Pronunciation problems of Turkish students: Suprasegmental features

Language is an important means of communication between people. Although both speaker and listener use the same language, there are sometimes communication breakdowns. In such cases, the language becomes unintelligible especially students who are learning a foreign language have some problems due to pronunciation differences when they talk to a native speaker. When pronunciation lessons are considered, it is thought that the segmental features are problematic for students. However, the main factor affecting intelligibility is the suprasegmental features of pronunciation such as stress, rhythm, and intonation. The study attempted to determine whether the pronunciations of Turkish students are intelligible for native speakers and to take an inventory of the students' pronunciation problems. There were 20 first year students from Anadolu University Education Faculty English Teaching Department participated into this study. While they were speaking spontaneously on some topics, they were recorded. These speech samples were listened by 4 British and 6 American English teachers and by this way a pronunciation problem inventory was prepared. Based on the results of the study, problems of suprasegmental features such as stress rhythm, and intonation are found to be problematic for Turkish students. Among these problems, failure to blend well, to make smooth transitions between words or syllables is rated as problematic by 70.5% of the informants; stress on wrong syllable of words of more than one syllable is rated as problematic by 58% of the informants; unnatural intonation at the end of statements is rated as problematic by 54% of the informants; unnatural intonation in general questions is rated as problematic by 30.5% of the informants; improper division of sentences into thought groups is rated as problematic by 26.6% of the informants; Improper sentence stress is rated as problematic by 25% of the informants; and unnatural intonation in special questions;and unnatural intonation in direct address are rated as problematic by 10% of the informants. Therefore, it is important to teach pronunciation, especially suprasegmentals in schools.