SETTING PRONUNCIATION PRIORITIES FOR UZBEK-SPEAKING LEARNERS OF ENGLISH: A LINGUA FRANCA CORE PERSPECTIVE

Pronunciation teaching in Uzbek universities often aims at a full native-speaker model and spends equal time on every sound, including features that rarely cause misunderstanding. Research on English as an international language points to a different goal: being understood by international listeners. Jenkins’s Lingua Franca Core identifies the features that matter most for mutual understanding, while research by Munro and Derwing separates accent from intelligibility and comprehensibility. This article compares the sound systems of Uzbek and English, identifies the main pronunciation difficulties of Uzbek-speaking learners, and classifies them into core features that threaten intelligibility and non-core features that mainly affect accent. Core priorities include consonant clusters, the contrast between long and short vowels, aspiration of initial voiceless plosives, and nuclear stress; non-core features include the dental fricatives and vowel reduction in weak forms. The article ends with a priority list and classroom procedures for pronunciation and integrated skills courses.