Outline of the Report

data by using A-B-A design. She concluded that the research has proven that Tongue Twisters can increase th e deaf children’s speech ability of fricative consonants. The last previous study I reviewed was done by Macháčková 2012. She has conducted a research on dental fricative consonants ð and θ in the secondary school; the objects of her research are Czech students. She intended to find out whether all of oral activities minimal pairs, tongue twisters, and oral readings work better in correcting the error of pronunciation of ð and θ that cause intelligibility among her students non-native speaker. The data were gained from three recordings. She compared them and found that the students’ pronunciation of ð was more or less successfully corrected 50, but in case of θ the students’ results in the production of θ were nearly the same. The results showed that by using some different oral activities; minimal pairs, tongue twisters, and oral readings, she could help her students improve their pronunciation. Based on the review of those previous studies, I can infer that oral activities or oral exercises are effective to improve students’ pronunciation. Thus, the previous studies above become my references in doing my research. However, this research is different from the previous ones in some matters. First, the subjects of this study are fifth graders of elementary school; meanwhile the others focus on adult learners. Second, the purpose of this study is to investigate how effective tongue twisters help fifth graders improve their pronunciation of dental fricative θ and ð . Meanwhile, the previous is for fricative sound s. Third, the media which is used in this research is tongue twister; meanwhile the others used nursery rhymes, minimal pairs and oral reading to teach pronunciation. The last but not least, in this study I use a classroom action research design, in which the subjects were taken from the whole class.

2.2 Review of Theoretical Studies

In this section, I will present some theoretical studies that support my research. They are as follows;

2.2.1 Pronunciation

This research deals with speaking activity which involves pronunciation. The explanation of pronunciation will be discussed in this section. 2.2.1.1 Definition of Pronunciation Burns and Claire 2003:5 defines that “pronunciation refers to the phonology of the language or the meaningful perception and production of the sounds of that language and how they impact on the listener. ” Macháčková 2012: 9 states that “pronunciation is a way how sounds are articulated by speakers marking their social class, education and so forth. Pronunciation deals with the way sounds are produced. ” Another expert writes that pronunciation is “the act of producing the sounds of a language” Roach, 2002: 61. From various definitions above, I can draw a definition that pronunciation is the production of the sounds of a language, in this case English, and how they impact on the listeners. 2.2.1.2 The Importance of Pronunciation In the primary stage of language learning, it is good to plant a correct foundation of the language itself. According to Burns and Claire 2003:5, “clear pronunciation is essential in spoken communication. ” Even where learners produce minor