Which /r/ are you using as an English teacher? rhotic or non-rhotic?


DEMİREZEN M.

4th World Conference on Educational Sciences (WCES), Barcelona, Spain, 2 - 05 February 2012, vol.46, pp.2659-2663 identifier

  • Publication Type: Conference Paper / Full Text
  • Volume: 46
  • Doi Number: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.05.542
  • City: Barcelona
  • Country: Spain
  • Page Numbers: pp.2659-2663
  • Hacettepe University Affiliated: No

Abstract

There are many obvious differences between North American English (NAE) and British English (BrE) /r/ phoneme, and a great majority of Turkish English teachers do not know which variant of the /r/ they are using. It must be noted that such a case easily confuses the students. The articulation and production of North American English-r is ambiguous. In terms of articulation and pronunciation, NAE is also referred as General American (GA), and BrE is accepted as Received Pronunciation (RP). The American-r phoneme, whose IPA sign is [x], which is a retroflex case of pronunciation, also called a flap, represents a very serious setback in teaching standard American pronunciation to Turks. As opposed to this, the BrE-r is a tap whose articulation is very close to Turkish-r word-initially and intervocalically.