An Analysis of the pronunciation problems of Turkish learners of English

Abstract

ABSTRACT Title : An analysis of the pronunciation problems of Turkish learners of English Author : Tarkan Kaçmaz Thesis Chairperson : Dr. Linda Laube, Bilkent University, MA TEFL Program Thesis Committee Members: Ms. Patricia J. Brenner, Dr Ruth Ann Yontz, Bilkent University, MA TEFL Program This study attempted to arrive at an analysis of the pronunciation problems of advanced Turkish learners of English. In this study, the researcher employed Prator & Robinett's (1972) Accent Inventory as diagnos tic text in order to elicit the participants` pronunciation. Participants in the study were randomly selected from among the second-year students at the English department of Dokuz Eylul University, Buca Faculty of Education in Izmir. The researcher recorded the participants' voices as they read aloud the Accent Inventory and listened to the recordings several times in order to detect problems in the pronunciation of English phonemes. The research er calculated the number and percentage of the participants who failed to pronounce a particular phoneme and how they dealt with the problem. The results of the research have shown that Turkish speakers of English do have certain problems in pronouncing certain English phonemes where there are differences between the Turkish and English sound systems. Participants faced problems mainly in producing the English phonemes in the following five cases. (1) When an English phoneme was in free distribution whereas the Turkish counterpart was not. (2) When an English phoneme was non-existent in Turkish. (3) When the place and manner of articulation of a phoneme differed in the two languages. (4) When the allophones of a phoneme were non-existent in Turkish. (5) When the Turkish phonotactic rules contradicted the English phonotactic rules. When the participants were faced with one of the above mentioned cases, they adopted certain strategies in order to deal with the problem. Participants' strategies included the following:(1) Substitute a similar sounding Turkish phoneme for the English phoneme ; (2) Delete an English phoneme that they had difficulty in pronouncing; (3) Add a Turkish phoneme before, after or in-between the English phoneme ( s ). It can be concluded from this research that Turkish speakers of English have certain difficulty with some English phonemes and that teachers of English to speakers of Turkish should allocate more time and effort to improve pronunciation in the problematic phonemes detected in this research and before continued mispronunciation leads to fossilization.