Acrolectal English for Tertiary Students: Individualised Metaphonological Awareness Instruction

Bromeley Philip,John Francis Noyan

doi:10.17576/3l-2018-2404-03

Abstract

This paper explores the process of implementing the Individualised Metaphonological Awareness Instruction (I-MAI) for the teaching and learning of acrolectal English in terms of the phonological aspect: selected suprasegmental features of English sound, namely, the schwa and catenation or linking features. For instance, not producing the neutral schwa vowel sound is in part what gives those whose second language is English an accent or pronunciation that is different from those whose first language is English. Producing or not producing schwa vowel sounds affects the quality of one’s pronunciation and how natural one sounds when speaking English. If the sophisticated learners aspire to approximate the RP model in their enunciation, schwa and catenation are deemed very important. The study assesses the instruction model in terms of its facilitative effects in assisting the teacher as well as in assisting the student to learn selected aspects of suprasegmental features of English sounds via scaffolding process. It is a qualitative case study which involves five (5) participant undergraduates at a public university in Sarawak. Only qualitative data involving one participant were reported and discussed in this paper. It was found that firstly the I-MAI model did assist both the teacher and the student in coaching and learning pronunciation respectively. The process of micro-scaffolding yielded varied scaffolding features/characteristics that explain the interactive dynamics occurring within the individualised instructional process itself. The I-MAI was also found to be positive and facilitative in enhancing the student’s metaphonological awareness of the suprasegmental features of English sounds. Keywords: metaphonological; awareness; acrolectal; catenation; suprasegmental

Highlights

In Malaysia, due to its long history of British colonisation, the British model of English seems to have become an acceptable standard in the educational sector even though it is not spelt out clearly for example, in the Malaysian school English language curriculum
The paper provides a frame of reference for explicit pronunciation teaching especially as regards to specific suprasegmental features of the schwa sound and linking, in the context of Malaysian English as a Second Language (ESL) involving undergraduates at a public university setting
Pronunciation teaching has long been neglected in the Malaysian ESL context (Nair, Krishnasamy & De Mello 2006, Pillai 2017), it would be useful to highlight the findings of the research to help inform the literature as to the potential of explicit pronunciation teaching with strong emphasis on the use of instructional scaffolding

Summary

Introduction

In Malaysia, due to its long history of British colonisation, the British model of English seems to have become an acceptable standard in the educational sector even though it is not spelt out clearly for example, in the Malaysian school English language curriculum. Many would agree that pronunciation is an aspect of language that is difficult to acquire, the reality is that generally in many English lessons in Malaysian schools, teaching pronunciation is granted the least attention (Nair, Krishnasamy & De Mello 2006, Jayapalan & Pillai 2011, Pillai 2017). It can be argued that pronunciation skill is one of the most important language skills that contributes towards the overall success of a competent language user. This is because despite having a good grasp of the lexical and syntactical rules of English, an English user may find himself/herself unintelligible in his/her speech if he/she had poor pronunciation. The spread of English worldwide is explained in Kachru’s (1985) Concentric circles paradigm that demarcates the types of patterns of English into three circles: the Inner Circle, comprising the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Australia, Canada and New

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