The effect of using pronunciation applications on students' pronunciation abilities

Abstract

As part of speaking skill, pronunciation has an important factor in learning English as a foreign language, especially in communication. In English communication, if our pronunciation is wrong or inappropriate the result will be miscommunication, even to the point of not conveying the purpose of communication in a conversation because the meaning of a word or sentence is not conveyed properly. So far, the steps for learning and modeling pronunciation in English are done directly or face-to-face. Lecturers and students also need appropriate learning media and support online learning to carry out this Pronunciation course. Regarding applications, the benefits of many applications that are suitable for learning English are; students can watch videos related to the topic, are able to save examples of learning materials, and are able to save the exercises they have done as learning evaluation material for teachers and students later. Applications which are appropriate are the methods which are not only support online learning but can also improve students' pronunciation skills. This study aims to determine whether or not using the pronunciation application have an significant effect on students' pronunciation abilities. This study is used one group pretest-posttest. This design analyzes the results of students' pronunciation abilities at the beginning and at the end of the lesson. The subjects of this study were undergraduate students of the English Education Study Program, FKIP University of Lampung. One class consists of 31 students who take pronunciation courses. Based on the data analysis, the researcher concludes that there is no significant difference of students pronunciation ability before and after taught using pronunciation applications. Meanwhile, we can say that there is slightly significant improvement between pretest of posttest of pronunciation test.