Exposure to English Linguistic Environment and Oral Proficiency of First Year College Students in Davao Del Norte LARCYNEIL P. PASCUAL, LPT, MAED Department of Teacher Education UM Tagum College, Mabini St., Tagum City (084) 655 - 9607 [email protected] ABSTRACT communicative competence so as to interact with people in one’s The study evaluated the oral proficiency of students according to own field and with those from other countries. their level of exposure to English linguistic environment. The After years of learning, majority of the students in Taiwan are study further aimed to determine the significant relationship neither fluent nor confident English speakers. Some may attribute between exposure to English linguistic environment and oral this deficiency to the limited time for oral practice in classrooms proficiency of first year college students in selected Higher and the lack of conversational opportunities outside of them, Educational Institutions (HEIs) in the province of Davao del especially in English as a Foreign Language setting. However, it Norte. The study employed the descriptive – correlation method may, in fact, stem from the myths that students hold regarding in investigating the research problems. Using a two-part communication in a foreign language, such as the necessary questionnaire, this study found out that the level of exposure to possession of excellent pronunciation, a good accent, a large English linguistic environment of the first year college students is vocabulary size, and an in-depth knowledge of grammar. moderate and their level of oral proficiency in terms of Moreover, some learners who perform well in English classes still comprehension, fluency, grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary find themselves at a loss when interacting with native speakers in is low. Furthermore, there is no significant relationship between everyday life (Yang & Gai, 2010). This dichotomy arises from the English environment and oral proficiency among first year somewhat unreal and comparatively safe context of the students, and the students’ exposures in the context of this study classroom, since teacher-student and peer interactions are often do not significantly influence their oral proficiency. restricted to basic patterns and prefabricated situations or topics Keywords (Scarcella & Oxford, 2002). Exposure; linguistic environment; oral proficiency; Davao del In the Philippines, some parents use the English language with Norte; Philippines their children even before they go to school. Middle- to upper- class members of society use English when on the phone, when CCS → Computing methodologies → Artificial they e-mail, and when they chat. This only proves people’s need intelligence → Search methodologies→ Continuous space to become competent players not only in their own countries, but search also within the region. With competence closely tied to a workers’ communication skills, non-native speakers of English are faced with questions propelling them to reflect on whether they are as 1. INTRODUCTION good as or better than their counterparts in neighboring countries. The gap between the English oral proficiency of students and the (Amurao, 2012). requirements of the industries has received increasing attention In the same vein, English language instructors of UM Tagum recently in business arena. Campus complained about their students’ proficiency in terms of In 2009, the Ministry of Education (MOE) urged technological using the English language as the primary language in universities to propose an English curriculum reform that communication. Very often students commit mistakes for not emphasizes the centrality of productive skills such as writing and being able to follow written directions, understand speaking to equip students with the qualifications industries announcements, guidelines, and the like. require, to have international perspectives plus good English In an attempt to find reinforcement for the said dilemma and to Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for help students develop English language proficiency, college personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are instructors employed different methodologies in teaching English; not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that however, the researcher observed that despite conscious effort copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights made to substantially minimize the problem on oral and written for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be communication, engaging students in different English language honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or activities that would maximize their oral proficiency, the issue republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior remained unsolved. specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. The researcher, therefore, is driven to find out if English linguistic IC4E 2019, January 10–13, 2019, Waseda University, Japan environment could affect the student’s oral production skills. The © 2019 Association for Computing Machinery. researcher believed that it is necessary therefore to determine DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/12345.67890 students’ acquisition of the English language based on their exposure; this study would not help the English language teachers in their search for effective methods, strategies, procedures and The instrument utilized in data gathering of the study consists of programs of instruction to maximize students’ performance but two parts. The first part of the questionnaire was adopted from the would help English language mentors understand their students. questionnaire cited by Tagadiad from Atiagan’s master thesis (2006) which sought to determine the respondents’ exposure to 2. OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY English linguistic environment measuring the formal setting The purpose of this study was to find out the relationship between which includes the school and the multimedia; the informal the exposure of English linguistic environment and oral setting includes the home and the multimedia. The second part of proficiency of first year college students in the selected Higher the instrument was a two (2) minute telephone conversation Educational Institutions (HEIs) in the province of Davao del activity; this was also adopted from the published copy of Norte. Lozarita’s master thesis which sought to determine the participants’ oral proficiency in terms of fluency, comprehension, 3. METHODOLOGY pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. The validity and This study utilized the descriptive – correlation method in reliability of the instruments were considered. In getting and investigating the research problem. The purpose of correlational weighing the student’s oral proficiency in the test, the rating research is to determine the relations among two or more instrument on oral proficiency in speaking and understanding variables (Bursal & Paznokas, 2006). English developed by Dr. David P. Harris (as cited by Lozarita It is descriptive because the study focused at the present condition 2000) was adopted. whose purpose is to find new truth that may have different form in a new generation. Likewise, data would be presented in 4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS qualitative and quantitative descriptions of the English linguistic Shown in Table 2 is the summary of the level of exposure to environment and the oral proficiency. English linguistic environment of first year college students. As to the research locale, Tagum City is the capital province of As reflected in the table, the students’ formal exposure has Davao del Norte and was officially created into a component city obtained an overall mean score of 3.54 with a verbal description on March 7, 1998. Situated 55 kilometers north of Davao City, it of high. This indicates that the respondents are exposed to some is one of the fastest growing cities in Region XI. It has a total land English-speaking environment with a little code switching. On area of 19,580 hectares. one hand, the first-year college students’ informal exposure obtained an overall mean score of 3.43 having a verbal This study was conducted within the two (2) cities of Davao del description of moderate. This means that the respondents are Norte Province, namely, Tagum and Panabo. The three (3) exposed to the English-speaking environment but there is often schools were chosen due to the student’s population and the stable code switching. programs offered. It is also interesting to note the disparity between the exposures of St. Mary's College is situated along the national highway of the students in the formal and informal settings. While the formal Tagum. UM Tagum College is located at Mabini Street of Tagum setting shows a mean of high, this is tempered by the mean of the City while the other school is the other branch of UM located in informal setting which is moderate. This in totality results into a the city of Panabo. The presence of these three (3) schools moderate exposure which means that the students are exposed to a gradually contributes in making Davao del Norte another linguistic environment that allows code switching. educational hub for college education. Table 2. Summary showing the level of exposure to english In choosing the research participants of the study, the researcher linguistic environment of selected first year college students employed the stratified random sampling technique.