| dc.description.abstract | This research was conducted by applying a classroom action research. This
action research aimed to enhance the second year students’ word pronunciation
accuracy by implementing the Reading Aloud Technique in a Descriptive Text at
SMP Plus Darus Sholah Jember. The researcher used the Reading Aloud Technique
because the researcher believed the technique could improve the word pronunciation
accuracy of the students of class VIIIB after having the treatment.
This research applied the purposive method in choosing the research area and
participants. The research was conducted in SMP Plus Darus Sholah Jember and class
VIIIB was chosen as the participants because the students in this class had the lowest
score on the pronunciation pretest. After the research participants were determined,
there were two cycles administered in the class to give the treatment. These two
cycles consisted of three meetings in which the first two meetings were for the
treatment and the third meeting was for a pronunciation test. The treatment was a
series of activities adapted from Gabrielatos (2002) and Haycraft B. (1985).
The research was conducted by instructing the students to read the provided
descriptive text (having theme of animals), pay attention and listen to the researcher
reading aloud the text, mark a ‘/’ and ‘//’ to indicate the pause and fullstop
respectively and also underline the stressed syllables and bracket the unstressed ones,
pronounce the difficult words in an isolated way by repeating what the teacher said,
and then practice the reading aloud together. In the research, the third activity was
omitted due to the students’ request as they felt it would be easier to follow the
activities without this third activity. Besides there was a pronunciation test after these
activities had been carried out to measure the students’ pronunciation improvement. According to the research result, Cycle 1 was not successful. The percentage
of the students’ achievement level was merely 68.75% out of 70.00% as the targeted
one. This percentage indicated that there were only 16 students attending the test 1
and there were only 11 students achieving the acceptable achievement level out of 37
students in the classroom. It happened because there were 11 students met their
parents in their dormitories and other 10 purposely were absent without any
notification. The research result of Cycle 2, however, it was much better than before.
There were 29 students joining pronunciation test 2 in which 27 students achieved the
acceptable achievement level. There were totally 8 students did not achieved the
acceptable achievement level including the students who did not attend the test that
day. As a result, the percentage of the students’ achievement level increased as much
as 93.10%. It showed that they had achieved the targeted achievement level.
According to research result, it was proved that the technique could enhance
the students’ pronunciation ability. It was because the activities designed enabled the
students to learn a new language, in this case by listening carefully and repeating
what the researcher said continuously in the form of oral reading (Kelly, 2000:15). As
a result, they could perform their oral reading of a precise pronunciation better
(Jacobs, 2011). Finally, the treatment administered in the classroom was able to make
the students enhance their pronunciation ability as the theory stating that the reading
aloud technique was applicable to enhance the students’ pronunciation ability
(Huang, 2010 & Jacobs, 2011). On the other hand, another finding showed that the
students’ self-confidence in practicing pronunciation did not easily emerge. It was
stated that the technique could enhance the students’ self-confidence (Ninsuwan,
2015). The research proved that there was no change on this and it might take a
longer time to take effect. Although the technique was not successful to promote the
students’ self-confidence, it could enhance the VIIIB students’ pronunciation
accuracy in reading a Descriptive Text at SMP Plus Darus Sholah Jember as the aim
of the research. | en_US |
