| dc.description.abstract | Pronunciation is a very important component in real communication. Warna
et al. (2003:86) state that to be able to speak English fluently and correctly, students
should have a good mastery of pronunciation. In communication, if mispronunciation
happens to the speakers’ utterances, it will often lead the listener to
misunderstanding. In learning pronunciation, the problem happens to students when it
is very difficult for them to pronounce English words appropriately and correctly. For
example when they are asked to pronounce the word “umbrella”
/∂mbrel∂/ they
will pronounce “umbrella”
/umbrǩlla/. It is because of the differences between their
mother tongue and English. Another problem that may appear is reception of the
English sounds. Again, words which have vowels, consonants, and diphthongs which
belong to almost similar groups may become the reason why it is difficult for the
students to differentiate them, such as sheep /
∫i: p/ and ship /∫ip/. It is because if the
English sounds are not clearly received, the students will convert them into the
closest sounds in their own language which may lead them to misunderstanding.
Dalton (1997:1) says that it seems logical to place a heavy emphasis on listening
(reception of English sounds) English words as a way of releasing correct
pronunciation (production of English words). Because of that reason, the teacher
needs to use other media and technique that can help the students to produce more
accurate pronunciation.
To solve the problem above, the researcher tried to apply other way in
teaching pronunciation using educational medium software (Talk Any) to help the
students in the teaching and learning process at SMPN 1 Jember. Therefore, “Talk
Any” was used because it could make the teaching and learning process more
interesting. Besides, it also had functions as one of the teaching aids to help and
facilitate the students’ interest and motivation in the pronunciation activity.
According to Al-jarf (2009), using text to speech software could improve students’
ability in spelling, reading fluency and pronunciation correctness. It means that
English teachers should use various teaching techniques by using text to speech or
natural sounding software.
Softvoice, in Hermansyah (2011) refers to one of the interesting and enjoyable
media in teaching pronunciation by using “Talk Any” educational media software
technology and it is popularly called “text to speech software (TTS)”. This software
helps the teacher to repeat the typed words frequently and the speed of the speech can
be slowed down by reducing the speed rate. It means that “Talk Any” software is
considered to be very useful especially for the second language learning, because it
can make the teaching and learning process more interesting. In line with this idea,
the researcher conducted Listening & Imitating, and Drilling activities in teaching
pronunciation using “Talk Any” software (adapted from Kilickaya, 2006; CelceMurcia,
1996; and Al-jarf, 2009). More spesifically, learning pronunciation focused
on sounds and word stress. In this reserach, the students were taught about certain
sounds, they were: Vowel sounds
(Ǻ, iə, uə, ǝ, æ), Consonant sounds (s, ȓ, θ, ȷ, ȴ),
and Diphthong sounds
(eǺ, aǺ, ǤǺ, Ǻǝ, ǩȚ).
The purpose of this research was to know whether or not there was a
significant effect of using “Talk Any” software on the Seventh Grade Students’
Pronunciation Ability at SMPN 1 Jember.
The research design was quasi experiment with Nonequivalent Groups
Posttest Only Design. It was begun by conducting homogeneity test, deciding the
experimental class and control class, giving treatment to the experimental class,
giving the same posttest to both classes, and the last was analyzing the result of the
posttest by using Independent Sample T-test.
The area of this research was SMPN 1 Jember. It was chosen because “Talk
Any” software had never been used by the English teacher in teaching English
especially for teaching Pronunciation. Based on the result of the homogeneity test
that was conducted to 8 classes of the seventh grade students at SMPN 1 Jember with
the total number of students were 313 persons. According to the result on the output
of ANOVA, the value of significant column was 0.000 or significant value was less
than 0.05 (p < 0.05). It means that the ability of the seventh grade students was
heterogeneous. As a result, the two classes that had the closest mean score were used
as the control group and experimental group. Class VII A and VII C had the closest
mean score among the other classes, they were 79,46 and 79,50. Class VIIC and class
VIIA were chosen as the experimental class and the control class by lottery.
The result of this research showed that there was a significant effect of using
“Talk Any” software on the seventh grade students’ pronunciation ability. It was
proven by the value of significant column (2-tailed) of t-test table by using SPSS
Software was 0.040, and it was lower than 0.05.
Based on the explanation above, it was concluded that: there is a significant
effect of using “Talk Any” software on the seventh grade students’ pronunciation
ability at SMPN 1 Jember. | en_US |
