Hizmet öncesi İngilizce öğretmenlerinin sorunlu sesleri

Today, pronunciation is one of the least researched areas in teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. The studies in the literature usually focus on the errors of learners and aim to make a generalisation about the sound problems of the learners in differing contexts and L1 backgrounds. Studies also reveal that some of the learner errors are caused by the input they receive at their learning environment. Departing from the belief that the primary input in an EFL classroom is the teacher, this thesis aims to analyse the sound problems of senior pre-service English language teachers. The study was carried out in 3 universities in Turkey within the bounds of accessibility. A total of 66 pre-service English language teachers were randomly selected. "Please Call Stella" accent elicitation text was adapted to delineate the sound problems related to segmental features of the language. The compact text including almost all the sounds of English within 69 words and two extra sentences tailored for missing sounds were read by each participant and the researcher recorded each sample digitally. The recordings were listened to impressionistically for the most common sound problems. In this phase of the study, expert advice was resorted to and the researcher's marking reliability was measured using interrater reliability (IRR) percentage agreement analysis. In the later steps, the problematic sounds were listened to attentively for many times for each occurrence in the text and the findings were presented quantitatively. The analysis of the descriptive data revealed the major sound problems for senior pre-service English teachers in Turkey which conformed to the previously mentioned literature in the field. Although the participants had completed their formal education in ELT, they committed errors with devoicing of word-final consonants, vowel insertion, vowel shortening, gemination and individual sounds /ɾ/, /ð/, /w/, /θ/, /ŋ/ /oʊ/ /ə/ and /æ/. It was assumed that mother tongue interference, fossilization of mistakes in the language classrooms and non-existent sounds in the native language form the basis for errors in pronunciation. Keywords: Sound problems, Pronunciation, Pre-service English teachers, L1 Interference, Error Analysis