Investigating Pronunciation Material Tasks and Method of Teaching in Sunrise Series 7-9

Abstract

This study is an attempt to investigate pronunciation material and tasks and/or activities along with teaching methods in Sunrise 7-9 series adopted by the ministry of education in KRG to be taught in basic schools all over Kurdistan region of Iraq. The rationale of the study is the obvious deficiency of basic school students’ performance, more specifically of student's pronunciation and speaking skill. Pronunciation is regarded as one of the basic components in learning English, hence conducting this study is deemed necessary. This paper focuses on investigating pronunciation material, tasks/exercises and teaching methods used from the teachers' and researchers' perspectives. To this end, a questionnaire was administered to 51 English teachers who have taught these books for at least three years in Basic Schools in Erbil city and an observation checklist was designed to observe 30 lesson periods of teachers. The data are analyzed through SPSS program to find out the frequencies, percentages, mean and standard deviation. The results reveal that most of the teachers are (not quite) satisfied with the pronunciation material, more than half of teachers are not satisfied with the tasks and exercises due to time and lack of equipment, almost none of the teachers use effective and suitable teaching methods and the sound files found within the teachers' book of the series. Based on the results, some new pronunciation material, new tasks, exercises, teaching strategies and also some recommendations are presented.