Clase Asteroidea

During the observations of her lessons, it was found that Anita has tried to incorporate pronunciation in two of her lessons observed to perhaps demonstrate her understanding of the content of pronunciation as well as the methods used to teach pronunciation. In the first lesson observed, Anita has used tongue twisters as her material to teach pronunciation. She mentioned that she sourced most of her materials from the internet as she always uses the internet and as mentioned earlier that I.T was her major in her first degree. She has tried to incorporate the tongue twisters as a lead in to her focus of the lesson for that particular week which was summary writing. Her plan for the lesson was to summarise the tongue twisters which had a lot of repetitions of words and ideas. Based on the lessons observed, her lead in activity using the tongue twisters was interesting based on the positive feedback and response from the students during the activity. The activity was carried out based on the following excerpt;

“Read it aloud and then summarise the tongue twisters in less than 20 words. You don’t summarise it now. Let’s look at it first. You may opt to eliminate unimportant points or rephrase it if it’s necessary. What I’m trying to say is that, summary remember; you got to minus out the examples, you got to minus out the unnecessary points which are not relevant. Which are irrelevant. So, for the second tongue twister, you may need to throw some of the phrases which are not necessary. But, before that, let’s try reading it and see.”

(S.L1.1 – 54-59) In the lesson, it was clear that her idea of integration of the pronunciation skill was a reflection of her belief of how pronunciation should be taught. Her focus on content however, was more on the segmental features; discrimination of sounds. This was reflected in the interview where she mentioned her focus on pronunciation content is on teaching the production of sounds. Anita asserted that she would choose several vocabulary that are suitable for the students’ level to teach vocabulary and the pronunciation of the words is usually taught indirectly.

“Interviewer: How do you decide what to teach? How do you select the content for pronunciation?

Interviewee: No specific base but as long as it’s easy. Not too easy as well. There

should be some new words in that; difficult words in there, for me.

Interviewer: When you say that you teach based on words that you choose from the

textbooks or text that you select from the internet, it means you teach them sounds? As how to pronounce the words?

Interviewee: Ah, yes. How to pronounce the words. That’s about it. And also the

meaning and other parts of it. How to make sentences. Like some carries more than one meaning. Then, how to pronounce it correctly, that’s it.”

(S1.4 – 63-75)

Besides the focus on the segmental features Anita claimed that she also incorporated the suprasegmental features; mainly intonation as she mentioned. Intonation is not taught directly by her, it is usually indirectly taught through various speaking activities that require the students to converse with expressions to convey the

“Yes, I do stress the intonations. At times the punctuations and things like that right. It brings a lot of different voices, different tones and things like that. Yes, I do. Especially for dialogues, interviews.”

(S1.4 – 131-133)

Anita claimed her focus on the suprasegmental features was reflected in the lesson observed where she had indirectly mentioned the focus on intonation in her lesson where she had asked the students to focus on the punctuations while reading the sentences that she had photocopied on the blackboard in her ‘dictation race’ activity. In this lesson, Anita has indirectly incorporated the focus of intonation through punctuation.

“I don’t know how all of you are going to convey the punctuation, full stops, commas and others. I don’t you how you are going to do it but you have to do it in English. Your friend has to copy exactly.”

(S.L1.2 – 135-137)

Based on these observations Anita translated her beliefs of pronunciation practices through the use of creative activities based on modifications to be incorporated with the other language skills. The inclusion of pronunciation activities may not be too explicit in terms of highlighting the specific pronunciation content rather an indirect exercise of pronunciation.

In the interview sessions, Anita admitted that she has never taught pronunciation directly in her English lessons. In fact pronunciation is almost absent from her lessons. This was confirmed during the interviews with her students that Anita has never taught them pronunciation in the English lessons. However, according to her students pronunciation was only highlighted as and when the students made mistakes in pronunciation.

“Interviewer: How often does your teacher teach pronunciation in class?

Interviewee: Huh?

Interviewer: Does she always teach grammar, reading, and writing only? Does she

teach pronunciation?

Interviewee: Pronunciation, no. When she asks us to discuss and present, if we make

mistakes in pronunciation, she will point it out.”

(St1(s1) – 28-36)

Anita, being a young teacher and a person with a vibrant personality had shown that she had a lot creative teaching ideas which she claimed derive from her own ideas as well as ideas from the internet which were later redesigned by her perhaps to suit the ability of her learners. The creativity and interest may have resulted from her pursuing her master degree in TESL where she may experience an ongoing exposure to teaching and learning approaches and ideas of teaching during her studies. In the first two lessons which were observed it was evident that she had tried to incorporate pronunciation in her ESL lessons. When asked about how she had obtained the idea of the pronunciation activities used in her ESL lessons, she replied as the following;

“Interviewee: I just generate it like that.

Interviewer: It’s from your own ideas?

Interviewee: Yes, modification of this and that. Yes, exactly. Take whatever I have,

and I’ll think about how to go inside. That’s just about it.

Interviewer: How about internet?

Interviewee: Yes, internet. Like the tongue twisters I used.”

(S1.2 – 160-171)

Anita had adapted the pronunciation activities that she had taken from the internet based on her understanding of an activity that would suit the level of her learners where the learners could learn some aspects of pronunciation, specifically on sound discriminations and are able to do the activity. Anita had tried to prove that her lack of knowledge on the pronunciation component as well as pedagogical knowledge

However, based on the model of integration of pronunciation skills by Burgess and Spencer (2000) Anita did not focus on the pronunciation element that she initially intended to teach in the lesson. The integration was loosely done where it had no connection to the other stages of the lesson. Thus Anita was not able to achieve the objective of trying to expose the learners to success in communication as how she had reflected in her beliefs of pronunciation instructions. The following table shows a lesson conducted by Anita in comparison with the integrated model suggested by Burgess and Spencer (2000).

The text used in the teacher input served to introduce and emphasise several sounds in the English Language pronunciation. Since the tongue twisters used by Anita were ‘Betty Botter’ and ‘Wish to wish’, the sounds focused were the vowel sounds in ‘Betty Botter’ and the consonant sounds such as /w/ and /s/. Based on the analysis in figure 3, Anita’s understanding of integration is the combination of several skills taught in one lesson. Since Anita’s focus of the week was on summary writing, she had

focused on writing summaries as her main component rather than giving emphasis on the pronunciation component.

Figure 4.1 Anita’s Lesson 1 – Summary Writing Using Tongue Twisters

Learner Output 1 Summarise tongue twisters Teacher Input 1 Tongue twisters Learner Processing Reading aloud of tongue twisters

As stated by Celce-Murcia etal (1996), in teaching pronunciation through the communicative approach, some traditional techniques and materials are still currently used. This includes the use of the reading aloud technique used by Anita in her tongue twister activity. The disadvantage of using the reading aloud technique as mentioned by Celce-Murcia etal (1996) is that there is some doubt if it could promote better pronunciation in real life conversations. Thus, now the use of traditional techniques to teach pronunciation are largely rejected as the emphasis of teaching pronunciation is directed more to the teaching of the suprasegmental features mainly the rhythm, stress and intonation as opposed to the segmental features such as the discrimination of sounds (Celce-Murcia etal, 1996).

Nevertheless in the Learner Output 1 stage, Anita had attempted to integrate pronunciation with other language skills in her first lesson observed. As mentioned by Anita in the interview, she would not teach pronunciation in isolation due to time constraint and this is proven in her first lesson observed although her implementation of integration was not in line with the model suggested by Burgess and Spencer (2000). Based on the observations, the pronunciation component was not taught explicitly or in isolation but incorporated in a summary writing skill. Although the tongue twister activity was seen more like a lead in activity to get the students’ attention on summary

writing, it was adapted into a summary exercise where the students had to summarize the tongue twisters. The focus of the lesson was however, on summary writing and pronunciation was carried out as part of an activity intended to get the learners to warm up to the summary lesson. Anita’s use of game concept in her reading aloud technique

reflects her belief where pronunciation is taught beyond the traditional approach. She believes, through interactive activities such as language game is a way to move away from the traditional approach of pronunciation instructions. However, her knowledge and understanding of traditional and non-traditional approach seem to contradict the

concept of communicative approach described in the literature. The following extract from Anita’s lesson observation shows the transition from a focus on pronunciation

component into a summary writing activity.

“Teacher: Let’s look at the first one. Enough of our ‘witch’ and our ‘Mary’ and our ‘Betty’. Now let’s come to the summary point of view. What I expect you to do is, of course you’ve read aloud, now I want you to understand what the tongue twister is all about. Simple words, simple vocabulary, any words that you don’t understand? O.K, you understand Betty and the butter right? Now, what I did was, I summarized that particular tongue-twister into less than 20 words. What I want you to do is to summarise the tongue twisters.”

(S.L1.1 – 390-396)

In the second lesson observed, the pronunciation activity was done in isolation. Again, the pronunciation activity was made as a lead in activity. In this lesson, Anita has made this activity into a game where the students were organized into groups for a competition. In this activity called the ‘dictation race’ the students had to memorise and

read a paragraph which was written in small prints pasted on the blackboard to their group members. The group members then had to write the sentences read by their ‘reader’ friend. This activity did not prove to be of any relation to the summary

activities that followed after the pronunciation activity. The following table shows another lesson conducted by Anita in comparison with the integrated model suggested by Burgess and Spencer (2000).

Figure 4.2 Anita’s Lesson 2 – ‘Dictation Race’

As shown in Figure 3, the pronunciation component was taught as a single component without the integration with the other language skills. As mentioned by Anita, this happened perhaps due to the limitation of time as a factor that hinders her from focusing on the pronunciation component. In this lesson, Anita has used the game approach once again. Pronunciation was perceived as not important in the examination to be given detailed or a serious approach, thus, perhaps the approach where pronunciation is practiced through games was used to create an element of fun and to avoid any technical activities. The focus on pronunciation in this lesson was also on the segmental features that stressed on appropriate pronunciation so as to be understood by the listener in the game.

In the third lesson observed, Anita had used the Bingo activity which made use of short phrases in place of the long phrases read by Anita. This activity was also related to the summary lesson planned for the period of teaching during the observations. The

Teacher Input 1 10 written sentences pasted on the whiteboard Learner Processing Reading aloud of sentences to partners and writing sentences

incorporated pronunciation element was probably evident in the listening of the teacher’s pronunciation and incorporated with the vocabulary skills where learners have

to substitute the long phrases with shorter phrases by selecting the appropriate phrases arranged in a bingo format. This was related to the summary writing lesson where it taught the learners one of the summary writing strategies through the use of shorter phrases in replacing a sentence.