The Relationship of Letters and Sounds in German. An Error Analysis of the Pronunciation of Multilingual Turkish Students
Handan Köksal, Servet ÇınarA challenge for foreign language learners is the correspondence of the written language with the sounds of the target language. Although the sound-to-letter relationship of German is not as complicated as English or French, the German language does not have total sound-to-letter correspondence. The aim of this study is to question which sounds are more problematic for multilingual Turkish German learners in university education. A further aim is to determine the possible causes of their pronunciation deviations. In the context of the present study, an error analysis in the sense of Kleppin (1998) was carried out. The sample of the study was a group of Turkish university students who learned German as a third foreign language. To collect the data, the respondents were asked to perform a number of actions: to pronounce a list of selected words, record themselves with electronic recording devices and then send the digitally stored recorded files to the researchers. The deviations were dominated by vowels, including diphthongs and vowels with umlauts, which was expected. The causes of the deviations were mostly due to the interferences of the written language and the previously learned (foreign) languages. From the results, it can be concluded that multilingual learners have many advantages in pronunciation skills and that the deviations are due to the interference of the written language and the previously learned (foreign) languages rather than errors.
Die Beziehung von Buchstaben und Lauten im Deutschen. Eine Fehleranalyse zur Aussprache der mehrsprachigen türkischen StudentInnen
Handan Köksal, Servet ÇınarEine Herausforderung für Fremdsprachenlernende ist die Übereinstimmung der Schriftsprache mit den Lauten der Zielsprache. Obwohl die Laut-BuchstabenBeziehung des Deutschen nicht so kompliziert ist wie das des Englischen oder Französischen, ist die deutsche Sprache auch nicht lauttreu. Das Ziel dieser Studie ist es, zu fragen, welche Laute für mehrsprachige türkische Deutschlernende in der Hochschulausbildung problematischer sind. Ein weiteres Ziel ist es, die möglichen Ursachen für ihre Ausspracheschwierigkeiten zu ermitteln. Im Rahmen der vorliegenden Studie wurde eine Fehleranalyse im Sinne von Kleppin (1998) durchgeführt. Die ProbandInnen sind Studierende einer türkischen Hochschule, die Deutsch als dritte Fremdsprache lernen. Um die Daten zu sammeln, wurden die Probanden gebeten, eine Reihe von Handlungen durchzuführen: eine Liste ausgewählter Wörter auszusprechen, sich mit elektronischen Aufnahmegeräten aufzuzeichnen und uns die digital gespeicherten Aufnahmedateien zu schicken. Die festgestellten Abweichungen werden von Vokalen dominiert, darunter Diphthonge und Vokale mit Umlauten, was auch erwartet wurde. Die Ursachen für die Abweichungen sind meist auf die Störungen der Schriftsprache und der zuvor erlernten (Fremd-)Sprachen zurückzuführen. Aus den Ergebnissen lässt sich schließen, dass mehrsprachige Lerner viele Vorteile bei der Aussprache haben und dass die Abweichungen eher auf Interferenzen der Schriftsprache und der vorher gelernten (Fremd-)Sprachen als auf Fehler zurückzuführen sind.
In this article, the role of pronunciation in foreign language teaching was first presented as an introduction. It follows its function in textbooks. Teacher competence was then discussed and the situation in the CEFR was briefly considered. The teaching situation was then described. Based on this, the research topic phonetics was examined more closely from the perspective of the relationship between phonetic letters and sounds. In the second part, the methodology was described, including the aim and the research questions, the research design, the context, the data collection and the sample as well as the analysis of the data. In the last part the results of this work were presented and discussed. Finally, the research questions were discussed in detail and suggestions were made.
One of the most important aims of foreign language teaching is to teach learners how to speak accurately and understandably. Good pronunciation brings considerable advantages for foreign language learners. At this point, it is expected that a substantial value will be attached to pronunciation training, as is the case with receptive and productive skills. Understanding language learning as a whole and cultivating it so that real communication can take place are important prerequisites for language learning. The reason why this article focuses on pronunciation training in relation to the sound and letter relationship is that this area is rather neglected. In the present age, there are a lot of textbooks that pay enough attention to pronunciation, as in other areas of foreign language teaching. Besides the textbooks and students, the attitude of the teachers is worth mentioning. Only then do the textbooks have a chance to make the foreign language more functional in the classroom. There are languages where the spoken and written languages are more or less identical. The German language does not appear in this category. This becomes particularly clear when the phonetic-letter relation is examined. Dieling and Hirschfeld (2000) see the awareness of the relationship between pronunciation and writing in foreign language teaching as important. From this, some suggestions for the learning process can be derived: The teachers, the learners and the learning material itself are in the center of attention. Teachers should identify their learners’ deficits so that they know what needs to be improved. Foreign language teachers should be in no doubt about the aforementioned differences and terms so that they can carry out successful pronunciation training and recognize the causes of the errors or deviations. Learners should make the pronunciation exercises part of their learning process for self-training. The textbooks should contain numerous efficient pronunciation exercises, both for the teaching phase and for self-learning, according to the methodological-didactic principles of foreign language teaching.
The aim of this study is to question which sounds are more problematic for multilingual Turkish German learners in university education. A further aim is to determine the possible causes of their pronunciation deviations. In the context of the present study an error analysis in the sense of Kleppin was carried out. The sample was a group of students from a Turkish university who were learning German as a third foreign language. To collect the data, the respondents were asked to perform a number of actions: to pronounce a list of selected words (see Appendix 1) privately (at home or in a quiet place), record themselves with electronic recording devices and then send the digitally stored recorded files to the researchers. The deviations that occurred were dominated by vowels, including diphthongs and vowels with umlauts, which was expected. Among the vowels, the diphthongs, the long vowels, the vowels with umlauts and the schwa-sound were particularly noticeable. Among the consonants, deviations were mainly in the following sounds: [ts], [k], [ʃp], [ŋ] and [h]. The causes of the above mentioned deviations were mostly due to interferences of the written language and the previously learned (foreign) languages. Apart from the deviations, it should be mentioned that the overall performance of the respondents was highly satisfactory, which can be attributed to the multilingualism of the learners.
