SONGS
TO IMPROVE THE STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN PRONOUNCING ENGLISH WORDS
(An
Action Research)
CHAPTER
I
INTRODUCTION
1.1
Background of the Study
Language
is a very important means of communication in daily human life. Human being
uses language both in written and spoken forms to express their idea. As stated by Ramelan (1992: 10),
language is an arbitrary system of speech sounds which is used in interpersonal
communication by an aggregation of human beings, and which rather exhaustively
catalogs thing, process, and events in the human environments.
English
has become an international language. People of different countries speak
English to communicate. English is a key,
which opens the door to scientific and technological knowledge. The Indonesian government has chosen English as the first foreign language to be
taught in the schools. English becomes one of compulsory subjects from Junior High
School up to University. Therefore, the government provides a curriculum as the
guidance of English teacher in teaching-learning process. In the English
curriculum 2006, the learning activities involve listening, speaking, reading
and writing. The four skills are taught cohesively. Although it is focused on the four skills,
pronunciation is not separately taught from the four skills.
It
is difficult for Indonesian students to pronounce English words correctly, for
example when they are asked to pronounce
the word “umbrella” / ∂mbrel∂ / they
will pronounce /umbrella /. It is because of the differences between their mother
tongue and the English. The degree of difficulty in learning is also determined
by the degree of difference between the two languages. The greater similarity
between them, the less difficult it will be for
the students to learn the foreign language (Ramelan,1985:5).
Pronunciation
is one of the most important parts of English to communicate with others since
there are differences between the symbol and its sounds. When we communicate
with other people we should not only have a good vocabulary but also have good
pronunciation. Therefore, it is important to teach pronunciation. As stated by
Harmer ( 2000: 183 ) that for all these
people, being made aware of pronunciation issues will be of immense benefit not
only to their own production but also to their own understanding of spoken
English.
The
students often find problem with pronunciation when they speak, read, or listen
to English words. It might be caused by some factors. Learning English is very
complex since there are many factors that determine the success or failure of
learners in language learning. There are two kinds of factors,???????????
