THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PHOTRANSEDIT APPLICATION IN IMPROVING PRONUNCIATION SKILL
THESIS
Siti Rohani, S,Pd., M,Pd, Ph.D
BY
Disha Mario Putra Gautama 21602073006
UNIVERSITY OF ISLAM MALANG GRADUATE PROGRAM
ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT JUNE 2020
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PHOTRANSEDIT APPLICATION IN IMPROVING PRONUNCIATION SKILL
THESIS Presented to Graduate Program University of Islam Malang
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Magister in English Language Education
By
DISHA MARIO PUTRA GAUTAMA NPM 21602073006
UNIVERSITY OF ISLAM MALANG GRADUATE PROGRAM
ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT JUNE 2020
ABSTRACT
Disha Mario Putra Gautama, 2020. “The Effectiveness of PhoTransEdit Apllication in Improving Pronunciation Skill”. Thesis, English Teaching and Education Program, Graduation Program, Islamic University of Malang. Advisor: Siti Rohani, S,Pd., M,Pd, Ph.D
Keywords :PhoTransEdit Application, Pronunciation skill
ESL and EFL students need to master pronunciation because it lays the foundation for speaking. Pronunciation is the biggest thing that people notice when speaking English. This research has observed the use of PhoTransEdit application in improving pronunciation skills.
The research questions are: (1) Do the students taught by PhoTransEdit achieve better pronunciation than the students taught by the conventional method? (2) What are the students’ opinions about the application in helping improving pronunciation?. The answer to those has been formulated in the hypotheses, saying that students from the experimental group would get better achievement scores than the control group.
This study used an explanatory design that is characterized by the collection and analysis of quantitative data in the first phase of research, followed by the collection and analysis of qualitative data in a second phase that builds on the results of the initial quantitative results. The participants of the study were 30 students of the English Department from UNISBA Blitar in their fourth semester. They were divided into experimental and control groups. Tests, questionnaires, and interviews were prepared for the data collection instruments of this study. For the data collection, the participants were going to have to take a pretest. Treatment was applied for the experimental group, and finally, after the treatment was done, the participants were going to take the post-test. In order to analyze the data, the researcher applied the ANCOVA formula to prove the hypothesis.
Based on the findings, the students from the experimental group achieved better scores than the control group. Concluded from the questionnaire, they stated that PhoTransEdit as a representative media learning was an excellent way to improve pronunciation these days. In the interview, they stated that the application helped them to write and understand phonetic transcriptions; therefore,they could improve their pronunciation.
From the findings, it can be concluded that it proved that PhoTransEdit gave the students improved significantly in their pronunciation skills. By using PhoTransEdit software, the student could easily have many chances to transcribe the words and sentences individually. PhoTransEdit could help students learn and understand the phonetic symbols. It has two options, whether they want British English or American English. If the students learn the phonetic symbols from PhoTransEdit, they can learn to pronounce the word better.
Finally, for further research, future researchers were encouraged to research in the same field but with different respondents of a broader scope. Limitations of the current study should also be under consideration for further research.
1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents background of the study, the research problems, the objectives of the research, the significances of the study, scope of the research and definition of key terms.
1.1 Background of The Study
Mastering the right vocabulary and grammar is not enough in communication. However, ESL and EFL students need to have fluent pronunciation because it is one of the key for speaking. Pronunciation is the biggest thing that people notice when you are speaking English. ‘when you talk to a person in real life, they may not notice your limited vocabulary or grammar mistakes. However, they will notice right away if your pronunciation is good or bad. If your pronunciation is poor, they will think about you as the guy/girl who speaks bad English, and good grammar and vocabulary will not help you’
(Szynalski, 2004: 2). The correct pronunciation is very fundamental because if speakers have unclear pronunciation, their speech will not be delivered correctly to the listeners. Hence, the learners need instruction in the pronunciation of specific English sounds.
However, there are still many English teachers who neglect a few essential elements when teaching pronunciation. The main reason is that due to not having enough time in class to give correct attention to this aspect of English instruction, but when they do find the time to address pronunciation, they do not give the
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correct instruction and practice. Fangzhi (1998:47) has stated that English pronunciation is still neglected or ignored even by some teachers in Indonesia. He also pointed out that an English phonetic course is not given in any of their teaching and learning.
Mulhuda (2012) did classroom action research to implement PhoTransEdit application in teaching pronunciation. And his study revealed that the application could enhance the students’ English pronunciation after several cycles. The application could build up the students’ confidence, make students feel comfortable, and increase their learning achievement.
Mompean et al. (2015) stated in their research about the benefit of phonetic transcriptions training. In their research points out that phonetic transcriptions training helps the students improve their pronunciation skills. They said phonetic symbols were considered useful by the majority of the learners as a result of questionnaires revealed that way.
While according to Lintunen (2013), who did phonetic training for pronunciation problems. He states that phonetic teaching raised the awareness of the subjects.
Based on Muna’s research (2012: 109), implementing pronunciation software can motivate students to improve their pronunciation well, and it can give them opportunities to practice speaking English. The results of this study also show students’ higher achievement after the implementation of the treatment.
There are many cases when students cannot entirely understand pronunciation lessons from their teachers. The factors that cause such problems
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are the teachers’ pronunciation itself, which is unclear, students’ boredom including due to the teaching method. For those reasons, many Indonesian students struggle and dispirited because of their poor English Pronunciation. Even more that there are still a few types of research dealing with the media used in the teaching of English pronunciation. Therefore, as mentioned by the past studies above, The researcher believed that if the students learn phonetic transcription properly, they will have better pronunciation skills.
In this research, the researcher investigated the effect of PhoTransEdit, which have been designed to help those who want to improve students’
pronunciation skill by working on the phonetic transcription. PhoTransEdit is aimed at just helping learners who have difficulties or questions on how to pronounce words properly and how to distinguish the various English sounds correctly.
Because many words in English are pronounced in the different way they are spelled, and this application can help learners to pronounce the words more correctly. This application provides many things students need to learn about pronunciation because this software provides automatic phonetic transcription.
This software also can be downloaded for free.
1.2 Research Problems
This research was conducted to answer these problems:
1. Do the students taught by PhoTransEdit achieve better pronunciation than those taught by conventional methods?
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2. What is the students' perception of the application in helping improving pronunciation?
1.3 Objectives of the Research
Following the research problems above, this research was conducted with the following objectives :
1. To find out whether PhoTransEdit applications could give better achievement to the students’ pronunciation.
2. To know students’ perceptions about the application in helping improving pronunciation.
1.4 Hypothesis
Based on the statement above, the researcher formulated the following hypothesis.
1. H1 = The students taught through PhoTransEdit would get better scores in pronunciation.
1.4 Significances of the Study
The principle of this research is that phonetic training to improve pronunciation skills. So, theoretically, this research is expected to extend and to prove that phonetic training by using PhoTransEdit is one of the best ways to improve pronunciation skills.
Practically, this research is expected to be useful for English teachers as a new way of teaching English, especially in pronunciation. It is an important
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consideration to give guidance, inspiration, advice of what, how, and why to teach pronunciation effectively in the modern era.
For students, this study will help them to realize the importance of pronunciation in communication. Then, this study is expected to help them to learn pronunciation more efficiently and correctly.
1.5 Scope of the Study
This study focused and was conducted in UNISBA Blitar. It involved two groups of 15 students as participants. They were the fourth semester of the English department. Regarding the test, the students needed to transcribe 40 regular words into phonetic symbols. Then the researcher scored based on which and how many of them are correct according to IPA standards. The research was also limited to focus on segmental features, which are vowels, consonants, and diphthongs, excluding suprasegmental features such as stress, intonation, and other components.
1.6 Definition of The Key Terms
Due to the importance of pronunciation in communication, this study is expected for them to learn pronunciation correctly.
1. Pronunciation
Pronunciation is about how do we produce or make English sounds properly based on IPA standards.
2. PhoTransEdit
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PhoTransEdit is an application that can help the students to learn English pronunciation based on IPA standards. This application allows us to transcribe the regular words into phonetic symbols. This application is available for PC and also has a web version for mobile phone users.
44 CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
In this chapter the researcher concluded the result of the study and shares the finding writing in order to be understood by readers, so that they can use this study as their consideration in applying the strategy for teaching.
6.1 Conclusion
This study is to find out the effect of using PhoTransEdit in improving the fourth semester of students at UNISBA Blitar. According to the statistics data analysis, the students taught by PhoTransEdit scored better than students taught without it. As reminder based on the previous studies that stated phonetic training improves pronunciation skills. It proved that in this current research phonetic training by using PhoTransEdit gave the students improvement significantly in their pronunciation skills. The hypothesis saying that Experimental group would achieve a better achievement than the control group should be accepted, F(1,27) = F 5,703, P 0.024< 0.05.
According to the qualitative data, the students like to use electronic media to learn pronunciation over dictionary. By using PhoTransEdit application, students can easily access the application and transcribe the words or sentences by themselves. PhoTransEdit can help students learn and understand the phonetic symbols even if they don’t have a teacher or trainer with them. It has two options whether they want British English or American English. If the students learn the phonetic symbols from PhoTransEdit frequently, the researcher believe that
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students pronunciation skill will get better. It can be said that teaching or learning pronunciation by using PhoTransEdit is more fun, easily accessible. And should be considered one of the new way to learn and teach pronunciation in a classroom or even for self-learning knowing people these days are inseparable with their gadgets. Because not only does PhoTransEdit have its application but also have it also has an online version. Instead of flipping and looking at a conventional dictionary, using PhoTransEdit is one of the best way to learn and improve our English pronunciation.
6.2 Suggestions
Several suggestions in this research can be valuable and helpful for the success of using PhoTransEdit or any other tools to teach or learn English Pronunciation.
1. For Teachers
To encourage Indonesian EFL teachers to have more confidence in teaching English pronunciation even though we are not native speakers of English. With full advanced preparation, including practicing our own pronunciation using this software and designing effective teaching activities, we can all be experts in teaching English pronunciation.
2. For Future Researchers
For the future researcher who would like to do the research in the same field, it would be better to broaden the limitation of the study. For example longer research with more subjects.
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