Sunjung Baer

PRONUNCIATION TUTORING PAPER Introduction This pronunciation tutoring paper is covering my two pronunciation tutoring sessions with my tutee. Through the tutoring sessions and writing this paper, I was able to learn how I should approach and teach pronunciation to students, and I was also able to reflect on my lesson and teaching about pronunciation.

Tutee Description Background My tutees name is Jihye. She is from Korea, and her major is Psychology at BYUH. She started learning English when she was an elementary school student, and before she came to BYUH she attended BYU Provos ESL program for a year in order to start studying English in earnest so that she could enter BYUH. After she came to BYUH, she was in EIL courses for six months. Currently, she is living in TVA with her family. Since all her family members are Korean (her husband, son, and grandmother) and she spends most of her time with her family outside of the school, she rarely has the chance to use English after school. Due to lack of English usage with a lot of Korean usage, even though she has high understanding about vocabulary and grammar rules, her pronunciation has the same problem as most Koreans have, which is that vowels should be pronounced as /i/ or /I/. Thus, I gave her an English proficiency level 7.5 out of 10.

Pronunciation Needs There is a major problem that affects Jihyes intelligibility, and it is the /i/ and /I/ vowel pronunciation. For example, from the three diagnostic tests that I gave her previous tutoring sessions, she pronounced confident in speech (/kanfIdnt In spit/) as /kanfidnt In spit/, and through this, I was able to tell that she knows how to make the/i/ and /I/ sounds differently, but she is not able to recognize which vowels should be pronounced as /i/ or /I/. Based on the problem that she has with her pronunciation, I will plan two lessons that can help her with her recognition of vowel sounds between the /i/ and /I/ sound and producing the vowels correctly. Since there are some words that she says where only the vowel sounds are different, such as sin and seen, sit and seat, and bit and beat, it is important to recognize which vowel should be pronounced as /i/ or /I/ and pronounce them correctly in order to convey and

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reaccept the right meaning, especially in her situation where she lives in an English speaking country and studies at BYUH.

First Lesson Lesson Plan Since Jihye is able to pronounce /i/ and /I/ correctly, but she does not know which vowels should be pronounced as /i/ or /I/ my plan for the first lesson is to help her to recognize the words that should be pronounced as /i/ or /I/. First, I will pronounce the /i/ and /I/ sound with an exaggerated mouth shape so that I can make sure that she can tell the difference of the mouth shapes when /i/ and /I/ sounds are pronounced. Listening to these vowel sounds with the mouth shapes will help her to pronounce /i/ and /I/ sounds more clearly and it will lead her to tell the difference between /i/ and /I/ sounds easily when she listens to the words that contain those vowel sounds. After that, I will make her to read the word cards out loud that I made which contain words with the /i/ and /I/ vowel sounds such as sin, seen, bit, and beat. Through this activity, I want her to hear her own pronunciations of the words and remember them for the next activity, and I will not make any correction about her pronunciation. Later, since I want her to hear a native speakers pronunciation of those words from the word cards, I will also prepare a recording of my husbands voice saying the words while pronouncing them slowly and clearly so that she can listen and repeat while looking at the cards with the words on them. It will help her to hear the differences between her and a native speakers pronunciation of the /i/ and /I/ vowel sounds. This will be the end of the first lesson. My objective of teaching this lesson is to help my tutee to understand which words should be pronounced with an /i/ or /I/ vowel sound because even though she can pronounce those vowel sounds, she cannot recognize which words should be pronounced with an /i/ or /I/ sound. Through the activities that I prepare, she will have a more clear understanding of the difference between the /i/ and /I/ vowel sounds, and she will be able to define the vowels that should be pronounced as /i/ or /I/.

Materials Used During this first lesson, there are some materials that I used to teach my tutee. The first one is word cards that I created by myself. The picture that I put looks like the cards that I created but with different words since I needed to put the words that contain an /i/ and /I/

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vowel sound on the card. I allowed my tutee to read them out loud, and I also used them when I made my tutee repeat them while listening to the recoding of them. Another material that I used to teach her is the recording of the words on the cards. The recording was made by my husband who is a native speaker. While recording, I asked him to read them very slowly and clearly so that she could catch which vowels of the words are pronounced as /i/ or /I/ and repeat after him easily. As I mentioned before, after I started the lesson pronouncing the /i/ and /I/ sounds with exaggerated mouth shapes, I am going to use the word cards and ask her to read them out loud so that she can hear her own pronunciation. Following that, I am going to use the recording of the words and make her listen and repeat it while looking at the words. Through this, she will be able to hear the difference between her own and my husbands pronunciation of the words. My plan is to help my tutee to recognize the words that should be pronounced as /i/ or /I/.

Lesson Narrative I met with Jihye on November 26th at her house since we are living in the same building in TVA. Since we are friends and we both are from Korea, we always use Korean while communicating with each other. However, during this tutoring session, since it is about English pronunciation, I decided to speak English to her during this tutoring session, and I told her about this beforehand. I also told her that whenever she cannot understand the lesson she could ask me to explain the lesson in Korean. During the lesson, since she does not know about any linguistic terms, I was very careful with my choice of words in order to help her to understand the lesson better. I started off by telling her that we will focus on the /i/ and /I/ vowel sounds on that day. I said those two vowel sounds out loud with exaggerated mouth movement and shape several times and I also made her to repeat after me while I was doing it. Since she was able to pronounce them correctly, I asked her the major difference between them that she was able to find. She told me that the shape of the mouth when the /i/ sound is pronounced is more flat and wide ( ) than when the /I/ sound is pronounced ( ). In order to make her have

a more clear understanding about the difference between those vowel sounds, during the

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explanation of the sounds, I used Korean pronunciation and explained that the /I/ sound is in the middle of (/i/) and (//) sound. After that, I took the word cards out, and asked her to pronounce each word twice out loud. I also told her that by doing this activity, she should remember her own pronunciation for the next activity. It was my mistake that I told her that she needed to remember her own pronunciation, because her pronunciation was unnaturally slow and she was too carful about her pronunciation while reading the words. Thus, after she finished reading the words twice out loud, I made her read it just one more time without thinking about anything. While she was doing it, I recorded her voice secretly (because I did not want her to notice that I am recording and to read the words unnaturally like the first time) so that she can listen to her natural pronunciation later and compare with the recording of the words from a native speaker. Since her baby son was there during the whole tutoring session time, he interrupted us a lot. Thus, we did not have enough time to do the other activity that I planned to do, which is listening to the recoding of the words from the native speaker and repeating them while looking at the cards. Before I left, I gave her the word cards, and the recording of the words and I asked her if she could listen to the recording and repeat after it before the second lesson came. I also told her it would be better if we were meeting at my house without her son because we could not finish the whole lesson. She said she is not sure whether she can come without her son or not but she said that she will do the thing that I gave her. We decided that we will meet on November 28th and I left.

Second Lesson Lesson Plan Since we were not able to finish the lesson about recognition of the /i/ and /I/ sounds in the words, and I was not sure if she would be able to do the assignment that I gave her the last time or not, I decided to change my lesson plan for this second lesson in order to be flexible depending on the situation and changes. If she listened and practiced the pronunciation of the words in the word cards, I will check her pronunciation of the words by making her read them out loud. If she is able to pronounce all the words correctly, I will give the other word cards that contain the other words with /i/ or /I/ sounds. Then, I will play the recording of the words and make her to

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choose the right word from the recording. It will help both of us to see if she is able to make a connection between the words and the right /i/ and /I/ vowel sounds. If she did not do the assignment, I will play the recording and make her to repeat the words out loud from the word cards that I gave her from the previous lesson. After several repetitions, I will turn off the recording and make her to pronounce the words by herself. If she is able to pronounce all the words correctly, I will do the activity of listening to the recording and find the right words from the new word cards that I mentioned in a previous paragraph. Then, I will use tongue twisters so that she can practice pronouncing the words with the right vowel sound between /i/ and /I/ in the sentence. Under the assumption that she is able to recognize which vowel should be pronounced as /i/ or /I/, I will make her to read the tongue twisters by herself slowly and clearly without my assistance at first. If she makes an error while doing it, I will correct her so that she can pronounce it correctly. By repeating the tongue twisters several times, I will make her to say it faster each time. If we have some time left, I will make her to read all the words from the word cards out loud and record them. Before I leave, I will let her listen to the recording from a native speaker, her first recording, and her last recording of the words, and allow her to compare them and let her tell me if she is able to tell the difference and improvement of her pronunciation. The purpose of the second lesson is to allow her to be able to not only recognize the words that should be pronounced correctly whether it is /i/ or /I/ but also to help her to pronounce the words and sentences that contain the words several times so that she can pronounce them correctly.

Materials Used The materials that I used are the word cards from the previous lesson: the recording of them, the new word cards, and the recording of them in order to review the previous lesson and check her recognition of the words and the /i/ and /I/ vowel sounds. I also used tongue twisters that focus on the /i/ and /I/ vowel sounds. The tongue twisters are from these websites http://eltmedia.heinle.com/resource_uploads/downloads/039596072X_33049.pdf, and http://www.buzzle.com/articles/tongue-twisters-for-adults.html. For example, the tongue twisters that I picked are Silly Sally swiftly shooed seven silly sheep. The seven silly sheep

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Silly Sally shooed shilly-shallied south. These sheep shouldn't sleep in a shack; sheep should sleep in a shed, The sheep on the ship slipped on the sheet of sleet, and The keen king kissed the quick queen on her green ring. Moreover, I used the first recording of her pronunciation and last recording of her pronunciation of the words to make her realize the changes of her own pronunciation by comparing with the native speakers recording.

Lesson Narrative We met November 28th in my house without her son. Luckily, she did the assignment that I gave her; we were able to start with the reading the previous word cards out loud. Even though she hesitated to pronounce some words, I was able to see that she is recognizing which vowel should be pronounced /i/ or /I/. I gave her the new word cards in order to do the new activity that I prepared. I played the recording of the words on the cards from the native speaker, and I asked her to pick up the right word cards. Since the words are very similar except the vowel parts such as ship, and sheep, she did not have any clue if she would recognize the vowel sounds of the words. However, even though she took some time to find the right cards, she was able to pick all the cards successfully. I asked her if she practiced a lot, and she told me she actually did a lot of practice because she felt bad for not finishing the lesson because of her son. After that, I gave her the tongue twisters. When she looked at the sentences at first, she was worried that she needed to read them fast. I told her she could read slowly and clearly. After she became familiar with the sentences by reading them slowly and clearly, I asked her to read them five more times but to try to speed up each time. Even though she stammered and hesitated several times by speeding up, she finished reading them and I told her that she did a good job. Since we did not have enough time, I could not ask her to read the all the word cards to record her pronunciation. However, by giving her her first recording (she was actually surprised that I recorded her voice secretly) and the recording from the native speaker, I told her it would be better if she can record her pronunciation of the words on her own and compare all three recordings in order to see the difference and improvement of her pronunciation. I also told her that reading the word cards out loud at least once a week and listening to the native speakers recording will help sustain her recognition of the /i/ and /I/

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vowel sounds and pronounce the words with the right vowels. I thanked her for her participation and the lesson was ended.

Reflection on the tutoring experience During the lesson, I was not nervous about speaking English to my tutee because I am used to speaking English with my other Korean friends in class during the discussion time. However, finding the right level vocabulary for her during the lessons gave me a hard time because I am used to using the linguistic terms, and I did not prepare for the alternative vocabulary of linguistic terms. Thus, through this experience I was able to learn that preparing the vocabulary that I am going to use in class that match with students level should be the part of lesson plan, and in order to do this, I need to have clear understanding about the students level. The second thing that I learned from the two tutoring sessions is that I should be flexible when I make a lesson plan because there is high possibility that something might happen, and I should not plan too many things to do in one lesson. For example, from the first lesson I did not expect her son would interrupt our lesson, so I planned several activities that we could do during the lesson and we could not finish doing all of them. After the lesson, I did not think that I did a bad job with planning the lesson but I thought that I might have prepared too many things to do. Thus, while preparing the second lesson I tried to consider the things that can happen during the lesson, and I was able to come up with a lesson plan that could deal with both situations whether my tutee did the assignments that I gave from the first session or not. However, I still think that I planned too many things to do for the second lesson again. Actually, this was a problem that I had when I thought English in Korea. I always planned a lot of things to do in one lesson, and made myself feel pressure and made the students overwhelmed. I personally think that making a lesson plan with the right amount of things to do in one lesson is difficult to do. I think I still need more experience with the lesson plan in order to improve my lesson plan habit. Also, I learned that we should be able to make decisions quickly for making changes during the lesson as a teacher or tutor. Since I was not able to finish the things that I planned during the first lesson, and I knew that I might be having a hard time carrying out the second lesson if the things that I prepared for the first lesson was not done, I quickly decided to change it as an assignment. If I did not have any teaching experience previously, I would

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probably be frustrated and not know what to do, but since I had dealt with these kinds of situations previously while teaching English in Korea, I was able to make it through. Luckily, I was able to see that my tutee can recognize the vowels that should be pronounced as /i/ and /I/. Before, even though she was able to pronounce both sounds, she did not have a clear understanding about those two vowel sounds and which vowels should be pronounced as /i/ or /I/. Thus, when she pronounced words with the /i/ or /I/ vowel sound she just pronounced them randomly. However, after the two tutoring sessions, even though it still takes time for her to figure out which words should be pronounced right away by looking at the words with an /i/ vowel or an /I/ vowel sound, she is able to figure out the right pronunciation on her own. Obviously, since fixing and training ones pronunciation takes a long time and a repetition of practices, I did not expect her to fix her problem from the two tutoring sessions. However, I am so happy that I can see her improvement. I am glad that a person with that type of enthusiasm is my friend and was my tutee.