1

EF Diploma in TESOL

Portfolio Part Three

Independent Research

An Investigation into Pronunciation Errors of Teenage Learners in China

3384 Words

Stephen Harker

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Content Page

Acknowledgements Page 2

Introduction Page 3

Rationale Page 3

Outline of the Project Page 5

Summary of the Findings Page 7

Conclusions Page 15

Implications Page 17

Evaluations Page 19

References Page 22

Appendix 1 – Word List Page 22

Appendix 2 – Sample of Completed Interviews Page 23

Appendix 3 – Interview Results Page 27

Appendix 4 – Teacher Workshop Based on Findings Page 29

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Andrew Brown and Ian Oakes for putting me in contact

with Directors of Studies who could help with the administration of the

interviews in the different EF Centres around China. I would like to thank

Luke Beiseida, DoS of Shenzhen 3; Dan Elsworth, DoS of Guangzhou 2;

Rory Bogdon, DoS of Chongqing 1; and Gavin Watkins, DoS of Urumqi 2 for

conducting interviews. I would like to thank Simon King, DoS of Shanghai 3;

for letting me interview students. Thank you Steve Crooks for checking the

word list and Garry Nixon for advising how to conduct the interviews.

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Introduction

“They [Learners] must recognize that poor, unintelligible speech will make

their attempts at conversing frustrating and unpleasant both for themselves

and their listeners”

Joanne Kenworthy (1987)

Rationale

EF English First is in the process of developing a course for 14-17 year-olds,

a previously untaught age group. Students will enter the course at CEFR

B2.1 level. The course will be made up of weekly two hour long classes and

CALL lessons, which are an undetermined length at the moment of the

study. The syllabus for the course has been based on CEFR levels and

EAQUALS bank functions for the levels CEFR B2.1 through to CEFR C1.2.

Figure 1 shows CEFR descriptors related to speech, indicating that students

should have a proficient knowledge of phonemes before they enter the

course.

• B1S027 Pronunciation clearly intelligible though occasional mispronunciations occur

• B2S005 Delivers announcements on general topics with a degree of clarity, fluency

and spontaneity causing no strain to listeners

• B2S013 Communicate in conversation without unintentionally amusing or annoying listeners

Figure 1: CEFR Descriptors

Some of the major phonological differences between Chinese and English

can be summed up below

• /A/ doesn’t exist in Chinese Mandarin

• There is limited contrast between long and short vowels and in the

case of /i:/and /I/ and /u:/ and /J/it doesn’t exist at all.

• /W/ and /T/ don’t exist in Chinese Mandarin.

• There are only six final consonant phonemes in Chinese Cantonese,

/t/, /p/, /k/, /n/, /m/ and /N/.

Making mistakes is a natural process of learning a foreign language. There

are two distinct causes for the errors which most if not all students make at

various stages; L1 interference and developmental errors

Jeremy Harmer (2001)

‘Studies on error correction show that non-native English teachers tend to

penalize grammatical errors with the utmost severity’

Peter Medgyes (1994)

4

-

The quote from Medgyes, above, reflects the error correction strategies in EF

Centres in China. In EF centres in China, all young learner and teen’s

courses are co-taught up to CEFR A2. The teacher will rotate, week-by-week,

from native-speaker like to local teacher. The strategy outlined by Medgyes

doesn’t just apply to non-native teachers (local teachers) but also to native

speakers in the case of EF. Treatment of pronunciation errors is infrequent

and inconsistent, leading to fossilization of errors. As a result students are

reaching B2.1 level of English but bring the baggage of fossilized errors with

them, such as Chinese learners replacing /θ/ with either /s/ or /f/. There

is no focus on segmental phonological features in the course as it starts at

CEFR B2.1. An assumption has been made that the students should have

mastered these features.

A common cause of miscommunication between, native and non-native

speakers and between two non-native speakers of different L1’s is

mispronunciation. The following example of miscommunication arose in a

study of verbal communication, by Wang Zhen Xian of the Beijing Institute

of Education. The example is a conversation between a native and non-

native speaker of English.

Native Speaker: What’s the filling?

Non-Native Speaker: Delicious!

Native Speaker: I mean ‘What’s the filling?’

Non-Native Speaker: I’m feeling very well!

In this conversation the Non-native speaker processed the length of the

vowel incorrectly, a common error with Chinese learners of English, as

stated by Jung Chang in Learner English, leading to miscommunication,

and possible frustration and certainly a negative communication experience,

which could have future repercussions.

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Outline of the Project

The research project aims to answer the following question(s)

1) What are the problem phonemes for EF’s students?

2) Where do the problem phonemes occur in the word for EF’s students?

3) What do EF’s students produce instead of the problem phonemes?

The information gathered from the research will be used to guide the

development of a syllabus for a pronunciation supplement to a new teenage

learner course.

First background reading into the potential problems took place. This

information was then used to create a word list containing identified

problem phonemes. Where possible the problem phoneme was placed in six

words, two in the initial, two in the medial and two in the final position of

the words. The word list was then checked by colleagues for mistakes,

appropriate length and wording. See Appendix 1 for the finalised word list

The words chosen for list came from the General Service List and words

taken from current courses that students would have faced. It was decided,

where possible, the meaning of the words are known to the students, so they

could focus on pronouncing them and not thinking about the meaning of

them to avoid students mispronouncing words because they are unknown.

A further criterion for the word list was the expected response, in China

there is a large influence from American pop culture, furthermore the

current EF course suite is influenced by American English, such as

grammar, in ‘I have gotten …’ to the spelling, such as ‘color’ and ‘center,’ it

was decided to use American English. For example the word ‘car’ was

chosen and expected to be read to the students as /kɑ:ʳ/ not /kɑ:/.

After discussion with a colleague the method of research was decided.

Having students read the word from a PPT was disregarded in favour of

saying the word to students and have them say it back. Reading the word

may lead to a student confusing the pronunciation because they are not

familiar with the written forms the phonemes could take and how different

phonemes could take the same written form, e.g.,

"A rough, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman emerged from a slough to walk

through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing."?

www.funtrivia.com

Transcribed as -:

/ə rʌf dəʊ feɪs θɔ:tfʊl plaʊmən ɪmɜ:ʤ frɒm əs lu: tə wɔ:kθru: ðə stri:tsəv skɑ:bərə kɒfɪŋ

ən hɪkʌpɪŋ/

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This extreme example shows the many ways in which ‘-ough’ can be

pronounced and as Russell Stannard points out,

“Most people would say that English is not a “phonetic” language because it is not

pronounced the way it is spelled. However, studies have shown that over 80% of

English words do follow a regular spelling pattern. Unfortunately, approximately

500 of the most common English words e.g. said, are spelled irregularly”

Russell Stannard

To get significant data, after discussion with colleagues, it was decided to

have a sample size of a minimum of 80 students.

The final word lists were sent out to DoS of our EF Centres, they were

chosen because of their high proficiency in the phonemic script and ability

to identify problems, and be able to make the problems clear. I interviewed

students in Shanghai, where I am based.

The data collected was correlated and analysed, then used to modify the

syllabus. The outline of the research project is summarized below, (Fig2).

Figure 2: Research Outline

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Summary of the Findings

In the student survey 14 target phonemes were tested on a range of teenage

learners, from CEFR A1 to B2 and who had been studying at EF between

6mths to five years. The sample students covered a geographic range from

the south, Shenzhen and Guangzhou to the west, Chongqing and Urumqi.

Figure 3 shows the overall percentage of errors made by the students for

each of the target phoneme sounds.

Fig 3: Overall Breakdown of Student’s Production of Phonemes

The chart above shows that students were highly accurate pronouncing /tF/,

/F/ and /BJ/, all recording less than 5% errors in the sample. In contrast

/T/, /v/ and /W/ proved to be highly troublesome for the sample all

recording 20% or higher error rates and /W/ recording a 32% error rate.

The words in the study focused on phoneme positioning, were there

problems with the initial, medial or final position. The following pie charts

show the breakdown for each sound, except the four phonemes with the

least errors and /J/, all errors with /J/ were in the medial position, the

same as the /w/.

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

tʃ ʃ ɑʊ w r ʌ æ ʊ l i: dz T v θ

Pe

rce

nta

ge

Phoneme

Percentage of Times the Phonemes were

Mispronounced

tʃ

ʃ

ɑʊ

w

r

ʌ

æ

ʊ

l

i:

dz

T

v

θdV T

8

Fig 4.1 Breakdown of /W/Errors Made in Different Positions

Fig 4.2 Breakdown of /v/Errors Made in Different Positions

Fig 4.3 Breakdown of /T/Errors Made in Different Positions

26%

36%

38%

Percentage of All Errors Made with /WWWW/

Initial

Medial

Final

47%

19%

34%

Percentage of All Errors Made with /v/

Initial

Medial

Final

25%

75%

Percentage of All Errors Made with /TTTT/

Initial

Medial

9

Fig 4.4 Breakdown of /dV/Errors Made in Different Positions

Fig 4.5 Breakdown of /i:/Errors Made in Different Positions

Fig 4.6 Breakdown of /l/Errors Made in Different Positions

2%

10%

88%

Percentage of All Errors Made with /dVVVV/

Initial

Medial

Final

17%

72%

11%

Percentage of All Errors Made with /i:/

Initial

Medial

Final

8%

92%

Percentage of All Errors Made with /l/

Initial

Medial

Final

10

Fig 4.7 Breakdown of /A/Errors Made in Different Positions

Fig 4.8 Breakdown of /Q/Errors Made in Different Positions

Fig 4.9 Breakdown of /r/Errors Made in Different Positions

58%

42%

Percentage of All Errors Made with /AAAA/

Initial

Medial

29%

71%

Percentage of All Errors Made with /QQQQ/

Initial

Medial

60%28%

12%

Percentage of All Errors Made with /r/

Initial

Medial

Final

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Important observations below -:

• Fig 4.1 & 4.2 - /W/and /v/ caused significant problems in all positions.

• Fig 4.4 - /dV/ only caused any significant problems for students when

it was in a final position.

• Fig 4.3 - /T/ was only tested in the initial and medial position and

was problematic in both positions but was mispronounced 3 times

more often in the medial position. A similar pattern can be seen with

/Q/, fig 4.8, however, fig 3 shows /Q/ to be overall less problematic.

• Fig 4.6 - /l/ proved to be only problematic in the final position and in

single items, it caused no errors in the initial position.

• Fig 4.9 – nearly two-thirds of /r/ mispronunciations came when it was

an initial sound.

The final question the study wanted to find out was, what sounds were

replacing the mispronounced phonemes, were they being substituted or

deleted? The following pie charts show the findings

Substitutions and Deletions of /WWWW/

Fig 5.1: The Breakdown of Substituted Phonemes of /W/

47%

40%

5%

2%4%

2%

Initial

/f/

/s/

/dt/

/v/

/z/

del

52%44%

2%2%

Medial

/f/

/s/

/t/

del

44%

30%

2%

5%

2%17%

Final

/f/

/s/

/d/

/z/

/T/

del

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Substitutions and Deletions of /v/

Fig 5.2: The Breakdown of Substituted Phonemes of /v/

Substitutions and Deletions of /TTTT/

Fig 5.3: The Breakdown of Substituted Phonemes of /T/

Substitutions and Deletions of /dVVVV/

Fig 5.4: The Breakdown of Substituted Phonemes of /dV/

70%

22%

5% 3%

Initial

/w/

/f/

/b/

/v/

44%

19%

25%

12%

Medial

/w/

/f/

/b/

del 81%

4% 15%

Final

/f/

/s/

del

36%

55%

4%5%

Initial

/d/

/z/

/f/

del61%22%

7%

7% 3%

Medial

/d/

/z/

/f/

/v/

/θ/

89%

2%2%

7%

Final

/tʃ/

/d/

/V/

del

75%

25%

Medial

/tʃ/

/d/

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Substitutions and Deletions of /i:/

Fig 5.5: The Breakdown of Substituted Phonemes of /i:/

Substitutions and Deletions of /l/

Fig 5.6: The Breakdown of Substituted Phonemes of /l/

Substitutions and Deletions of /JJJJ/

Fig 5.7: The Breakdown of Substituted Phonemes of /J/

59%

8%

33%

Final

del

/r/

/w/

64%9%

9%

18%

Medial

/u:/

/o/

/BJ/

/Q/

94%

6%Medial

/I/

/IE/ 60%

40%

Final

/I/

/IE/

/I/

/IE/

/I/

/IE/

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Substitutions and Deletions of /AAAA/

Fig 5.8: The Breakdown of Substituted Phonemes of /A/

Substitutions and Deletions of /QQQQ/

Fig 5.9: The Breakdown of Substituted Phonemes of /Q/

Substitutions and Deletions of /r/

Fig 5.10: The Breakdown of Substituted Phonemes of /r/

23%

7%

23%

8%

8%

23%

8%

Medial

/o/

/BI/

/BJ/

/A/

/E/

/u:/

/B:/

10%

80%

10%

Medial

/B:/

/e/

/E/57%

43%

Initial

/B:/

/e/

81%

5%

9%5%

Initial

/w/

/b/

/l/

del

14%

43%14%

29%

Medial

/w/

/dV/

/l/

del

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Important observations below -:

• Fig 5.2 – Initial /v/ was substituted by /w/ in 70% of the errors but

was substituted by /f/ in the final position in 88% of the errors.

There were cases of /v/ being replaced with /b/, but only in the west.

• Fig 5.3 – Initial /T/ was substituted by /z/ in 55% of the errors but

was substituted by /d/ in the medial position in 61% of the errors.

• Fig 5.4 – Final /dV/ was substituted by /tF/ in 89% of the errors and

a further 7% of the errors it was deleted.

• Fig 5.5 – In all positions/i:/ was substituted with /I/.

• Fig 5.6 – Final /l/ was most often deleted.

• Fig 5.7 – Medial /J/ was most frequently substituted with /u:/ but

this only happened with students from the west of China.

• Fig 5.8 – Initial /A/ was most frequently substituted with /a:/ but

medial /A/was substituted by /e/ in 80% of the occasions.

• Fig 5.9 – All initial /Q/ errors occurred in Chongqing and were always

substituted by /a:/. In the medial position there were seven

substituted phonemes, the most of all the target phonemes.

• Fig 5.10 – Initial /r/ was substituted by /w/ in 81% of the errors but

only substituted 14% of the time in the medial position. The most

common substitution in the medial position was /dV/ at 43%. The

most common word this occurred in was ‘draw’

Some other interesting findings came up from the study, which weren’t

being tested. Two words that contained consonant clusters and the /d/

phoneme, ‘stand’ and ‘width’ were frequently mispronounced. In the word

‘stand’ students either substituted the /d/ phoneme with /t/ or deleted it

and in ‘width’ the students usually deleted the /d/ phoneme. In ‘stand’ /d/

was substituted for /t/ on eight occasions and deleted on seven and in

width /d/ was deleted 11 times. This was only noted in about half the

sample, in the other half the volunteers hadn’t been instructed to listen for

this and just marked the target sound /A/ and /T/.

Conclusions

1) What are the problem phonemes for EF’s learners?

The most common problem phonemes can be seen in fig 3, with the most

common phoneme being /W/ and it was mispronounced 32% of the time.

Fig 3 also shows that the sounds /F/and /tF/were rarely problematic at all

for the students in the sample.

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As mentioned in the observations, consonant clusters with the /d/ sound

proved to be problematic, with the phoneme either being deleted or

substituted for /t/. The problem didn’t show to be determined by the

position in the cluster. Another problem identified was the substitution of

final /d/ in the words ‘stand’ and ‘flood.’ In Shanghai /d/ was substituted

in flood 40% of the time to /d/

2) Where do the problem phonemes occur in the word for EF’s students?

The most interesting finding here is the /dV/ phoneme, it really only showed

to be a problem in the final position. This suggests L1 interference because

the sound is common to the L1 but it is never in a final position. It isn’t a

problem of making the sound but just a problem of using the sound. The

/l/ phoneme also proved to be only problematic in the final position.

The phoneme /W/, /v/, /i:/ and /r/ proved to be problematic all in positions.

Most phonemes were problematic in multiple positions for the students.

Only in the west did medial /A/ cause problems and was replaced with /a:/.

Also in the west final /l/ was substituted with /w/ after the /eI/ phoneme.

3) What do EF’s students produce instead of the problem phonemes?

Students produced a variety of substitutions for every sound that was tested.

However the position of the sound had a direct effect up on the

substitutions made by the students. In the initial and medial position of

/v/ was usually replaced with /w/ when there was an error but in the final

position it was replaced by /f/ and never /w/.

The geographical location of the students appeared to have an effect on how

sounds were substituted. Only in the west /v/ was replaced with /b/ for

example. Also only seen in the west was the substitution of /u:/ for /J/,

other regions it was replaced by /BJ/, /Q/ or /ɒ/. A final observation of

pronunciation in the west is that /Q/was replaced by /a:/but not in other

regions.

In the south medial /i:/ proved troublesome, in the word, ‘wheel’ 14 of the

15 students from Guangzhou substituted it with /I/In the word ‘green’ there

was some problems, about a third of the students used the short sound.. In

the rest of the country the percentage of errors on this phoneme were much

lower. Furthermore in the south /W/ was replaced by /f/ in 81% of the

errors where the average substitution of /f/ was only 48% of the times.

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Implications

a) Phonemic instruction shouldn’t be in isolation

The phoneme /dV/was tested in six words, geography, joke, subject, region,

pledge and badge. In the initial position and medial positions students were

able to correctly pronounce the phoneme correctly. However in the final

position /dV/was substituted with /tʃ/33% of the time in the word pledge.

When teaching and correcting pronunciation, the target phonemes should

be presented in words and in positions where they are most problematic. In

this way the problems can be focused on in much more detail and

instruction is much more worthwhile.

b) One problem phoneme cannot be treated in the same way every time

The phoneme /v/was a problem in all positions but it was substituted by

different phonemes. In the initial position, in words such as value and

village /v/ was substituted by /w/ 70% of the errors, compared to /f/,

which only substituted /v/22% of the errors. However in the final position

/v/ was only substituted by /f/ and this occurred 80% of the errors e.g.,

drive was pronounced /drɑɪf/ but village was /wɪlətʃ/. In the case of village

the students were also making errors with the /dV/phoneme, making it

much more confusing. When treating the /v/ phoneme, it would be more

beneficial to focus on the difference between /w/ when the phoneme is in

the initial position and /f/ in the final position.

c) Where possible, ensure examples don’t contain other problem

phonemes

Not only in the already mentioned word village, did this occur, another

example is with the word, eels. Students were having problems

distinguishing the long and short vowel phoneme in the initial position but

also the plural ‘s’ was frequently being pronounced /Ils/ not correctly as

/i:lz/. When examples contain multiple problem phonemes it can be

difficult for students to focus on the distinction between the phonemes they

are making and the phonemes they should be making. Having just one

problem phoneme, it is much easier for students to focus on and remedy.

The second problem phoneme in this case could be treated on a separate

occasion. This is also the case for consonant clusters.

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d) Future Testing Procedures

Currently at EF students aren’t assessed on their pronunciation but

assessments are currently being designed. The findings of this study will be

used to inform assessors of errors that are likely to occur. This will make

testing more efficient and effective.

e) Future courses and teaching

Results from this study will provide guidance to EF content writers for

future young learner and teens courses. Current young learners’ courses

have limited phonological instruction and activities usually only compare

one phoneme to another. A typical example would be classifying a list of

words into two separate columns based on two contrasting phonemes. In

the study nine different phonemes had different substitutions. In the future,

examples chosen in pronunciation exercises will be based on the findings of

this research, which means problem phonemes will be contrasted with

multiple potential substitutions. The selected contrasts will now take into

account phoneme position, initial, medial or final, providing more

meaningful instruction.

Students will benefit from this knowledge by making them aware of the

typical errors that occur with a phoneme. By making the students aware

that some phonemes have shown to be incorrectly substituted for a range of

different phonemes, but typical only one phoneme in a certain position, the

students are more conscious of the errors and be able to deliberately deal

with them in a more efficient manner.

Teachers and Directors of Studies can be made aware of the findings of this

research through workshops and discussion groups. See Appendix 4 for a

workshop designed from this research. Teachers and DoS’ can be better

equipped to deal with pronunciation errors. For example if teachers hear

students pronounce very as /weri/ it would be more efficient to just use

words with initial /v/ as more practice, to compare it with /w/, rather than

also having words with final /v/ like drive, because of the common /f/

substitution.

f) Syllabus Changes

As a result of the data, the practice of the /v/ sound will include a

comparison to /b/ as it occurs in some regions. A lesson will be added that

practices the difference between verbs and nouns that end with /T/ and /W/.

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Minimal pairs with /v/ and /A/ will be treated differently for different

phoneme positions.

Evaluation

1. Additional Knowledge

The study provided additional knowledge to what was given in current

resources used in EF English First. The most common resource used to find

information on pronunciation errors is ‘Learner English’. For example, it is

said that there is no equivalent contrast between /J/ and /u:/ and will

cause difficulties. This only turned out to be the case in western China.

With the phoneme /v/, only /w/ and /f/ are mentioned as substitutions,

yet in the west /b/ was a substitution. Finally for consonant clusters

Learner English identifies that Chinese learners will simplify them by

deleting the final consonant but in the case with width /tT/ the more

difficult final phoneme was deleted.

2. Word List – Scale of the Study

For practical reasons the word list didn’t cover all the phonemes highlighted

as a problem. The study was dealing with teenage students and took into

account their attention span. Learner English identified up to 20 phonemes

that could be problematic. Choosing two words for each phoneme in each

position would have nearly doubled the word list. Students may not pay

attention at the end of the study and make mistakes.

From a small sample in the study a trend of problems with consonant

clusters arose, but not fully tested. It would be interesting in the future to

look at the common pronunciation problems of the common clusters found

in the English language.

3. Accent – American or British

The word list was designed on an American style of English, for example the

word ‘car’ was testing the /r/ phoneme in a final position. Some of the

volunteer interviewers were British and marked deletion for this word when

the students repeated back what they heard and what they heard was /kB:/

not /kB:r/. These errors were treated as correct pronunciation in the study.

If I were to do the study again I would better vet the interviewers.

4. Regional Dialects

The aim of the study was to get an overview of pronunciation problems in

China, which it did, but some regional trends began to emerge from the data.

The sample size for each region was too small to make any real conclusions

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from. The next logical step from this study would be to look at regional

differences within China.

5. Phonology Features – Scale of the Study

Phonemes are not the only major pronunciation problem Chinese learners

have. English being a stressed time language and Chinese being a syllable

time language means that Chinese students often omit features of connected

speech, making their speech stilted and a strain for the listener.

A separate study would be needed on this, possibly asking students to

repeat back short sentences that contain a single feature.

6. Non-Target Phonemes

One interviewer noted down other errors that students were making and not

just the one highlighted on the word list. Interviewers hadn’t been

instructed to do this. A change in instructions would have resulted in more

data on each phoneme.

7. Inter-Connectedness of Phonemes

The sample list didn’t provide enough examples to show if the correct

pronunciation of a phoneme was affected by the phonemes around the

target phoneme. The word list would have been too large had I done this,

but a separate study choosing a selection of phonemes could do this. This

could provide a much deeper understanding of pronunciation problems

students have.

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References

Harmer, Jeremy (2001) The Practice of English Language Teaching. (Pearson-

Longman)

Hensman, Bertha (1969) The Phonological Problems of Chinese Students of Englishas a Second Language (American Language Institute of New York University) Kenworthy, Joanne (1987) Teaching English Pronunciation (Longman)

Medgyes, Peter (1994) The Non-Native Teacher (Macmillan)

Stannard, Russell ( ) Teaching Pronunciation

http://61.178.20.47/teta/chapter/1219909567718/qy/jxll/file/1.htm

Swan, Michael & Smith, Bernard (2001) Learner English 2nd Edition

(Cambridge)

Weng Zhen Xian, (2002) Verbal Miscommunication Between English Native

Speakers and Chinese Learners of English (Beijing Institute of Education)

22

Appendix 1 – Word List

Region: China City:

No. Word IPA Correct Substituted Phoneme Deletion

1 answer A

2 hourly aJ

3 shower F

4 value v

5 brush F

6 ski i:

7 stand A

8 athlete W

9 mother T

10 geography dV

11 outside aJ

12 liar l

13 shake F

14 active A

15 green i:

16 change tF

17 could J

18 pushed F

19 handle A

20 thirsty W

21 railway r

22 clever v

23 flood Q

24 other T

25 wheel i:

26 joke dV

27 allow aJ

28 under Q

29 cheap tF

30 free i:

31 subject dV

32 width W

33 capital l

34 drive v

35 thank W

36 clowns aJ

Time at EF: Level:

No. Word IPA Correct Substituted Phoneme Deletion

37 English F

38 easily i:

39 richer tF

40 math W

41 book J

42 badge dV

43 Thursday W

44 were w

45 them T

46 lovely l

47 region dV

48 which tF

49 between w

50 eels i:

51 borrow r

52 upper Q

53 Wednesday w

54 special F

55 sister r

56 blouse aJ

57 rope r

58 pledge dV

59 match tF

60 village v

61 delight l

62 queen w

63 picture tF

64 draw r

65 how aJ

66 over v

67 dollar l

68 nothing W

69 car r

70 have v

71 outdone Q

72 trail l

23

Appendix 2: Sample of Completed Interviews

24

25

26

Appendix 3: Interview Results

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28

29

Appendix 4: Teacher Workshop Based on Findings

30