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 ??????
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