Markedness differential hypothesis and the phonological errors of Turkish EFL learners

Students of English Language Teaching (ELT) departments in Turkeyexperience difficulties in terms of accuracy in pronunciation. As prospective Englishlanguage teachers, it is essential for the students of ELT Departments to have accuratepronunciation so that they will teach English sounds correctly when they becometeachers. Therefore, the goal of this study is to enable prospective teachers to overcomethe difficulties they encounter in English pronunciation. For that reason, the main focusof the study has been the phonological errors of student teachers. The errors that wereidentified have been analyzed in relation to Eckman?s ?the Markedness DifferentialHypothesis?, since the notion of markedness is a determining factor for the level ofdifficulty in pronunciation.The participants of this study are the sophomore students at Cukurova UniversityELT Department. Treatment and Control Groups, each consisting of 26 students, havebeen formed. After the application of the Pre-test, the errors have been identified and atreatment designed to deal with those errors have been given to the ExperimentalGroup. The syllabus of the treatment included an extensive error analysis and a detailedcomparison of English and Turkish phonological structures. Following the completionof the treatment, a Post-test has been conducted. Both Groups have been compared bymeans of statistical analysis so as to observe if there is any significant difference interms of improvement in pronunciation.The results have shown that markedness alone does not have a determiningeffect on the level of difficulty in pronunciation. In addition, the environment in which asound is used plays an important role. Thus, the term environmental markedness needsto be emphasized. Fossilized incorrectly learned forms, the effect of native language,and the orthography have been observed as the other factors that cause difficulties inpronunciation.