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The pronunciation of the inter-dental sounds of English: an articulation problem for Turkish learners of English and solutions

Abstract The inter-dental consonant phonemes like /θ/ and /δ/ have always created pronunciation problems for Turkish learners of English in that these two sounds are non-existent as phonemes or sounds in the sound system of the Turkish language. The aim of this study is to rehabilitate the pronunciation mistakes caused by [θ] and [δ] sounds of English to Turkish learners of English by making use of a pronunciation teaching method called the audio-articulation method developed by Demirezen (2004) as a fossilized pronunciation mistake breaker. The result of the study indicated that the audio-articulation method helps Turkish students of English overcome their interdentalization problem in the target language.


Introduction
Pronunciation teaching is a significant part of foreign language teaching. Since sounds play an important role in communication, foreign language teachers must attribute proper importance to teaching pronunciation in their classes. However, this fact is very much neglected by foreign language teachers in our country. There may be several underlying reasons as to why pronunciation is disregarded by foreign language teachers in EFL classes in Turkey. The first reason may be that pronunciation is not incorporated directly into their programs or into the textbooks. The second reason may be that teachers believe learners will develop their pronunciation via the other activities included in the syllabus without any direct focus on pronunciation (Sefero lu, 2005). The third reason may be that teachers, especially non-native ones, do not have phonological competence to teach both segmental features (consonants, vowels, and diphthongs) and suprasegmental features (stress, intonation, rhythm, and connected speech) of the target language.
It is a commonly accepted viewpoint that foreign language learners cannot acquire a native-like accent after a certain age at ease. Besides the so-called physiological difficulties, it has also been argued that many foreign language learners wish to employ their own accent in that that is a part of their identity (Harmer, 2001). At that point, the foreign language learner may not want to speak the target language just like native speakers do. However, there have been researches which stress that there are negative attitudes towards those L2 speakers with a strong foreign accent placing such speakers in a socially or professionally disadvantages position (Morley, 1991).
There have been many researchers arguing against the recognition of native speaker norms as the sole bases in teaching English in view of both the unrealistic nature of expectations from the learners and the impossibility of the acquisition of native speaker phonological systems (MacArthur 1998 ;McKay 2002;Alptekin 2002;Jenkins 2002). Alptekin (2002) states that a native speaker-based notion of communicative competence is unrealistic because it fails to reflect the status of English as an international language. He proposes a new notion of communicative competence viewing English as a world language, containing local and international contexts as settings of language use, involving native-nonnative and nonnative-nonnative discourse participants, and taking successful bilinguals with intercultural insights and knowledge as pedagogic models.
In our times, English is no longer in the hegemony of monolingual native speakers (Crystal, 1998). It is mostly spoken in international contexts where the speakers are nonnative speakers of English and the status of English as an international language brings with it some key concepts like international pronunciation, international intelligibility, and mutual intelligibility to provide learners with optimum number of requirements for communication.
Determining goals and standards in pronunciation teaching is very important in deciding what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. If the goal is communicative efficiency or intelligibility rather than native like pronunciation, not all deviations from native speaker pronunciation can be viewed as errors but a reflection of a nonnative speaker regional accent. However, there are some fossilized pronunciation errors which give rise to misunderstandings or breakdowns during the communication. These fossilized pronunciation errors are chronic articulation mistakes made by language learners in the acquisition of the sound system of the target language which continue for a long time and cannot be easily solved. Because language learners apply the phonological rules of their mother tongue to those of the target language, they make fossilized pronunciation errors. Fossilized pronunciation errors are one of the most significant obstacles to second language phonological acquisition. As Demirezen (2005:83) states, "… fossilized pronunciation problems cannot be ignored since fossilization slows down the improvement of the communicative competence and fluency, intonation advancement and other related skills." To Turkish learners of English inter-dental consonant phonemes like / / and /Δ/ continually lead to the emergence of fossilized pronunciation errors, the main reason of which is that these two sounds are non-existent as phonemes or sounds in the sound system of the Turkish language. Hence, learners, being under the negative influence of Turkish, are inclined to articulate [ ] as [t] and [Δ] as [d] disregarding the required inter-dental feature in articulation, which reduces the pronunciation intelligibility of language learners.
The aim of this study is to rehabilitate the pronunciation mistakes caused by [ ] and [Δ] sounds of English to Turkish learners of English by making use of a pronunciation teaching method called the audio-articulation method developed by Demirezen (2004) as a fossilized pronunciation mistake breaker.
The following research question was investigated: 1. Can the pronunciation mistakes caused by [ ] and [Δ] sounds of English to Turkish learners of English be rehabilitated by using the audio-articulation method?

Subject
Thirty first-year students at European University of Lefke, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of English Language Teaching participated in this study.
In this study, a dialogue taken from Bowler and Parminter's (2001)

Data Collection Procedure
After selecting the data collection instrument, the researcher recorded thirty subjects' voices as they read aloud a dialogue at the beginning of the Fall Semester of 2008-2009 Academic Year.

Data Analysis Procedure
The researcher listened to the recordings and wrote the impressionistic transcriptions of the words with the [ ] and [Δ] sounds on previously drawn tables. Then, the researcher counted (a) speech sounds produced correctly, (b) speech sounds produced incorrectly, and (c) speech sounds that are not produced (ignored by the subjects) and for scoring purpose, he gave one point for each correct production. Incorrect productions and those ignored by the subjects were not taken into consideration. As a following step, the sum of the correct productions for each problematic sound was divided into the number of subjects to find out the average rate of correct productions as the test performance of these thirty students for the relevant problematic sound.

Treatment
After that, the researcher asked these thirty students to participate in a 50 minute pronunciation lesson designed in parallel to the audio-articulation method developed by Demirezen (2004). In the practice lesson, the researcher applied the previously prepared sample lesson plan relevant to the teaching of [ ] and [Δ] sounds. Thus, he tried to help students to have an easily understandable pronunciation in relation to these two problematic English phonemes through using a wide variety of techniques, activities, exercises, drills, and pedagogically-developed texts. After the treatment, the pretest administered to all the students was given as the posttest to all of them to measure whether the treatment given to them lead to high level of correct pronunciation at segmental level or not. Following this procedure, pre and post test performances of the subjects were obtained for [ ] and [Δ] sounds. Then, in order to see the progress of the subjects, post test and pre test performances of the subjects were compared and contrasted for these two problematic sounds. To compare and contrast the progresses in the performances of the subjects, first of all, pre test scores were subtracted from the post test scores for these two problematic sounds and improvement rates were obtained for each problematic sound. After obtaining improvement rates of the subjects in relation to two problem causing sounds, it was clearly seen that the treatment produced the expected result in teaching [ ] and [Δ] sounds to Turks.

/ Τ / as a Problem-Causing Phoneme
In the pretest, the students having role A read aloud 15 words having /Τ/ phoneme word-initially, word-medially, and word-finally in a dialogue, whereas the students having role B read aloud 19 words having the same phoneme in the same distribution. While the average number of words with / Τ / phoneme mispronounced by the students having role A was 14.47 (% 96,5), the average number of words with / Τ / phoneme mispronounced by the students having role B was 16.47 (% 87 After the specification of / Τ / phoneme as problematic for Turkish learners of English according to the results of the pretest performances of the students in relation to this sound, the researcher applied a previously prepared sample lesson plan containing various teaching techniques, activities, and exercises to these thirty students. Using minimal pairs, tongue twisters, contextualized drills (sentences with contextual clues and minimal sentences), exercises ( same-different exercise, 1-2 exercise, 1-2-3 exercise), pictures, proverbs, riddles, and songs, the teacher tried to teach this problematic sound to the students.
In the posttest, likewise the case described above, the students having role A read aloud the same 15 words having /Τ/ phoneme word-initially, word-medially, and word-finally in a dialogue again, whereas the students having role B read aloud 19 words having the same phoneme in the same distribution. While the average number of words with / Τ / phoneme correctly pronounced by the students having role A was 6.86 (% 46), the average number of words with / Τ / phoneme correctly pronounced by the students having role B was 7.93 (% 42).
The following tables exhibit the improvement rates observed in the students having role A and role B in relation to the articulation of the / Τ / phoneme. In the table, average correct pronunciation and mispronunciation rates and percentages of the students having role A and role B in both the pretest and the posttest in relation to / Τ / phoneme are shown:  Table 2. Average correct pronunciation and mispronunciation rates and percentages of students having role B in relation to / Τ / phoneme Table 4. Average correct pronunciation and mispronunciation rates and percentages of students having role B in relation to /Δ/ phoneme