Vigilancia de la Salud Colectiva

In line with theories of self-directed learning and learner autonomy, self-monitoring is usually defined as one of the strategies needed to manage one‘s own learning by making judgements on one‘s learning outcomes and achievements. Among the benefits of implementing self-monitoring strategies in the learning process (Smith, 2002; Trammel, Schloss, &Alper, 1994), researchers identify an increase in student engagement in the course, on-task behaviour during lessons, completion of homework assignments out of class, academic performance and general learning skills that can be maintained over time and applied to other subject matter. Cooper et al. (2007) state that in order to develop self- monitoring skills, a set of sub-skills needs to be worked on: goal setting, self-observation, self-recording, self-evaluation, self-instruction, and strategy instruction. Some of these theorists include the observation, recording and evaluation by an observer as another essential element in the process of becoming aware of one‘s strengths and weaknesses as well as making the teaching of these strategies explicit in the lesson. They also highlight the importance of comparing students‘ first performance with later ones to reinforce the feeling of success. Taking all this into account, for the sake of our research, we will define self- monitoring as the ability to become aware of one‘s own level of oral production, to set goals for improvement after comparing one‘s own production to the target behaviour

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described in the goals for the course and to guide oneself through the process of acquiring that desired performance. With this definition in mind, we established the following objectives to be achieved:

1. Students should be able to clearly define a target behavior as described in the objectives for the course

2. Through self-observation and self-recording and the feedback received from peers and teachers, students should be able to identify their pronunciation problems, how much they impede understanding and the frequency with which they occur.

3. After identifying the areas to improve, students should be able to set clear goals to adjust and improve their performance with repeated out-of-class practice.

4. Students should be able to compare their first performance to their final one and reflect on how both differ.

These four steps go along with the methodology presented in the corresponding section. To go along with the goals set for Phonetics and Phonology I, students are required to show sound knowledge of the content presented and practiced throughout the course and to show the ability to perceive the features under study as well as to be able to produce them correctly.

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2.2 Assessment

Regarding the object of study of this research, it is important to clarify that, as is described in the syllabus of Phonetics and Phonology I, the criteria for the assessment of pronunciation encompass the micro and macro levels as proposed by Morley (1994). Consequently, at the moment of assessing students and encouraging self-evaluation, it is expected that the assessors take into account these two levels of pronunciation and that the final grade provided mirror the objectives expressed in the subject syllabus. In this model, which adopts a communicative approach, Morley suggests a ‗dual-focus‘ framework and highlights the importance of pronunciation as an essential part of communication. According to the author, the elements that make up pronunciation can be classified into two levels: micro and macro. The former centers on the phonetic-phonological competence; that is, it focuses on the production of vowels and consonants, stress, rhythm, intonation, pauses and adjustments in connected speech. At the micro level, it is possible to focus on the isolated sounds or on the production of features of rhythm or intonation. On the other hand, the macro level is concerned with general elements of communicability in particular settings and a goal of developing discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence (Morley 1994, p. 65). At this level, it is possible to focus on precision and on clarity as well as on fluency and intelligibility in general. It is clear that, as Morley (1994) says, both levels are inseparable, since the macro includes the micro and the micro is essential to the macro. However, the distinction between these two levels has helped to approach the teaching of pronunciation more effectively in the subjects of Phonetics and Phonology at the School of Languages, UNC. It is through the implementation of these two levels that teachers assess student performance and, because of this, the elements described

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above were used to create the checklist to be used in this research, which includes the following items: 1 Vowels Stressed Unstressed 2 Consonants Initial Medial Final Clusters (initial/final) 3 Intonation Statements Questions Other 4 Stress and prominence Word-level Phrase-level 5 Adjustments in connectedspeech 6 Additionalcomments Mark

Table 1. Checklist for self, peer and teacher assessment. As can be seen, items 1 to 5 relate to Morley‘s micro level, leaving item 6 for general comments in terms to communicability.

3. Methodology

To carry out this study, ten students were asked to record themselves at the beginning of the year. In this first recording, the students were required to read a text from the course materials and to comment on their own performance by completing the checklist provided for self-assessment. These recordings were analysed by the teachers who also completed the same checklist with feedback on their production. A third checklist was completed by a classmate who listened to the recording as well. The ten students participating in this project received the original recording together with the three checklists and were asked to listen to it again and to work on their mistakes by paying attention to the feedback received. Students were advised to use this feedback as the starting point of their practice and to work

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on the reading of that material as many times as necessary until they felt confident about their performance. At that point these ten students were asked to submit a new recording with the reading of that same passage. Once the recording was received, students were asked to complete a questionnaire with their reflection. The questions included were the following:

• Do you consider it important to be aware of the weaknesses in your own production? Why?

• Was it easy for you to detect your own mistakes? Or was it easier to listen to your classmate‘s?

• Once you received the three checklists, did you agree on what each of them said? Which one did you find more useful? Why? What other type of feedback would you like to get from peers/teachers?

• Did the checklist help you concentrate on the weaknesses in your pronunciation? Or would you prefer to spot your mistakes without any guidance?

• How did you feel about receiving feedback from a peer? And how did the feedback from the teacher make you feel?

• Would you like to work like this in class more often to improve your pronunciation?

To analyze the materials, the first performance of each of the ten students was compared to that produced after reflecting and working on their weak areas. The feedback provided by each of the assessors (student, peer and teacher) was also compared in order to find similarities or differences in type (extent, content, micro and macro levels) and, finally, the

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answers to the questionnaire were used for a final reflection on how students saw the process of acquiring self-monitoring skills while improving their pronunciation.

4. Results and implications