THE USE OF TONGUE TWISTER TECHNIQUE TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION

The objective of this research was to find out whether the use of tongue twister technique can improve students’ pronunciation especially in pronouncing sound /ð/, /d/, /θ/, /t/, /ʃ/, and /s/ or not.The method of this research was pre-experimental with pre-test and post-test as an instrument of the research. The population of the research was the eleventh grade of SMP 2 Sungguminasa that consisted of 63 students. The number of samples was 33 students. The data collection consisted of pre-test, treatment and post-test. Forms of pre-test and post-test were oral test that contained 18 words that related with the focus sounds.The findings of the research showed that the students’ mean score of pre-test before treatment was 63.09%. While after treatment, the mean score of post-test was 86.81%. Therefore, the significant between pre-test and post-test was 37.59%. In order that, the researcher assumed that using tongue twister technique could improve students’ pronunciation correctly especially in pronouncing sound /ð/, /d/, /θ/, /t/, /ʃ/, and /s/.


INTRODUCTION
In mastering the language, we have to understand and learn about the skills of language. They are speaking, reading, writing, and listening. Each of them are important and has relation each others. Pronunciation is an important part of speaking. "Pronunciation is the way in which language is spoken" (Wulandari, et al., 2016:2). Sometimes, in measuring people English-speaking skill could be known by looking from their pronunciation and their fluency (Huda, 2014:1). Automatically, we have to learn pronunciation to go mastering English. Learning English pronunciation is surely not easy, especially for us, the Indonesian.
Based on the previous research, the researcher showed the novelty of this research by using tongue twister technique to improve students' pronunciation that more focused on similar consonants by considering in its pronunciation. They were sound voiced dental fricative /ð/ and voiced alveolar plosive /d/, voiceless dental fricative /θ/ and voiceless alveolar plosive /t/ and sound voiceless palatoalveolar fricative /ᶴ/ and voiceless alveolar fricative /s/. The researcher wanted to make different with other study to reach correct English pronunciation. Finally, they would know the sounds that they consider similar are definitely different. Based on the background above, the problem of this research is "Does the use of tongue twister technique improve the students' pronunciation?" Based on the problem statement above, the objective of this research is to find out whether tongue twister technique improves students' pronunciation or not. In this research, there are three focuses of place of articulation; they are dental, fricative, and palato-alveolar. Dental consonants occur when you block/constrict airflow by placing your slimy tongue against your upper teeth. In the manner of articulation, the researcher only focuses on plosive and fricative. Plosive is defined as consonant sounds, which involve, first, a stricture of the mouth that allows no air to escape from the vocal tract and, second, the compression and release of the air. Therefore, there are four phases in the production of plosive: closure, hold, release and post-release. English has six plosive consonants, /p/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/, /g/. However, in this research only focus on plosive sounds /t/ and /d/. The release of the voiceless plosive is followed by audible poison and, in the postrelease phase, by an aspiration. Therefore, "the most noticeable difference between the voiceless and the voiced plosive is this aspiration," (Trujillo). Fricatives are characterized by a "hissing" sound, which is produced by the air escaping through a small passage in the mouth. These are homorganic sounds, that is, the same articulators produce two sounds, the plosive and the fricative.

METHOD OF THE RESEARCH
The method of this study was pre-experimental (one group pre-test posttest) research design. This design can be presented as follows: The population of this study was 63 students of SMP 2 Sungguminasa. There were two classes of that population; they are XIA, XIB respectively 30 and 33 students. Among the population that the researcher had presented above, the researcher used purposive sampling as a technique in choosing sample. The sample of this research was class XIB that consist 33 students. The researcher chose XIB because according to the English teacher, the students of the class had the lowest ability of English pronunciation between the two classes. Therefore, the researcher wanted to improve their pronunciation, especially in differencing the sounds /ð/, /d/, /θ/, /t/, /ᶴ/ and /s. The researcher used an oral test of this research. The oral test used in assessing the students' pronunciation consisted pre-test and post-test. Form of pre-test and post-test contained 18 words which every word consisted sounds that the students had learned in learning and teaching process in three meetings before. The words in pre-test and post-test were quite different but same level of difficulties. The technique that used in collecting data was pre-test and post-test. In this research, there were six meetings. It consisted one meeting for pre-test, 3 meetings for treatment, one meeting for reinforcement and one last meeting for post-test. Each meeting lasted 70 minutes in the classroom.
At the first meeting, the researcher gave a pre-test to read some words that seem similar to the students in measuring their pronunciation. The researcher asked the students to read the list of words. For the treatment, the researcher explained the material about pronunciation & sounds /ð/, /d/, /θ/, /t/, /ᶴ/, and /s/. The post-test was given to the students. The researcher asked the students to read and pronounce the different words from pre-test but had same level of difficulties. After the collecting data had done, the researcher tried to find out the score of each student and the mean score of the students based on the test result. The data from the test were analyzed quantitatively. It employed statistical calculation to the hypothesis. Scoring the students' correct pronunciation of pre-test and post-test by using the following formula: Classifying score into seven levels that were based on the Depdikub standar of evaluation (1986:6) as follows: Calculating the collecting data from the students in answer the test, the researcher used formula to get mean score Where: ̅ X = mean score ∑ = the total score = the total number of samples (Gay, 1981:298) Calculating the percentage of students' improvement based on the pre-test and post-test. :the total score of pre-test X2

P (%) = 0%
:the total score of post-test (Gay, 1981) Finding out a significant between students' pre-test and post-test by using the following formula: t = Where: t : test of significant differences D : test differences between two scores compared ̅ : the mean of different scores ∑ : the sum of total score of significances (∑ ) 2 : the square of the sum of differences : the total number of samples (Gay, 1981:366) Calculating the percentage of students' pronunciation by using this following formula:

FINDINGS AND DISSCUSSION
The findings of this research could be explained by seeing in the following chart:

Chart 1. The Mean Score of Pre-test and Post-test
The chart showed the significantly different of mean score of pre-test and posttest. Before the treatment, the researcher conducted pre-test, the mean score was 63.09. After the treatment, the mean score was 86.81. It means that the progress happened after the tongue twister technique applied in teaching pronunciation. The table showed that there was an improvement for 37.59% in pronouncing the sixth sounds. Next, the rate percentages of the students' pre-test scores were presented in the following table. The table 5 showed that in the pre-test, which was done before treatment, which 5 students (15.15%) who belonged to 'good' category, 10 students (30.3%) belonged to 'fairly good' category, 11 students (33.33%) who belonged to 'fair' category, 4 students (12.12%) who belonged to 'poor' category and 3 students (9.09%) belonged to 'very poor' category.
While in the post-test that done after the treatment, from 34 students, there was 1 student (3.03%) who belonged to 'excellent' category, 19 students (57.57%) belonged to 'very good' category, 10 students (30.3%) who belonged to 'good' category and 3 students (9.09%) who belonged to 'fairly good' category. Based on the result, it can be concluded that the rate percentage in the post-test was higher than the rate percentage of pre-test.
In order to know whether the pronunciation ability in difference between the pretest and post-test at the level of significance 0.05 with degrees of freedom (df) = N1, ttest from independent sample was employed. The data above showed that the t-table value was smaller than the t-test value. It means that there was significant difference in students' pronunciation ability between before and after treatment using tongue twister technique.

DISSCUSSION
However, on the research above, some sounds were almost not improved significantly; the students still felt the difficulties to pronounce the sounds, such as fricative consonant /ð/ and /θ/. It was caused by the students' perception that the regulation of sound system in English and Indonesia was different. They faced difficulties in changing the habit of moving their speech organs in such a way as to produce the foreign sounds. Moreover, the implementation of tongue twister consumed so much time, students needed to adapt technique longer and more often than usual. Therefore, the English teachers have to select carefully suitable activities for teaching pronunciation by using tongue twister technique, based on the result of some previous researches and this research tongue twister is really suggested and recommended, but the teacher should do much effort in implementing tongue twister in teaching pronunciation.

CONCLUSSION
Based on the following finding and discussion in the previous chapter, the researcher concluded that the use of Tongue Twister Technique was effective to improve students' pronunciation. It was proved by the mean score of post-test (86.81) which was higher than the mean score of pre-test (63.09). It means that learning by use Tongue Twister Technique was effective to improve the students' pronunciation. Furthermore, There was a significance difference between the students' pronunciation before and after using Tongue Twister Technique. It was proved by the result of the statistical analysis at the significant level 0.05 with degree of freedom (df= N-1, 33-1= 32) which indicated that t-test value for pronunciation was 12.1, it was greater than t-table value 2.042 (12.1 > 2.042). The researcher assumed that using tongue twister technique could improve students' pronunciation. To sum up, based on the result of some previous researches and this research tongue twister is really suggested and recommended, but the teacher should do much effort in implementing tongue twister in teaching pronunciation.