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AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLGY

BACHELOR OF ARTS AND IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

MARLON B. SAGUIDON
IVY P. OTIDA
Suprasegmental Features Analysis Among Banwaon Students

Thesis Adviser
QUIM B. MIOLATA, MAEd.
College of Arts and Sciences

MAY 2023
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INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

The Correct pronunciation of sounds in English is very important but If

we mispronounce many English sounds our speech will be very difficult to

understand. Only if we have pronunciation mistakes in sounds (though

unpleasant by itself) is certainly not enough to cause serious

misunderstanding of the essential message being said (Maratkyzy, 2021).

But if we just make one mistake with intonation, the whole meaning of our

sentence could change. Sometimes a sentence can have two, three and/or

even more meanings just by changing the intonation.

One of the most difficult tasks for non-native speakers of the language

to learn is the intonation patterns of English. Intonation can be inaccurate

to the point of making the message completely unintelligible. One of the first

linguistic features learned in childhood is the intonation of native language.

SUPPORT ? We imitated the intonation of the speech we heard from the

adults around us and started talking. Learning resin patterns as a child is

easier than learning new patterns as an adult. However, mastering

intonation greatly benefits the intelligibility of non-native speaker in

conversation. In English, sometimes we are high and sometimes we are low.

We use inflection and pitch to emphasize words and lengthen vowels, to add
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emphasis, meaning and variety words and syllables, or to soften the tone of

speech.

ADD SUPRASEGMENTAL

Every language has its own intonation system; certain

correlations exist between intonation patterns with special meanings.

Research tells us that the difficulties in the learning of second language

intonation patterns are often due to the non-equivalence of the

intonation structure of the learners’ first language and the second

language structure. (Rusadze & Kipiani, 2018).

Intonation is a complex unit of speech tone, sentence emphasis, voice

quality and speech speed. Undeniably, different problems in teaching and

learning intonation have appeared in different contexts and it is not

surprising that teachers and students find it difficult to master this.

Intonation is crucial in the total language development of IP learners. It is

done while listening to the student (Academia, 2016).

English intonation greatly challenge indigenous learners in

mainstreamed Philippine classrooms. Common observations are some

phenomenon that appears on intonation of these indigenous learners. First,

they have problems in prosodic features in the pattern of intonation

(tonality, tonicity, and tone). Second, they have problems in pronunciation.

Third, they have problems in the word stress (primary stress and secondary

stress). Finally, intonation was ignored (Purnami, 2017).

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The issue on pronunciation, especially in intonation, has always been

an important topic in language research. According to Dumanig (2004),

production of the sound of language is influenced by many factors, such as

differences in social class, education, gender and even ethnic group. Many

researchers have been interested in finding these differences and studying

them in depth.

In the case of Banwaon, as observed the second largest ethnic group in

Agusan del Sur, they have different intonation between their first language,

second language and foreign language. When they did a story reading, they

use native language intonation. Intonation is critical for learners of

Banwaons’ whose native language does not like intonation system as

English.

It is crystally clear that the major influential factor impacting

learners’ intonation is the essential role of the native language. All languages

in the world comprise a wide range of phonological elements. These

variations will cause some difficulties for learners to pronounce in the target

language well. Thus, learners’ awareness and efforts made to overcome

these difficulties and their familiarity with the sound system of their native

language will significantly help them better improve their English

pronunciation and intonation.

Given the scarcity of research conducted on the intonation concerning

on story reading, this research will investigate the patterns of intonation

between male and female Banwaons. The gradual extinction of indigenous

peoples’ languages significantly affects their identity and culture. With this
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concern, our study aims to improve the Banwaon speaking skills,

specifically in English intonation.

This study focused on the EFL learners who vary in intonation between

their first language, second language, and foreign language. Storytelling in a

foreign language can be challenging without proper intonation, which is why

it is crucial for EFL learners to understand its importance. English is an

intonation language, and there is no intonation system like it. Despite its

significance, teachers and students often overlook intonation language,

considering it to be abstract and challenging to teach. Researchers have

identified several difficulties faced by EFL learners, such as struggles with

punctuation, expressing emotions, and reading fluently in English, which

can lead to be hesitation and fear of making mistakes (Tench, 2011).

Purpose of the Study

The main purpose of the study is to analyze the intonation patterns

utilized by male and female Banwaon students of Agusan del Sur State

College of Agriculture and Technology (ASSCAT).

Research Questions

This study aims to investigate the intonation patterns of male and

female Banwaon students from Agusan del Sur State College of Agriculture

and Technology. Specifically, the study seeks to answer the following

questions:
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1. How are the intonation patterns utilized by the male and female Banwaons

in story reading?

2. What intonation patterns are demonstrated by the male and female

Banwaons?

Theoretical lens

To deliver sufficient support to explain the need and relevance of our

study, we anchored our research on the various theories related to

pronunciation and gender study to support the findings of our research.

Halliday’s Theory of English Intonation

According to systemic-functional linguistics (Haliday, 1963),

intonation can be used to express interpersonal functions, and its semantic

features are expressed by the tone “contour” of the phonological layer.

Halliday (1963) proposed the concept of English intonation as a threefold

system: Tonality, Tonicity and Tone. Intonation unit, tone nucleus and

intonation type are respectively related to information structure, information

center and information function in the process of information organization

and transmission, reflecting the selection of three aspects of information

transmission in oral communication. This concept organically combines

syntax, intonation and information to lay a foundation for many subsequent

intonation studies. Halliday divided tone groups into monotone and dual
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tone groups, each containing only one tonal stress, extending from the tonal

stress syllable to the end of the tone group. Monotone includes falling tone,

rising tone, low tone or flat tone.

Amplitude Modulation Theory

According to (Pierrehumbert’s,1980) the Amplitude Modulation (AM)

theory, English intonation encompasses three different pitch events, seven

pitch accents, two phrase accents, and two boundary tones. With regard to

the pitch accent, it is closely associated to the nucleus of syllables in words

and can be treated as the ―nuclear accent ‖.

The capital letter H with star symbol (*) is employed indicating the

high tone with nuclear accent (H*). The capital letter L with star symbol is

used to indicate the low tone with nuclear accent.

Amplitude theory established four basic principles (Ladd 1996, as

cited in Huang and Zhang, 2019). (1) Linear arrangement of tonal structure.

This principle stipulates that intonational pitch contours can be syncopated

as linearly connected pitch events, which is attached by the transition. Pitch

accents are the main body of intonation. Most important pitch events are

pitch accents and boundary tones (Chen, 2008). (2) Difference between pitch

accent and rhythmic stress. (3) Two basic tones, H for high and L for low,

and their combinations are used to analyze pitch accent and boundary

tones. All pitch accents are constituted by H as well as L and connected with

the text in accordance with the prosodic structure. In other words, pitch

tunes and relative prominence exist in the utterance in a way permitted by

the phonological structure (Huang and Zhang, 2019). Only using two basic
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tones to analyze the change of pitch accents and boundary tones solves the

argument about description of prosody between level approach and

configuration approach. The employment of two basic tones opens an

effective and concise road. (4) The overall pitch trend can be explained by

the repetitive effect of partial pitch regulating sound speed.

Theory on Gender Intonation

According to (Jiang, 2012) The discrepancy between female and male

speech is often discussed, attention has been put on the gender difference of

intonation application. Women use more varied intonation patterns, and

they are characterized by exclamatory and interrogative intonation, which is

practiced by a rising tone (Orazebova and Shyngyssova, 2015). Additionally,

when using the so-called interrogative intonation, the rise of male intonation

is much smaller than that of female intonation (Jiang, 2012). From the

perspective of sociolinguistics, the special fondness for using specific

intonation patterns is established and internalized in the unconscious

(Jiang, 2012). Society and culture create gender roles, and these roles are

prescribed as ideal or appropriate behavior for a person of that specific sex

(Michaol, 2018). Because of the social status and some other cultural

elements, female intonation is relatively more emotional and friendlier so as

to avoid the conflict with others and push forward the communication

smoothly. However, Jiang (2012) has substantiated that the rising tone is

the intonation pattern used to embody non-power discourse or compliance

of speakers. Besides, more frequently use of rising intonation substantiates

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those women subconsciously admit that their social status is lower than

men’s.

Significance of the Study

The findings of this study may also turn out to be useful to the

following people and stakeholders of Agusan del Sur State College of

Agriculture and Technology:

Students. The findings of this study might be an addition to the

understanding of students for they are the primary concern of this study;

the result of this study will possibly provide a solution to aid their struggles

in intonation.

Banwaon Native speakers. This study may also have a great value to

Banwaon Native speakers the that will serve as an eye opener to them so

that they will gain ideas about how they pronounce the words and asses

them in their pronunciation.

Teacher. This study will show the positive effect for the teachers of

speaking course. This will encourage them to come up with possible

teaching strategies in teaching intonation that could help students improve

their speaking ability and enhance their speech production competence.

School administration. The school administration will help in

supporting the activities formulated by language department program to

develop the speaking skills of the students in learning pronunciation. They

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were the one of the instruments in guiding and supporting the teachers

toward teaching.

Future researchers. This will be beneficial to the future researchers

since they are the one who will continue to improve the Study. Thus, the

study will lead to wider scope of data collection and helped the participants

of their study.

Delimitation and Limitations of the Study

This study will focus on the intonation patterns of male and female

Banwaon students of Agusan del Sur State College of Agriculture and

Technology regardless of year level. Moreover, participants of the study will

be limited only and purely Banwaon students whose native dialect is

Banwaon. Other suprasegmental features like stress, pitch, juncture, etc.

will be excluded in the study.

Definition of Terms
To give a better understanding on the terms used in the study the
following terms are defined operationally.
Banwaon language refers to the native language that was used by the

Banwaon living in Agusan del Sur.

Banwaons students refers to male and female participants of this study

who used Banwaon language as the native language.

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Intonation pattern refers to the variation of pitch or the falling intonation,

rising intonation and fall-rise intonation variation of pitch.

Suprasegmental features refer to, speech feature such as stress, tone, or

word juncture that accompanies or is added over consonants and vowels;

these features are not limited to single sounds but often extend over

syllables, words, or phrases. In this Study this refers specifically to

intonations patterns.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Phonology
.

Children’s phonology of first words can be influenced by the

environment and by children's cognitive and motoric abilities, such as

memory capacity, vision, proprioceptive feed examines the consistency of the

phonological characteristics by discovering how they vary with vocabulary

size. Second, as it was compared to the Norwegian CDI results with targeted

words and actual productions in data from spontaneous speech by children.

To conclude, the role of the language which was influenced by the

surroundings as compared to children's speech to adults' speech back from

the articulators and motoric dispositions and control on the other

(Garmann, Hansen, Simonsen, ＆ Kristoffersen, 2019).

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Language is one of the most important and complex cognitive

functions and can be very diverse divided into receptive (auditory

comprehension/understanding) and expressive (speech and language

production and/or communication) functions. As a foreign language like

English, was used different from children in English-dominant societies

(Huol, S., and wang, S., (2017). English has a written alphabet system,

which means that print represents the language primarily on a phonemic

level. Therefore, phonological coding plays a big role in learning to read

English. Phonological education, which focuses on learning the phonological

analysis of words and phonetic correspondence, is effective in improving

early reading and writing outcomes. Phonological education (PB) and

phonetics education is indicated. to be effective on early literacy skills

among young children in western countries, ( Kliegman, 2020).

Idsardi, and Monahan (2016) explained that foreign language like

English, was used different from children in English-dominant societies.

Phonology instruction has been shown to be effective in developing basic

reading skills, including phonemic awareness and no word reading, in

elementary English learners. In contradiction, the effectiveness on word

recognition and reading comprehension were inconsistent across studies.

This is implying that limitation of the phonological-based instruction, which

is the difficulty of transferring the phonological underlying outcomes to real

reading. It was shown that most studies, although meeting the minimum

standards of evidence for effectiveness, suffer from methodological flaws are

potentially biased. This implies that phonological-based instruction in the

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current English curriculum may be beneficial for young EFL learners who

need to learn the phonological symbols of English words (Huol,, ＆ Ｗ ang,

(2017).

Suprasegmental

According to Mirfatemi, Sadeghi, and Niyazi, (2020) supra-

segmental features are various forms of intonation and how words and

sentences are uttered. Suprasegmental features sounded somewhat

similar to native speaker. Teacher that it is not to push sounding like

an English native speaker, but to use the learned English as second

language, as own Philippine English with own phonological features,

noting that there was no extreme communication breakdown. Study

can be used by State Colleges and Universities, and other higher

education institutions in partnership with the tourism department to

design intervention programs as part of their extension program on

capability building to tourism service providers. Piorac, (2019).

Also, Berowa, and Dita, (2021) explained that Philippine

English is one of the New English in the world that is situated in a

country where numerous languages exist all over the archipelago.

Thus, the study illustrates the suprasegmental phonology of

Philippine English based on the speech samples obtained from the

speakers of the 13 major languages in the country. Therefore, the

research suggests that the suprasegmental features of PE are

somehow shaped by the first native languages of the speakers.

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Intonation
In spoken language, suprasegmental pitch variations that span entire

utterances, such as sentences and phrases, are referred to as intonation. In

that it crosses over multiple segments, it is suprasegmental. Intonation

plays an essential role in verbal communication. Besides, intonation

patterns that influence information transmission in speeches have always

been a significant research focus in current years. ). Accordingly, the study

on rising intonation and pitch range in male and female English

conversations in an informal setting in Brunei. The study examines

conversation recordings of ethnic Malaysian students solving flashcard

problems. Eight female-female and eight male-male conversation were

recorded, and it was found that there ws a slight difference inpitch range,

but no difference in the frequency of rising intonation between women and

men (Ghani, (2017).

According to Jiang (2011) Intonation functions not only serve

different pragmatic actions, they also convey different social meanings,

especially for gender identity. Female speakers have showed their tendency

to use the rising tone in statement while male speakers on the other hand,

use more failing tones. However, according Orazbekovaa (2015) to such

changes are supported by feminists who see this differences as sexist

inequality. It is impossible to say with certainly that these developments will

lead in blurring the distinction between the male and female speech. Women

employ a wider range of intonation patterns. They can be identified by

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exclamatory and interrogative intonation, which is pronounced by a rising

tone. Contrarily, men are distinguished by more smooth intonation that

descends. Their speech is more categorical and affirmative in tone, and it

dominates

In addition, the theory used by Herman was Kelly (2000), and theory

by Allen (1954) and Roach (2000) introduced the most difficult position in

pronouncing influenced by the basic intonation learned by the students. The

intonation in speaking skills the difficulties drawn after analyzing the data

were difficult in using correct juncture; difficulty in using rising intonation,

falling intonation, and difficulty in determining pitch and stress of a syllable

(Purba, Hutahaean, Herman.,＆ Pardede, (2021).

In the early 1990s, a prosodic interpretation system for American

English speaker (Beckman & Ayers Elam, 1997; Silverman et al., 1992) was

developed by a group of linguists from different disciplines. Since its

development, ToBI has established itself as a standard interpretation

system. But it has also been shown to have certain limitations that will be

discussed in detail.ToBI is based on a phonological approach to prosody,

that of autosegmental-metrical theory and its naming conventions are

largely based on the theoretical work of Pierrehumbert and colleagues.

According to Arshad khan, (2014) Intonation is a noticeable change in

pitch from one part of speech to another. For example, the meaning of

English pronunciation arises not only from changes in its sound image and

comparative, accentual emphasis, but also from forms related to intonation.

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But the contour of the intonation itself has no difference in the lexical

meaning of the statement. It tells the listener something about the speaker’s

emotion attitude, because the intonation patterns of language are among the

first patterns a child learn to respond to and Point to.

According to some theories, when animals (such as dogs) respond to

human speech, they do not respond to segmental phonemes, only to

intonation contours. Stress and intonation are related phenomena; They

work together to create an emphasis or accent effect. Accented syllables can

be said with a high or low tone or with a change of tone. An accented

syllable spoken at one pitch is described as having a static tone. While an

accented syllable that involves a changes in pitch has begins the kinetic

tone is called the nucleus and is said to have an initial unclear or tonal

accent. Hence, the phrase thieves come in the night is usually spoken in

British English with a high static tone in the low and original drop or drop

in the kinetic tone during the night.

The speaker’s emotional level affects his intonation. The more the

speaker is engaged in what he is saying due to anger, sadness, excitement,

satisfaction, etc., the more pitch and amount of pitch he uses. The system of

intonation patterns in any language is complex and naturally learned by

native speakers. It takes years of study and practice for foreign language

learner to learn the intonation styles of a language.

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There exist three fundamental system of the intonation, these are

tonality, tonicity, and tone. This study discusses tonality, tonicity and tone.

As per Tench (2000), Tonality refers to the partitioning of spoken discourse

into distinct intonation units, each conveying one piece of information,

tonicity indicates the position of the most prominent syllable within an

intonation unit.

Tonality denotes the speaker’s segmentation of the entire message into

discrete pieces of information, tone pertains to the pitch level and movement

within an intonation unit (Tench, 2011). The listeners may find it difficult to

comprehend the message without the three basic system. In the realm of

intonation research, various phenomena have been observed among English

Foreign Language (EFL) learners.

Fristly, these learners encounter difficulties with prosodic features

relating to intonation patterns (i.e. tonality, tonicity, and tone). Secondly,

pronunciation poses a challenge for EFL learners. Thirdly, EFL learner

strunggle with words stress, both primary and secondary. Fourtly, EFL

learners encounter issues with punctuation when speaking English. Fifthly,

the teaching of intonation has been largely overlooked in the language

instruction.

It is recommend that greater attention be devoted to intonation, as it

plays a crucial role in the conveying speaker meaning. As stated by Parker

(2002), “Intonation is the overall pattern of sound that is associated with a

given message. Intonation is related to stress but has a direct bearing on

meaning too.” Moreover, as Tench (2011) notes, “ Changing the intonation of

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an utterance the meaning of that utterance.” Consequently, the study of

intonation has become an integral part of EFL language instruction, despite

its reputation as a challenging area to teach and learn. According to

Anthony (2000,),”intonation has traditionally been regarded as a problem.”

Nevertless, given the importance of intonation in conveying meaning, it is a

challenge that must be addressed.

METHODS

This section deals with the methods of the study it includes research

design, research participants, research materials, data Source, data

collection, data analysis, trustworthiness of the study, role of the researches

and its ethical consideration.

Research Design

In this research we will use descriptive qualitative research design.

Qualitative research is used to describe or understand more about the

current status of particular thing (McCombes, 2022) in our research. We will

describe the intonation pattern utilized the Banwaon Students in story

reading, we will collect and analyze the data through listening to the way the

participants reading the story to describe the intonation patterns they used.

Then, we will measure the data in numbers by determining the dominant

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patterns used by male and female Banwaon participants.

Research Participants

In this qualitative study, there will be ten (10) Banwaon participants

from Agusan del Sur State College of Agriculture and Technology. In

selecting the number of participants Creswell (1998) provided

recommendations that in a qualitative study, there should be at least five (5)

to twenty-five (25) participants.

According to Kelly (2010), purposive sampling is used to select

respondent that are most likely to yield appropriate and useful information.

It is a method for locating and choosing instances that will make the most

efficient use of the limited study assests available. The participants will be

selected and identified through purposive sampling method . The

participants of this study are exclusive only for Banwaon students of

Agusan del Sur State College of Agriculture and Technology (ASSCAT).

Research Materials
We will use story as our research materials. The content of the story

will be taken from a fable titled, “The Crow and the pitcher” written by

famous fable writer Aesop We will also use a voice recorder to capture the

way the participant read the fable or story. In addition, we will also use

Voice Tone application that will serve as a tool that would easily record
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distinctively the pitch or intonation pattern made by male and female

Banwaon student-participants.

Data Source
Data are gathered from the Agusan del Sur State College of

Agriculture and Technology male and female Banwaon students of Agusan

del Sur. The male and female Banwaon students reading the story.

Moreover, the result is analyzed with respect to the phonology, and

intonation pattern of the male and female Banwaon participants are able

follow the correct pattern. Also compare the intonation pattern of the male

and female Banwaon participants.

Data Collection
Qualitative researches engage series of activities in the process of

collecting data before arriving at the completion of a research study

(Creswell, 2012). Henceforth, as researchers we took rigorous steps on the

data collection procedure.

The general essential steps are to seek permission to IP Council to

conduct the study; find participants who will be involved in the study

ensuring their willingness to participate; ready the availability of materials

and tools for data gathering such as mobile phone or laptop.

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First, we will ask record of the Banwaon students from IPYC

organization to ensure the identity of our participants. Then we will seek out

consent from the research participant. We will conduct the activity by letting

the participants read out loud the story.

We will be taking a voice recording from the reading story using a

Voice Tone Application. After reading the story we will transcribe the data

using Tone and Break Indices (ToBI). Then we will observe the intonation

pattern anchored from the type of intonation patterns suggested by Halliday.

Lastly, we will analyze the intonational pattern used by male and female

Banwaon students.

Data Analysis

The data will be analyzed and classified according to the intonation

pattern of male and female Banwaon. To demonstrate the detailed analysis

of the results, extracts from the students’ utterances in the poem reading

will be transcribed and presented. Pitch extraction software Voice Tone, will

be used for the analysis of the utterances to display words transcribed using

Tone and Break Indices (ToBI). It is worth to note S that some

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transcriptional signs of intonation phenomena were given by ToBI and

identified during the research among others.

Trustworthiness of the Study

To establish the trustworthiness of this study, we will follow the

suggestions of Lincoln and Guba (1995) as cited by Shenton (2004).

Credibility, dependability, confirmability, and transferability were the main

concerns of Qualitative research regarding its trustworthiness.

Credibility is defined as the conviction that can be placed in the truth

of research findings. This helps in ensuring internal validity of the research

findings. Lincoln and Guba (1995) pointed out that credibility involves two

aspects which are first, carrying out the study in a way that it enhances the

believability of the findings, and second, taking steps to demonstrate

credibility to external readers. To support credibility when reporting a

qualitative study, the researcher should demonstrate prolonged engagement

in the field, persistent observation, and triangulation of the data (cope,

2014). In the context of this study, we adopted iterative questioning and

member checking as suggested by the author mentioned above.

Iterative questioning is use to elicit detailed data. It is important as

the researcher returns to matter previously raised by the participants and

extracts related data through rephrased question (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

To address iterative questioning in our study, probing question will be used

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in relation to research question. Probing question will be provided to deepen

the knowledge and understanding information from the responses of the

participants as the interviewers. In the virtual-in-depth interview, we will

adjust the order and flow of the question and ask additional question to

probe for more detailed and rich content of the responses. Moreover, this

was one of our strategies to help us ensure honesty among participants.

In this study, we will make sure that after the result that we will be

gathering together with the transcription, it will be sent back to the

participants to read the transcribe script. This allowed the participants to

confirm the accuracy of the data being transcribed to avoid bias. After that,

we will let them sign the certification as evidence that they have checked

and approved the findings presented.

Dependability is important to trustworthiness because it will

establish the research study’s finding as consistent and repeatable (Patton,

2005 Lincoln and Guba (1995) as cited in Shenton (2004) stresses the close

ties between credibility and dependability, arguing that, in practice, a

demonstration of the former will go the distance to ensure that latter. To

address the dependability, the processes in the study will be reported in

detail, enabling future researcher to repeat the work, if not necessarily to

gain the same results.

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In addition, to directly address reliability issues, the process within

the study should be reported in detail to allow a future researcher to repeat

the work if not necessarily achieving the same results. Also, we have a clear

description of the researcher methodology, research design, and research

procedure. Also, careful data collection, analysis, and interpretation were

documented and considered throughout the process of conducting this

study to allow the replication of this academic work in the coming future.

Confirmability refers to the extent to which of the result of an

investigations can be confirmed or confirmed by another investigator. Could

be confirmed or corroborated by another researcher. Confirmability is

primarily concerned with establishing the data and interpretation of the

findings that are derived from the data given by the participants and not

figments in inquirer’s imagination, motivation, or interest. Further, reference

to literature and findings by other authors that confirm the researcher’s

interpretations can strengthen confirmability of the study in addition to

information and interpretation by people other than the researcher from

within the site itself (Anney, 2014). In this study, audit trail was used to

confirm the study on the accuracy of the data gathered.

In the context of the study, an audit trail will be provided to ensure

the reliability of the results by tracing the participants whose significance

responses have been included in the results of the study. Moreover, this was

used to demonstrate that the results are clearly linked to the conclusion in a
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way that it can be followed in methodological description. This is also to

ensure that the results are based on the responses of the research

participants rather than those of the researchers. This further established

the data and interpretations of the findings that will not figment the

researcher’s imagination, but it will clearly derive from the data of the

research participants.

Lastly, transferability refers to the degree to which the results of

qualitative research can be transferred to other context with other

respondents –it is the interpretive equivalent of generalizability (Bitch,

2005). To address this, it should include a thorough and thick description of

each step taken in the process of conducting this research and a detailed

description of phenomenon being study.

Thick description is described by Lincoln and Guba (1985) as a way of

achieving a type of external validity by describing a phenomenon detailed

one can begin to evaluate the extent to which the conclusions drawn are

transferrable to other times, setting, situation, and people. In collecting

thick description, the data will allow comparison of the context of this study

to another possible context to which transfer might be contemplated and

produces a thick description of the context to make a judgment about fitting

in with other possible.

To address transferability, the research will ensure to have a detailed

and thick description of the methodology and the phenomenon that was

being studied and will assure that the data where on file to make this study
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more credible and transferable. We will be going to make sure that all

document stored in soft copy will be well-kept in a secured password-

protected folder in our computer as the results of the study may be

submitted for publication.

Role of the Researcher

As researchers, our role in this study is to ensure that there will be a

proper data collection and analysis; we will primarily ensure the ethical

Conduct of research we will ensure that the conduct of the study will will be

properly recorded, transcribed, translated, and will thoroughly analyzed the

gathered data.

Our main role as researcher would be to initiate the exchange of

thoughts. We will observe the intonation pattern in reading poem of

ASSCAT Banwaon students.

Ethical Consideration

As qualitative researchers, we considered ethical guidelines to make

sure that our research study was carried out properly. We consider their

identity and language culture because the study examines pronunciation

error on affricate among Higaonon students, who are indigenous peoples.

During the audio recording of the interview, privacy and confidentiality were

scrupulously controlled.
 24

We take our participants’ privacy and confidentiality into account when

transcribing their interview answers. We concealed their identities by

utilizing number codes rather than their real names in order to maintain

their safety. Also, all data gather inside the school sources and cited in the

paper are completely acknowledge.

Before starting our research, we also follow ethical guidelines. Along

with the Dean and Coordinator of the College of Arts and Sciences, we ask

permission from the Office of the Research Development Extension.

We explicitly disclose our primary goal to the students-participants

during the interview process. We assured them that any information we

obtained about them would be treated in confidence and use only for

educational and research endeavors.

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