The Teaching of English Pronunciation: Perceptions of Indonesian School Teachers and University Students

Abstract

<p>This study aimed to explore teachers’ and students’ perception of pronunciation teaching in Indonesian EFL classrooms, particularly on (1) the difficulty of English pronunciation, (2) the reasons for the difficulty, (3) the inclusion of pronunciation in EFL classrooms, (4) the goal of pronunciation teaching, (5) priorities in pronunciation teaching, and (6) techniques in pronunciation teaching. To achieve the purpose, a written questionnaire was distributed to 110 Indonesian school teachers and 230 Indonesian university students. The collected data were submitted to independent two-sample t test to determine the significant mean differences between the teacher and student participants. The results of the study discovered that almost all of the respondents perceived English pronunciation as one of the most difficult areas in English learning. The participants also agreed that two most significant reasons for the difficultly were related to students’ first language (L1). Regarding these results, the participants strongly agreed on the inclusion of pronunciation in EFL classrooms with intelligibility as the goal of pronunciation teaching. Moreover, segmental features such as consonants and vowels as well as sentence stress became the priorities in pronunciation teaching for EFL learners. Finally, teacher explanation in students’ L1, followed by demonstration of how to produce the English phonemes, is significantly rated as the better way to teach English pronunciation in EFL classrooms. The finding of the study implies that intelligibility as the goal of pronunciation teaching can be really attained with the consideration of priorities and techniques in pronunciation teaching.</p>