Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
BILKI Z., Senel B., Kaymak G., Akbulut O.
Yükseköğretim Kurumları Destekli Proje, Üniversite Destekli Diğer Projeler, 2019 - 2020
"Despite its great significance in communication, the topics of pronunciation and speaking skills have long been neglected in English education in Turkey, unlike grammar and vocabulary due to a “test-oriented” understanding. Research has shown that individuals who learn and speak English as a foreign language in Turkey have difficulties in pronouncing consonants and diphthongs nonexistent in Turkish such as the notorious “th” sound (e.g. think, that). Research has also shown that Turkish English learners equate success in language learning with speaking abilities rather than grammar or vocabulary, which means problems in pronunciation affects Turkish students’ linguistic confidence in a negative way. In addition, Turkish English learners, who have problematic pronunciation, get discouraged using and learning English due to intelligibility, comprehensibility, and fluency issues, mainly resulting from the person being spoken to not understanding the speaker. “Intelligibility refers to the extent to which listeners can correctly identify the words they hear, often as measured by correct transcription. Comprehensibility, on the other hand, refers to the listeners' perception of the ease or difficulty with which they can make out a speaker's meaning, often measured by a rating on a 9-point Likert scale” (Sheppard, Elliott & Baese-Berk, 2017). In this experimental study, we aim to provide explicit pronunciation instruction (teaching of English pronunciation in a direct and open way) in order to see if filling this instructional pronunciation gap in Turkish education system and teaching pronunciation to Turkish learners will improve their ability to communicate more effectively, and whether it will affect their overall perception of English. We hypothesize that (1) the experiment group, who are to be given explicit pronunciation instruction will see improvements in their pronunciation while the control group will not, and that (2) the experiment group’s perception of their pronunciation skills will change positively."