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The interview excerpt described that the native speaker speech helped the students to imitate the sounds of English. As the result, the students’ accuracy was also
improved. In addition, the visual aid appeared in the screen was a very good media to attract the students’ attention and awareness. Besides repetition drill,
substitution drill also improved the students’ grammar and pronunciation accuracy. The following was the complete discussion.
b. Substitution Drill
Substitution drill was other technique which could be employed to improve the students’ grammar and pronunciation accuracy. According to Larsen-
Freeman 2000: 48, in the substitution drill, the students are required to substitute a part of a sentence with a word or a phrase provided by the teacher as a cue. In
terms or Richards and Rodgers 2001: 60, the substitution drill is called replacement.
During the employment of the repetition drill in the cycle two and three, the writer noted that the students’ grammar accuracy gradually improved from
basic to developing, proficient and fluent. Similar improvement was also shown in the students’ pronunciation. The students’ pronunciation accuracy improved from
basic up to the proficient and fluent. According to the criteria, proficient grammar accuracy was described that after being expose to a technique the students could
fairly quickly repeat or produce sentence with correct subject-verb agreement. Although sometimes they made mistakes, they could automatically correct their
mistakes. On the other hand, fluent level grammar accuracy showed that after PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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being exposed to a technique the students could quickly repeat or produce sentences with correct subject-verb agreement without being prompted or given
hints by teacher. Proficient in pronunciation described that after being exposed to a technique, the students correctly pronounce the [
ɪ]
,
[ ʃ]
or [ð] sounds
.
Although sometimes they incorrectly pronounced the sounds, students automatically
corrected their mistakes. On the other hand, fluent described that after being exposed to a technique, the students were consistently able to quickly perform
correct, clear and distinct pronunciation of [ ɪ]
,
[ ʃ]
or [ð] sounds automatically
without teacher’s promptness. The writer employed the substitution drill on the cycle two and cycle three
as the replacement of the transformation drill. The writer replaced the transformation drill because the transformation drill required the students to alter a
type of sentence to be another type of sentence. The students were stuck during the employment of this technique. As an example, in the meeting one and two, the
students could not transform an affirmative sentence I am washing the car to be an interrogative sentence. Therefore, the writer had to give explanation or prompt
the students in which it was time consuming. Because the students concentrated much on the grammar of the sentence, their pronunciation was also affected. The
writer noted that the students replaced the voiceless postalveolar fricative [ ʃ] with
voiceless alveolar fricative [s]. They also replaced the near-close near front unrounded vowel [
ɪ] with close-mid front unrounded vowel [e]. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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However, after the substitution drill was employed, the trend of the students’ pronunciation increased. In the meeting three and four as an example,
the writer asked the students to substitute the pronoun you in Are you dancing? with the pronoun she. The students could quickly and correctly responded the
teacher’s question by uttering Is she dancing? In addition, their pronunciation was also intelligible and they pronounced accurate sound. They could produce the [
ɪ]
and [ ʃ] sound correctly. For teacher, substitution drill was also easy to be
employed. The field notes that the writer made also discovered that the substitution
drill could improve the students’ grammar accuracy. The writer’s critical self reflection as a professional pointed out that the success of the substitution drill
was related to the students’ intellectual development. Brown 2001: 88 explains that students’ intellectual is limited. It was understood then why substitution drill
succeeded and transformational drill did not. In the writer’s case, the transformation drill was beyond the students’ intellectual development. However,
it was necessary to clarify that beyond the students’ intellectual development referred to difficulties of the task. In the transformation drill, the students were not
only required to select appropriate subject and verb, they should also figure the words arrangements out. Substitution drill only required the students to select
correctly either the subject or the verb whereas the words arrangements was kept intact.
Finally, the interviews, which also function as data triangulation, validated the findings that the substitution drill could improve the students’ grammar and
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pronunciation accuracy. The followings are the excerpt from the interview related to the grammar accuracy.
Guru : Menurut kamu bagaimana waktu Ibu memberikan sebuah kalimat
Teacher kemudian menyuruh kamu mengganti subject atau to be-nya? Susah
nggak? What do you think when I gave you a sentence and
then asked you to substitute the subject or the be-verb? Was it difficult?
Murid 1 : Ya kalo cuma ngganti subject atau to be-nya sih ga begitu sulit
Student 1 Miss. Yang sebelumnya itu lo. Waktu suruh langsung mengubah jadi bentuk kalimat. Itu aku kesulitan. If only replaced the subject
or the be-verb it was not very difficult. I got difficulties whenever I had to altered a type of sentence to be another type of sentence.
Murid 2 : Yang kemarin Miss. Pas suruh langsung bikin kalimat lengkap.
Student 2 Kalo ini ga begitu sulit. Jadi tadi aku bisa jawabnya Miss The previous was difficult. When I had to make a complete sentence.
This technique was easy. I could answer it very well
Similarly, the interview also discovered that the students’ pronunciation also improved in the employment of the substitution drill. The following was the
interview excerpt related to the students’ related to their improvement in pronunciation accuracy.
Guru : Menurut kamu apa yang membuat pengucapan bahasa Inggris
Teacher kamu bagus di pertemuan ini? Soalnya tadi ibu lihat kamu selain betul menajwab pengucapannya juga bagus dan benar. What
made your pronunciation was good in this meeting. I noticed that today you answer was not only correct but your pronunciation was
also good. Murid 1 :
Mungkin karena kalimat ga harus di bolak balik kaya bikin kalimat Student 1 positif menjadi kalimat tanya. Jadi saya bisa cepet jawab dan
pengucapan saya jadi benar. Maybe because of the sentence was not necessarily altered completely like altering a positive sentence
to be an interrogative sentence. Therefore, I could quickly
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answered and I could pronounce it correctly Murid 2 :
Ya karena susunan kalimatnya tetap Miss aku nggak bingung untuk Student 2 menjawabnya. Jadi aku bisa konsentrasi untuk pengucapannya.
Dibandingkan dengan aktiitas pertemuan yang lalu yang ini tidak begitu
sulit. It was because the arrangement of the words was not
altered so that I could concentrate on the pronunciation. Comparing to the former activity, this technique was not very difficult.
The next technique which improved the students’ grammar and pronunciation accuracy was question and answer. The following is the elaboration of the
technique employed in this research.
c. Question and Answer
