Getting Rid of Dialectophobia: A Concern for the Students of Education

Abstract

Interest in learning English is at rise. Students confront a number of barriers in the way to learn English. Acquiring a particular accent/pronunciation of English is one of the issues of non native speakers of English. This paper deals with this issue at length through a qualitative research survey report covering the issue of people‟s and specifically students‟ anxiety of native dialect and accent. Linguists and scholars opine that although for the children under five years of age, it is easy to acquire a native like pronunciation of a foreign language, for adults, it is very difficult. Since in Pakistan the purpose of any foreign language is likely to be able to communicate successfully with the native speakers of that target language or with other people through this language, attention should be to focus on conveying the message correctly not necessarily with any of the native features of the target language.