Candidate Mother Tongue Teachers’ Perceptions on Speech Skills

Abstract

Candidate mother tongue teachers have a class on elocution in their third year at university. However it is necessary to determine how candidate teachers feel about their speech skills, what they think of this class, and their expectations from this class. In this research, the researchers worked with 50 candidate mother tongue teachers from Dumlupinar University. Data was collected with open-ended surveys, and analyzed through content analysis. Based on the results of the research, the researchers tried to determine the participants' perceptions of themselves and the class. The researchers found out that the participants do not generally consider themselves to be eloquent speakers. A large majority of them did not take any elocution classes or anything simila r prior to coming to university. Participants are aware of certain speech defects they have. These mainly include the use of local dialects, nervousness, and pronunciation problems. The main factors which contribute to their overall poor speech are the lack of self esteem and not being well informed in the subject matter.