Pullen, Elizabeth2016-01-082016-01-082011http://hdl.handle.net/11693/15187Ankara : The Department of Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Bilkent University, 2011.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2011.Includes bibliographical references leaves 111-114.Many factors are known to influence the pronunciation of English by speakers of other languages, including: the speaker’s L1, age of beginning English, length of study, gender, motivation, aptitude, and personality. Other socio-cultural factors, such as ethnic group affiliation and desire of the speaker to identify themselves through their accent are also believed to influence a speaker’s pronunciation. However, there is at present a lack of research into the relationship between the degree of a speaker’s self-identification with their own culture and that speaker’s pronunciation accuracy in an EFL context. This study addresses the following two questions: 1) What are the relationships among cultural identity, the degree of accentedness, and attitudes toward pronunciation of non-native speakers of English in an EFL context? and 2) What are the attitudes of non-native speakers of English in an EFL context toward their pronunciation of English? The participants of the study were advanced Turkish speakers of English at two English-medium universities in Ankara, Turkey. The participants responded to a questionnaire about cultural identity, attitudes toward pronunciation, and language background. Then a selection of participants who had completed the questionnaire provided a pronunciation sample based on three tasks, which were then scored for degree of accent by five native speakers of English. The questionnaire, and the pronunciation ratings provided by the native speaker judges were analyzed for reliability. The language background information factors and attitude ratings were compared individually with the identity and pronunciation scores to determine which factors were related to each. It was found that age of beginning English study and residence of three or more months abroad were significantly related to both the identity and pronunciation scores; therefore, these factors were controlled for in the partial correlation analysis of the relationship between cultural identity and pronunciation. The results of the study did not reveal a direct relationship between cultural identity and degree of accentedness. Moreover, the qualitative data revealed that the majority of participants did not believe that their pronunciation was related to their cultural identity. However, the data did reveal a significant relationship between cultural identity and how important native-like pronunciation of English was perceived to be. For this reason, it is felt that more research into the relationships between cultural identity, pronunciation attainment and attitudes toward native-like pronunciation is needed. It can be concluded, based on the attitudes expressed by the participants, that native-like pronunciation of English should not be ruled out as a goal for learners, especially in that most did not feel that this would be a threat to their cultural identity. Individual preferences and goals need to be taken into consideration in pronunciation instruction, but it should by no means be neglected on the basis of the claim that trying to change pronunciation is interfering with identityxviii, 160 leavesEnglishinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccesspronunciation abilitycultural identityattitudes to pronunciationPE1068.T8 P85 2011English language--Study and teaching (Higher)--Turkey.English language--Study and teaching--Turkish speakers.English language--Pronunciation by foreign speakers.Thesis