CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
B. Theoretical Bases
1. Pronunciation
Every school has mentioned the importance of having good pronunciation in all stages of academic education, especially in mastering English speaking context. It means, pronunciation is the basic skill to master English speaking.
a. Definition of Pronunciation
Pronunciation is the most important skill in speaking English. If the speakers have bed in pronunciation ability, the speech will be not understood by the listener. Meanwhile, there are some of experts was declared about the definition of pronunciation which are; Gilakjani states that pronunciation is an importance part of foreign language learning since it directly have an effects on learner communicative competence as well as in someone performance11. Hayati declared that pronunciation is one of the most important and it cannot be lost in parts of teaching English speaking in particular and any other languages
11 Pourhosein Gilakjani, “ɑ Study of Factors ɑffecting EFL Learners English Pronunciation Learning and The Strategies for Instruction”. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, Vol 2, No 3, 2012.p 2
in general12. Furthermore, Whereas Prommak (in Fatchul Mu’in) stated that pronunciation is an integral part of language in learning. It consists of some parts; vowel, consonant, stress, intonation, rhythm, rate, and volume13.
b. Kinds of Pronunciation
There are two kinds of English pronunciation namely segmental and supra-segmental.
1) Segmental feature refers to the sound units arranged in a simple order. This feature can be studied in all steps of education. Segmental is a phoneme that can be divided.
For example, when we say “BAHASA”, the word can be divided into three syllables “BA-HA-SA” or it can divide into smaller syllables “B-A-H-A-S-A”.
In segmental feature, there are some features such as;
vowel, diphthong and consonant. Hence, the whole explanation parts of segmental feature such as the following:
a) Vowel
Vowel is a sound produced with a free passage. The free passages means, the vowel sound are produce without forcing of mouth and it vowel
12 Hayati, “Note on Teaching English Pronunciation to EFL Learners: ɑ Case of Iranian High School Students”, Canadian Center of Science and Education , ELT, Vol 3, No 4, Desember 2010.p 5
13Facthul Mu’in, “Tongue Twister, Students Pronunciation ɑbility and Learning Style”, Arab World English Journal (AWEJ), Vol 8, No 4, December 2017.p 366
sound are divided into two kinds. They are, long vowel with it patterns, such as /i:/, /ɜː/, /a:/, /u:/, /ɔː/, and short vowel as a patterns, like ɪ/, /e/, /æ/, /ə/, /ʌ /, /ʊ/, /ɔ/.
However, vowel sould is explanning in height, front, back ness and roundness of your mouth.
b) Diphthong
Diphthong is the combination of two vowels sound and it getting movement from one vowel sound to anothers. Rochmad says that diphthong is part of vowels inside of English pronunciation. For instance, /eə/, /ɪə/, /ʊə/, /eɪ/, / ɪ/, /ɔɪ/,/ ʊ/, and /əʊ/. Those sounds need higher position in your mouth and it has combination sound14.
c) Consonant
Consonant sound is produced with an aggressive flow of air is coming out from our mouth.
Ramelan said that there are twenty four consonant’s phonetics those are, p, b, t, d, k, g, f, v, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, ʧ, ʤ, θ, ð, m, n, , h, i, r, w, j. Based on the positions, the consonant phonetic alphabets are classified into two parts. First, voiced which are / b, d, dʒ, g, j, l, m, n, r,
14Rochmad Dio Pratama, “Error ɑnalysis on Diphthong Sound Pronounced by Fourteen Semester Students in English Department UIN Sunan Kalijaga”, (Thesis, Faculty of Arab and Cutural Science , State Islamic University Sunan Kalijaga, Yogyakarta, 2017) p. 30
v, ð, y, z, ʒ, /. Second, unvoiced such as, f, p, t, ʧ, k, θ, s, ʃ/. 15
To know the position of those voices let follow the explanation such as: it called voiced when you feel vibration while speaking in your mouth.
Contrary, if there is no vibration in your throat just air that called unvoiced.
2) Supra-segmental refers to stress, length, intonation, and other sound of feature. Supra-segmental is phonetic style that used in words or sentences and it is something that accompanies which is can be in the form of sound intonation, pitch, and sound vibrations that indicated certain emotions. Also, it has four kinds, which are stress, intonation, pause and rhythm.
In addition, the researcher tries to explain the kind of supra-segmental is as follows:
a) Stress
Stress means that focus of the word meaning follow the details explanation and example of stressing word.
That is your phone The word stress on
“phone” it the general way saying that sentence
15 Ramelan, “English Phonetics”, Semarang: UNNES Press, 2003.
That is your phone It explain about word stress on “your” it word implication that the phone is really yours not mine That is your phone Primary stress is on “is” it
clarify that phone is belong to “your” not “mine”
That is your phone
Stressing word if the phone is really “yours” not
“mine” exposition word.
b) Intonation
Intonation is the true expression of what you say. For example, if someone feels angry to someone else, of course they well use high intonation. In contrary, if someone feels happy, they will use low and high intonations. It means that the intonation is based on the fellings.
c) Pause
Pause is usually happen when you are speaking in group of presentation, there is pausing or giving someone else to speak. There are two kinds of pause such as short pause and final pause.
d) Rhythm
Rhythm means that a beats of language. This usually happened when we are talking about something to someone else.
Based on those theories above, the researcher can take the conclusion that segmental and supra- segmental features are really helping students to pronounce the English words. However, the researcher does not researching all about phonetic of vowel diphthong and consonant. But, the researcher only focusing on what is the second grade students of MTs Al-Hamidiyah NW Sidemen that got difficulties.
c. The Importance of Pronunciation
Pronunciation training is important part of mastering any foreign language. Also, pronunciation is definitely the biggest thing that people notice when you are speaking English, although you have lot of vocabularies, master in grammar and good in listening. But, if your pronunciation is poor, neither advanced grammar, lot of vocabularies nor listening ability would not help you anymore. Amelia noticed that the importance of English pronunciation ability is helping someone to understand what the native speaker says and make our public speaking more having power and the listener will feel enjoyed to listen it16.
16 ɑmelia Widi ɑstuti, “ It is Important to Learn English Pronunciation as Foreign Language”, (Thesis, English Language Teaching, Teacher Training and Education Faculty, Muhammadiyah University of Perwokerto, Perwokerto, 2016).p 19
d. Teaching Pronunciation
Teaching is the process to give information to the students. In teaching and learning process, the teacher is usually transferring knowledge, message and skill to the students. In addition, teaching is the process of attending the people needs, experiences and feelings, so that, the students can learn particular things. Cohen says that teaching defined as helping others learn to do particular things everyday in which many people engage regularly17. Also, in teaching and learning process occur interactive process between teacher and students.
Teaching pronunciation is really needed by young learners in Indonesia because it helps the English students know in speaking English correctly sounds. Moreover, there are some roles of teacher in teaching English pronunciation.
1) The teacher’s role in teaching pronunciation such as the following:
a) Helping the students hear
The teacher should help the students to express their knowledge. In this part, the teacher explains the categories of sound because every language has difference categories in term of pronunciation ability.
17 Cohen, “Teaching Practice”, 2008, retrieved from http://ncrtl.msu.edu/issue.htm
b) Help the students make sounds
The teacher should make the students be able to follow the new sound. If the students cannot imitate the new sound, the teacher can give the instruction or the indication, it will help the students create new sound.
c) Providing feedback
The teacher should give attention to the students’ ability and performance during the learning process.
d) Devising activity
This is the most important role of teacher in teaching English pronunciation because the teacher should think which activities are good in teaching pronunciation and many other factors that will make teaching and learning process running well.
2) The students’ role in learning English pronunciation
The students do not need to do many activities during teaching and learning process. But, the students just need to do simple thing that is focusing in the material and giving respond to the material what the teacher have explain.