IMPROVING STUDENT PRONUNCIATION SKILLS THROUGH SONG

IMPROVING STUDENT PRONUNCIATION SKILLS THROUGH SONG


by Mega Lestari

PREFACE

Assalammu’alaikum Wr.Wb.
Alhamdulillah, thanks to Allah SWT for his blessing and all the praise be to Him who has given so much favored that this small paper entitled Improving student pronunciation skill trough song has finished.
This paper is submitted to the lecture of Writing in Academic Purposes and as a requirement for Final Test of Writing in Academic Purposes in Semester Six.
I realize that this paper is still so far from being perfect. I would like to welcome any kinds of suggestions, critics, and so on. At last I hope this small paper will be useful for readers, especially for Teacher of English in Indonesia.
Wassalamualaikum wr. wb






ABSTRACT

In the teaching learning English, there are four essential skills; speaking, reading, listening, and writing. Teaching speaking is very important because with speaking, the teacher will know the result of achievement and successful of their student.
Improving pronunciation through song could be one of the methods to expand the student abilities in speaking. Song can motivate students to learn pronunciation like native speaker. The teacher has to keep their ideas in improving pronunciation and must be able to make the student fun with English.
The aim of this research are to know the student ability, improving the student pronunciation especially through song to know, pronunciation skill between the students who were taught using song and those who were not taught without using song.
The student’s skill in pronunciation will be improved after teaching and learning activity by using song. It means that improving pronunciation using song is one of alternative media of teaching speaking and the last, the songs are good tool for learn English as a fun language.

 
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the study
As a second or foreign language, English is not easy to study by student in early learning. Most of students complain that English is likely to be one difficulty in learning and feel uneasy to try it. For illustration, students feel confused when the teacher asks them to pronounce some words in English. Besides, they also have difficulty in translating many words in English, because they don’t have a lot of vocabulary.
Speaking skill is very important because speaking skill and human being cannot be separated from each other. Speaking skill is used to express their ideas and to communicate to other people. Most students still get hard to be a good speaker. The problems are: the student feels ashamed and afraid to speak English, so they never practice to use target language and always use mother language in the classroom, second for the teacher; they do not use variety of teaching technique such as visual aids. Teacher has to motivate the students to speak English in the class and create the method of teaching, so the student will feel relaxed, and free in using English in classroom. The teacher should be able to make students speak English fluently.
Musical training has a profound impact on other skills including speech and language, memory and attention, and even the ability to convey emotions vocally (www.naturalnews.com/029324_music_brain.htm).
Song can provide interesting way to introduce many types of pronunciation of English language itself. Improving pronunciation by using song may give new atmosphere for the student and also give them fun, and enjoyment. Besides that, song could make the student easier to understand the material that shown by their enthusiasm in teaching learning process. Improving pronunciation through song not only for fun but also teacher teach English through unusual method to enrich student ability to achieve the best goal.

B. Limitation of the problem
This paper only focused on students speaking skill. In this research the writer apply to Improving English pronunciation skill by using song.

C. Statement the problem
The problems of this research are the followings:
1. How is improving pronunciation skill of the students who were taught using song?
2. Is there any difference pronunciation skill between the students who were taught using song and those who were not taught without using song?
D. The purposes of the study
Based on the background of the study above, the purposes of the study are follows:
1. To know how is pronunciation skill of the student who taught using song.
2. To know how is pronunciation skill of the student who taught without using song.
3. To know differences pronunciation skill of the student who taught using song and those who taught without using song.
 
CHAPTER II
TEORITICAL FRAMEWORK

A. Teaching Speaking
Teaching speaking is not a matter to transfer the knowledge of speaking, but also teach how the students are be able to speak to any circumstances.

1. The definition
Teaching learning process is a complex phenomenon. It is not only interaction between the teacher and the student but it involves many factors such as instruction materials, techniques or methods, teaching aids, evaluation and facilities.
There are many opinions about definition of teaching. Teaching is a process to transfer knowledge to students. It is stated from Munsyi: “Mengajar adalah memberikan ajaran-ajaran berupa ilmu pengetahuan kepada seseorang atau beberapa orang, agar mereka dapat memiliki dan memahami ajaran-ajaran tersebut” (2000: 21).
Speaking is one of the skills that have to be mastered by student by students in learning English. It is important to know the definition of speaking first. Brown and Yule stated that “speaking to express the needs-request, information, service, etc” (1998: 7).

2. The purposes of speaking
When we speak to others, we believe that our speech has some purposes. The purposes are very important to be a guide in how we present our ideas. Ralph, an author, said that “Speech is power, speech is persuading, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense” (1999: 7)

3. The elements of Speaking
In speaking, the speaker not only deals in how the sound can be transferred to other and communicates. There are some important elements inside speaking. Shares Chauday stated: “Speaking has some elements that have to be considered by any speaker: pronunciation, vocabulary, fluency” (1997: 22).

a. Pronunciation
Loreto Todd, said: “Human beings are capable of producing an infinite numbers sounds. But no language uses more than a small proportion of infinitive set. And no two humans’ language make us of exactly the same set sounds. When we speaks there is continuous movement of such organt at the time, the volume (soft palate, the lips and the lunge)” (2002: 17)

b. Vocabulary
Penny ur, stated “vocabulary is one of the important aspect in teaching a language, beside grammar and pronunciation as a stuck of words used by person. Vocabulary can be define, roughly as the words we teach in the foreign language (1996:60)”


c. Fluency
According to Penfield at all in Brain Mechanism, they said:
“It might be suggested that a word or phrase is sometimes use in thinking without references to sound of the words, it appearance when printed or the movement of mouth or hands which make it. (2004:54)



B. Songs
Song is a familiar thing and popular in our society not only in general society but also in education society. Most of the people like song because it can make the feeling happy and could tell their aspiration. Beside song can be used as a motivation to student to learn something, motivation is needed to support someone and influence them to do something to get their own goal or purpose.
1. Definiton of Song.
Grifee stated that “Song is part of music that you sing through words” (2001: 10). It closely related to speaking, because speaking is an action of having a communication with the others in using oral language. Oral language can be define simply just an activity which is combine the words together into something understandable.

2. Advantages in Using Song
According to Grifee “Teaching English using song has many advantages for student in improving their pronunciation and also gives the knowledge about the differences between pronouncing in British and American” (2001: 39).
In the same Book, Grifee explain the advantages of Song, there are:
• They are funny
• They promote mimics, gesture and associated to the meaning
• They are good to introduce supra segmental phonetic(stress, rhythm, and intonation)
• Student play a participate role
• They can be applied to comprehension stage (listening) or production (singing)
• There are songs for all ages and levels
• Student learn English very easily, through echoic memory
(2001: 63).

3. Kinds of song
There are many kind of song: Aria, Ballad, Carol, Round/Canon, and Shanty
According to Pinakigoswami:
1. Aria is a song with an instrumental accompaniment. Arias appear most commonly in operas.
2. Ballad is a folk song that tells a story
3. Carol is a traditional song heard at Christmastime or on other holidays
4. Round/Canon is a song in which all parts and voices have the same melody, each starting at a different time.
5. Shanty is a song sung by sailors in earlier times to help them keep a rhythm as they worked


Many language learners feel uncertain and self-conscious about their pronunciation skills. The reason for it may be not only incorrect pronunciation of words, but also incorrect intonation. What do we mean when speaking about intonation and why is intonation so important for those who want to improve their pronunciation skills?
In linguistics, the term "intonation" can be defined as the variation of pitch of the voice when speaking. Along with the word stress the intonation represents a significant element of linguistic prosody. In respect of intonation characteristics all languages can be divided into two large groups. The languages which use pitch to convey some ideas or concepts, for example, surprise, irony, etc. or to change a statement to a question, are called intonation languages: English and French are well-known examples. Some languages use pitch to recognize words: these are tonal languages: Thai and Hausa are examples. An intermediate position is occupied by languages with tonal word accent, for instance Norwegian or Japanese (www.qwertystudios.com/speech/tts-study/study-accurate pronunciation/intonation-skills.html).

 
CHAPTER III
CONCLUSION

Teaching speaking is very important because with speaking, the teacher will know the result of achievement and successful of their student. Improving pronunciation through song could be one of the methods to expand the student abilities in speaking. Song can motivate students to learn pronunciation like native speaker. The teacher has to keep their ideas in improving pronunciation and must be able to make the student fun with English. The student’s skill in pronunciation will be improved after teaching and learning activity by using song. It means that improving pronunciation using song is one of alternative media of teaching speaking and the last, the songs are good tool for learn English as a fun language.
 
References

Munsyi, Abdul Kodir, 2000. Pedoman Belajar Bimbingan Praktis untuk Calon
Guru, Surabaya: Al-Iklas.
Todd, Loreto 2002. An Introduction to Linguistics. UK Longman York Press.
Chauday, Shares, 1997. Testing Spoken English (English Teaching forum)
Edinburgh: Longman.
Gillian Brown and George Yule. 1998. Teaching the Spoken Language Approach
Based on the Analysis of Conversational English. Australia: Cambridge
University Press.
Penny Ur. 1996 . A Course in Language Teaching Practice and Theory. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Penfield et all. 2004. Speech and Brain Mechanism. New Jersey: Princeton.
Griffee, D.T. 2001. Songs in Action. Hertfordshire: Prentice Hall International.