IMPROVING STUDENTS PRONUNCIATION THROUGH TONGUE TWISTER
TO THE EIGHT GRADERS OF SMP MUHAMMADIYAH PAGARALAM
1. Background Of Study Nowadays, English has become one of the most important elements of communication which cannot be separated in daily activities in the life of globalization. When students learn an English language, they also learn the language skills and the language components. There are many kinds of subject in teaching and learning english, one of the basic language skill is speaking.
Speaking is an interactive process which consist of producing systematic verbal utterances to convey meaning (Brown,2000,p.48) and according to Burn & Joyce (1997,p.163), an utterance seen in terms of its propositions (meanings) and functions. Mastering the art of speaking is the single most important aspect of learning a second language and success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the language. The interaction in communication will not run smoothly if the speaker doesnt have the speaking ability. pronunciation item tend to incorporate context and meaning. On speaking test, Pronunciation becomes important when it interferes with communication (Harold,1983,p.58). In brief, Speaking ability is described as the ability to express oneself in life situation, or the ability to report acts or situation in precise words, or the ability to converse, or to express a sequence of ideas fluently (Risdon,2000,p.1). In speaking, we must give attention to how the way we speech the word.
In speaking, there are four language elements namely: Structure, Vocabulary, Pronunciation and Spelling. Those elements are through in order to develop the student skill in the language learning especially in speaking. One of those language components that is important and should be mastered by the students is pronunciation. Mispronounced in English word can create misunderstanding and miscommunication. However, teaching pronunciation is very difficult because not any people can pronounce exactly alike. It does not matter how good a learners 2
vocabulary or grammar is if no one can understand them when they speak. (Yates & Zielinski,2009,p.11)
The specific characteristic of English learners who categorized as good and successful oral skill developer is those good pronunciation accent. A good pronunciation accent suggested is a accent of pronunciation that sound like native speakers. Therefore, it is necessary for english learners to have a good pronunciation to support them to be a good speakers. Teacher of English as a foreign language should be sensitive in viewing and overcoming such problems above.
Pronunciation is an oral utterance or speaking, pronouncing of a word especially with reference to a standard for the purpose of communicating meaningfully. It is important for ESL teachers to assist their students with pronunciation practice, but books can often difficult to decipher and cause confusion (Osowski,2012,p.4).
Realizing this problem, the students need to focus in one speaking component. In this case, pronunciation is chosen as one phenomenon in English.
One of the media that the researcher is going to use is tongue twister. Tongue twister is a phrase or sentence which is difficult to articulate without hesitation. Osowski (2012,p.4) who explains that tongue twister is fun way to teach pronunciation they can be very challenging as well as motivating to young children in EFL classroom. The aims of this study are to describe the implementation of tongue twisters for the teaching of pronunciation for the eighth graders and to describe the students responses toward implementation of tongue twisters for the teaching of pronunciation for the eighth graders. The researcher conducts this study in order to give some inputs to the teacher and students in the process of the teaching of pronunciation through tongue twister.
Based on the explanation above the researcher would like to take a class action research under the title of Improving the Students Pronunciation Through Tongue Twister 3
2. Problem Of Study Is there any significant difference in pronunciation between the student who are taugh by using tongue twister and those who are not of SMP Muhammadiyah Pagaralam.
3. Objective of the Study to find whether any significant difference in pronunciation between the student who are taugh by using tongue twister and those who are not of SMP Muhammadiyah Pagaralam.
4. Significance of the study The writer hopes the result of this study gives advantages to increase teaching and learning strategies in English process especially for Pronunciation development. He hopes that using tongue twister could be applied by teacher of English to motivated students to learn especially pronunciation to increase their achievement in English
5. Limitation of study This study is limited on application of tongue twister in improving the students pronunciation, focused on the students Th Consonants.
6. Hypothesis of Study Hypothesis is a temporary answer to the research question. According to Sugiono (2006,p.69), hypothesis is the interim assumption or the interim answer of the formulation of research which need the data to examine the correctness of that assumption. From this study writer proposes two hypotheses, namely: 1. Null Hypothesis (Ho). There is no significant difference to the students who are taught pronunciation by using tongue twister for eighth graders student of SMP Muhammadiyah Pagar Alam 4
2. Alternative Hypothesis (Ha). There is significant difference to the students who are taught pronunciation by using tongue twister for eighth graders student of SMP Muhammadiyah Pagar Alam