The Research Process RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

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CHAPTER IV RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter was divided into two parts. They were the process of the research and the role of podcasts in helping the students’ pronunciation skills.

A. The Research Process

Classroom Action Research CAR was a research which was conducted by a teacher who wanted to find out the best method that could improve the students learning in her own classroom. In this research, the teacher as the researcher collected and analyzed the data in her classroom related to the teaching practice. After collecting and analyzing the data, the teacher could reflect on her finding. After finding the problems in classroom, the researcher collected fresh data related to the problem and then analyzed some solutions to solve the problem. This process was called as a cycle which could be repeated until the researcher found a suitable solution. In this research, the researcher tried to answer the objective which was to find out whether podcasts are useful for the students’ pronunciation skills in VIII B of SMP PGRI 10 Wedi, Klaten. 1. The Observations The researcher did the observations after getting the English teacher’s permission. The researcher did two observations on 5 th and 7 th August, 2015. On 5 th Augu st, 2015, the researcher introduced the researcher’s name and also asked 35 the students’ cooperation during this research to the students in VIII B class. Then, the researcher sat down in the back of classroom and started to observe the English teacher, students, and the situation in the classroom. During the observation, the researcher found that the students had difficulties in learning English such as grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and the students were not accustomed to use English in the classroom. The researcher paid attention to the English teacher’s way of teaching and the researcher knew that on several occasions the English teacher used Bahasa Indonesia to give instructions in the classroom to the students. Afterwards, the researcher decided to do this research about the students’ pronunciation skills because the students’ pronunciation skills was worse than their grammar or vocabulary. On 7 th August, 2015, the researcher did the next observation to know the students’ difficulties in learning pronunciation deeper in order to find out an appropriate method or treatment to overcome the students’ difficulties. The researcher found that the students had difficulties in pronouncing animals’ names which have two or more syllables. The researcher took notes of 12 animals’ names which were difficult to be pronounced by the students. After the researcher did two observations, the researcher knew an appropriate method or treatment to the students. Therefore, podcasts were chosen to overcome the students’ difficulties in learning pronunciation. 36 2. The Students’ Difficulties in Pronouncing Animals’ Names In this research, the researcher tried to find an action to overcome the research problem. Podcasts were chosen to help the students’ pronunciation skills in VIII B class of SMP PGRI 10 Wedi, Klaten. Podcasts were chosen because the researcher found some advantages of using podcasts to learn pronunciation exercises. For example is the atmosphere of pronunciation exercises was conducive enough because the stu dents really could pay attention to teacher’s explanation by using podcasts. After knowing the advantages of podcasts to learn pronunciation exercises, the students were able to pronounce animals’ names with correct stress and good accuracy. By using the pronunciation rubric, the researcher assessed the students ’ pronunciation skills. From these stages, the researcher could show problems which occurred in students’ pronunciation skills. From their performances, the researcher concluded the general problems of the students. The problems were as follows: a. Students had difficulties in pronouncing animals’ names which have two or more syllables. For examples:  Eagle ˈi . ɡᵊl̩ became “Eagel” eagəl.  Tiger ˈt ɪ·ɡər became “Tiger” tɪger.  Crocodile ˈkr k·əˌd ɪl became “Krokodil” krokodɪl.  Elephant ˈel·ə·fənt became “Elepent” elepent. 37  Kangaroo ˌkæŋ·ɡəˈru became “Kangeru” k ngəru. b. Students had limited English vocabulary. Some of the students often asked the teacher for the English vocabulary. c. Students were not confident when the teacher asked them to read aloud the materials. 3. Action Implementation This research was CAR. The actions were implemented through the steps of CAR. This research consisted of four steps namely; planning, action, observation, and reflection. Those four steps were a part of a cycle. In the planning step, the step was done to prepare everything before the teaching and learning process. Meanwhile, the actions and observation were done at the same time during the action implementation. The result of the action was evaluated and reflected by the researcher to figure out if the action implemented could help the students develop their pronunciation skills. The results were taken by using the instruments of this research. The implementation of the use of podcasts in learning pronunciation was conducted from August until September 2015. There were two cycles in this research. The first cycle was conducted in four meetings in August 2015 and one meeting was conducted in September 2015 as the second cycle. Each cycle should consist of four steps. In the second cycle there was only one meeting and one step because the researcher wanted to know the students’ progress of learning pronunciation through podcasts by doing the post-test. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 38 a. The First Cycle The participants of this research were 15 students. The first cycle was conducted in four meetings on Friday, 14 th August, 2015, Friday, 21 th August, 2015, Friday, 28 th August, 2015, and Friday, 4 th September, 2015. The teaching and learning processes were based on the syllabus and the researcher’s materials. The first cycle of this research consisted of four stages namely; planning, action, observation, and reflection. The actions and observation were conducted at the same time. When the actions were implemented, the researcher could observe what was going on during the implementation. After that, the researcher did reflection for the next cycle. 1 Planning At the first time, the researcher began to plan the CAR by asking permission to the headmaster of SMP PGRI 10 Wedi, Klaten and to the English teacher. After having permission, the researcher prepared the lesson plan, the model of exercises, flashcards, podcasts, and questionnaire. The planning step was done after the researcher found problem faced by the students in VIII B class of SMP PGRI 10 Wedi, Klaten. The main focus of this step was to prepare an appropriate treatment to help the students’ pronunciation skills by using podcasts. In the first meeting of the first cycle, the researcher tried to show flashcards. The researcher planned to show animal pictures to the students. The researcher tried to provide the phonetic transcriptions of the animals’ names on the flashcards. The researcher tried also to print the colored pictures. The PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 39 researcher made a plan to use 12 color animal flashcards and asked the students to read it correctly. There were two reasons why the researcher chose 12 animal flashcards. First reason was 12 animals’ flashcards was mostly used in students’ handbook and also in LKS. Second reason was 12 animals’ flashcards categorized clearly which stress in the beginning and in the middle of word. The researcher also planned to explain the function of stress and give the correct example in pronouncing the animal’s names. The researcher also asked each student to read the 12 color animals’ names in the teacher’s desk as their pre-test. The researcher also planned to make the action for this stage of pronouncing carefully. Due to this stage was very important to know whether podcasts help the students’ pronunciation skills in pronunciation exercises. Then, the researcher also planned to give a task to complete the animal diagram on the book as their homework and do some activities from LKS. The researcher only focused on the use of podcasts to help the students’ pronunciation skills. During pronunciation exercises, the students got many difficulties. They lacked of knowledge about accuracy, vocabulary, and knowledge about stress and unstressed. Therefore, the researcher gave the solution to fix their mistakes by using podcasts. Podcasts also could train them to be accustomed to hear English sounds in order to help them in developing their pronunciation skills. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 40 2 Action This action was conducted in the meetings on Friday, 14 th August, 2015, Friday, 21 st August, 2015, Friday, 28 th August, 2015, and Friday, 4 th September, 2015 for eighty minutes. In this stage, the researcher played role as the classroom teacher. On Friday, 14 th August, 2015, the researcher started the activity by checking the students’ readiness to follow the lesson and it was continued by recalling the students’ pronunciation skill to pronounce animals’ names by asking some questions. After that, the researcher asked the students to do task 2a page 2 from the book “English on Sky SMP book 2” and do activity 1 and 2 from LKS page 5. The researcher asked the students to do part in LKS because it made the students were accustomed to pronounce animals’ names as often as possible by doing several exercises from the book and also LKS. All in all, it made the students pay attention to the animals’ names’ pronunciation and emphasize stress on students’ mind from short term memory to long term memory Thornbury, 2005 as cited in Gianjar, 2013. The researcher also asked the students to do task 2b from book page 3 as their homework. The researcher gave examples on how to pronounce animals’ names correctly by showing the phonetic transcriptions of animals’ names on the flashcards to the students. The researcher showed the phonetic transcriptions of animals’ names because it was important to the students to know the basic knowledge of English vowels and consonants to avoid misunderstanding in pronouncing animals’ names. The example is when the students pronounced the words Kangaroo ˌkæŋ·ɡəˈru and Ostrich ˈ ː.strɪtʃ. They could not pronounce 41 those two animals’ names correctly because the word “Kangaroo” has double vowels æ which are followed by ŋconsonant and the word “Ostrich” has tʃ consonant. The researcher pronounced æ vowel and ŋ and tʃ consonants loudly and frequently in the classroom and asked the students to repeat many times. In this stage, the researcher chose the animals’ names as a topic in pronunciation exercises in the first cycle. After the students had enough accustomed to listen the correct pronunciation on animals’ name, the researcher asked the students to read 12 flashcards one by one as the pre-test. The researcher let the students to read the 12 flashcards based on their understanding. Each student read the 12 flashcards in order from first line until fourth line. After all students had done the pre-test, the researcher asked them to discuss together whether their pronunciation was right or wrong. In the second meeting of the first cycle on Friday, 21 st August, 2015, the researcher asked the students to do the task 3a on page 4 from the book and activity 3 and 1 on page 6 from LKS. After that, the researcher asked the students to discuss together. Then, the researcher showed the podcasts by using LCD in the classroom. The researcher would stop the podcasts after one animal name was showed. Then, the researcher asked the students to repeat twice what they heard from the podcasts. In the third meeting of the first cycle on Friday, 28 th August, 2015, the researcher asked the students to do task 4a on page 5, task 6a on page 9 from the book and activity 3 on page 7 from LKS. As usual, the researcher asked the PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 42 students to discuss it together in the classroom. After that, the researcher showed podcasts and also asked the students to repeat aloud. When the students pronounced incorrectly, the researcher played the podcasts. Figure 4.1: Students’ activities in the classroom In the last meeting of the first cycle on Friday, 4 th September, 2015, the researcher reviewed the previous materials by asking the students to do task 11a on page 15 from book. The students had to complete seven questions about writing the pets’ names .The researcher also asked the students to do activity 7 on page 8 from LKS abo ut guessing what animals are through the animals’ characteristics. The researcher asked the students to read the animals’ names in the book. After that, the researcher showed the podcasts again to the students in the classroom. The reason why the researcher used podcasts was that this media could help the students to give the correct pronunciation in giving the right stress of animals’ names which have two or more syllables, to be accustomed to listening to English pronunciation, and to make the students were enthusiastic to learn 43 English. Moreover, the students had color animal flashcards to make it more interesting. Here were the examples of the flashcards and podcasts used in this research. Figure 4.2: Flashcard and Podcast in Animals From the examples of flashcards and podcasts, it can be seen that this media made the students were enthusiastic to learn English especially in learning pronunciation and helped the students to have idea about the animals’ appearance. The researcher provided the phonetic transcriptions on the flashcards to introduce the English vowels and consonants in order to help the students were able to read and pronounce the English vowels and consonants correctly. It was because when the researcher gave the flashcards with the phonetic transcriptions, the students could not read the phonetic transcriptions such as vowel æ and consonant t ʃ. After the students could read the phonetic transcriptions, the students were able to pronounce the animals’ names correctly. Therefore, when the students saw the podcasts which provided sound, they were not confused. 44 3 Observation The observation was conducted at the same time with the action implementation on Friday, 14 th August, 2015, Friday, 21 st August, 2015, Friday, 28 th August, 2015, and Friday, 4 th September, 2015. In the observation stage, the researcher asked a help to the English teacher to observe what was going on during the action implementation. In the second meeting of the first cycle on Friday, 21 st August, 2015, the stage of learning was done by giving the podcasts in LCD. Earlier, the researcher asked the students to do the task from the book on page 7. The researcher asked the students to discuss it in a group of two. After that, the researcher asked each of the students had to answer the questions. After discussing the task together, the researcher showed the podcasts by using LCD in the classroom. The researcher asked the students to repeat and speak loudly what they had heard after watching the podcasts. Additionally, the students were very excited to watch the podcasts and repeat it although sometimes they were noisy. In the third and fourth meetings of the first cycle on Friday, 28 th August, 2015 and Friday, 4 th September, 2015, the stage of learning was done by giving the podcasts in LCD. The researcher used the same method as at the first meeting. The researcher asked the students to do some tasks from book or LKS and then discuss it together after the students finished on doing the tasks. The researcher explained the material if some students still did not understand yet. In the end of the class, the researcher showed the podcasts. 45 Based on the observation during the first cycle, the students were very excited in learning pronunciation through the podcasts and active in repeating the podcasts. Even if, some students still did little mistake in pronouncing animals’ name. Therefore, the researcher asked one of the students to pronounce loudly. On the first meeting of the first cycle, when the students did the pre-test, each of the students gave different pronunciation. For examples are when the students pronounced animal “Elephant” and “Eagle”. The first student pronounced “Elephant” became “Elepen” elepen and “Eagle” became “Eagel” eagel. The next student pr onounced “Elephant” became “Elephen” elephen and “Eagle” became “Igle” ɪgle. From those two examples, it could be concluded that the students were having difficulty in pronouncing animals’ names which have two or more syllables. To help the students, the researcher made correction toward their pronunciation by giving the correct pronunciation by showing the phonetic transcriptions of the animals ’ names. After the pre-test, the researcher showed the podcasts and asked two different students to pronounce the same of animals’ names: “Elephant” and “Eagle”. Both of the students could pronounce correctly even the stress was still not disappear yet. From those two students, the researcher concluded that the students had already been able to pronounce animals’ names. In this activity, the students looked very enthusiastic and they accustomed to pronounce animals’ names with the correct stress and accuracy. When the researcher asked them to pronounce the animals’ names correctly in loud voice, 46 they enjoyed the process of pronouncing animals ’ names by using podcasts they saw. To he lp the students pronounce animals’ names correctly, the researcher moved around the classroom and helped the students who still had difficulty in pronouncing animals’ names correctly. During the learning processes in the classroom, the researcher observed and took notes everything which was considered significant and important related to the students’ progress. The researcher conducted the first cycle by using podcasts in four meetings. In the first meeting until the fourth meeting, the researcher taught about how to differentiate the use of stress in two or more syllables. The researcher explained about the importance of stress to have good pronunciation skills. 4 Reflection In CAR, reflection was important. The researcher reflected the actions implementation in the first cycle. In the reflection stage, the researcher tried to find what went well and what did not go well. The result of the reflection stage would be used for the second cycle of this Classroom Action Research. From questionnaire analysis, the researcher found that the students showed progress of their pronunciation skills through podcasts. The researcher planned to recall the students’ understanding about the importance of stress in pronouncing English words in the second cycle. The researcher reflected that podcasts was helpful to help the students pronounced PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 47 animals’ names correctly. In addition, the goal of using podcasts was visible and stimulating. Practicing the podcasts in pronunciation exercises could decrease the students’ difficulties while, at the same time, helping them to speak up. In this situation, the researcher planned to explain more about how to use the phonetic transcriptions of learning stress in pronunciation. In the second cycle, the researcher still planned to use the same flashcards. However, flashcards which were used in second cycle was without phonetic transcriptions. After four meetings were conducted, the researcher could see the progress in pronunciation components through the students score based on pronunciation rubric. In second cycle, the researcher planned to have only one meeting. The researcher planned to use one meeting of second cycle for doing the post-test. b. The Second Cycle The second cycle was conducted in one meeting. The meeting of the second cycle conducted on Friday, 11 th September, 2015. In the meeting, all the students attended the class. In a meeting of second cycle was to do the post-test. In this cycle, the researcher would provide the same flashcards without phonetic transcriptions. It was aimed to give opportunity for the students to be more confident in pronouncing animals’ names. Moreover, it helped to strengthen the students’ memory. The researcher would implement the same steps to do the post-test. The PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 48 researcher would ask the studen ts to come to teacher’s desk one by one and then, they would pronounce 12 flashcards without phonetic transcriptions. 1 Planning Based on the pre-test in the first cycle, the researcher still used the same steps to do the post-test because the researcher would know the development of the students’ learning. The researcher tried to provide the same flashcards without phonetic transcriptions. In the beginning of meeting in second cycle, the researcher asked the students to sing a song “we are in the train of love” together. The researcher would make the atmosphere of the classroom was happy. After all students were happy, the researcher asked them to come to teacher’s desk one by one to do the post-test. The example of the flashcards used in post-test in the research is as follow: Figure 4.3: Flashcard without Phonetic Transcription In this stage, the researcher planned to ask the students to pronounce the same 12 flashcards which did not have phonetic transcriptions one by one at the 49 teacher’s desk. Therefore, the researcher could know the students’ progress in pronouncing animals’ names based on the podcasts. Besides that, by using the flashcards without phonetic transcriptions, the researcher hoped that the students could strengthen their memory in learning pronunciation skills. The researcher assumed that the students had been able to pronounce podcasts correctly with the good stress from post-test. The examples of the correct pronunciation of animals’ names are “Elephant”, “Whale”, “Tiger”, and “Crocodile”. 2 Action This action was conducted in one meeting on Friday, 11 th September, 2015 for eighty minutes. In this stage, the researcher began to start the learning by asking the students to sing a song “we are in the train of love” together and then r ecalling the students’ understanding about animals’ names. Besides that, the researcher also informed that their pronunciation skills were better during the treatment of podcasts in the classroom although some of them still had difficulty in pronouncing an imals’ names. To check the students’ understanding about the use of stress, the researcher asked the students to pronounce some animals ’ names which was written by the researcher in the white board. The researcher gave the different animals’ names of the flashcards. These activities aimed to make sure that the students really understood on how to have the correct pronunciation by reading the stress. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 50 Therefore, the students did not memorize animals’ names pronunciation, but they understood the function of stress. During the treatment of giving podcasts to learn pronunciation, the researcher wrote down the students’ pronunciation skills progress. After some meetings of giving treatment were conducted in the first cycle, all students had performed their pronunciation skills by using podcasts in post-test. The researcher could saw the progress in pronunciation elements. All the students made progress and achieved the indicators in the second cycle. Besides that, the researcher sometimes asked the students to repeat new words expect animals’ names after the teacher. It was able to overcome the problem on how to have good stress in pronunciation. The s tudents’ pronunciation skills had improved. They made few mistakes in pronouncing animals’ names. Moreover, they did self-correction when pronouncing animals’ names even their friends did not finish it yet. Generally, they had enriched their speaking skill by pronouncing correct pronunciation of animals’ names and some English words. 3 Observation The observation was conducted at the same time with the action implementation on Friday, 11 th September, 2015. The researcher began the lesson by greeting the students and checked their readiness to follow the lesson in order to make sure that the students were spirited. The researcher began the class by PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 51 askin g the students to sing a song “we are in the train of love” together. The researcher asked the students to sing together in order to make their pronunciation skills better in fun way. Moreover, the researcher chose that song because the song had a nice beat and simple lyric. Therefore, the students were easy to remember. The students were very excited to sing that song. Based on the observation, after singing together the students were enthusiastic to join the class. Although, there were some students who were not enthusiastic. The researcher announced that they were going to have post-test. One by one the students did the post-test well. From the observation, the researcher asked all students to pronounce the flashcards together after finishing their post-test. The researcher also asked the students to be sensitive of their pronunciation whether their pronunciation was correct or not. Before starting the post-test, the researcher gave instruction to be focus when the students pronounced the flashcards one by one and to read calmly. The researcher also found that some students enthusiastically pronounced flashcards. Some of them could pronounce flashcards without phonetic transcriptions well. 4 Reflection The data identified in the students’ post-test score and questionnaires were used as a basis to implement the next cycle or teaching learning activities. Therefore, it was the last step of the second cycle. From the implementation, the 52 researcher recalled the students’ knowledge about the use of phonetic transcriptions of animals’ names. In this stage, the students could answer and master the materials before. The researcher reflected that this stage went well. The researcher also gave the podcasts as the model was good media because the students could develop their pronunciation skills. In a meeting of second cycle, the students also could do the post-test well although there were some students who were not spirit at that time. Furthermore, the researcher also moved aro und to check the students’ understanding and helped them in reading the phonetic transcriptions of animals’ names. The researcher reflected that giving podcasts could help the students to understand the way of reading. Most of the students had similar answer that podcasts helped them to read correctly. One of the examples was from student Edelweiss. Edelweiss said that “aku suka belajar pakai podcast Miss, karena sangat membantu atau memudahkan untuk memahami cara membaca yang benar dan baik”. I like to study by using podcast Miss because it really helps me to understand the good and correct way of pronunciation easier. It showed that the students were enjoy to learn pronunciation by using podcasts as media. The students also had already studied and been familiar with the correct pronunciation of animals’ names. It was beyond the researcher’s expectation that the students had already made good progress when they did the post-test in the second cycle. After four meetings were in the first cycle and one meeting was in the second cycle and all students performed their performance, the PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 53 researcher could see the progress in the pronunciation elements. All students made progress and achieved the indicators. 1. Stress Compared to the students’ pre-test score of the first cycle, in post-test score in the second cycle the students 100 made good progress of their stress in pronunciation. Even though, there were some students who pronounced quickly, they still tried to pronounce the animals’ names. Then, the rest of the students pronounced calmly and correctly. 2. Accuracy Compared to the students’ pre-test score of the first cycle, in post-test in the second cycle all students 100 made progress of their accuracy in pronunciation. In order to overcome the problems in accuracy, the researcher asked the students to listen the podcasts carefully. After watching the podcasts, the researcher asked the students to repeat what they had heard from podcasts twice. When the students still had difficulty in repeating animals’ names from podcasts, the researcher would pronounce it and ask the students to repeat animals’ names after the researcher twice or more.

B. The role of podcasts in helping the students’ pronunciation skills