Observation Research Findings and Discussions

a. Observation

Observation is the first step in the classroom action research. In this step, the researcher played her role as the teacher in the class. The teacher entered the classroom and followed the activities in the class. Hence, the researcher also had her role as the observer in class. The researcher conducted the observation at the first meeting, on February 3 rd , 2009. In the observation, the researcher found some problems in the class. One of the problems was the students’ pronunciation intelligibility in speaking. The researcher collected the first data based on the students’ pronunciation intelligibility in the class. During the lesson, the researcher observed the students’ activities, teacher activities, and classroom activities. In the first lesson, the teacher distributed lists of vocabulary to the students. The list of vocabulary consisted of thirty five words from the topic in the students’ handbook. The words were action verb and thinking verb. In order to make students easier in studying the new vocabulary, the teacher also gave the meaning of the vocabulary in Indonesian. After distributing the vocabulary, the teacher asked the students to pronounce the vocabulary individually. While the students pronounced the vocabulary, the teacher recorded the data. From the observation, the researcher found out some findings. First, the researcher found out that the English teacher did not teach pronunciation in the class. Pronunciation was not one of the basic skills that the students should acquire and pronunciation lesson was usually taught integrated with speaking. The English teacher also rarely corrected the students’ lix PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI mistakes in pronunciation. The English teacher still allowed the students to make mistakes in their pronunciation. Those mistakes in pronunciation made the student speak unintelligibly. Second, the researcher found that the students had limited knowledge in English phonetic features. The students were not familiar with the English words in the vocabulary and mispronunciations almost happen during the lesson. These made the students were unintelligible in pronouncing the English words. Third, the problem arose because of the students’ first language. The students’ dialect was still strong in the pronunciation. In fact, different sounds could bring different meaning for the words. Fourth, the students were rarely asked the teacher the correct spelling of the words. This made the students easily to make unintelligible pronunciation in their speaking. From the problems found, the researcher intended to improve the students’ pronunciation intelligibility in speaking. The researcher could find the appropriate technique to improve students’ pronunciation intelligibility in speaking. The participants in this research were the students of XIIPA 3 of SMA 2 Ngaglik. The class consisted of thirty six students, but in the first observation two students were absent. Therefore, the participants in this research were thirty four students from the beginning until the end of the research. The subjects of the research were five students. The subjects were two female and three male students. The students were selected because they had the lowest pronunciation intelligibility in class. They made unintelligible pronunciation more than 30 from the listed vocabulary. Those five students got the treatment to improve their pronunciation intelligibility in speaking. The improvement in class was not only lx PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI for the low level students, but also all of the students in class. The improvement showed that the medium level and high level students also improved their pronunciation intelligibility. The students were required to pronounce the vocabulary individually.

b. Reflection