PHONETIC, PHONOLOGICAL, AND MORPHOLOGICAL CHALLENGES OF INTERMEDIATE ESL LEARNERS: A CLASSROOM-BASED ANALYSIS

This article analyzes the phonetic, phonological, and morphological difficulties experienced by intermediate-level ESL learners in a classroom context. The study is based on a group of school students aged 12 to 14 studying at Registan Learning Center in Tashkent. The learners come from multilingual backgrounds, mainly Uzbek, Russian, and Azerbaijani, and study English to improve their language proficiency beyond the school curriculum. The article identifies five major linguistic challenges: pronunciation of dental fricatives, differentiation between short and long vowels, stress placement in multisyllabic words, irregular plural noun formation, and incorrect verb tense formation. Each problem is discussed in relation to learners’ first language influence and teaching strategies designed to address these difficulties. The findings demonstrate the importance of targeted phonetic and morphological instruction in helping learners improve pronunciation accuracy and grammatical competence.