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organs, learning to make the right motions may require a good deal of time and practice. Therefore, it has been the writer’s concern to eradicate the students’
mistakes on pronunciation to avoid fossilized habit of pronunciation so that they can attain better performance in their future learning.
The writer, therefore, would like to conduct an action research based on the practical problems which occur in the teaching learning activities. The major
focus of the action research is on practical issues of immediate concern to particular social groups or communities. In this case, the role of grammar and
pronunciation accuracy which is very important to communicate globally hold immediate concern to be investigated and solved whenever problems occur on that
aspect of language. In addition, the rigorous analysis and systematic data collection of the action research facilitate the writer to conduct the research in her
own pace without sacrificing her involvement in the teaching learning activities. Finally, the writer hopes to give contributions on English language teaching
especially in teaching elementary school students though this research.
B. Problem Formulation
Through the study of grammar and pronunciation accuracy, the writer would like to answer these following research questions:
1. What are the techniques which improve the students’ grammar accuracy?
2. How can the students’ grammar accuracy be improved?
3. What are the techniques which improve the students’ pronunciation accuracy?
4. How can the students’ pronunciation accuracy be improved?
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C. Problem Limitation
The research is conducted to the fourth graders of SD BOPKRI Gondolayu Yogyakarta in the framework of action research. The outcomes of the research
will be closely associated to the participants of the research. However, as the nature of the action research which pertains to improvement, the application of the
findings to the other cases with similar problems and characteristics is widely opened. In addition, as the nature of the action research allows collaboration, the
writer is helped by two language teachers in conducting this research. They will help to observe and record progress during the research.
Although there are many problems occurring in the class, this research focuses on techniques which improve the students’ grammar and pronunciation
accuracy. Besides, this research investigates how to improve the students’ grammar and pronunciation accuracy. The study on the grammar accuracy will be
limited on the improvement of the students’ grammar accuracy on subject-verb agreement. The writer reasons that subject and verb are the two most important
elements of sentences structure in that complex sentences will be ill-formed by the absence of those elements. By emphasizing on the importance of the subject and
verb, the students will acquire functions and the role of those elements. In addition, the English teaching curriculum suggest that the elementary school
students should learn simple sentence structure such as making simple question, responding to questions and making simple sentence.
In addition, this study also investigates the improvement of the students’ pronunciation accuracy. This study limits the study on the improvement of the
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students’ pronunciation accuracy on near-close near front unrounded vowel [ ɪ],
voiceless postalveolar fricative [ ʃ] and voiced dental fricative [
ð
]. Here, the writer chooses to use words instead of phrases or sentences since pronunciation of words
in isolation could be recognized and analyzed more clearly and accurately rather than the pronunciation of phrases and sentences. There writer reasons that
voiceless postalveolar fricative [ ʃ] and voiced dental fricative [
ð
] are absence on the students’ native language. As a result, the students replace the sounds with the
similar sounds of their native language. Therefore, the students need to be accustomed to pronouncing those two sounds. Finally, the near-close near front
unrounded vowel [ ɪ] is actually present on the students’ native language or
Bahasa Indonesia however they often mispronounce the sound because of the influence of adjacent or initial sound and in some occasion they replace the sound
with similar sounds of their native language.
D. Research Objective
