TEACHING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION USING EXPLANATION AND REPETITION DRILLS FOR THE THIRD YEAR STUDENTS OF LANGUAGE PROGRAM OF SMU NEGERI TEJAKULA IN ACADE

A. Title of the thesis : Improving Students’ Pronunciation Using Explanation and Repetition Drills for the Third Year Students of Language Program of SMU NEGERI TEJAKULA in Academic Year 1998/ 1999

B. The researcher : Ketut Sukarsa

C. About the technique

The technique used by the researcher in order to improve the students’ pronunciation was using explanation and repetition drills. This technique is viewed as an effective way to solve problems faced by the students in learning pronunciation. Learning pronunciation is commonly felt as the most difficult thing in learning English. Moreover, pronunciation often spooks the students by its complication. These conditions may complicate the students to reach the learning objectives. Whereas, in learning English, the students are expected to improve their pronunciation as earlier as possible because if they have developed false pronunciation, correcting it will be difficult and time consuming. Thus, repetition drills is one of the techniques which is effective and appropriate to solve the problems.

Repetition drills is a kind of drills in which the students repeat the teacher’s model as accurately and as soon as possible. In this case, this technique used in order to enable the students to use proper stress, rhythm and intonation which lead them to good pronunciation. It is very useful at the beginning stage of language learning to built up the “kinetic memory” that is for training the students’ perceptual motor skills.

According to the thesis, there are three kinds of repetition drills, they are verbatim repetition, open-ended repetition, and dialogue repetition drills.

a. Verbatim repetition

In verbatim repetition, the students repeat what the teacher says properly without any changes.

b. Open-ended repetition

In this drills, each student has to repeat all the responses from the students before him and adds his own information related to the topic. This drills requires the students to listen and pay attention to each other.

c. Dialogue repetition drills

In this drills, the sequence of specific pattern is repeated by the students with minor variation.

Repetition dills is one of the techniques in audio-lingual method. This technique emphasizes on how students learn a target language by repetition in order to enable the students to reproduce it automatically. The students will achieve this ability by forming new habits in the target language because learning is viewed as habit formation. Besides, the teacher, in this case, has an important role in leading and controlling. He also plays a part in being or providing a good model of imitation for the students. The learning materials are graded based on the level of complexity. Consequently, the beginners are only presented by the simple ones. Finally, the students’ errors are really avoided because it viewed as a formation of bad habits. Thus, when errors occur, the teacher immediately corrects the errors.

Although repetition drills is an old-fashioned technique, it has some advantages. It can:

1. Train the students’ accuracy and fluency.

2. Provide the students with intensive practice in hearing and saying particular words or phrases that different from their first language.

3. Help the students notice the correct form or pronunciation of a word or phrase.

4. Provide an opportunity for students to get immediate feedback on their accuracy.

5. Help memorisation and automatism of the students in term of pronouncing words or phrases.

According to the thesis, the researcher did not only use repetition drills purely, but it was also added by explanation. It was done in order to make the students understand more about how sounds are produced or how words are pronounced. Besides, there will be very little understanding if the teacher just use repetition drills without giving explanation.

D. Procedure

This is a procedure that must be obeyed by the teacher when applying the technique.

1. Before working with students, the teacher firstly have to do item selection in which he selects which items will be taught to the students.

2. After that, the items are displayed. The teacher gives models how to pronounce particular sounds, words, or more complex ones. The teacher repeats it three times or more. It must be clear, natural sounding, and consistent. The teacher should repeat the items with natural speed since slow or fast stimuli will affect the students’ pronunciation.

3. After the students have listened for several times, they are asked to repeat. The repetition should begin with chorus or mass drills. When it is successful, the teacher may ask the students to repeat individually.

4. Within the practice, the teacher judges the students’ responses.

5. The judgement did by the teacher, then, used as a basis for giving feedback to the students’ responses. During the practice, errors are really avoided. Thus, the teacher will give correction directly when he finds the students making errors. Drilling is firstly for showing to the students how to say something modelling or highlighting. Therefore, correction (after choral or individual repetition) can be seen as an opportunity to re-model or re-highlight.