THE INFLUENCES OF TONGUE TWISTER IN TEACHING PRONUNCIATION OF ASPIRATED SOUND [ph]

Abstract

Speaking English for Indonesian students needs more than an effort to master as
they cannot produce intelligibly pronunciation. Besides, their mother tongue
interferes them when there is different sound production between Indonesian and
English; hence, they have difficulty in pronouncing aspirated sound that does not
exist in Indonesian. This study aims to find out how Indonesian students pronounce
aspirated sound [ph] and the influences of tongue twister to teach pronunciation of
aspirated sound [ph]. This research uses pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design.
The data were collected from the result of pronunciation tests of seventh graders of
SMP Negeri 12 Magelang in academic year 2016/2017. The findings showed that
students mispronounced [ph] into /p/ as what they had in Indonesian. After being
taught with tongue twister, the mean score of experiment group increased from
13.28 to 50.16. There was significant difference of the ability between students who
were taught pronunciation using tongue twister and those who were not. The t-test
result was 0.000 sig 5%; it means there was different ability between control and
experiment group after receiving the treatment. Based on the result, the researcher
concluded that tongue twister helps Indonesian students to improve their
pronunciation of aspirated sound [ph].