The production and pronunciation problems of /dʒ/ phoneme for Turkish English Majors

Research Article

Abstract

Abstract In English, there are two affricate phonemes, which are /ʧ/ and /ʤ/. The former one is defined as a voiceless alveo-palatal affricate while the latter one is defined as a voiced alveo-palatal affricate. Both of them are also termed as alveolo-palatal sibilants. They are coded as two-part consonant sounds. They begin as a stop sound by fully stopping the air from leaving the vocal tract, then end as fricative sound by being released through a constricted opening in the oral cavity. The audition of /ʧ/ and /ʤ/ phonemes contains hissing or hushing sounds at the same place of articulation which makes their perception not easy because of the creation of a dominating friction during their production. In this study, a diagnostic test was administered to the 45 ELT first year students of a foundation university it was discovered that word-initial occurrence of the /ʧ/ phoneme leads all of participants to the word-final articulation of /ʤ/ phoneme to /ʧ/ in the same word through a fronting devoicing consonantal assimilation, which is a faulty articulation in English. In order to break this wrong articulation, some pronunciation texts are designed so as to administrate to the ELT majors, which requires a separate subject of research.