The awareness of silent letters in English by Turkish learners of English

This paper discusses the awareness of silent letters by Turkish speakers of English, whether this awareness correlates with the L2 proficiency level and whether the position in which a silent letter can appear in a syllable influences the awareness. The previous studies show that silent letters are problematic for L2 learners but there is no study that focuses on the effect of the proficiency level and the effect of the positions, onset and coda, on the awareness of silent letters. The data about the participants’ awareness of silent letters was collected from 60 participants, 30 advanced and 30 beginner learners of English, by means of a reading task. The findings of this study show that Turkish learners of English may not be aware of silent letters regardless of their proficiency levels, the proficiency level contributes to the awareness to some extent and the positions affect the correct pronunciation of words containing silent letters. That is, Turkish consonant clusters rules might have an effect on the proper articulation of words that have silent letters because participants in both proficiency level groups performed significantly better when the silent letter appears in the coda of the syllable in written forms. Besides, participants who are exposed to English more, namely advanced participants, perform better than the beginner participants because of the effect of explicit teaching.