The Importance of Pronunciation in English School Books

Primanda Dewanti

Abstract

Pronunciation is one of the most important language elements for students in studying English. Ideally, teachers should provide activities which can improve students’ pronunciation. However, most of the school teachers nowadays do not pay much attention to it, so that they rarely provide pronunciation-improving activities. Pronunciation is merely inserted in the school curriculum in the speaking skill. Furthermore, only a few school books provide it. This article will attempt to see about (1) the definition of pronunciation and its aspects, (2) why English teachers neglect it, (3) how to solve the problem, and (4) what activities can be involved in school books. Hopefully, the article provides enough information for students, teachers, and the policy maker of curriculum that pronunciation is very important in English learning.

Keywords: pronunciation, school books.

Introduction

Pronunciation is one of the most difficult problems faced by English learners in Indonesia. Some students do not pronounce every single English word correctly since they may not be confident to do it. Sometimes, they speak too fast which make their pronunciation unclear.

Pronunciation teaching in Indonesia is regarded to be poor. The students are not provided by proper pronunciation. Also, book writers tend to write course books without involving pronunciation in it. In accordance with the idea, Martono (2013) says that “That pronunciation is one area of teaching which is often neglected is true. This is evident in the way that pronunciation is treated in most course books used by Indonesia learners, only a few of which have regular pronunciation activities in the units.”

What is pronunciation and what are its aspects?

Pronunciation refers to “the ability to use the correct stress, rhythm, and intonation of a word in a spoken language” (“Pronunciation”, 2013). Meanwhile, Merriam-Webster dictionary gives definition about it as “the act or manner of pronouncing something” (Merriam-Webster.com). In other words, pronunciation can be said as how a word is pronounced with the correct stress, rhythm, and intonation.

Kenworthy (1998, p. 9) suggests some aspects of pronunciation:

1.      Sounds

English has different sounds from Indonesian. Indonesian tends to make the sound the same as it spells. For example, the word ‘author’ should be pronounced /’ ɒθəɾ/ instead of /’ɒðəɾ/. The activities can be performed by drilling exercises.

2.      Combination of Sounds

English consonants are different from Indonesian. They tend to have a consonant cluster. Kenworthy gives example on the word salt. The word is ended by two consonants.

3.      Linkage of Sounds

English people speak without pausing on each word. They move smoothly from one word to the next (Kenworthy, 1998: 9). Meanwhile, most of Indonesian teachers and students pronounce words in sentence separately each other.

4.      Word Stress and Rhythm

English has different stress and rhythm from Indonesian. Indonesian tends to have the same weight in each syllable, making the rhythmic pattern appear to be syllable-timed (Martono, 2013). English words are pronounced with different stress respectively. Nouns tend to be stressed on the first syllable and verbs tend to be stressed on the second one.

5.      Weak Forms and Sentence Stress

Every single English word has stress on each syllable. However, when combined with other words in a sentence, certain words will have weak forms and are pronounced as schwa /ə/ sound. For example, the word ‘just’ /d͡ʒʌst/ in a sentence will be pronounced /d͡ʒəst/.

6.      Intonation

Intonation refers to the pitch changes (Martono, 2013).  Improper intonation will result in a monotonous utterance. It can also lead to misperception for a person someone is talking to.

Why do English teachers neglect it?

To start with, some people from non-English speaking countries, including Indonesia, find that it is difficult to have a good pronunciation in English. Laroy (1995, p. 7) says that “People from some language backgrounds think it is unimaginable for people from their culture to pronounce English well, and often reinforced by prejudices and stereotypes”. It is believed that some people from certain languages provide English pronunciation well, but some others do not. Some teachers and students in Indonesia do not try to pronounce well since they still believe such kind of view.

Most of English teachers in Indonesia nowadays neglect it. There are some factors going to analyze. Martono (2013) mentions some reasons in line with the fact:

First, many aspects of pronunciation are difficult to teach (or at least that is the perception of most teachers). Secondly, unlike a grammatical or functional area of language, it can be quite difficult to build a lesson around pronunciation point and therefore such points are add-ons to a unit in a coursebook or a lesson in the class. Thirdly, teachers often feel underprepared to teach pronunciation and many seem to struggle to learn the phonemic alphabets.

It can be concluded, then, that pronunciation is not something simple. It needs support in material, lesson plan, and also teaching technique in the classroom.

Another cause that may give influence on it is that government seems not to support the teaching of pronunciation in Indonesia. It can be seen from the competency standards on the ongoing curriculum. One of the competency standards of speaking in Standar Isi says, “Mengungkapkan makna dalam percakapan transaksional dan interpersonal sangat sederhana untuk berinteraksi dengan lingkungan terdekat.” As an element of speaking skill, it is not described very clearly both in the standard itself and also in the indicators. As a result, the material books written by some authors will focus on the ability to utter a phrase or sentence regardless the proper pronunciation.

Related to the school curriculum, there are some competencies standards in a semester. They involve four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Each standard is divided into some basic competencies. Furthermore, every single basic competence is described into some indicators. Most of the topics are about genres and expression, both spoken and written. The materials must be taught to the students four periods in a week in which a period lasts for forty minutes. It means that for a period, the teachers have to teach an indicator. To acquire an indicator may be difficult for some students. In an indicator, they have to master a certain skill accompanied by grammar and vocabulary. Pronunciation merely accompanies speaking skill. It can be seen that pronunciation has the only little place in the teaching and learning.

How to solve the problem?

There are many things can be done to solve the problem. One way suggested by the writer is that a regular course focused on pronunciation for English teachers. The program has to be held regularly. In the implementation of the course, a good pronunciation trainer, a native-like speaker, is really required in this program. As everybody knows that pronunciation teaching needs a model to imitate, a model with improper pronunciation will lead to improper imitation. Also, the trainer has to be able to describe some aspects of pronunciation which are the places of articulation, the manners of articulation, and voicing of a phoneme.

The second thing that can be applied is that involving pronunciation in the school coursebooks. Most of the coursebooks have provided materials about English skills and its elements: grammar and vocabulary. As an important element in English, it is necessary to provide material about pronunciation in every single unit of the book in order to make both teachers and students to consider it as an important element of English teaching. The material can be provided in the form of phonetic transcription and also in the form of cassette/CD.

What Exercise can be involved in School books?

1.        Matching Games

Matching games can be done by certain sentences with the sentence stress. In this case, the book can provide a column filled with utterances and another with the sentence stresses. For example, below is a list of utterances given by Yates (2002) with the stress pattern:

I’ve finished

I’d love to    -    — -

Don’t worry

Keep quiet    — — -

2.        Jazz Chants

Jazz chants are being very popular nowadays in teaching pronunciation. They have been practiced in many other countries. Jazz chants refer to rhymic spoken chants that can be done in the class (Yates, 2002).  It can be used to rehearse students to have good intonation in English. Yates also gives some example of the chants:

I’ve got a new watch                          - — - - —

So have I                                             — - —

And I’ve got a new house                  - - — - - —

So have I                                             — - —

3.        Song-based pronunciation exercises.

Laroy (1995, p. 119) gives an example of activity using a song. The activity, then, should be changed into a material by the song entitled ‘London Bridge’ written in the book. This kind of activity can correct students’ improper pronunciation.

Conclusion

Pronunciation should not be neglected in English teaching in Indonesia. It has the same importance as other English elements. To acquire good pronunciation, both teachers and students nowadays have to apply many techniques deal with it. The government should also help them by involving it into the curriculum and make it as a compulsory element to master for students of schools. In line with the idea, some pronunciation activities can be involved in English school books such as games, jazz chants, and song-based exercises.

References

Kenworthy, J. (1998). Teaching English Pronunciation. Malaysia: Longman

Laroy, C. (1995). Series editor: Alan Maley. Pronunciation. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.

Martono (2013) The Importance of Pronunciation Teaching in Achieving Successful Oral Communication. Proceedings International TEFL Conference. Surakarta: English Education Department UNS.

Pronunciation (2013). Wikipedia.org. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation.

Pronunciation. Merriam-Webster.com. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pronunciation.

Yates, Linda. (2002). Fact Sheet — Teaching Pronunciation: Approaches and Activities. Retrieved from http://www.nceltr.mq.edu.au/pdamep