AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION OF WORD STRESS USING THE ELSA SPEAK APPLICATION

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SKETCH JOURNAL: Journal of English Teaching, Literature and Linguistics

Volume 3 Nomor 2 (2023) 88

AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION OF WORD STRESS USING THE ELSA SPEAK APPLICATION

1Muhammad Rizqi, ²Muhammad Zainor Ihsan, ³Istiqamah Ardila English Education Department, STAI Rasyidiyah Khalidiyah Amuntai,

South Kalimantan, Indonesia

Email:¹ [email protected], ²[email protected], ³[email protected]

Abstract

Word stress in pronunciation is important to avoid misleading in communication through English language. The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze students’ mastery of word stress using the ELSA Speak application as well as to find out the effectiveness of the ELSA Speak application in delivering results. The research involved 10 first-year students who were members of the Language Club (LC) at STAI RAKHA Amuntai. The data collection technique is voice recording using ELSA Speak application on smartphone. From the research results, the researchers found that almost half of the participants made mistakes in pronunciation. The error is a misplaced stressed and unstressed word. The researcher also found application errors in analyzing and providing students’ pronunciation results. These findings emphasize the significance of addressing both student and application-related issues in order to improve the overall effectiveness of pronunciation programs.

Keywords: pronunciation, word stress, ELSA Speak, and application

A. INTRODUCTION

One of the most crucial aspects of spoken language and a fundamental criterion for learners' competence is pronunciation. It plays a significant part since it demonstrates how people pronounce words and enunciate their words. It includes the sound of its element like vowels, consonant, intonation, rhymes and stress (Pareza, 2019). As Khan (2019) said that acquiring correct pronunciation in a second language is crucial for enhancing communicative competence and performance in language learning especially for learners.

Pronunciation instruction has re-emerged as a focus of attention in applied linguistics, with a shift towards enhanced intelligibility and comprehensibility (Derwing

& Munro, 2022). Research on good language learners has shown that language learning strategies, including pronunciation learning strategies, are effective in developing second language competence (Alghazo, 2021). Accurate pronunciation is considered a critical component of English language proficiency, and pronunciation practice can be systematically integrated into lessons (Hood, 2017).

In English, stress plays an important role that a wrong placement of stress may change part of speech of that word or lead to misunderstanding (Kusumawati, 2017).

Roach (2009) said that understanding and correctly applying word stress aid in conveying meaning, emphasizing key information, and contributing to effective oral communication. In addition, the entire rhythm and flow of speech can be affected by

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word stress patterns, influencing how listeners understand and absorb spoken messages.

However, many students have good vocabulary mastery, but they don't know how to pronounce these words correctly, so the message is not conveyed properly.

Pronunciation is one of the three components of languages, together with grammar and vocabulary. It plays an important part in listening, and speaking skill (Komariah, 2019). Pronunciation is the way a certain speech sounds in the mouth, pronunciation stresses more on the way of sounds are produced by the hearer (Richards

& Schmidt, 2013). Non-native speakers must be careful when pronouncing utterances or they will create misunderstandings. Therefore, having an understanding of pronunciation is more important than the ability to speak quickly like a native person.

In pronunciation, there are two main features of pronunciation: 1) Segmental features or phonemes, which refer to sound units, arranged in a sequential order; or it is about consonant and vowel. 2) Suprasegmental features refer to stress, pitch, length intonation and other features that always accompany the production of segmental (Kenworthy, 1987). When talking about stress is also talking about syllable and sentence stress. There are two kinds of stress, they are sentence-stress and syllable stress (Fudge, 2016). Sentence stress is the manner in which stress is distribute on the word and syllable stress is the manner in which stress is distributed on the syllable. He stated there is a sign (‘) to put stress placement in a word.

A stressed syllable is produced by pushing more air out of the lungs in one syllable relative to others (Styvant et al., 2019). A stressed syllable thus has greater respiratory energy than neighboring unstressed syllables. It may also have an increase in laryngeal activity. Stress can always be defined in terms of something a speaker does in one part of an utterance relative to another (Ladefoged, 1982). Furthermore, placement of stress on a word can vary, depending on the factors that influence it. Stress can be located on the initial syllable, penultimate syllable (second from last), ante-ultimate syllable (third from last), and final syllable (McMahon, 2014).

Along with the massive use of smartphones because of their advantages in terms of mobility, people tend to use applications available on these mobile devices. There are many applications that are certainly useful in the field of education, especially learning foreign languages. One of the useful applications for learning English is the ELSA Speak.

ELSA (English Learning Speech Assistant) Speak can be a very useful medium in English learning, especially pronunciation, which is one of the important factors in mastering speaking skills. ELSA Speak can help us to practice and hone our speaking skills in English by correcting incorrect pronunciation and explaining how to pronounce correctly in English (Akhmad & Munawir, 2022). In the application, there are many features that help foreign language learners, especially those who focus on improving speaking and pronunciation skills.

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The previous studies showed that ELSA Speak application, play a significant role in improving students' ability in word emphasis (Muamar, 2022; Anggraini, 2022).

These apps provide various features and exercises to train students in pronouncing words, phrases, and sentences correctly, with a focus on improving pronunciation skills and achieving American accents. The use of ELSA Speak has been found to significantly improve students' pronunciation skills, as evidenced by the increase in pre-test and post- test scores. The apps offer instant feedback and detailed evaluation of pronunciation accuracy, enabling students to practice and improve their word emphasis autonomously.

Incorporating mobile-based technology like ELSA into pronunciation learning provides students with opportunities to enhance their pronunciation and develop autonomous learning abilities.

The purpose of this study was to determine the ability of first-year Language Club (LC) members of STAI Rasyidiyah Khalidiyah Amuntai to mastery of Pronunciation, especially word stress. Furthermore, researchers also find out how effective the ELSA Speak application is in detecting and analyzing students’

pronunciation.

B. METHOD

The research method used in this study is descriptive qualitative, which describes students' ability to pronounce word stress using ELSA Speak application. The participants of this study were 10 new members of the Language Club (LC) at STAI RAKHA Amuntai. They were chosen because they are members of the Language Club's English program. In addition, the majority of them are students of the English Education Department.

The instrument used for this research were 10 English words (two-four syllables) taken from the list of test words available on the ELSA Speak application. These words were chosen based on the placement of stress which were in the initial syllable (4 words), final syllable (3 words), penultimate syllable (2 words), and ante-ultimate syllable (1 word).

WORDS LIST Words Number of

Syllables

Stress Placements Phonetic Transcriptions Appreciate 4 Ante-ultimate syllable /əˈpriʃiˌeɪt/

Borrowed 2 Initial syllable /ˈbɑˌroʊd/

Important 3 Penultimate syllable /ɪmˈpɔrtənt/

Overthink 3 Final syllable /ˌoʊvərˈθɪŋk/

Appointment 3 Penultimate syllable /əˈpɔɪntmənt/

Believe 2 Final syllable /bɪˈliv/

Probably 3 Initial syllable /ˈprɑbəbli/

Accept 2 Final syllable /əkˈsɛpt/

Always 2 Initial syllable /ˈɔlwiz/

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Inside 2 Initial syllable /ˈinˌsaid/

Then, researchers collected voice recordings from all students. Next, the researchers used a device to play audio and used another device that has the ELSA Speak application installed to detect the audio. Then, the application will display students results on the pronunciation of word stress. Finally, the researchers analyzed and described those data into a table.

C. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

The research findings are divided into two parts. First, the result of students’

pronunciation, and secondly, the effectiveness of the ELSA Speak application in analyzing students’s pronunciation.

STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION WORD STRESS RESULTS No Word List

Types of Error

Total of Error

Correct word stress Misplaced

Word Stress

Unstressed word

1 Appreciate 4 0 4 6

2 Borrowed 4 2 6 4

3 Important 4 0 4 5

4 Overthink 6 0 6 4

5 Appointment 4 1 5 5

6 Believe 0 0 0 10

7 Probably 5 0 5 4

8 Accept 0 0 0 10

9 Always 4 0 4 5

10 Inside 5 2 7 1

Total 36 5 41 54

Based on the data analysis, the researcher found that there were two types of stress errors made by the participants. There were 36 misplaced words with stressed words, and 5 times with unstressed words. Therefore, the number of word stress errors made by the participants was 41 times. In the table above, the word inside has the most pronunciation errors with 7 errors. However, there are 54 correct pronunciations made by students. The words believe and accept were pronounced by the participants without any errors.

This finding shows that half of the students still unaware about the correct placement of the words that created misplaced stress. The misplaced stress occurred in the two-syllable words, three-syllable words, and four-syllable words. This findings

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is line with research conducted by Prayitno, Hidayat, and Ahmad (2022) and Algifari (2017). They also found that the students made misplace stress of two to four-word syllable. The two-word syllable and three-word syllable became the most misplaced stress by students. This finding indicates that misplaced word stress is a common issue among the students, with some even misplacing the stress on the same words. The Indonesian accent also contributes to the students' difficulty in placing stress correctly.

APPLICATION’S ERRORS No Participants Word list Phonetic

transcription

Students’

pronunciation transcription

Application results

1 P1 Always /ˈɔlwiz/ /ɔlˈwiz/ Correct

2 P4 Probably /ˈprɑbəbli/ /prɑˈbəbli/ Correct

3 P6 Important /ɪmˈpɔrtənt/ /ɪmˈpɔrtənt/ Incorrect

4 P7 Inside /ˈinˌsaid/ /insaid/ Correct

5 P10 Inside /ˈinˌsaid/ /ˈinˌsaid/ Incorrect

Based on the table above, there were 3 participants who had word stress errors, namely stress placement errors. However, the application detects and decides the participant’s pronunciation with the correct results. In addition, there were also 2 participants who said the word with the correct stress placement, but the application detected the participant’s pronunciation as an error/incorrect. This may be caused by several factors; participants who read words too fast, participants whose voices are not loud, the quality of the participant’s microphone, and even the shortcomings of the ELSA Speak application itself.

D. CONCLUSION

There are two main findings from this study. First, the results of the participant’s pronunciation, it was found that more than half of the participants who were examined had good knowledge about stress. That’s acceptable considering they are new members who probably haven’t been taught about stress before. Second, it also describes the errors that exist in the application caused by several factors mentioned above.

Based on the findings and conclusions of the research, there are several suggestions given. First, the participants, in this case students, must learn more about the material related to the word stress. Furthermore, the researcher hopes that teachers and lecturers can help students develop their pronunciation by giving them more practice. Finally, for other researchers, to be able to apply even better methods and techniques, for example by taking audio samples directly so that poor audio quality does not affect the research results.

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