DEVELOPING ENGLISH PHONEMIC CHART MULTIMEDIA TO TEACH PRONUNCIATION

Primanda Dewanti

English is taught in junior high school in Indonesia. One of the elements is pronunciation. Pronunciation takes an important role in communication because it is a useful basis for a person to understand what other people say. Ideally, in their first year of junior high school, the students are able to pronounce every single word they have learned correctly. It is based on some reasons. First, incorrect pronunciation may lead into a misunderstanding. Kelly (2000: 11) says that a learner who consistently mispronounces a range of phonemic can be extremely difficult for a speaker from another language community to understand. Second, pronunciation is the first elements for someone to know how good our English is. A person will be considered as a good English speaker in the first impression from his pronunciation. Grammar and vocabulary usually become secondarily noticed. From the things mentioned above, it is now clear that pronunciation is very significant in English. It is strongly suggested for every single student to master it well from the very beginning they learn the language.

In learning pronunciation, the students are supposed to master some pronunciation elements. Firstly, they should be able to pronounce a word correctly as the phonemic symbols written in English dictionary. Secondly, they should be able to pronounce every single word in a right stress. Every single word has a stress on its syllables. Stress can be defined as an emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word.  Lastly, they should be able to utter a sentence in a good intonation. Intonation is variant of spoken pitch. It indicates the speaker’s attitude and emotion.

Based on the three requirements above, it can be concluded that the material for teaching pronunciation must be arranged as well as possible. The media should provide words with phonemic symbols and sounds. Phonemic symbols are needed to be included because they show how the students have to pronounce the words based on the symbols. Meanwhile, sounds are required as they provide the real voice of a word. Sounds provide something that can be heard and imitated easily for the students. Furthermore, the media also needs a word stress put on certain syllables of a word. Word stress is a crucial thing in pronunciation. The position may depend on the certain rules. For example, the stress of verbs is usually at the second syllable and the stress of nouns is usually at the first syllable. However, word stress sometimes becomes unpredictable and needs to study individually for every single word. Lastly, the media should provide some full sentences with a good intonation. Intonation expresses the speaker’s emotion and attitude. It also identifies a grammatical structure. It is possible for a person to utter a statement, but by using a question intonation the listener will understand that what he actually means is giving a question.

Many English language learners usually pay less attention to their pronunciation. In junior high school, pronunciation as a part of speaking element is sometimes neglected as the process of teaching and learning often focuses on reading comprehension, grammar, and vocabulary mastery. Pronunciation is often viewed as less important than the other two elements. It is due to the fact that the teacher seldom teaches them about it. English class is sometimes full of working in a paper or textbook. In a reading class, pronunciation is possible to be integratedly taught. However, only few teachers are consistent to do the technique. The fact makes them neglect pronunciation. In addition, some English teachers are not aware about the differences of pronunciation between British and American English. Even, as models for the students, they still pronounce every single word in an unproper pronunciation.

The teaching and learning process of pronunciation in SMP 20 Surakarta can be categorized into poor. The media used is only students worksheet (LKS) whose contribution to pronunciation is very small. The worksheet is employed due to its cheap price since most of the students in the school come from middle-to-low society. Related to the teaching and learning process, it only covers two languange skills; reading and writing. It does not cover the other two skills; listening and speaking. It can be said that the worksheet is not in line with the indicators written on the syllabus since they are based on the four skills in English. Therefore, it is true that it is quite necessary to provide and develop something meaningful to make their pronunciation better.

English phonemic chart multimedia is a media going to be developed in this research. Multimedia is a very popular and easy-to-apply media nowadays. It is a kind of machine-readable instructions that direct a computer processor to perform a specific operation. Many language teachers employ it as a help in developing teaching material. Phonemic chart multimedia is something simpler to bring than a series of books for its light weight. It is true that it needs notebook, LCD projector, and a loud speaker when applied in the class but its contribution to the students’ pronunciation mastery is very valuable. In addition, phonemic charts are choosen as they represent the sound of every single English phonemic symbol. The chart contains all 44 sounds that make up words in spoken English. It will be very useful for studying English pronunciation. The phonemic symbol of the word will be the same with the ones written on English dictionary but it will be easier to apply. In further activity, phonemic charts can be elaborated into some activities, such as drilling, games, and phonemic crosswords. It does not only help the students in relation with pronunciation mastery but also help the teachers to provide a better pronunciation.