Dongwook Kang LING 260 Pronunciation Tutoring Journal Bro.

Wolf

Tutee Description Introduction

This tutoring assignment serves two main objectives. First, tutors will be able to apply principles of English pronunciation that they learned to their teaching. Second, tutors will be able to recognize tutees (learners) needs according to their cultural background, language level, and education background. When these goals are achieved, tutors will reflect what they learned from the assignment onto their own teaching.

Background
My tutee is Korean. She has been at BYUH about 8 months. She started from EIL Intermediate II level. Her education background is that she has studied English only for college entrance exam. She works at the PCC as a waitress. Her goal of English pronunciation is to speak English intelligibly because she sometimes struggled because of her English pronunciation at work. She has a hard time in communicating with her customer. The experience at her work became a great motive to herself, and she actively engaged in the tutoring sessions.

Pronunciation Needs
Overall score that I gave her is 7.5 out of 10. Generally, she speaks good English even though she has a strong accent, which is commonly found among Koreans. I gave her a few reading materials to read in order to analyze her weaknesses and prepare for my lesson

plan. She showed a clear difference in between words that she knows and words that she never heard before. I could also analyze some vowels that she struggled, such as / /, //, and / /. For example, she pronounced a word apple epl. Other than this, she was not able to distinguish the difference between /e/ and / /. major consonant issues that I found were //, //, and /p/. However, I figured out that the issue that draws my attention was a stressing. The consonant and vowel sounds that she struggled with seemed a not major issue that decreases her intelligibility. Based on the diagnostic test, I prepared my plan to address /e/ and / / difference, some consonant sounds, and stressing.

First Lesson Lesson Plan

I decided to work on her weaknesses by teaching her theoretical principles of English pronunciation. Since she has no understanding about the difference between /e/ and / /, I decided to teach how to produce these two similar sounds; therefore, she will eventually be able to see the difference herself. I used the English vowel chart that shows different vowels sounds in different location of a speaker s mouth. I also decided to use a rubber band to give her an idea of word-stressing.

Material Used
English Vowel Chart (See the last page of this journal) A rubber band White board Word lists (I made my own word lists, which are relevant to her job at the PCC)

A small mirror

Lesson Narrative
Since she was afraid of making errors, I had to concern about positive learning environment. Her experience of failure was that she tried to guide her customer to a dessert section. She said that We have a dessert section next to a salad bar, but the old lady replied what? to her. After a few attempts to explain what she said, she gave up explaining what she tried to say and took the old lady to the dessert bar. This experience was very crucial to my tutee, and the problem was that happened several times. Fortunately, I had a similar experience of being unintelligible at work as well. I kindly encouraged her that this is just a part of learning English, and told her that that will keep happening unless you learn English. After we had a short discussion about her pronunciation and goals of this tutoring session, she seemed to be very motivated. I began the lesson with giving sound examples of /e/ and / /. I remembered that Bro. Wolf exaggerated his mouth shape when he explained that sounds change depending on a

speaker s jaw position. As I spoke words apple and effort, she repeated what I said. However, even though she said that she could hear the difference, she struggled with pronouncing / / sound. In order to solve this issue, instead of focusing how to produce a correct sound, I emphasized on correcting her mouth shape. I asked her to pull her jaw down as low as possible. When she made a correct shape, I asked her say apple while she kept her jaw fixed. She seemed to understand what sound that I wanted to hear from her. When she understood how to produce the correct sound, the lesson went smoothly. I approached in the same way for other vowel sounds. The vowel chart helped a lot for her recognize a right way of producing English vowel sounds. In order to teach stressing in English, I used a rubber band to demonstrate how to stress words in English. I explained her that most stressed words are pronounced higher, longer, and lauder; beside, 90% of two syllable nouns are stressed on the first vowel. Therefore, even if she faced English words that she never heard or saw before, she could assume where in the word should be stressed. After the explicit rule explanation, I asked her to read the word list that I prepared for the lesson. I specifically asked her to be careful on vowel sounds that she practiced. In order to enhance her understanding of stressing in English, I gave her two sentences that have the exactly same words. For example, He NEVER took a bus and He never took A BUS are the sentences that I used to explain stressing in English. The first response from her was What is the difference? I was happy to see my lesson went as I planned. Instead of giving an answer directly, I gave her a time to think about the difference. Finally, I taught that English sentence alters its meaning depending on the words that you stress on. The first sentence means that the person (He) doesnt like to take a bus or has never taken a bus before. On the other hand, the next sentence could mean that he would take anything but a bus. She said that I think that Ive learned this before but I dont

remember. I concluded the lesson after She and I practiced the stressing a few more times. The lesson took about 40 minutes by the time that we finished reading the word list, so I gave her homework to study words that she doesnt know in the list.

Second Lesson Lesson Plan

The lesson plan for the second session was focused on how well she understands the rules and she produces the correct sounds. Therefore, I prepared words that have /e/ and / / in, so that I may be able to analyze whether she recognizes them and produces the sounds correctly. After I checked her understanding, I would write a short dialogue, which is relevant to her job, to check both her understanding of word stressing and vowel/consonant sounds. The main activity of the second lesson is a role-play of which I take a role as a customer, and she takes a role as a waitress.

Material Used
English Vowel Chart / Consonant Chart (See the last page of this journal) White board Word lists (I made my own word lists, which are relevant to her job at the PCC) A piece of paper and pen

Lesson Narrative
I wanted to know how much she remembers about the previous lesson, so I prepared two different types of activities. One was that has the same words that we practiced in the previous session, and the other was new words that have /e/ and / /, such as animal, effort, arrow, appetizer, and entrance. First, I spoke words bet and bat to see if she could hear the difference and produce them differently. It was very happy to see her recognizing the difference, and I could see that how hard she practiced herself. After I checked her understanding about the previous lesson, I gave her a new word list. There were some words that she knows and doesnt know. However, one interesting scene that I observed was that she was assuming what the vowels would sound like based on the spelling. Although she couldnt guess everything correctly, it was very encouraging moment for me to see her making efforts. I choose to teach English consonants in pair. In other word, instead of teaching a single consonant that she feels difficult with, I decided to teach consonant pairs, which are produced in the same place/manner of articulation. I picked /f/, /v/, and / /. First, I explained

how to shape a mouth to produce /f/ and /v/ sounds by using the consonant chart that I made. Bro. Wolf said that places of articulation are not necessarily taught. However, I made my own assumption that learners would understand and perform better if they have both a theoretical knowledge and adequate aptitude. When I explained /f/ sound to her, I gave her an example of how Koreans speak a word Facebook in Korea. Those who have studied English would pronounce the word /fes bk/ while those who dont know English would pronounce it /pes
bk

/. The point is that /f/ sound doesnt exist in Korean sound system. It was the same when

I taught her //. I told her that I also had a hard time when I worked at the PCC with // sound. I thought I said that /br mi ras/, but my co-worker heard it /las/. She and I enjoyed listening to my embarrassing moments when I was taking EIL courses. Last 10 minutes of the lesson, I decided to practice a role-play. She acts as a waitress, and I act as if Im a customer of her restaurant. I asked questions that are commonly heard in restaurants. While she answered my questions, I decided to tease her by saying that I don t understand. Mostly, she dealt with the unexpected situation nicely. However, she seemed to forget what she and I learned from two days of tutoring sessions. I could observe that she failed to produce correct sounds and stress words in sentences. I concluded the lesson with giving her some comments that she learns in adequate speed, but needs continuous practice to make the knowledge that you learned a habit, so that you use English correctly without thinking. I recommend her to sign up for speech center tutor to improve her pronunciation. I believe that, like other skills of English, English pronunciation requires an adequate understanding and continuous practice to improve.

Reflection on the Tutoring Experience

Language teaching/learning environment is too dynamic for us to be idle. Many new principles rise and fall. I remember that I learned that being eclectic is very important in our profession. There is no absolute methodological, pedagogical, and theoretical solution in language learning/acquisition. I once again recalled the importance of being eclectic. After two times of tutoring sessions, I would like to evaluate my teaching skills and learn from the self-evaluation. What I learned from my other TESOL classes are adjusting and on-spot-decision. These two elements actually happened a lot during the tutoring sessions. What I prepared doesnt guarantee a successful lesson. During the tutoring session, many of my predictions and expectations were not met with my tutee. The tutees level, fluency, and many other characteristics were very different with my assumptions. Whenever that happened, I had to adjust my plan, and eventually all the adjustments that I made were on-spot-decisions. What I learned from this tutoring was that teachers should have a great knowledge about the language that they teach. At the same time, teachers should be quick enough to make changes in their lessons when needed. Teaching is not simply delivering information to one another. It is a relationship in between people; therefore, many affective factors must be cared. For example, my tutee was afraid of making mistakes. This anxiety made her pressured to speak in front of other native speakers of the language. I had to help her overcome this fear first before any other issues. What I did was telling my experience of struggles in communication at work. Throughout the sessions, I carefully approached to correct her mistakes or errors that can possibly discourage my tutee from speaking English. I believe these are what make teaching complex and dynamic. However, I feel that these are what make this profession attractive as well. You have to think what you are going to teach and how you are going to teach. It is essential to keep developing our profession, so that we can prevent our lessons from becoming ritualized. I really enjoyed two days of lessons, and currently teach her pronunciation. I expect that ,at the end of this semester, I can see a remarkable improvement from my tutee.