Middle East Technical University
Language Acquisition – Research Project
THE UTTERANCE OF /Θ/ SOUND BY TURKISH SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH AS A
SECOND LANGUAGE
ŞEYMA NUR ÖNAL
AYŞENUR KIZILKULAK
FLE /Section 2
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ABSTRACT
This study focuses the utterance of /θ/ sound by Turkish speakers of English as a
second language. The experiments carried out, discovers whether Turkish speakers of English
as a second language can pronounce the /θ/ sound correctly. In this study, quantitative data
was collected from 20 METU students between 20-24 ages via reading activities of some
certain sentences. After the completion of the examination process, it is found out that most
people are unable to produce the /θ/ sound accurately. Even though the different sections of
the examination yielded close results, it can be inferred that overall outcomes indicate a
failure of correct pronunciation. Due to the limitations of this study, only one aspect of the
mispronunciation is explored. In future researches, it is recommended that the reasons should
also be explored in order to pave a more accurate way of learning to English learners.
Keywords: pronunciation, /θ/ sound, learning, education, acquisition
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.0 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...5
1.1 Significance of the Topic.……………… …………………………………….......5
1.2 Purpose and Overview of the Present Study……………………….………...…6
1.3 Limitations…………………………….…………………………………………..6
2.0. LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………………………………………....6
3.0 METHODOLOGY………………………………………………………………………..9
3.1 Research Questions……………………………………………………………...9
3.2 Participants……………………………………………………………………....9
3.3 Data Collection Tools…………………………………………………………..10
3.4 Design and Procedure…………………………………………………………..10
3.5 Data Analysis……………………………………………………………..........11
4.0 RESULTS………………………………………………………………………………..11
4.1 The Initial Position of the /θ/ sound in the Word…………………………....11
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4.2. The Middle Position of the /θ/ sound in the Word …………………………13
4.3. The final Position of the /θ/ sound in the Word
………………………….14
5.0. DISCUSSION……………………………….…………………………………………15
6.0. CONCLUSION……………………………………….………….…………………..16
7.0. REFERENCES……………………………………………………….………………17
8.0. APPENDICES ……………………………………………………………………....18
8.1. Appendix A: Data Collection Tool………………………………………….18
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1. INTRODUCTION
1.
1.
Significance
of
the
Topic
Human beings are interactional creatures. They have to share their feelings, ideas and
thoughts via talking or showing bodily expressions. They can frown, smile, shake hands and
hug to express themselves. No matter how much body language covers a conversation, there
is always a need for verbal expressions. People need to talk so as to communicate. They also
should share a common language as a means of a healthy interaction. After all these
requirements are met, there is also another criterion to be fulfilled as a means of
understanding each other, pronunciation. Two people cannot have a fully comprehension
unless they talk with correct pronunciation. They can surely understand each other to a
certain degree but an actual communication can only be held with the correct pronunciation.
There are many problematic sounds in English varying from nation to nation. For
example, Chinese people incline to mispronounce the “l” sound since they don’t acquire the
requirements of the production of this sound whereas Russian people tend to overpronunce
“r” sound since their own “r” is in a more emphasized one. This research is intended to focus
on Turkish people, so the /θ/ sound is selected because of its rate as the most mispronounced
item. The wrong usage of this vocabulary causes many problems ranging from the meaning of
the vocabulary unit to the whole perception of a syntactic structure. English does not allow as
much sound change as Turkish does, so these pronunciation changes by non-native speakers
create an environment of misunderstandings. As a very simple instance, “tree and three” are
two quite different words but the wrong pronunciation of these vocabulary items can cause
huge mistakes during a conversation. Determining whether they can pronounce the /θ/ sound
in accordance with their places in the vocabulary item is a crucial topic to conduct research.
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1. 2. Purpose and Overview of the Present Study
Communication is one of the most important means for a person to express
himself/herself. Talking, using gestures and bodily movements constitutes communication but
among these, verbal actions take up the most significant place. In order to establish a fluent
and proper conversation, both speakers should have knowledge of adequate pronunciation.
There are many problematic sounds in English changing from nation to nation. Since this
research is intended to narrow down the topic of mispronunciation to Turkish speakers, the
most commonly made mistake is chosen, the usage of /θ/ sound. The purpose of this research
is to determine to what extent the Turkish speakers of English can pronounce the sound /θ/
accurately.
1.
3.
Limitations
This research is bound to the pronunciation of the participant’s so their reluctance to
read the sentences can be a limitation. Another limitation of the study is that it included a
limited number of participants for data collection. However, we believed that running the
appropriate statistical analyses would provide useful insights. Due to time constraint, this
research is conveyed to determine whether they can pronounce the /θ/ sound in accordance
with their places in the vocabulary item but in a future broad research, the reasons could be
also explored.
2.0. LITERATURE REVIEW
The pronunciation issues are one of the linguistic topics that mostly discussed
throughout the world so there are many previous studies and researches done on this topic.
Ülkerson in Adana conducted a research in 2007 on markedness differential hypothesis and
the phonological errors of Turkish EFL learners believing that phonological transfers from L1
to L2 may lead to inaccurate pronunciation. According to him, the role of language transfers
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and markedness should be taken into consideration so as to provide a better explanation for
phonological errors. For the purpose of his study, two groups each consisting of 26
sophomore students at Cukurova University ELT Department was selected to form the
Experimental Group and the Control Group. The students of the ELT Department at
Cukurova University come from different educational backgrounds such as state high schools,
private high schools and so on and this research also is conducted regardless of participants’
background.
The participants of Ülkerson’s research are asked to read sentences in which the target
sounds that are /θ/ and /ð/ are placed. He later analyzed the correct and wrong pronunciations
of the participants. He compared the results and determined where those sounds are used
correctly or interchangeably. After data analysis, he stated that majority of Turkish speakers
of English learners have difficulty in producing the inter-dental fricatives correctly. In most
cases, it is observed that these sounds are mostly replaced by /t/ and /d/. He concluded that
the consonants [ð] and [θ] are among the problem causing sounds English speakers of Turkish
as a second language. That‘s because of the fact that Turkish language has no [θ] and [ð]
sounds. Therefore, students tend to replace them with [s] and [z] word-finally and [t] and [d]
sounds word initially
He also pointed out that some teachers and students may think that replacement of /θ,
ð/ with sounds in the mother tongue can be tolerated; it is not favorable to do so. Because as
teachers and learners of English, we should pave the way leading us to the correct
pronunciation, since having a correct pronunciation is a sign of both professionalism and
phonetic intelligence. (Ülkerson, 2007)
Another research done on this pronunciation topic was by Lado comparing the
pronunciation difference between English and Spanish. Lado (1957) gave the example of the
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sounds [d] and [t], which are allophones of [d] in Spanish, but which contrast in English. Lado
claimed that assigning
The allophones [d] and [t] to separate phonemes in English by a Spanish native speaker
constituted maximum learning difficulty. From Lado’s description, it is inferred that one
should be able to predict the errors of pronunciation that a language learner will make by
means of a
comparison between the native and the target language. He found out that those elements that
are similar to one native language will be easy for the learners of the language as a second
language learner and those elements that are different will be difficult.
As Lado did, Flege also conducted a similar study on a comparison between French
and English language. Flege (1987) argues that similar sounds are difficult to acquire because
a speaker classifies or perceives them to be equivalent to those in his or her L1, whereas
different sounds are easier because the speaker is consciously aware of the differences. Flege
conducted a number of studies to support his hypothesis. He found that experienced L2
learners of French produced a dissimilar sound, French /ü/, correctly, whereas their French
/u/, which has a close counterpart in English /u/, remained English-accented
An error analysis research was conducted by Sinan Bayraktaroğlu in 2009 to see if it
could prove fruitful to examine the actual pronunciation errors made by a homogeneous
sample of fourteen Turkish adult speakers of English. Moreover, as part of his error analysis,
an intelligibility test was designed as a central part of this investigation. As a result of the
error analysis, he set up a model of classification of pronunciation errors, the sources of which
are all to be found in the interference of L1. He concluded that L1 greatly affects the
production of L2 in terms of pronunciation.
In 2011, Ali Karakaş and Ecehan Sönmez conducted an experiment under the name of the
teaching of [θ] and [ð] sounds in English stating pronunciation is a significant part of foreign
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language teaching since having a good pronunciation is one of the most important signs of
getting mastery in foreign language learning and teaching. They pointed out that the fossilized
pronunciation errors may be a barrier for learners who are trying to get mastery in foreign
language (FL) and second language (L2) in that such errors harm the learners‘speech fluency
and prevent them from speaking English in the way native speakers do. Of all the fossilized
pronunciation errors, the phonemes /θ/ and / ð/ have always been problematic not only for
Turkish learners of English but also for Turkish teachers of English who are already on the
job. At the end they found out that the most common tendency is that Turkish learners replace
the phoneme /θ/ with the phoneme /t/ and the phoneme /ð/ with the phoneme /d/.
Şenel (2006) discussed that a language is a part of a culture, thus it is inevitable that
there must be mother tongue interference, which is native language influence, in the
pronunciation of the target language. He thought that as a user of Turkish language, we have
difficulty in some English words and sounds which are not found in our native language. For
example, /θ / and / d / sounds do not exist in Turkish, and that is why Turkish learners
encounter pronunciation difficulties with the words that include those sounds and thus never
obtain a native-like accent, so they produce those sound under the influence of their mother
tongue. In his research, he explored the reasons for pronunciation errors and found out six
factors, which are the native language factor, the age factor, the amount of exposure, phonetic
ability, personality, attitude and motivation.
3.0.
METHODOLOGY
3.1. Research Questions
1. How intelligible and successful are Turkish learners of English as a second language in
their production of / θ / sound?
2. How intelligible and successful are Turkish learners of English as a second language in
their discrimination / θ /
sound in terms of its places within the words?
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3.2. Participants
The participants are selected from Middle East Technical University studying in
various departments such as Architecture, English Language Teaching and Engineering
departments. Their age ranges from 20 to 24. They are capable of English conversational
skills since the medium of instruction is English in METU. The number of participants is 20.
The gender of the participants is not relevant to this research since the pronunciation issue
does not differ from female to male. As this research is focused on participants’ capability of
pronunciation of /θ/ sound, demographic features of the participants are also irrelevant.
Participants are considered to have a sufficient level of English since all the students of the
METU are required to pass the Proficiency Exam to continue their education in METU.
3.3. Data collection
The participants will be provided with a handout on which 20 sentences are placed.
Those sentences include vocabulary items that have /θ/ sound. /θ/ sound appears in the
beginning, middle and at the end of the vocabulary items. These vocabulary items are selected
as their higher rate of daily usage since the participants should be familiar with the
pronunciation of them. The vocabulary items are embedded in sentences in order to avoid a
conscious focus on the /θ/ sound. The sentences are read by each of the participants and their
voices are recorded. Data is collected via these handouts and record files.
3.4 Design and Procedure
A handout in which there are 12 sentences divided into three parts in terms of the
places of the /θ/ sound is designed. These sentences are grouped in accordance with the place
of /θ/ sound in the beginning, middle and at the end of the vocabulary unit. The participants
are selected, they are given handouts on which the sentences are placed and they are asked to
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read them one by one. They are not informed on the purpose of the study which is about the
utterance of the /θ/ sound in order to prevent their conscious attention. In this way, the results
are expected to be more objective. A silent environment is provided since the voices of the
participant are recorded and it should be clear in order to analyze them properly. After the
participants signed the consent form, the readings of them are recorded via a voice recording
device.
3.5 Data analysis
The voice records are reviewed and the collected data is entered to SPSS and the
outcomes are analyzed and explained via charts and tables. While entering the data to the
SPSS program, the correct pronunciation of /θ/
is labeled as 1 and the mispronunciation is
labeled as 2. The charts and tables are organized in SPSS in numeric variables.
4.0 RESULTS
As stated in the methodology section, the data is collected via voice recording devices
and analyzed by entering the outcomes to the SPSS program. The results are reflected to
frequency tables in order to state the percentage of correct and incorrect pronunciation.
As can be seen from the statistics, all the answers are valid and there is no missing
information from the data. All the participants are able to read the sentences without
exception no matter whether they pronounced the vocabulary units correctly or not. In
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accordance with the experiment conducted, the results are investigated in three groups in
order to enable a more proper analysis.
4.1 The Initial Position of the /θ/ sound in the Word
The sentences are organized in groups in accordance with the /θ/ sound’s place in the
word. Firstly, the vocabulary items on which the /θ/ sound is places at the beginning are read
by the participants and the outcomes are given in frequency charts below.
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According to the data given in frequency charts above, it can be said that the correct
pronunciation of the /θ/ sound at the initial position of the word is 26% of the overall
pronunciation experiment. A great number of participants failed to pronounce the /θ/ sound
correctly when it is placed at the beginning of the vocabulary unit. When explored
individually, none of the words could reach at least a half success rate of pronunciation. It can
be implied that he highest rate is 30% as indicated above in the cases of “through and thick”.
4.2. The Middle Position of the /θ/ sound in the Word
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As given above, the rate of the correct pronunciation of the /θ/ sound in the middle
position ranks as 46%. It can be said that this group of the vocabulary has the highest rate of
correct pronunciation in this study. In the cases of “clothing and something” the rates are as
low as 25% whereas in the cases of “bathroom and healthy” the rates increase to the level as
high as 60% and 75%.
4.3.
The
final
Position
of
the
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/θ/
sound
in
the
Word
In consideration with the data provided above, the outcomes can be analyzed as 45%
correct pronunciation rate when the information is grouped according to the place of the /θ/
sound. Correct pronunciation outweighs the incorrect pronunciation as stated above and
overall; more people had the correct pronunciation in relation to the ones who had incorrect
pronunciation. The words “with and path” are mostly mispronounced while “truth and youth”
has a higher rate of correct pronunciation.
5.0. DISCUSSION
The focus of this research is to determine whether the Turkish speakers of English as a
second language can pronounce the /θ/ sound in relation to its place in the vocabulary. After
the data process session, it is clearly shown that most of the participants are not able to
pronounce the /θ/ sound correctly. The outcomes of the research are divided into three parts in
correlation with the place of the /θ/ sound. These sections include the sub-categories of the
given sentences as initial, middle and the final position of the /θ/ sound.
In the first category, the given target vocabulary are think, thank, through and thick.
After the analysis, it can be said that most participants failed to pronounce the correct version
of these vocabulary items even though they are commonly used words. The cumulative
percent of the correct pronunciation of these words is 26%. It can be implied that the initial
position of the /θ/ sound causes people to mispronounce the vocabulary units.
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In the second category, the vocabulary units are grouped according to the middle
position of the /θ/ sound. The given vocabulary items are clothing, something, bathroom and
healthy. This group takes the place of being mostly correctly pronounced words in accordance
with their cumulative rate of 46%. It can be inferred from this result that the middle position
of the /θ/ sound enables people to pronounce it more correctly. People tend to utter the /θ/
sound accurately when it takes place in the middle of the word.
In the third section, /θ/ sound is placed at the end of the vocabulary units. The words
are with, path, truth and youth. The correct production of the /θ/ sound has a rate of 45%
which can be considered as a high portion. The final position of /θ/ sound can be an
implication for people to utter it more accurately. The morphological features of the given
vocabulary are a determining factor of correct pronunciation.
In an overall view, it can be inferred that most of the Turkish speakers of English as a
second language are not quite capable of pronouncing the /θ/ sound accurately. Almost more
than the half of the participants is unable to produce the target sound whereas less than the
half of the participants is capable of the proper production of the /θ/ sound. The reason of the
high rate of the mispronunciation of the /θ/ sound can be explained as the lack of the /θ/ sound
in Turkish language.
6.0. CONCLUSION
According to the findings of this study, most people who speak English as a second
language tend to mispronounce the /θ/ sound in terms of its place. A person who is assumed
to capable of using the language has to have the ability both to convey and comprehend the
messages in the target language correctly. It is clear that the role of correct pronunciation for a
healthy communication has been regarded as vital since there are countless studies on how to
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teach it in the literature. Based on this research, it can be stated that people should give more
importance to pronunciation issues.
Even though this study has reached to the valuable results, this study has a number of
limitations. Firstly, due to the time constraint, an elaborate and detailed study could not be
conducted. Secondly, the number of the participants could be increased in order to accomplish
more accurate outcomes. In a future project, it is suggested that the reasons of the
mispronunciation should also be explored for English Learners’ beneficence.
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7.0 REFERENCES
Bayraktaroğlu, S. (April 2011) A model of classification of phonemic and phonetic negative
transfer: the case of turkish –english interlanguage with pedagogical applications. Journal of
Language and Linguistic Studies, Vol.7, No.1
Flege, J.E. & Davidian, R. (1984), Transfer and developmental processes in adult
foreign language speech production, Applied Psycholinguistics, 5, 323-347.
Gökçen, Y. (2010) Speech production and speech performance. Eskisehir : English Language
Department of Anadolu University
Karakas, A & Sönmez, E. (2011). The teaching of [ θ] and [ ð ] sounds in english. 1st
ınternational conference on foreign language teaching and applied linguistics. May 5-2011
Sarajevo
Lado, R. (1957), Linguistics across cultures: applied linguistics for language
teachers, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press
Ülkersoy, N. (2007). Markedness differential hypothesis and the phonological
errors of turkish efl learner. Adana: PhD Dissertation
Şenel, M. (April 2006) Suggestions for beautifying the pronunciation of efl learners in turkey
Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies Vol.2, No.1
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8.0. APPENDICES
8.1. Data Collection Tool
1. Today, I wore my pink sweater with my red pants.
2. Hasan took the wrong path to the garden.
3. I’m telling you the truth
4. They attended to a youth exchange program
5. I want to thank my family for their support
6. He sometimes likes to think aloud.
7. I don’t like to read my thick course book.
8. We all passed through various hardships in life.
9. Her clothing reminds me of a clown
10. I want to tell you something that can change your life.
11. The bathroom is upstairs on the second floor.
12. To be healthy, you should eat meat.
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