Harrison Neil

Ling260
McCollum
12-01-14
PRONOUNCIATION TUTOR JOURNAL

Introduction
As future ESL teachers we have many opportunities, provided by
our TESOL program here at BYUH, to learn about language and how to
teach it. This has been an excellent opportunity that allowed me to put
my knowledge into practice, allowing us to see how/where the rubber
meets the road, as the expression goes. Pronunciation Tutoring focuses
on the tutees intelligibility issues and how to go about correcting and
remedying these issues. My pronunciation-tutoring journal contains my
tutees background (linguistically), lesson plans to improve his
intelligibility, and my reflection on this tutoring experience as a whole.
Tutee Description
Linguistic Background
My tutee is from Malaysia and his name is Felix. He studied here at

Brigham Young UniversityHawaii for a couple semesters, but he no

longer attends as he is working to support for his family. Felix came
from a country that is considered outer circle for speaking English,
Malaysia. What adds even more to Felixs exposure to English is that he
grew up in Ampang, which is a part of Kuala Lumpur that has many of
the educated who speak English (as their adopted L1, although this was
not the immediate case in Felixs home) with some Malay vocab thrown
in for local flavor. Like I mentioned in the pronunciation doctor
assignment, Felix Speaks five languages. His tongue is loose and
versatile and he picks up new languages very easily, while on the
mission in Sarawak I witnessed Felix pick up bits and pieces of local
dialects without books or even pen and paper! Language is a big part of
everyones identity, and Felix is no exception. His identity here in Laie is
leaning towards Polynesian and this is what causes the intelligibility
issue that will be addressed in the first lesson (-er becoming ah, as a
terminating syllable). Felixs Identity in Malaysia is what causes the
second issue, which will be covered in the second tutoring session (v
becoming w). These intelligibility issues stem more from Felixs identity
and less from his ability.

Pronunciation Needs
Words that end in er and the segmental v (Represented and
IPA as v) becoming a soft w sound are the snags Felixs intelligibility
suffers from.
The fact that Felix has a multilingual background provides him
with an extremely wide variety of sounds that he can produce. Although
words that end in er are not common in his more native languages
(Malay, Tamil, Hakka), he is still very capable of making the proper
segmental. As I mentioned in the background section, this issue is due
primarily to Felix is identifying with the Polynesian community here in
Laie where he resides. Felix is a linguistic chameleon and would not
make this alteration in his speech were it not beneficial in his
environment(s). Because of this, my first lesson will seek (first and
foremost)to make him aware of this issue rather than correcting it.
As we have learned this semester in our phonology class, actual
pronunciation and sounds do not closely correlate with spellings in our
Romanized alphabet. One exception to this is the letter v. In standard
American English as well as all the world English as I know of have very
Limited Exceptions Where the letter v does not make the IPA sound

v. Because of this I plan to point this out to Felix, So that he can be less
distracting when producing words that contain the letter v.
I have prepared two 30-minute lessons that I believe can help
Felix with his two main issues that affect intelligibility. While preparing
these lessons for my tutee I kept in mind his background, his desired
outcomes and language proficiency, his personality, and materials
available to me among other things. I reviewed the sections of our
textbook for this class that deal with the issues I will be covering with
my tutee.
First Lesson
Lesson Plan
Description and rationale for lesson objectives!!!!!!!!!
Prior to getting into the lesson I will discuss with Felix the
purpose of these tutoring sessions and make sure we are on the same
page. In order to do this I will explain to him that intelligibility is our
primary focus and goal. Because my tutee is so fluent and
knowledgeable about languages, I will not need many materials In order
to help him see my point ( I think they might distract rather than aid)

and make the necessary changes. I will instead focus on creating a calm
quiet atmosphere that will facilitate our conversation about the need to
pronunciation words that end in er more standardly in certain
circumstances as to not distract. Once Felix has grasped the idea and
shown me that he can produce the words that were distracting in his
audio sample I will show him the YouTube video (link posted below) So
that he can see both ends of the spectrum from the perspective of the
listener. We will then discuss his impressions of both ends of the
spectrum (-er vs. ah) and talk about when the standard form is
relevant and appropriate.
Lesson Narrative
The first lesson was delivered in a private room in the stake
center on 26th of November. Since Felix and I have been friends for quite
sometime there was no awkwardness about me pointing out these
intelligibility issues to him. We had a good talk at the beginning of the
lesson about the desired outcome and purpose of these tutoring
sessions and I was glad to see Felix was on board and excited! I
provided him with a brief overview of my plan for the tutoring session.
After that, I showed him a list of words the end in er and told him how

he pronounced them. He said, brah no make like dat, dis how I talk. Of
course he is kidding he was just showing me that this is his new identity
in a way. After he showed me that he could produce these words
without ending in ah, we moved onto the YouTube video. The video
helped Felix to see how this kind of pronunciation (Mispronunciation)
can be distracting and effective intelligibility. After the video it seemed
like he was more willing to think about and change in the appropriate
contexts.
Second Lesson
Lesson Plan
Description and rationale for lesson objectives!!!!!!!!!
This tutoring session took place on 28th of November. Felix was
feeling ill, but we pushed through anyway. I was very happy with the
way this lesson panned out despite his health troubles!
This lesson was focused on Felixs Pronunciation of the letter v
in English. This is a common problem for people whose native language
is either Tamil or Sinhala (Southern Indian and Sri Lankan languages,
where his mother hails from).

I used a similar strategy as I did in lesson one here at the

beginning of lesson two. I presented Felix with a list of words and
repeated back to him the way that he pronounces them in his audio
sample during our interview for the pronunciation doctor assignment.
I feel that if I had tutored someone who had more issues I
wouldve implemented more materials and more in depth lesson plans.
Because Felix is At such a high-level I felt that I would not distract him
with too many visual aids and so on, And rather focus on a lesson that
would motivate him to be as intelligible as possible. Much of my plan
was to simply point out the issues and remind him that he is able to
produce the correct forms of these words that have the letter v.
I again used a video from my mission videos to show him what he
sounds like from the other end. The video was of himself, which we
both had a good laugh about.
After the discussion about the issue, how it affects intelligibility,
and discussion about the video our 30 minutes were up.

Reflection on the Tutoring Experience

As an aspiring teacher of language I found this pronunciation

tutoring to be very enlightening in shedding light on my skills, strengths,
weaknesses and abilities as a teacher. I obviously have a long way to
come, but I am able to see that my strength is connecting with students
and making sure that they know I care about them and their language
skills and that is why I want to help them. I really enjoyed this tutoring
experience, And I was so happy to see Felix accept the points I made, I
know hell put them into practice in the appropriate times and places
and the future based on his reaction to the lessons. This assignment was
a great reminder of something I learned on my internship; that less is
often more (not in planning, but in material covered or activities
implemented). This was shown to me by the fact that both tutoring
sessions went by very quickly. Im glad that I have this opportunity to
see how I can observe an issue with intelligibility and use the principles
that we have learned in our phonology class to address and correct.
Another major point that was shown to me throughout this
assignment and now during my reflection on the assignment is that
people often have anxieties and insecurities about their language and
we need to be tactful and warm so that our instruction can be received

with open ears and minds. I realized this when Felix commented on
how long the list was of issue words. I could have accomplished the
same and by showing him only a few examples.
This has been an excellent example of how feedback is important
in language learning and how it can be done. I am grateful that I have
had this opportunity for such a specific task; I feel that it really helped
me apply when I have learned in LING260 these past few months!!
Each of the audio samples that I covered in the pronunciation
doctor assignment would necessitate very different lesson plans, the
reflection of this has shown me that we as teachers need to have a vast
amount of knowledge in how to approach the infinite combinations of
variables that we may encounter with students. I feel blessed to have
such good textbooks and professors to help me in this quest for
knowledge. Thanks for everything Brother McCollum!
I really enjoyed This assignment, And I feel that it is one it will
stick out in my mind As the most diagnostic for me personally as a
teacher/tutor.

http://youtu.be/GLmfQSR3EI0?list=PLKs50pHJL1KkeWwg7bjN437DX1
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