Teach English in Jiusi Zhen - Enshi Tujiazu Miaozu Zizhizhou

As we saw on the TELF course units pronunciation is one of the major problems for students worldwide, but focusing on students of the English language from Turkey, why would this task be even more difficult for them to achieve? First, we should talk about pronunciation itself. Why pronunciation is one of the biggest problems when English language learning? Sometimes teachers are not confident enough, to focus on this task. This is not something that happens only with foreign teachers, this can also happen with native English speakers, then so, teachers have a lack of focus on this area of the English teaching, although a good teacher, should have pronunciation as an important goal to achieve during the course. Because of this lack of confidence teachers usually, focus on the letters pronunciation rather than everything it takes to really understand how to speak a great diversion of words. When studying pronunciation, we go through the phonetics of the words, what this means is that we see how rhythm, stress and intonation change not only our pronunciation but also the meaning of what we want to express. Usually we don't use only our mouths to say something, we make use of gestures also, from time to time a teacher will use gestures to express something, like the intonation, or the stress of the work, the rhythm of a sentence, our hands can be used so the students can comprehend more easily what we are explaining. Every student has their own timing when learning something, and with pronunciation will not be different. Some students will be better learning the grammar, others will be better with the listening, this is a part of learning something new not only a new language. Besides all that being said, when we think about Turkish students learning English, why it is so difficult for them to have a fluent pronunciation, or even a poor one. We need to think first how distant the languages are. The English language has an Indo-European origin, while the Turkish language has a Ural-Altaic origin. This contrast with the language origin is an important point to focus when we think why is difficult for Turkish people to accomplish the English language pronunciation. When we have a different origin of language, we will also have a different alphabet, and on that point a different phonemic alphabet, this will directly affect how we need to vocalize the letters, therefore the pronunciation will be a harder subject for students to comprehend. There are letters that are common on both alphabets but they have a different sound, this will make the students life more difficult, letters like c for example, have a very different way to be vocalized between these two languages while in English the C will have a K sound like in car for example, in Turkish C will have a J sound like in jar, and we also need to think about the letters and sounds that don't exist in both languages, the way you put the stress on the syllables will be also different, all of these things that for some people can be a small detail, will make a big impact on how people can understand a new language. In conclusion, for more accurate pronunciation, a lot of practice will be needed for the student to let go from old habits of his mother language. Considering all that was said before some students are more agile to learn than others, but this doesn't affect if they will really learn or no, what will influence the comprehension of the language is how much work is put on it. It is a fact that Turkish and English language are very distinct, but with hard work, it is possible for a student to achieve a successful pronunciation.