Improving the Students’
Pronunciation through Homophone Games
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A.
Background
In English language teaching,
there are four language elements namely: structure, vocabulary, pronunciation
and spelling. Those elements are though in order to develop the students’ skill
in the language learning. One second of them should be noticed is pronunciation
is considered difficult element method that can be applied in learning
pronunciation.
The researcher has
observed that in junior high school students are lack of pronunciation while
Nurhayati (2008:1), states that the pronunciation means knowledge of knowing to
produce word which is very essential in oral communication. When speakers
mispronounce some words or phrases, people can be misunderstanding. To reduce
it, the teacher must equip the learner with English certain degree accuracy and fluency in understanding, responding and in expressing him self in the language
in speech in other the learners communicatively in using the language.
The specific
characteristic of English learners who categorized as a good and successful
oral skill developer is those who have a good pronunciation of English
consonant and English vowel. A good pronunciation of English consonant and
English vowel suggested is a consonant and vowel of pronunciation that sounds
like native speaker. Therefore, it is necessary for English learners to have a
good pronunciation to support them to be good speaker (Nurhayati, 2008).
Due to the problem above, most of the result indicates that the students have
low ability in pronunciation included the students of the second year SMP . Based on the researchers’ observation, she got that the
students still have much difficulty when they are asked to pronounce especially
English vowels. Besides that, based on the students’ mean score is still
low.
There are many interesting media
that can be applied to serve the pronunciation in the class; one of them is
Homophone Games. With the reason that games offer students a fun-filled and
relaxing learning. After learning and practicing new vocabulary, students have
the opportunity to use language in a non-stressful way (Uberman, 1998:2).
Games also motivate students to
introduce an element of competition into language-building activities. This provides
valuable impetus to a purposeful use of language (Prasad, 2003). In other
words, these activities create a meaningful context for language use. Most
students who have experienced game-oriented activities hold positive attitudes
towards them (Uberman, 1998:2).
Homophone Games are a natural
follow on from the homophone dictation and can be used to help the students to
practice and remember homophones (Editor, 2000). A homophone is a word that is
pronounced
