CHAPTER II

THEORETICAL FOUNDATION

A. Pronunciation

1. Definition of Pronunciation

Languange is an important thing for communication. To explain the

language, people have to understand how to produce language correctly. It means

that people have to know some knowledge about language. One of them is

pronunciation. Pronunciation is a curicural component for the learning of oral skill

in a second or foreign language.1 Pronunciation is the way a letter, group of

letters, or a word sounds when spoken, the way some one say things. 2 Meanwhile,

pronunciation as the act of producing the sound of speech including articulation,

vowel, formation, accent inflection and intonation, often with reference to the

correctness or acceptability of the speech sounds.3 The study about the error

pronunciation is very important to be done in order to investigate the students‟

problem.4

According to definition above it has already to covered the meaning of

pronunciation. It can be concluded that pronunciation determines between

speakers and listeners who transfer their messages, ideas, and thoughts.

1
Ila Amalia, “Integrated Lesson in Teaching Oral Skill”, Loquen: English Studies
Journal, Vol. 12, No. 01 (08 Juli 2019), 40.
2
Richard A Spears, Ph. D, NTC‟S Pocket Dictionary or Words and Phrases, (The
United State. The McGraw-Hill Compainies, 2002), P 459.
3
Rebecca M Dauer, Accurate English, (New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents, 1993), p.7.
4
Agnes Maria Diana Rafael, “Analysis on Pronunciation Errors Made By First Semester
Students of English Depatment STKIP CBN”, Loquen: English Studies Journal, Vol. 12, No. 01
(08 Juli 2019), 3.

6
 7

Furthermore, pronunciation is the way a person utters words or sounds in a certain

way in order to make the speech can be easy to understand.

2. Element of Pronunciation

Ramelan divides the element of English pronunciation into two parts

namely segmental and supra segmental features. The first is segmental features,

which refer to sound units arranged in a sequential order. This feature can be

studied in isolation. It means that every utterance may be cut out or segmented

into a linear sequence of segmental feature.5

The second is suprasegmental features, which refer to such features as

stress, length, intonation, and other features that always accompany the

production of segmental. Moreover, suprasegmental, cannot be studied in

isolation. Suprasegmental features cannot be described, unless it deals with

segmental.6

In this research, the researcher has only focused on segmental feature.

Because, segmental feature is more appropriate and simple for the researcher to

conducted this research. Furthermore, suprasegmental is not appropriate in this

research because in the place of research does not facilitate and it takes very long

time for doing this research.

a) English segmental feature

English segmental features include vowels, diphtongs, and consonant.

Here are the classification :

5
Ramelan, English Phonetics, (Semarang: UPT UNNES Press, 2003), p. 22.
6
Ramelan, English Phonetics,p. 23.
 1) Vowel

Vowel is sound produced with a free passage. 7 A free passage

here means that vowel are produced without obstruction. English

vowels are divided into two kind, those are long vowels and short

vowels. Long vowels consist of /i:/, /ɜː/, /a:/, /u:/, /ɔː/, while short

vowels consist of /ɪ/, /e/, /æ/, /ә/, /ʌ /, /ʊ/,/ɔ/.

There are some processes that are responsible for the vowels

production, those are : the shape of the lips, the opening between the

jaws, the position of the soft palate, and the shape of the tongue.

Vowels are described in terms of height, backness/ frontness and

roundedness. In phonetics it is usual to symbolize the place of vowels

in the mouth schematically by a chart as displayed below :

Chart 2.1 The English Vowel Chart

7
Bertil Malmberg, Phonetics, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1963), p. 32.
 2) Consonant

The term consonant is negatively defined, that is sounds which

are not vowels are consonants.8 There are 24 consonants in English,

those are: p, b, t, d, k, g, f, v, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, ʧ, ʤ, θ, ð, m, n, ŋ, h, i, r, w, and

j.

According to the position of consonants, it can be divided into:

a) Voiced consonants : / b, d, dʒ, g, j, l, m, n, r, v, ð, y, z, ʒ , ŋ/

b) Unvoiced consonants : /f, p, t, ʧ, k, θ, s, ʃ/

To know wether voiced or unvoiced consonant can be done by

putting your finger on your throat. If you feel a vibration while you

are speaking, the consonant is voiced. Contrary, if there is no vibration

in throat, just a short explosion of air as you pronunce, it means that

the consonant is unvoiced.9

Those are the kinds of segmental features. It is quite different

with the condition in Indonesian language. There are only 5 vowels,

21 consonants and 3 diphthongs. It is possible if many students find

difficulties when they learn the producing of English words.

3) Diphthong

Diphthong is included in a vowel with a special feature.

Diphthong is a part of vowels in the main features of pronunciation

diagram as follow :

8
Gerald Kelly, How to teach Pronunciation, p. 35-36.
 Chart 2.2 The Main Features of Pronunciation10

According to Kelly, diphthong is a combination of two vowel

and involving a movement from one vowel to another (like /eɪ/, as in

rain). The first sound in each phoneme is longer and louder than the

second in English. There is an intentional glide (or movement of the

tongue, lips and jaw) made from one vowel position to another vowel

position. It is produced in one single impulse of breath. For example:

„lay‟, „how‟, „hair‟, „boy‟, 'poor', etc.11

Based on the statement above, it can be said that there are two

vowels produced with one impulse of breath also imply that only one

of those two vowel sounds is louder or more sonorous than the other.

3. The advantages of pronunciation

The advantages of working on pronunciation in the classroom include the

following points.

a) Learners can get guidance from the teacher.

b) Learners can practice the dialogues and other exercise in pair.

c) Learners can differentiate of the sounds.

10
Gerald Kelly, How to teach Pronunciation (England: Longman, Pearson Education
Limited, 2000), p. 1.
11
Gerald Kelly, How to teach Pronunciation, p. 34.
 d) We can direct learners with particular pronunciation difficulities to do

specifik units on their own or in small groups, if appropriate.

4. The Problems of Pronunciation

In learning lesson everybody of course has many different problems also

with learning pronunciation. Some the problems of the English of foreign

language are they have difficulty with individual sound and accuracy in spell

the word, many problems in learning pronunciation there are the students get

difficulty in differentiate sounds F,V,P. For example, the word very is

pronunved /peri/ and the word potato is pronunced /fotato/. The problems is

because of their mother tongue of sunda language, the habitual similar sounds

of F,V,P, they speech it words is F.

From the problems above, it can be seen that in order to teach

pronunciation well must teach to speak and listen. So a teacher not only teaches

how to produce correct sound, but also train their listening how Englis is

spoken.

5. Clasification of English Sound

Sounds are heard. The sounds which the organs of speech are capable of

utering are of many different kinds. Some of the continous voiced sounds

produced without obstruction in the mouth are what may be called „pure musical

sound‟ unaccompained by any frictional noise. They are called vowels. All other

articulated sounds are called consonant. The clasification of sounds are :

 a) Vowels

Vowels are voiced sounds that produced without obstruction in the

mouth. In the production of vowels the tongue is held at such a distance

from the roof of the mouth that there is no perceptible fictional noise. The

qualities of vowels depend upon the position of the tongue and lips.

b) Consonants

Consonant are the sounds that produced with obstraction. Some

consonants are breathed and others are voiced of articulation. Those which

contain breath are called breathed, those which contain voice are called

voiced. The example of breathed sounds are p, f, h and voiced sounds are b,

v. The clasification of consonants are explained in the following tables :

Table 2.2 The Consonants Of English12

Manner of Place of articulation

articulatio Palato
n Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glotal
alveolar
Unvoiced -v +v -v +v -v +v -v +v -v +v -v +v -v +v -v +v
(-v)
Voiced (+)
Plosive p b t d k g
Affricative ʧ ʤ
Fricative f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ h
Nassal M N
Ŋ
Lateral L
Approxime R J w
nt w

12
David Odden, Introducing Phonology, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005),
39.
 6. Teachers and Students Roles in Teaching Pronunciation

Teachers and students roles are very important in a pronunciation class.

Teachers should comprehend and do their roles well. Here are some teachers and

students roles explained by Kenworthy :

a) Teachers Roles

There are several important factors of teacher in teaching English

pronunciation as follows :

1) Helping students hear

It means that a teacher must help students perceive sounds. It is

important for teachers to introduce the categories because each

language has its own categories. Teachers need to check that

students aSre hearing sounds in an appropriate way and help students

develop new categories if necessary.

2) Helping students make sounds

Students usually able to imitate a new sound, but if they cannot then

the teacher should give a clue which may help students to produce

new sounds.

3) Providing feedback

Teachers must concern to their students progress by assessing

students performance to see extent of their failure of success.

 4) Pointing out what is going on

Students need to know what to pay attention to and what to work on

because speaking is unconsciously controlled, students may not

recognize that when particular word is stressed or said in different

way, it may affect the message that is delivered to the listener.

5) Establishing priorities

A teacher must help the students establish a suitable plan for action

by recognizing the purpose or their pronunciation learning such as

native-like pronunciation, acceptable pronunciation to the English

ear, and intelligible speech.

6) Devising activities

Probably, the most important and difficult role of teacher has to play

is devising what kind of activities and exercises will be helpful. The

teachers must keep in mind to create good activities, giving

apportunities to the students for practice, experiment, and

exploration.

7) Assesing progress

This is actually similar with feedback. The teachers have to provide

the students information of their performance. Many teachers ignore

this role, whereas in fact it is crucial for maintaining students

motovation.13

13
Joanne Kenworthy, Teaching English Pronunciation, (New York: Longman, 1998),1-2.
 Therefore, teachers roles is important in a pronunciation class. Such as

helping student hear, helping student make sounds, providing feedback, pointing

out what is going on, establishing priorities, devising activities and assessing

process. It means that the teachers has several factors for teaching English

Pronunciation well. But, the teacher must understand about their roles.

b) Students Role

It is simply said that all students need to do is to respond. But it is

not as simple as that, because a success of pronunciation learning will

depend on how much efforts the students put into it. It means that students

must pay attention to the teachers explanation and have a big willingness

to involve actively in the teaching and learning process. In the other words,

the learning process of pronunciation is depend on students attention when

teacher explain.

7. Assessing Pronunciation

There are five assessment categories for performing diagnostic tests of

oral production to accompany a manual of English pronunciation. They are stress

and rhythm, intonation, vowels and consonant.14 In this research, the researcher

focuses on the segmental features which only consists of consonant. According to

Wenjun Zhong, has stated that verbal reports after rater using the speaking rating

scale (pronunciation as one criteration) for TEM 4 and indicates that some vague

wording of descriptors in the rating scale will induce raters to form operational

14
H Douglas Brown, Language Assessment : Principles and Classroom Practice, (The
United States: Longman.com, 2004),p. 47.
definition based on their own understanding. Which examine the IELTS

pronunciation scale and which probes into CEFR Phonological control scale.

B. Tongue Twister

There are lot of practices in English Pronunciation. Those are able to

improve the students speaking skill. Pronunciation practices on sound production

are minimal pairs and tongue twister practice.

Furthermore, the researcher will explain what tongue twister is. Mc Arthur

says that tongue twister sentence is a sentence that has similar sounds or

alliteration, for example : peter piper picked a peck of pickled papers.15

Tongue twister is a means to practice twisting and bending the tongue in all

directions of the month to make the tongue pliable. 16 Tongue twister is a sentence

or phrase that is difficult to say because it contains many similar sounds.17

moreover, according to Karin M. Cintron, has stated that tongue twister are a great

way to introduce the concept of a alliteration and help those trying to learn

English better understand the language.18

At the other side, Tongue Twister are a way to introduce the concept of

alliteration. Those are the exercise that helps the learners to relize their actual oral

the fluency. Those could be the drill of the learners to adapted complicated words

to pronunce easly and to differentiate the similar sound of the different words.

15
Tom McArthur, Living Word : Language, Lexicography and The Knowledge
Revolution, ( London: University of Exeter Press, 1998 ), 20.
16
Brown Robert, L, “Tongue Twister to Improve Pronunciation”, Professional
Persfective, Vol. 3, No. 5 (Jul-Dec, 1998), 1.
17
Dewi Lutfiani, Indri Astutik, “Using Tongue Twister To Improve Pronunciation”,
Jurnal of English Language, Literature and Teaching, Vol. 2, No. 2 (September, 2017), 111.
18
Karin M Cintron, The Use Of Tongue Twister,
(http://www.aminlimpo.com/2012/11/the-use-of-tongue-twister-to-improve.html accesed On
June 2018).
 1. The Technique of Tongue Twister In Teaching Pronunciation

Teaching Pronunciation is not easy task for the teachers. They have teach

their students the correct pronunciation, but must of students still mispronunce

when they asked to read or pronunce an English sentence. Therefore, a teacher

needs to find a good way to teach pronunciation.

The researcher used tongue twister technique to teach pronunciation because

it was a new method and supposed as the appropriate method to solve the problem

faced by second grade students of SMP Negeri 4 Cirinten. In teaching

pronunciaton, tongue twister can be combined with some activites in order to be

more interesting and able to gain students attention. There are some activities :

a) Whisper Tongue Twister

This activity is very interactive and challenging because students must

memorize a tongie twister sentence and whisper it to the next member of

their group. Whisper it to the next member of their group. The result of

students whisper will be varied depend on the listening ability and

language competences they have. Its procedures can be implemented as

follow :

1) Teacher explains the task to the students

2) Teacher introduces the sounds students are to practice and write

their symbols on the whiteboard

3) teacher reads aloud the words and asks students to listen carefully

4) teacher asks students to practice pronuncing the sounds

 5) Teacher divides the calss into groups and have each group sitting

or standing

6) Teacher takes away the strips of paper

7) Each students are asked to repeat the tongue twister to next person

in line. That person repeats the massage to the next in line. In this

way, the message is passed from one student to the next

8) The last student who hear the tongue twister in each group read

aloud infront of class

9) The group finishing correctly in pronuncing the tongue twister wis

the game.19

2. Advantages of Tongue Twister

a) Advantages of Tongue Twister

1) Helping students focus on and take the problems which lead to quick

improvement

2) Tongue twister is great for new language leaners who have trouble

articulating sound of the new language that are different to those of

their own language

3) Tongue twister improve students motivation and pronunciation

4) Students learn in more exciting

5) Students become more confident

6) Tongue twister make students in the class relax in learning process20

19
Kathleen M. Bailey and Lance Savage, New Ways in Teaching Speaking, (Illionis:
TESOL, 1994), 247.
 Using tongue twister in pronunciation class gives advantages. The

advantages of tongue twister are to the students of SMPN 4 Cirinten.

The advantages of tongue twister are improve their motivation as a result

of various activities and improve their pronunciation.

C. Previous Study

There are some previous studies about pronunciation. One of studies is

conducted by Agnes Cahya Lestari, in her study “The Effectiveness of Tongue

Twister Technique to Improve Fluency and accuracy” Thesis. English Education

Department. Faculty of education and teacher training. State islamic university of

sunan ampel surabaya. The result of her study is that the gain of students‟

accuracy and fluency mean score from pretest is 47.00 and posttest is 82.75,

means that the posttest‟s score is higher than pretest‟s score. Then, in order to

answer the hypotheses the researcher use T-test paired sample to analyze the score

of pretest and posttest. The result is T-Value higher than T-Table. In accuracy

findings the table value of significance level of 2 tails above is 1.729 and the

value is 15.726. So that, value is higher than table (15.726 > 1.729) means the

alternative hypothesis (Ha) is not rejected and the null hypothesis (Ho) is rejected.

In fluency findings the table value of significance level of 2 tails above is 1.729

and the value is 6.842. So that, value is higher than table (6.842 > 1.729) means

20
Rahmad Purnama,”The Application Of Tongue Twister To Improve Students‟
Pronunciation”,Thesis (Faculty Of education And Teacher Training Ar-Raniry State Islamic
University Darussalam-Banda Aceh, 2019), p. 19.
the alternative hypothesis (Ha) is not rejected and the null hypothesis (Ho) is

rejected. This study can answer the reasearch question that Tongue Twister

Technique effective to improve fluency and accuracy in speaking English.21

From the second previous studies is conducted by Fathul Mu‟in, Rosyi

Amrina and Rizky Amelia “the students‟ responded that they found learning

pronunciation by using tongue twisters more interesting and enjoyable”. 22 There is

similarity and differences between this research and that previous study. The

similarity are in the topik and the method is about pronunciation and use tongue

twister. The differences is in the source of data.

21
Agnes Cahya Lestari, “The Effectiveness Of Tongue Twister Technique To Improve
Fluency And Accuracy”, English Education Department, Faculty of Education and Teacher
Training State Islamic University of Sunan Ampel Surabaya, (2019), 57.
22
Fathul Mu‟in, Rosyi Amrina and Rizky Amelia, “Tongue Twister, Students‟
Pronunciation Ability, and Learning Style”, Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Vol. 8, No. 4,
(December, 2017), 367.