THE NEEDS FOR TEACHING PRONUNCIATION IN INDONESIAN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Abstract

Pronunciation is one of the most complicated but it contains the most significant features of language for secondary students. Although pronunciation is one of the most noticeable features of a person’s speech, in Indonesian secondary schools it is not explicitly taught in English classes. Almost in all English classes, teachers get the students to study grammar and vocabulary, and they make little attempt to teach pronunciation in any overt way and give attention to it. Most English teachers adopt some approaches, relying on materials that lack grounding but expect good results. Despite the known importance of pronunciation, little attention is paid to teaching pronunciation in most English language classrooms. It is suspected that the reason is because teaching pronunciation involves a variety of challenges. In this paper, some of those challenges are discussed. Early part of this paper provides an overview of the status of pronunciation teaching in secondary contexts. In middle of the paper, it is estimated the future problems that the learners will be faced by both the young and adults in learning to pronounce the English sounds: vowels, consonants, and diphthongs. In similar parts, this paper suggests some ideas and materials to handle such problems. Finally, it emphasizes the need for incorporating pronunciation into English classes because of the importance of the pronunciation as a key to effective communication