Issues in English Pronunciation Teaching: Turkish-English Interlanguage Case

Traditionally, the teaching of English pronunciation has been a marginalized, or indeed neglected, area in many English language teaching (ELT) programs despite the crucial role it plays in effective communication. In recent years, however, with the global spread of English as the means of international communication, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of pronunciation in the teaching and learning of English and its close link to other aspects of language learning, such as listening, speaking and vocabulary. Students as well as non-native English-speaking teachers (NNEST) place great importance on the mastery of English pronunciation, from which they can gain confidence, develop a greater sense of professional and linguistic competence and achieve greater intelligibility through the development of communicative skills in speaking, listening and vocabulary.With the emergence of paradigms of English as an international language (EIL), World Englishes (WE), English as a lingua franca (ELF) and the worldwide impact of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) on foreign language learning/teaching, this study presents a critical survey of these areas expressing the author’s own views on the specific issue concerned while incorporating the views of other scholars. The book deals with both traditional and most recent viewpoints in pronunciation teaching, such as the nature of learning to pronounce, the pedagogical aims and objectives of teaching pronunciation, the role of the teacher and the notion of "intelligibility", which is considered to be a highly controversial issue for international communication within the paradigms of EIL, ELF and WE. The ‘Turkish–English Interlanguage Talk’ has been dealt with as a case study proposing pedagogical recommendations particularly for the Turkish academics/teacher trainers and the student-teachers of English language teaching (ELT) in mind as English pronunciation teaching is a very much neglected area in the Turkish ELT today.

Table of Contents:
Introduction - Part A: Background issues - 1. Teaching pronunciation: a neglected area - Part B: The classification of pronunciation difficulties - 2. A model for the classification of pronunciation difficulties - Part C: Turkish-English interlanguage talk and Lingua Franca Core targets - 3. The consonantal inventory - 4. Phonetic requirements - 5. Consonant clusters: word initially and word medially - 6. Vowel sounds - 7. The rhotic [r] and intervocalic /t/ - 8. Word stress - 9. Sentence stress - 10. Criticisms of the Lingua Franca Core - Part D: How do EIL and EFL relate to the CEFR? - 11. The impact of the CEFR - Appendix 1: Orthographic representations of Turkish phonemes with their variable allophones - Appendix 2: Orthographic representations of English vowels, diphthongs and consonants - Appendix 3: Turkish consonants - Appendix 4: English consonants - Appendix 5: Turkish and English vowels - Appendix 6: Empirical data and procedures -

About the Author :
Professor Sinan Bayraktaroğlu was educated at Talas and Tarsus American Schools in Turkey. He received his BA in English Language & Literature and Ottoman History at Ankara University, MA in Linguistics and ELT at Leeds University, and PhD in Applied Linguistics and ELT at the University of London Institute of Education. He lectured in Turkish Linguistics and Culture at Cambridge University for five years as a lector and was matriculated with MA status as a senior member of the university. He had been a senior lecturer in General Linguistics & Phonetics at Ulster University before he took up the position to be the founding director of The Cambridge Centre for Languages at Sawston Hall in Cambridge, where he served for twenty-two years. He has been working very closely with John Trim for many years, who is the architect and brainchild of CEFR. Since 2008, he has been taking appointments at 12 different State and Foundation universities in Turkey, gaining the Turkish experience while at the same time researching and publishing for the Turkish media about the past and present status quo of ELT in Higher Education in Turkey today. He was an elected fellow of Royal Society of Arts and Institute of Linguists in the UK and was awarded the State Medal of the Republic of Turkey for Outstanding Services (T.C Devlet Üstün Hizmet Madalyası) in the year 2000 by President Süleyman Demirel.