Turkish EFL pre-service teachers pronunciation problems

Abstract

This classroom research deals with pronunciation problems that Turkish EFL teacher candidates would encounter. The participants were 22 EFL pre-service teachers with B2 level of proficiency in English. The presentations which were carried out by these participants were analyzed both by the participants themselves and the researcher. The results revealed a dominant mispronunciation of the sound schwa /ə/ along with other sounds such as theta /θ/, engma /ŋ/ and /ae/. The absence of the corresponding sounds of /θ/ and /ae/ in Turkish could be deemed the reason for such pronunciation problems, but the case is not that straightforward for schwa /ə/ as in Turkish vowel inventory there seems to be a similar /ɯ/ sound. This situation brought about the question whether there could be different phonemic dynamics for the sounds schwa /ə/ in English and /ɯ/ in Turkish.