Adrienne Cardoza Tutoring paper Bro.

wolf-Ling 260

Pronunciation Tutoring Journal

Introduction I do this tutoring activity in hopes of getting experience in actually tutoring someone, and helping them to better their pronunciation. This experience however is mostly for me, it is to help me feel like I can be successful in tutoring someone in English, and that I can learn firsthand how it is to tutor someone. Description of tutee My tutees name is Hijiri Hayashi. She is 20 years old and has been learning English for about eight of those years, two of them being intensive. She is in EIL advanced level I and should be done with the EIL program come this summer semester. Hijiri doesnt like studying English but is motivated by her want to speak to her friends and people from around the world.

Pronunciation problem #1 This student has trouble differentiating between the vowel sounds// and //. Like in the words Africa, and inhabit; instead of saying /fka/ she pronounces it /fika/ also with inhabit she changes /nhbt/ to /nhbit/. This is because Japanese has only five main vowel sounds whereas in English there are as many as 27 vowel sounds (if diphthongs are included), so Japanese students have great difficulty with English vowels. This is important to work on because, in reference to intelligibility, according to the Lingua Franca article by Jennifer Jenkins The contrast between tense and lax vowels is important; thus why I would like to address this problem in the first tutoring session. I also address this problem because she is living in America where these two vowels are very important, and she has said on many occasions that she would love to live in Hawaii even after graduating. Lesson Plan I want to help Hijiri better differentiate between the phonemes // and / /. I plan to utilize minimal pairs in order to do so. I am only going to focus on these two sounds, so if she mispronounces any other phoneme I am not going to take time out of the lesson to fix it, I might correct her but that is all.

Procedure 1. Explain to Hijiri the goal of the tutoring session: To be able to better differentiate between the vowel sounds // and // in order to be more intelligible. 2. Explain the different mouth positions that occur with each vowel sound. a. Show her a picture of what the mouth should look like, using the text book page 30. b. / / -The tongue is positioned slightly forward and low in the oral cavity, with the tip positioned behind the lower teeth, the back of the tongue higher than the front. Lips are neutrally open. c. //-The back of the tongue is in the fully open position with the front of the tongue and the back at the same level. Lips are lightly rounded and jaw a bit dropped. 3. Practice: show her a collection of around 5-10 minimal pairs (will see how many she can handle, I dont want her to get over whelmed). First I will pronounce each so she can hear how it should sound, and also discuss meaning if needs be. Next she will say each of them, we will aim to get them all pronounced correctly at least once before moving on, knowing that it might not happen. This will help her to realize that she can in fact say them correctly. 4. Game: we will pick a minimal pair to use. I will say one of the words and she is to point to which word from the pair she thinks it is. If she gets it incorrect I will have her look at my mouth as I am saying the words so she can experience the different mouth shape again. Then we will switch roles as she says one of the minimal pairs I will choose which I think she is saying. 5. If we still have time after the game I will introduce to her some tongue twisters that have a lot of words that use / / and / / intertwined. I will introduce the words separately at first and then give her the sentences. If we do not have enough time for this activity I will use it for the next lesson. Materials Firstly, I used the text book for reference; especially for the mouth shape descriptions. Many of the tongue twisters I made up, but ones like A fashionably tan man sat casually at the bat stand, lashing a handful of practice bats came from this website: http://american-accent-english.weebly.com/tongue-twisters.html . Note cards: I wrote one word on each note card for the minimal pairs. I also used them for the tongue twisters. o Many of the minimal pair ideas came from the text book but I got some from http://pronuncian.com/MinimalPairs.aspx Some of the pairs that could be used are; o Cat-caught bat-bought fat-fought bran-brawn pan-pan(Japanese word for bread)

Some of the other websites I looked at while developing the lesson plan: http://www.rachelsenglish.com/videos/aa-bat-vowel http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html

Experience Our first tutoring session was on November 21 in the library. I know Hijiri quite well, and we usually use Japanese when speaking to each other so before beginning I told her that everything would be in English. I started the lesson by talking to her a little; I asked her how her day was and so on just to loosen the mood. Then I told her that I had listened to her reading the stories and that even though she does fairly well we were going to work on making /a/ and / / sound a little more different, because sometimes she mixes them up. I then opened up the text book to page 30 and showed her the different mouth shapes, and then explained which one / / was. I explained to her how / / is formed in the mouth because she already knows how to pronounce /a/ cause it is very common in Japanese. When I was explaining the mouth shape and she was trying it there was a moment when she said Ahh! like Now I understand! which made me really happy because even just explaining the mouth position seemed to help her and I could see that she could tell a difference too, like no one ever just explained it to her. So we practiced the sounds a little more to make sure we got the hang of it and then went on to words. After, mastering the sounds alone I asked her if she knew what a minimal pair is. She said no so I explained to her that they are sets of words that have one sound that is different and then I showed her the cards I made. We went through each card, reading and pronouncing them and making sure she understood there meaning. I was quite satisfied with myself because I guessed which words she probably wouldnt know correctly. She didnt know Bran or Brawn, so I explained them to her and she reacted in a way that told me she now knows what they mean. After that, we played the minimal pair game, taking turns on who would speak. She did very well; she didnt get any wrong which makes me wonder if my lesson was too easy. But, she seemed to enjoy it, and I think it was good for her to feel successful. Because she did so well we finished the game a little faster than expected so I got out the tongue twisters I made. First I read them and I actually made a mistake which made us laugh and then had her read them. I think she did better than me actually. She did a terrific job with them and was very understandable. She differentiated the two vowels very well within the sentences, so I feel like there was an improvement. I think she is now much more aware of how important differentiating vowel sounds is. The only thing I am not happy about is that we ended the lesson a little early because I underestimated her English proficiency. So the next lesson I will do my best to come up with more challenging material, and enough activities to occupy the full thirty minutes. Pronunciation problem #2 Hijiri also mixes up the lax vowel /I/ ,with the tense vowel sound /i/ saying /fika/ and /nhbit/. This is because Japanese only uses the tense vowel /i/, // is nowhere to be found in the Japanese language so she switches it with something she is familiar with. However, she does not mix up the vowels when one is at the beginning of a word. She never mispronounces it and she has no problem with saying the beginning // in inhabit. So she is able to pronounce the sound but just has trouble remembering to use it when it comes at the middle or end of a word.

Lesson Plan I want to help Hijiri to try and make the /i/ and /I/ phonemes sound more unalike. I again plan to use minimal pairs but in sentences rather than just words alone so that she can here and practicing them in the context they will always be in. I would also like to go over last weeks tutoring session a little just to make sure she is still trying to differentiate the sounds.

Procedure 1. I will go over the previous lesson by re-explaining the mouth position of /ae/ and having Hijiri read one of the tongue twisters again. We will also go back over the two words she did not know. 2. I will introduce the topic for that lesson: making /i/ and /I/ sound different. And explain to her where she has problems and why it should be fixed. 3. Show her the picture on page 30 again and explain which mouth position each of the two sounds are a. /i/: The tip of the tongue is slightly behind and below the bottom teeth. Lips are spread (show picture). The tongue is tense, and the sides of the tongue touch the upper molars, the middle of the tongue should be touching the roof of the mouth. b. /I/: The tongue is resting just on top of the teeth in a relaxed way, and lies fairly flat in the mouth, but the back of the tongue rises slightly when the sound is pronounced. The lips are spread loosely, and your tongue may just barely touch the upper molar. When the sound is produced you should feel your soft palate move really quickly, almost like a burst of air has hit it. 4. Next I will give her a set of about 6 words and without reading them to her I will have her divide the words into two different groups; the /i/ group and /I/ group. To see if she at least knows what phoneme each word is supposed to have. If she gets any wrong, I will read them aloud so that she can hear how they sound and hopefully be able to remember later on. These are harder words than the next activity will use. In most of these words the /i/ or /I/ phoneme occur in the middle of the word. Which she seems to have the most trouble with. 5. Next we will do a worksheet: activity. One I believe we received in class called Pair Practice-/i/ and /I/ This uses minimal pairs in sentences. One person is to read the sentence and the other is supposed to respond accordingly which will tell the reader if the listener has understood what they are saying. For example Did you sleep? Yes, I went to bed at 10pm last night. We will take alternating turns. 6. If we still have time after these activities I would like to do some more tongue twisters using /i/ and /I/. Maybe even one that has /i/ /I/ /ae/ and /a/! Materials The book, page 30 Previous lessons tongue twisters, and difficult words

Index cards with /i/ and /I/ words o I got the words from the diagnostic test (the ones she mispronounced) and then thought of words with similar features. Two Pair Practice-/i/ and/I/ papers Tongue twisters o Six sleepy sheep sit on a bin and think of sipping soup o How many sheets could a sheet slitter slit if a sheet slitter could slit sheets http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/en.htm

Experience I thought this tutoring session went a lot better, I actually knew her proficiency level for the most part and the lesson seemed more fit for her. First off, I reserved a room in the library but by the time we got there, there was already a group of people that looked quite settled and in deep conversation so I being the chicken I am, just asked Hijiri if she wouldnt mind just doing the session outside which she said was fine. So we went outside to the picnic tables and got started. First I went over the words she had trouble with last week. I am glad I did because she forgot their meaning and how to pronounce them. Then we did the tongue twisters, which I thought she did pretty well on. After the review I explained to her about what we were going to do for the lesson. I explained that we would work on /i/ and /I/ and trying to make them sound different. Before I explained how to pronounce /I/ I gave her the note cards with the words that had /i/ and /I/and the underlined phoneme I wanted her to focus on, those words were rhythm, biggest, terrible, Africa, inhabit, feature, technique, and police. I had two more note cards that had the /i/ and /I/ symbols on them along with a word that I knew she would know that corresponded with the sound, so /i/ had eat, and /I/ had in. I then explained to her what IPA was and what sound both symbols represent. I then gave her the cards without reading them and told her to separate them into which column she thought the underlined letter sounded like. She looked at all the cards and in a sort of laughing and surprised manner said eh? I think they all go in the /i/ one. Which to be honest made me quite happy because then I knew I picked the right subject to work on. So I said ok, thats kind of what I thought would happen so dont worry about it. I then read the words to her and she tried it again, getting almost all of them correct! She only missed police thinking it was in the /I/ column but after reading it again she quickly realized her mistake. After we had each column sorted out she looked at it and said wow, which also made me happy because I could tell she was starting to understand that there was a difference. But during the card activity I started to regret doing the tutoring outside because my papers blew away a couple times until I was able to properly weigh them down, which was a little embarrassing but didnt seem to hinder the lesson at all.

After that activity I explained to her how the mouth should be shaped when saying /I/ and after she said it correctly a few times and compared it to /i/ and said all the previous words correctly we moved on to the next activity. I used the paper given to us that was called Pair Practice-/i/ and /I/. We took turns saying a sentence while the other listened and tried to give the right response according to what they thought they heard. She always guessed mine correctly so I tried to get her to say more of them so she could get some practice and realize how important it is to make them different. She had a particularly hard time with differentiating hill and heel so I tried to explain the difference and how she could make them sound more different. I told her that if she couldnt pronounce heel just to make it longer so people will be able to hear at least that it is long and be able to figure out what she is saying. After some more practice and she had said it beautifully within the sentence a few times we went on to the next questions, which she did pretty well with. After we were done with the questions I repeat all the ones she had trouble with and made sure she remembered them. After that activity, because we still had time, we did the tongue twisters. This time I didnt read them before hand and she did very well with /I/, after she read the first time we went over any words she didnt know and then she read it again. And that was the end of the lesson. Afterwards she told me I liked this lesson, I learned a lot. This made me super happy because I felt like the first lesson was too easy for her and she didnt enjoy it much. Reflection At first I was very nervous to be tutoring someone because I felt very inadequate, but now that the two sessions are over I kind of wish we had to do three sessions instead because I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot from the first tutoring session that we had. I learned that it is very important to know your student. I didnt know Hijiris proficiency level in English very well so I felt like the first lesson was too easy and didnt benefit her very much, and I am almost certain she felt the same way though she is too nice to ever say that. After I knew that she was much more proficient in English than I had previously thought, I was able to create a lesson that she could benefit from. When she said I really liked that lesson, I thought it was good practice it got me really excited to teach English because I saw firsthand a little light bulb go off in her mind, however small. It just helped me to realize that knowing your students needs and interests is essential in helping them to improve and stay motivated. I also came to find through my experience and others, that it is good to create a balanced relationship with your student. One that is friendly and comfortable, but you give respect to the student and in return they respect your authority and knowledge and ultimately come to trust you. I thought Hijiri was a wonderful student, she listened to what I said, tried everything, even when she would look silly, and ultimately even though we are friends she respected that at that moment I was the teacher. I think setting an appointment and having the session in a secluded place like in or by the library helped establish that mood. I learned that everything has a time and a place. Some of the people in my group said they were trying to teach their spouse at home and that it didnt go very well because they werent focused and were too comfortable with them to see them as a their teacher. I feel that some of that stress could have been eliminated just by going to a more formal setting like the library.

I found that if I explained to Hijiri why we were doing the things we were that she was much more responsive and willing to try. So through this experience I found that telling the student the reason for certain activities and how they can benefit will help them to be more understanding and help boost their motivation. One thing I had trouble with was time. I ended both sessions early because I did not prepare enough materials. This taught me that you should probably prepare a lesson that is longer than the time allotted to you. You can always continue the lesson later on if it is too long but ending early, I feel is not fair to the student, and the time you have with them is usually precious because sometimes its the only time that student has to practice English. Overall I had a very good experience. I enjoyed teaching pronunciation and cant wait to get back out there. I am glad I had this experience, and I am sure I will use the things I have learned during this time in the future.