be tricky for many Italians. Adding vowels or additional consonants. Second, the tendency to add a vowel, very often in E, at the end of the word, for example glass becomes glass. This is most likely due to the fact that, in Italian, every single word ends with a vowel, only loan words and accent with a consonant. Additionally, especially in Northern Italy, there is a tendency to prolong the sound of the last vowel. Therefore, it is easy to understand that, to an Italian ear, a word ending with a consonant can sound incomplete or unnatural. In Southern Italy, on the other hand, people tend to double consonant when it is not required, for example bugia becomes bugia. This phenomenon affects English words pronunciation as well, for example management becomes managament. As you can see from this last example, the addition of letters unavoidably causes, more often than not, a shift in the stress of the word, making the pronunciation doubly wrong. Problems with the diphthong th The diphthong th is also complicated for Italians to emulate and this is because such a sound does not exist in their native language. The most national way for Italians to aviate this issue is by simplifying slash th slash into a dental sound, that is, slash d slash or slash t slash. The slash h slash issue is also very interesting, in my opinion. Despite the fact that slash h slash is a letter in the Italian alphabet, we need to bear in mind that it is literally called the mute consonant. As a matter of fact, slash h slash rarely represents the first letter of a word and, when it does, it is not pronounced. For example, if we take the two Italian words ha and a, that is, the verb has and the preposition to, respectively, we can see that they are pronounced in the very same way, slash a slash. This is why most Italians find it unnational to pronounce slash h slash, for example his and his are often pronounced the same way. Difficulties with irregular spelling patterns in the English written language We also need to highlight that Italian is a phonetically written language, meaning that you write the words exactly the way you hear them. English is totally opposite, in that sense. Many Italians tend to pronounce every single letter, when reading a text. Therefore, for example, island will not be read slash sound slash, but, most likely, slash island slash or, in the worst case, slash island slash. This example takes us to another very common pronunciation error, the letter i pronounced as slash slash instead of slash a slash, following the Italian pronunciation of the letter i. The same concept applies to the w and the word right, you will typically hear a slash v slash instead of a slash w slash, which totally works in a German context, though. More reasons for the struggles of Italian English learners To conclude, I would like to express my opinion concerning pronunciation problems in Italy. I believe that the lack of training of listening and, above all, speaking skills is largely due to the old school lesson planning method, which is extremely popular in most Italian public schools. A negative feature of this method is that the speaking time of the teacher considerably exceeds that of the students. While I had to draw a rough cast of the situation, I would say that the teacher's speaking time accounts for 95% of the lesson, while only 5% involves the students. Oftentimes only the most confident students participate actively and shire and less confident students are left behind. As a consequence, students do not get the opportunity to practice, make mistakes and be corrected and, at the same time, they become even more scared of speaking a foreign language in front of a group of people, especially if they are native English speakers or foreigners. I also believe that Italians do not pay too much attention to these pronunciation problems because they tend to speak English only when required and, above all, among themselves. Obviously, pronunciation problems do not create many hurdles when you are talking to someone who is native in your very same language. Are you ready to teach English abroad? Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us tollfree at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.