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 ??????
