My Thesis Tahun 2003

IMPROVING EFL STUDENTS’ ORAL READING PERFORMANCE THROUGH PRONUNCIATION PRACTICE BASED ON MISCUE ANALYSIS¹

By

Alamsyahril²

1. INTRODUCTION

When a person learns a new language, he or she will face some difficulties to have a good pronunciation like the native speakers of the language. On the other words, a person tends to make some pronunciation errors. The pronunciation errors he or she makes are not only in impromptu speech but also in oral reading. However, a learner tends to make pronunciation errors more in oral reading than in impromptu speech. In relation to English as a foreign language (EFL) learning, Indonesian students tend to read some English words as they are spelled. This can make the listeners have a misinterpretation in the meaning of the word when they read word as it spelled.

This is one of the errors in oral reading. Errors in oral reading are called miscues. However, the miscue in oral reading refers to not only mispronunciations but also to other errors. Besides mispronunciation, the miscues can be in forms of omissions, substitutions, insertions, repetitions, reversals, pronunciations, hesitations and self-corrections (Vacca et al., 1991:441-442; read also James, 1998: Rubin, 1997; Spache, 1981).

Yet, the identification of these miscues means nothing if not followed by the treatment of miscues. For the treatment of miscues, I proposed regular pronunciation practice since most EFL students made miscues in the form of mispronunciations. This treatment was done in a remedial teaching. By having this remedial teaching, the students’ oral reading performance was hopefully improved and developed. Therefore, there were two questions that were discussed in this study, namely: (1) is giving regular pronunciation practice effective to reduce the miscues? and (2) can regular pronunciation practice be used to improve EFL students’ oral reading performance?

To anser these questions, I did a study in which I tried to find out the miscues made by the EFL students of Sriwijaya University. There were a lot of miscue found. These miscues, then, were analyzed by identifying those miscues and categorizing them. After that, remedial teaching was done. The remedial teaching was arranged based on the miscues the students made. This was done by providing a good model and then followed by some exercises.

2. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Reading can be distinguished into two different types: silent reading and oral reading. Oral reading refers to saying a written text aloud. When a reader reads a text aloud, he or she sometimes makes some errors. These errors are called miscues (see Potter, cited in James, 1998:139). Goodman (1995:2) uses the term miscues because it reveals that miscues are unexpected response cued by the readers’ knowledge of their language and the concept of the world. The term ‘miscue’ implies positive view of error. The term error and miscue essentially describe the same phenomenon that is a deviation or difference between what a reader says and how the word on the page should be pronounced.

According to Vacca et al. (1991:441), there are some miscues that a reader tends to make in oral reading. The miscues are: (1) Omission, an omission miscue occurs when the reader omits a unit of written language; that is, a word, several words, parts of words, or a sentence (s), (2) Substitution, a substitution miscue is noted when a real word (or words) is substituted for another word in the text, (3) Mispronunciation, a mispronunciation miscue is one in which the word is pronounced incorrectly, (4) Insertion, the insertion miscue results when a word (or words) is inserted in the passage, (5) Repetition, repetition miscue occurs when a word or phrase is repeated, (6) Reversal, the reversal miscue occurs when the order of a word (or words) in the text is transposed, and (7) Pronunciation, it refers to word (or words) is (are) pronounced for the reader.

One of the ways in correcting the errors a learner makes is giving the treatment of the errors. One of the treatment of the miscues that a teacher can do is pronunciation practice. It is a kind of practice which stress on the students’ pronunciation.

3. DISCUSSION

Before I discuss the findings of this study, I present the result of the pre-test and post-test of oral reading. The results are as follows.

TABLE 1

RESULTS OF ORAL READING TESTS

No	Miscues	Number of Miscues		Means		tobtained
		Pretest	Posttest	Pre	Post
1.	Omissions	236	243	13.88	14.29	0.270
2.	Substitutions	284	291	16.70	17.11	0.22
3.	Insertions	54	33	3.17	1.94	-1.364
4.	Mispronunciations	797	590	46.88	34.70	-3.379**
5.	Pronunciations	53	11	3.11	0.64	-6.126**
6.	Repetitions	119	110	7.0	6.47	-0.636
7.	Reversals	13	4	0.76	0.23	-3.043**
8.	Self-Corrections	59	33	3.47	1.94	-2.263*

Notes: * significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed)

** significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)

From the table, it can be seen that the total number of miscues in the forms of mispronunciations, pronunciations, reversals, and self-corrections in the posttest were fewer than those in the pretest. In addition, the means of those miscues were also fewer than those in the pretest. The table also shows that the t_obtained of mispronunciations, pronunciations, and reversals were higher than the value of t_table at the 0.01 level. The t_obtained of self-corrections was higher than the value of t_table at the 0.05 level. Therefore, it can be stated that regular pronunciation practice was effective to reduce the miscues made by the students in oral reading. However, this pronunciation practice was not effective for reducing omissions, substitutions, insertions, and repetitions.

To see whether or not pronunciation practice could improve EFL students oral reading, I compared the students’ reading levels before and after having pronunciation practice. The percentage of students’ reading levels in both tests can be seen in the table below (Table 2).

TABLE 2

PERCENTAGE OF STUDENTS’ READING LEVEL

Reading Level	Pretest			Posttest
	Ind.	Ins.	Fr.	Ind.	Ins.	Fr.
4	-	100%	-	7.14%	92.86%	-
5	-	76.47%	23.53%	-	76.47%	23.53%
6	-	35.29%	64.71%	-	58.82%	41.18%
7	-	35.29%	64.71%	-	70.58%	29.42%
8	-	52.94%	47.06%	-	76.47%	23.53%

Notes: Ind. = independent Ins. = instructional Fr. = Frustration

There were some differences between the percentage of students’ reading levels before and after the students have regular pronunciation practice. The percentage of the instructional level in the posttest was higher than the percentage in the pretest. On the other hand, the percentage of frustration level in the posttest was lower than the percentage in the pretest. Therefore, it can be said that the EFL students’ reading level were improved after they have regular pronunciation practice based on miscue analysis. It means that regular pronunciation practice can improve their oral reading performance.

4. DISCUSSION

In this part, I discuss some points dealing with the findings of the study. First, I assume that the students tended to make more miscue on one kind than other kinds. This happened due to several possible reasons. The students, for example, made more miscue on omissions to reduce the miscue on mispronunciations. They omitted some words or some parts of the words to avoid mispronunciations. This is one of the strategies used by the students in oral reading. Goodman and Gollash (cited in Anderson, 200:340) present the reason why readers omit words or some parts of the words from the text during their reading aloud. Furthermore, they say that some omissions may arise from dialect or first-language differences from the language of the text, and other omissions may be seen as part of a strategy of avoiding the risk of being wrong. Related to the omissions that EFL students made in the posttest, I assume that it is a strategy they used in oral reading to avoid mispronunciations. This is supported by the negative correlation among miscues. It means that increasing in omissions related to decreasing in mispronunciations.

Another strategy is the EFL students substituted some words they could not pronounce with the words they could pronounce well. For example, they substituted the word through with the word to since they could pronounce the word to correctly. They also substituted some words that they did not know with the word they know well. They, for example, substituted the word levee [levi] with the word leave because they know the word leave well. This is also a strategy of avoiding the risk of making mispronunciations. Therefore, this strategy is called the strategy of avoidance (see Brown, 1987:172). In this case, the students avoided a particular sound or word by omitting it or by substituting it.

The two phenomena above shows that the treatment in the form of regular pronunciation practice that I did could not reduce all kinds of the miscues made by the students in oral reading. It was effective for reducing mispronunciations only. It may have something to do with the form of the treatment. This treatment can only be used to overcome the mispronunciation or the errors of faulty vowels and consonants (Monroe cited in Tierney et al., 1980:190-191). For reducing other kinds of miscues, Monroe proposed other ways. For example, to overcome the omissions of words, she suggested slowing the reader’s rate or leaving increased spacing between the lines of print because she associated word omission with excessive reading speed.

Finally, the treatment I did can also improve students’ reading levels. The criteria of reading levels are based on the word recognition (Betts in Rubin, 1997:168). The treatment in the form of regular pronunciation practice have relationship to the word recognition. Since this treatment was effective for reducing mispronunciations, it has also an effect on the word recognition. That’s why, this treatment can improve the students’ reading levels. Students’ reading levels changed after they had the treatment of the miscues. From these findings, it can be said that the treatment of the miscues in the form of regular pronunciation practice can develop EFL students oral reading performance because there is a difference in students’ reading level before and after the treatment.

5. CONCLUSION

After giving this practice for sixteen meetings, I found that this treatment was effective to reduce not only mispronunciations but also pronunciations, reversals, and self-corrections. This can be seen from the comparisons between the results of the pretest and posttest. The t_obtained of these miscues exceed the t_table at the 0.01 and 0.05 levels of significance. This implies that this treatment can be used to reduce the miscues of mispronunciations, pronunciations, reversals, and self-corrections. It means that regular pronunciation practice based on miscue analysis can improve EFL students’ oral reading performance. However this treatment was not effective for reducing omissions, substitutions, insertions, and repetitions. The t_obtained of these miscues was lower than the t_table at the 0.01 and 0.05 levels of significance. So, regular pronunciation practice can not be used to reduce these kinds of miscues.

From these two findings, I assume that the students used a certain strategy in oral reading. The strategy they used was strategy of avoidance. The students tended to omit some words or some parts of words to avoid mispronunciation.

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