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Boyoung Kang
19 July 2015
Artifact #1
Pronunciation Rules
(IOF Pronunciation)
Description
This artifact is distributed in IOF pronunciation class. To be specific, the teacher gives
students a handout each time they start to learn a new chapter. Students need to organize the
pronunciation rules with examples referencing their textbook. The handout covers various
components of pronunciation, such as stress patterns in words (ch.5), stress patterns in words
having suffixes (ch.6), stressed and reduced words (ch.7), stress patterns in sentences (ch.8), and
intonation at the end of sentences (ch.9). The textbook adapted in class is Well Said:
Pronunciation for Clear Communication.

New Ideas, Information, or Awareness


Completing the handout helps students internalize and remember the rules better, even
though the teacher does not check if they fill it out or not. According to Beecher (1988), the
study shows that students are seven times more likely to remember information one week after
they were exposed to the information if the information has been recorded in their notes (Howe,
1970). In other words, note-taking should be done by students themselves regardless of whether
it is checked by the teacher. The teacher encourages students to take notes by providing
guidelines on the handout. Also, it is easy for students to review what they have learned before

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taking tests like the midterm and final. Since they wrote by hand, recalling the information is
more accessible for students to look their own notes.
This artifact includes a similar principle to the Cornell Guided Notes, developed by
professor Pauk (1989). He suggests that teachers should prepare the guidelines of the notes such
as fill-in-the-blank to prevent student from missing key points (Scearce, n.d.). This handout can
be figured out such as how many rules are in each chapter and what the topic is. Therefore,
students can easily notice which part they should fill in.

Reflection
Important rules of pronunciation should be learnt by heart, since students in ESL classes
are not native speakers of English. However, students have trouble memorizing them because of
the large number of rules. If there is no opportunity to review a bunch of rules, most students
would never look them again. Thus, this handout offers students a chance to look them again at
least once. As a student who took this class, I am sure this is a really helpful material. I wrote
rules and examples that I learned every day. In the next class, I could see the rules that I learned
in the previous class because I had to write another rules on the same page. It reminded me of
what I learned before. I want to use this kind of material in my future pronunciation class
because my students might not be native speakers of English who need to remember rules
intentionally. One thing that I want to change in this artifact is making the space that students fill
in bigger. Since the space is quite narrow in this handout, students must write letters small. It
makes the handout difficult to figure out, and it leads to the result that students never look again.

Works Cited

Beecher, J. (1988, December). Note-Taking: What Do We Know About The Benefits? Retrieved
July 19, 2015, from http://www.learn2study.org/teachers/notes.htm
Scearce, J. (n.d.). How Note-Taking Helps You Learn and Organize. Retrieved July 19, 2015,
from http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/how-note-taking-helps-you-learn-andorganize.html

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