The Effect of Using Rap Songs on Students’ Pronunciation Achievement

Abstract

In learning English, students need fun and practical way to learn. Learning pronunciation can be done by singing songs. Singing English songs has direct impact on students’ pronunciation skill. By using songs, a teacher can make learning process more fun and interesting. Students will be motivated in learning how to pronounce the words from the lyric. Songs also make students more relax in the teaching and learning process. In this research, the songs chosen were rap songs. Applying singing everyday and associating them in music therapy could increase deeper emotional expression. Less frequent rapping in a song could decrease aggressive behavior. Rap songs could be challenging and interesting media and teaching materials for students to follow the English teaching and learning process, especially pronunciation. The design of this study was quasi-experimental research with posttest only. From six classes, the two classes were chosen as the experimental group and control groups by considering the result of homogeneity test consisting of 40 words that were given to the students to read aloud individually. The experimental group was given treatment of English pronunciation using rap songs, while the control group was given the conventional treatment using drilling. After the treatment, posttest was given to both groups. The experimental and the control groups were chosen based on the result of the homogeneity test given to all the population. In this research, the primary data were taken from pronunciation test, while the secondary data were taken from documentation and interview. After both groups got the treatment, the data obtained from the posttest were analyzed using Mann Whitney U. The researcher used SPSS program to analyze the data, and applied 5% of significant level (confidence interval 95%). In the main activity, both groups had the same activity but there was different treatment that was done to the experimental group. For the experimenting section, the students of the control group were drilled the learning material (text) line by line and the students of the experimental group were asked to sing the rap song together after the teacher gave the examples on how to sing the rap song. Post-activity for both the control and the experimental groups had the same activity.