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Humanities
- ISSN: 2155-7993
- Journal of Modern Education Review
Facilitating Taiwan Elementary Students’ Production of Sentence Stress on
English Reading Aloud Tasks
Lim-Ha Chan
(Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages, Taiwan, China)
Abstract: Elementary students in Taiwan tend to chant monotonously when ask to read aloud. The pronunciation of words was much more emphasized than the production of sentence stress in their English language classroom. Nevertheless, research found that teaching suprasegmentals (such as intonation, phrasing, stress) might enhance communication competence (e.g., Anderson-Hsieh, Johnson, & Koehler, 1992 and Landon, 2009). Therefore, facilitating Taiwan elementary students’ production of English sentence stress might worth doing. This study aims to explore the effect of Taiwan elementary students’ use of visual aids for reading aloud (VARA) on accuracy of sentence stress. The participants were second to sixth graders participating in a 4-day English summer camp. They were asked to read aloud a Reader’s Theater story script as a pretest. Then, they were explicitly taught to use the VARA system to practice reading aloud the script. After the practice time, they were asked to read aloud the same story script in which the VARA system was used as a post-test. At the end, a survey was given to the participants to find out whether the VARA system gave them more confidence in the reading aloud tasks. The results showed a significant improvement on the production of sentence stress.
Key words: second language learning, elementary education, sentence stress, suprasegmental, English
language