CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This chapter discusses about the background of research, Formulation of problem,

objective, scope and benefits of research..

1.1 Background

English Pronunciation is considered to be one of difficult skills to acquire and

improve especially for the English non native learners (Benzies. 2013. P. 1).

Pronunciation refers to produce the sounds of the words or phrases. The aspects

of pronunciation which is considered such as intonation, Phrasing, stress, timing

and rhtym (AMEP. 2002. P.1)

Teaching pronunciation is one of most complicated but significant in English

Foreign Language (EFL) and English as Second Language (ESL) class. Almost

English teacher in the past emphasize student to study grammar and vocabulary

than pronunciation. But now,some of those teacher try to emphasize pronunciation

skill in English teaching learning (Shooshtari, Mehrabi, Mousavinia. 2013. P.

454).

International Phonetic alphabet is a set of symbols andconvention which is

adoptedby the International Phonetic Association as a universal system for the

transcription of speech sound. IPA is used to describe and analyze the sound

systems of language and phonetic alphabets represent the sounds ofany language

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(Mumeneen. 2009. P. 6). It originally develop by French and British language

teacher by paul Passy and Henry Sweet (Polachova. 2006. P. 14).

Alphabet transcriptions help to pronunce words or sentences which is wanted to

pronunce . It also helps the learners recognize sound of word in listening

proficiency. The International Phonetic Alphabet has hundreds of symbols, but

fortunately only fifty or so, corresponding to the number of sounds used in

English are necessary for transcription of English.

Phonetic alphabets can be used to show students how a word or phrase should be

pronounced. The IPA can represent standard pronunciation which is commonly

blended with regional accents.

Most of teacher have taught pronunciation with this method but the case is they

just try to introduce the phonetic alphabet to the higher level.

1.2 Formulation of problem

1. How International Phonetic Alphabet can improve the students

pronunciation skill?
2. Whether this method can give the improvement to students pronunciation

skill?

1.3 Objective of the Research

1. To find out how International Phonetic Alphabet can help students to

improve their pronunciation.

2. To find out whether this method can give the improvement to

studentspronunciation skill.

1.4 Scope of the Research

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The data will be taken in English Club at SMA Utama 2 Bandar lampung. The

participant consists of 5 students, the first I will introduce the International

Phonetic Alphabet and give words list to know whether this method can give the

improvement.

I do this study to find out the benefits of learning phonetic symbol in Language

learning and how effective this method in Improving the learners pronunciation

skill in English. This method is appropriate to use in senior high school to

improve the pronunciation skill, Actually this method has used in Lecturer but for

senior high school not yet.Thats way I do this research with my title Using

International Phonetic Alphabet to improve the students pronunciation skill in

English Club at SMA Utama 2 Bandar Lampung.

1.5 Benefits of the Research

This research can be used by English teacher as a method which help student to

pronounce the words or phrases. It also useful for other researcher which do the

research that is related to International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and concern to

pronunciation skill.

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

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This chapter reviews studies of the importance of pronunciation , the concepts

studies related to the use of International Phonetic Alphabet to help the learners

improve their pronunciation.

2.1 Concept of Pronunciation and IPA

In English Second Language and English Foreign Language class pronunciation is

one of English element skill which is mastered by the learners. It means the

learners have to improve to pronounce each word or phrase correctly. For non

native English speakers will get the difficulties to pronounce English word

because of their accent or dialect.

Everyone knows that it can be difficult to produce sound when we learn another

language which different with our first languge. Many learners try to imitate their

teachers pronunciation to get correct pronunciation of the word or phrase. The

key of good communi;cation is understand what people say. It means our

pronunciation must be corret to make the listener understand.

According to Varasarin (Varasarin,2007.p.10) the learners need to understand and

to be understood. If they cannot listen the words or sentences, misunderstanding

will appear. Each aspect in English learning process is interconnected. It means

each skill can help to improve other skill of language.

Pronunciation is the knowledge of how to say a word and which is how to

pronounce it (Hakim. 2012. P, 245). Enhlrich divide factors to mastering

pronunciation, those are :

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 1. Biological Factors
The learners have accent of their first language which is influenced them

when they pronounce the words or phrase.

2. Sociocultural Factors

Conversation or communication to the environment will influence the learners to

learn how to pronounce word especially native environment, so they can identify

the sounds and imitate it.

Rahman (2011.P. 6) try to learn from ELT practioners in Bangladesh because

some university there teach to students of applied linguistic. He found out there

are differences between Native English Speakers (NES) and non native English.

He want to find it from current residentsof ELT land in March 2012, They were

taught or suggested teaching English Pronunciation to NES and NNES.

From his observation, he can conclude that NBS English learners should

emphasize English consonant phonemes [f], [v], [w], [z], and [s].The Bengali

learners also have to distinguish between short and long vowel sounds.

Issakainen (2006. P. 30) reports about two teachers in his experiment which face

same problem when they are teaching English especially teaching pronunciation.

They realized that learn how produce the sound. So, they emphasize more to

pronunciation skill. Students need dedication to phonetics, such as minimal pairs,

phonetic transcription and comparative analysis. If phonetic instruction is

neglected, student do not learn to percept sounds correctly and cannot be

understood by the listeners either. Students need to focus on what they hear, not

what they see on paper.

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The Phonetic Symposium 2006 reports on a Finnish research group, Iivonen et al.,

developing a new educational program. Which explains the process of acquiring

the pronunciation and the role of teaching pronunciation itself. The Phonetic

Symposium 2006 reports that learning the sounds of a foreign language requires

the formation of a memory model. So there is a correlation between produce the

sound with memory model. Memory model will influence the sound which is

produced for example foreign accent. Impossible to learn pronunciation without

developing auditory memory models. Iivonen et al. (2006) discuss an experiment

conducted by Lindbolm, Lubker and Gay (1975), where the normal movement of

the lower jaw was blocked by a bite block, and yet the speaker was able to

produce the compensating sounds. The result indicates that auditory objectives

guide articulation.

Actually, phonetic alphabet is one of methods which is suggested to teach

pronunciation in teaching books like Gimson (1964) suggest. Because this is a

good method to reinforce analytically the information which the learner may have

received imperfectly by ear. Even though school books do use phonetic

transcriptions in their vocabulary lists, it was interesting to know that there are

some teacher which combine this method with another method, for instances

using writing system, using passage or whole text and etc.

Stringer (1998) reports that a method called Everyday Life Performance (ELP)

for performing naturally occurring conversation, the actors try to recreate or

pretend that these scene or conversation is their own everyday life. Actors

rehearse these scenes by imitating tape recordings, using transcription as memory

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aid. The goal of this experiment is empirical adequacy, making students aware of

minute details of language and how conversations unfold naturally. Pronunciation

is a central component in teaching EFL. Stinger believes that one way for a non-

native teacher to help students with pronunciation is detailed understanding of

the principles of transcription and of the precise nature of relationship between

transcription and pronunciation. Thus, detailed study of the recording and the

transcription of a conversation can be effective in teaching pronunciation.

Alphabet transcriptions help to pronunce words or sentences which is wanted to

pronunce . It also helps the learners recognize sound of word in listening

proficiency. The International Phonetic Alphabet has hundreds of symbols, but

fortunately only fifty or so, corresponding to the number of sounds used in

English are necessary for transcription of English.

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHOD

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This chapter describes design, phenomenon, setting and participants in the

research. It also discusses data collection and data analysis.

3.1 Research Design

s

The research uses qualitative method. The method produces descriptive data from

human beings and their behavior.

The researcher conducts descriptive qualitative method to make description

systematically, factually and accurately. The researcher describes the development

of students pronunciation by using reading aloud. There are five students as the

participant from SMA Utama 2 Bandar Lampung. There are two ways in this

research, i.e. observing and implementation. Firstly, i observed the situation and

the ability of the students. I am as the researcher will give words list and ask them

to pronounce it words there before introduce the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Secondly, I teach students use International Phonetic Alphabet. The teaching

learning process was recorded. Finally, the data was analyzed to see the

development of students pronunciation.

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3.2 Phenomenon

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Cresswell (2012, p.128) explains that the term phenomenon is used in qualitative

research instead of variable for the object being observed. The central

phenomenon which is observed in this research is the improvement of the

students pronunciation when the students are being taught with International

Phonetic Alphabet technique.

3.3 Setting

This research was conducted in SMA Utama 2 Bandar Lampung. This school is

located at Sudirman Street , Bandar Lampung.

3.4 Participants

The participants are 5 (five) students as English Clubs members in SMA Utama 2

Bandar Lampung

3.5 Data Collection

The data was collected by observing the students and recording teaching learning

process. The observation is on International Phonetic Alphabet technique used by

the researcher in the school. The recording is about the process of using

International Phonetic Alphabet technique.