Muestreo de las variables biológicas y descriptores del hábitat

Laily believes that teaching pronunciation would not be able to help her learners to be better speakers of the language, to the extent that she felt direct teaching of pronunciation might fail. She advocated that pronunciation should be learnt through exposure which derived from the learners’ interest to improve in the area of pronunciation as well as the passion to speak like or near the native speakers’ accent.

This belief was a reflection of her exposure and her own drive to learn as well as develop her performance in the English Language in the aspect of pronunciation.

“Because I had that interest whereas, not many people are interested in pronouncing the words properly. If they are interested then they would do anything to find out themselves right? They don’t even have to be taught.”

(S2.1 – 917-920)

This belief probably resulted from her keen interest in the English Language and supported by her supportive environment where she had spent her tertiary education and career in a native speaking country. Her advantage of rich exposure to the native speakers’ environment has helped her to acquire the accent that she possesses today.

This rich exposure started since her schooling days where she went to various Convent primary and secondary schools. Then, the fact that she enjoyed reading English Language materials as well as the supportive English speaking environment at home, added to the vast exposure. Her wide exposure to the language did not stop there but became richer as she received the opportunity to further her studies in the native speakers’ country, the United Kingdom, from her A-Levels until her Master degree. It

was more enriched with her experience working as a teacher at several institutions in the U.K as well as the parliament. Based on this, her belief that pronunciation should not be directly taught was made very clear.

“The more you want to do it, the more you stress on pronunciation right, the more it’s going to be a problem. You are going to fail. I’m getting negative here. Because it’s based on my experience. You see, these days you have a lot of materials for students to refer to. During our time, there only books, reference books, right, no internet, no google. No photocopying machine. We did very well right? But now you have everything and now they have been misused. So that’s why it fails.”

(S2.1 – 643-648)

Despite her belief that pronunciation was best learnt through exposure she also shared some of the experiences faced by some of her friends who had similar exposure

as her in terms of the long duration of stay in a native country but did not accommodate themselves to the native speakers’ accent. This was perhaps due to their interest as well

as passion for learning the accent which was not as strong as Laily’s.

“Based on my experience, I have friends who have been exposed just like I was, overseas. I mean, they communicated with the native speakers of English but they don’t

seem to be speaking like the real native speakers. They just communicate like a Malaysian. So, I don’t think that pronunciation can be better learnt when you are in a native speakers’ country, just being in your own country will help.”

(S2.2 – 56-61)

Based on Laily’s statement, she associated interest with the success of learning

pronunciation. She believed that some learners might benefit from exposure to the language provided that it comes with interest and initiative to improve oneself. Laily believes that personal interest as well as improvement has enabled her to learn the native accent in an efficient way provided with her advantage of spending most of her time in a native speaker country.

Another factor that could have led Laily to hold the belief that pronunciation is best learnt through exposure was perhaps her tertiary education background. Laily did not specialize in the teaching of English Language, instead her area of study was in linguistics in both her bachelor and master degree. Thus, this has made her to be interested in the language aspects rather than the aspects of education. It was only after she returned to Malaysia that she underwent a teacher training course. Her own experience as a learner has made her to believe that learning through exposure was better than being taught the skill of pronunciation.

Despite her belief that pronunciation is best taught through exposure, there is also a question of the effectiveness of the way of learning. The effectiveness of learning through exposure can be argued through the time spent in learning pronunciation as it

could take a person longer to figure out how certain sounds are produced or connected. The learners need to figure out a lot of puzzles before making sense of a particular phenomenon that they observe. Learners may benefit from the exposure, however, it must be accompanied with the crucial learning of the pronunciation component in order to speak and interact successfully in the language. Learners must have knowledge about how the language works to be able to use the language effectively and communicate confidently. Thus, formal learning and training from a competent instructor of the English Language are also crucial in ensuring effective learning of the language. Exposure can help to enhance and enrich the learners’ ability in using the language. At the same time, learning through exposure has its worth as for people to have a good grasp of the English Language, they need to be aware of the context of what they say and be able to relate that to real world environments. This is best achieved through interaction in English with other English speakers.