Teaching Vocabulary Through K.K. and Dictionary Phonetic Symbols to Taiwanese Elementary Students

Abstract

此研究是運用質化研究的方式，以行動研究去探討KK音標與字典音標運用在臺灣小學的字彙教學上的效應。文藻外語學院的六個學生老師──兩個擔任教學者，四個擔任助教，參與本研究。參與研究的學生，來自於南臺灣兩所小學內的兩個班級。研究步驟是以van Lier (1994) 的行動研究循環為模式，此模式改編自Kemmis與McTaggart (1982) 的組織架構。參與教學的老師進行每月一循環，持續三個月的行動研究。研究結果顯示，老師擁有極大的興趣在增進學生拼字的正確性，雖然教育部希望小學階段，學生建立的是基礎溝通的能力 (也就是學生聽與說的技能) (教育部，2003，2006)。結果也發現，在使用音標輔助字彙教學時，使用KK音標的老師比字典音標的老師遭遇到更多音標混淆的問題。而最典型的例子則是把 [ə] 錯讀成 [e]。在老師們引用行動研究討論小組中的解決方案，嘗試去解決問題後，學生們的平均總評量也達到80%的正確率。

This study employs a qualitative approach which primarily relies on the use of action research to discover how well K.K. and dictionary pronunciation symbols can be used to teach vocabulary in Taiwan’s elementary schools. The six student teachers, two as instructors and four as teaching assistants, were students from the Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages. The study’s subjects were two primary-school classes from schools in southern Taiwan. The research procedure was based on van Lier’s (1994) Cycle of Action Research, a model adapted from Kemmis and McTaggart’s (1982) framework. The participant instructors engaged in three month-long cycles of action research. The findings reveal that student teachers demonstrated a great interest in improving students’ spelling accuracy, although the main goal of the Ministry of Education for elementary English education is to establish basic communication skills (i.e., students’ listening and speaking skills) (Ministry of Education, 2003, 2006). The results also show that when employing phonetic symbols to facilitate vocabulary learning, the instructor using K.K. symbols encountered more pronunciation problems than the instructor who used dictionary symbols. Furthermore, the K.K. symbols instructor encountered the problem of students’ confusing basic phonetic symbols, for instance, misreading [ə] as [e]. After the participant instructors incorporated the inputs from the action research group to tackle these problems, the results indicated an accuracy rate of 80% from the students in the final assessment.