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The Effect of Teaching Reading Aloud

Technique in Improving English Pronunciation
Putri Wahyuni1*
1
The Study Program of English Education, The University of Palangka Raya

Abstract: Pronunciation is one of the essential components in oral form and is considered the basic
ability of speaking English as well as other languages that has to be learnt by the students.
Pronunciation is the production of sounds that is used for making meaning. The correct pronunciation
of English is very important because the target of learning English is to help students to speak
accurately and fluently which leads them easy to understand the utterances and to produce intelligible
sounds. Reading aloud is an activity to read something loudly. By reading aloud, students can test
themselves whether the pronunciations that they are saying is correct or not. This research was
conducted to know the effect of teaching reading aloud technique in improving English
Pronunciation. This research used “One Group Pretest and Posttest Design”. The sample of this
research was the ninth-grade students by taking 31 students (13 male and 18 female). The result
showed that the calculation of Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test was 0.000. Since 0.000 < 0.05 even
<0.001, the null hypothesis was rejected. In other words, there is a significant effect on students’
pronunciation of English by teaching using reading aloud technique.

Keywords: reading aloud, English pronunciation, technique of English teaching

INTRODUCTION
Pronunciation is one of the essential components in oral form and is considered the basic
ability of speaking English as well as other languages (Huang, & Radant, 2009). The correct
pronunciation of English is very important because the target of learning English is to help
students to speak accurately and fluently which leads the students are easy to understand the
utterances and produce intelligible sounds.
The study of pronunciation has become an important aspect in teaching English as a
foreign Language. In the learning process, the student may face difficulty which is crucial
to be described and analyzed. One of them is difficulty in pronouncing English words.
Pronunciation has become a dilemma for students. As a result, making errors in pronouncing
English as foreign language is common. It is natural in the early stage of second or foreign
language learning process. Goodwin (2001: 117) says, in teaching pronunciation, the goal
of instructions threefold: to enable our learners to understand and be understood, to build
their confidence in entering communicative situations, and to enable them to monitor their
speech based on input from the environment. To accomplish these goals, he describes the
tools we need to teach pronunciation in a systematic and principled way.
In most languages, including Indonesian language, pronunciation follows predictable
rules but not in English. Spelling is not a reliable guide to know how a word is pronounced.
English must surely rank among the most irritating language when it comes to pronunciation.
Certainly, it has caused so much trouble for the learners. The same cases also happen in
*Corresponding author: pwahyunik@gmail.com
To cite this article: Wahyuni, P. (2022). The Effect of Teaching Reading Aloud Technique in Improving English
Pronunciation. Ebony --- Journal of English Language Teaching, Linguistics, and Literature, 2 (1) 2022,
pp. 46--54.
47 Vol. 2 Number 1 January 2022

SMPN 2 Palangka Raya where the students always found difficulties in pronouncing English
words. English is one of difficult subjects for them, especially in pronunciation. Based on
the research in SMP 2 Palangka Raya students making errors in pronounce. Moreover, they
usually use their regional language in their daily life as mother tongue. Furthermore, Baker
(1982) says students of different mother tongues have different pronunciation problems.
Particularly at beginner level, some students may be happy to spend some time on sounds
which are easy for them, deriving some encouragement in the relief of finding an English
sound which they can pronounce.
However, time is usually precious and if some of it is to be spent in this way, teachers
must be aware of how relevant this practice is to the students’ real pronunciation needs. From
the researcher observation, the researcher found that the students usually reading in a
whisper because they felt worried if they made errors in pronouncing the words. They get
difficulties especially in English vowel sounds. In producing different sounds, the learners
are sometimes influenced by the native language interference. The interference of native
language process influences the learners’ imitation. Hence, the errors in mastering a new
language cannot be avoided. For example, they may pronounce the word very is said [pery]
not [‘veri], another example when they pronounce the word heavy is [heapi] not [‘hevi].
In the teaching-learning process, the students seldom get the exercise about
pronunciation. In teaching, the teacher just reads the text, explains the material, and asks
students to read and answer the question in individual or pairs without explaining how to
pronounce it well. Therefore, when the teacher asks them to read the text the students felt
shy and worry about their pronunciation and they always read in a whisper. The smart
students listened to the teacher and did the task easily, while the others who did not
understand what the teacher was explaining would get trouble in doing task, so they were
not interested in doing the task and copied their friends’ answer without understanding it.
Not all of students took part actively in this teaching learning process especially when the
teacher asks them to read the text, they get bored because they always get same instructions
from the teacher. The students less motivated in learning.
In learning English, students have to master four basic language skills of the target
language. Those basic skills are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Speaking and
writing are language production (productive skills), while listening and reading belong to
language comprehension (receptive skills). Among those four skills, reading is vital in
language comprehension.
As cited from Fauzi (2018: 102), reading is one of the four skills that students should
learn and care of. Reading process means not only “read” but tries to make interaction
between the reader and the text. It is a constructive process that can help students to acquire
new knowledge of language, experience about life and so on. Simply, reading is defined as
“the active process of understanding print and graphic texts” (Souhila, 2014: 4). It is deals
with how the readers can convey the meaning through the written symbols and process them
into their mind. In more classical term, reading defines as the meaningful interpretation of
printed or written verbal symbols (Nuttal, 1982: 42). This definition indicates that reading is
a result of the interaction between the perception of graphic symbols that represent language
and the reader’s language skill, cognitive skill and knowledge.

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 Putri Wahyuni 48

Therefore, reading process also makes connection between a text, a reader and social
context with in which the activity take place. This is in line with Hudelson in Murcia (2001:
154) that reading process involves the reader’s acting on or interpreting the text and the
interpretation is influenced by the reader’s past experiences, language background, and
cultural frame work, as well as the reader’s purpose for reading.
Reading aloud is a classroom activity which has fallen in and out of favor with
teachers at various times. The main argument against it is that it can interfere with successful
pronunciation; spelling clearly affects pronunciation performance adversely. But reading
aloud offers opportunities for the study of the link between spelling and pronunciation, of
stress and intonation, and of the linking of sounds between words in connected speech; all
of these can be highlighted and investigated further in fun and interesting ways through
reading aloud.
Reading aloud is an activity to read something loudly. Reading aloud is necessary to
be learned. It is support by Huang (2010: 148) “reading aloud is an important part in
education for all-around development, which has several functions in English teaching”. By
reading aloud, students can test themselves whether the pronunciations that they are saying
is correct or not. If the pronunciations are not correct, the teacher can easily revise it. In
addition, Huang also said that reading aloud is used as the major and magic way to improve
students’ oral-English.
Huang (2010) at English Department, Zhenjiang Watercraft College of PLA in his
research about reading aloud said “reading aloud to middle and high school students can
motivate them to read, enticing them with good a short story and providing a model of
excellent reading, phrasing, expression, and pronunciation”. When the teacher reads aloud
to students, the teacher engages them in texts that they might not be able to teach. In the
process, the teacher expands their imagination, provides new knowledge, supports language
acquisition, builds vocabulary, promotes reading as a worthwhile, enjoyable activity. All
students, from pre-school through high school, can benefit from being read to.
Lundy (2004) in English Autumn from the British Council said that “Reading aloud
has been actively discouraged in the EFL classroom since he first trained as a teacher.
Furthermore, he said that it is obvious that some people are much better at reading aloud
than others. They are confident, polished and interesting. In all reading aloud it is important
to emphasize the main ideas while conveying the appropriate attitude or emotion. As most
of my students’ aim were, vaguely, to improve pronunciation.
According to Huang (2010: 148), reading aloud technique is used as the major and
magic way to improve students’ oral-English. Also according to Gibson (2008: 30), reading
aloud is a technique which offers opportunities for the study of the links between spelling
and pronunciation, of stress and intonation, and of the linking sounds between words in
connected speech.
In addition, the purpose of reading aloud, according to Huang (2010: 149), can
facilitate foreign language classroom with five functions.
1. Practice pronunciation; reading aloud is a kind of comprehensive practice of
pronunciation. Reading aloud can help them correct their dialect effectively.

The Effect of Teaching Reading Aloud Technique in Improving English Pronunciation

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2. Improve oral English; the students with perfect oral English should pronounce properly
and speak fluently. Most students learn English with a focus on reading and writing skill.
For some students who don’t have the confidence to practice spoken English, reading
aloud can help them overcome the faults of disfluency, repeat, improper pause, and
develop natural and good pronunciation habit.
3. Get deeper understanding; in fact, reading aloud is reappearance of all the original content
of idea, feeling, attitude and style in the form of voice.
4. Strengthen the knowledge; we can strengthen what we have learned by listening,
speaking, reading and writing. Reading aloud, which has relevant to listening, speaking,
reading, is the practice of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. General oral English
is an important method, but it has some restriction in vocabulary and structure. As a
practice, reading aloud can make up with the lack of oral English, for its material has
wide range in topic, vocabulary and grammar.
5. Improve the classroom atmosphere, in class, especially in intensive class, students may
feel tired and dull after some time. At that time reading aloud can help them back to the
class. "During read-aloud, we share the excitement, the suspense, the emotion, and the
sheer fun of a new book and its intriguing or annoying characters," said Nancy Lacedonia,
who teaches in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts.
Based on the explanations above, it can be concluded that reading aloud very helpful to
improve students’ ability in their pronunciation.
Also, there were some advantages of reading aloud that defined by Gibson (2008),
such as reading aloud can improve reading fluency, monitor pronunciation, reduce speaking
anxiety as it controlled, and be the part of being proficient in a language. From these facts,
the researcher considers that reading aloud technique can help students to solve their problem
in English pronunciation. Therefore, the researcher chooses reading aloud as a technique to
drill students’ pronunciation of English.

METHOD
This research applied pre-experimental research design with a quantitative approach in
which only one group was taken as research subjects and involved in a pretest, having the
treatment, and a posttest. The pretest was done to measure the students’ pronunciation ability
before being given them the treatment twice. The sample taken for this research was ninth
grade students of SMP Negeri-2 Palangka Raya which were filled by 31 students (13 male
students and 18 female students). In the treatments give to those students, researcher did
teaching reading aloud to the students.
The following are the procedure in teaching reading aloud technique:
1. The students were explained about pronunciation first.
2. Then the researcher gave a familiar short story or text to be read aloud by using correct
pronunciation.
3. The researcher divided the students into small groups then she dictated sentence to
sentence from the text and allowed the groups to imitate the words read after her loudly.
4. Next, the researcher gave the copy of story to the students in respective group.

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 Putri Wahyuni 50

5. The students in the group discussed how to read the story and to pronounce the text in the
correct pronunciation.
6. Then, the researcher asked each group to read the story loudly with correct pronunciation.
7. At the end of the treatment, the students got a feedback and evaluation from the researcher
to correct the wrong pronunciation or non-target like pronunciation of words during the
reading aloud activity. And, students were asked to practice pronouncing such corrected
words.
As the treatment was complete, the researcher administered the posttest with the
purpose to measure the students’ pronunciation improvement after conducting the treatment.
Finally, the means of two tests, both pretest and posttest were analyzed to know whether
there was a significant effect before and after the treatment carried out.
The test of pronunciation was used as the research instrument. There were 24
consonant sounds used where each consonant consisted of 2 items which were one
represented the initial sound position and one for the final position. Meanwhile, in relation
to vowel sounds, there were 12 sounds to be tested in which 1 vowel sound consisted of 2
items which were one sound in initial position and one in the final sound position. So, the
total number of items tested was 72 items covering consonants and vowels for the targeted
pronunciation. Before the research instrument being given to students, it was tried out first
to be tested whether it was reliable or not. The result of try out showed the reliability value
0.995 from the evaluation of inter-rater reliability using Pearson correlation product moment.
By this result, it confirms that the research instrument is reliable and appropriate to be given
to the research subjects.
The data of this research are the scores of students’ pronunciation of English words.
To score the pronunciation test, it was used the following scoring rubric adapted from
Djiwandono (2008).
Table 1. Scoring rubric of pronunciation test
Pronunciation
Score Description
Aspect
Pronouncing the whole words accurately and does
4
not cause any misunderstanding.
Pronouncing nearly whole words accurately does
3
not cause any misunderstanding.
Accuracy
Pronouncing almost of the words by little
2
misunderstanding.
Most of the words are pronounced inaccurately.
1
So, it causes misunderstanding.

Then the scoring rubric above was proceeded to find students’ score with the range of 0—
100 by using the formula proposed by Purwanto (2008:102) as follows:

R (Students’ accuracy score)

Score = X 100
N (Maximum score for the test result = 288)

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To analyze the data obtained from the test, it was used Wilcoxon sign rank test—a non
parametric test since the test of data normality yielded not normally distributed.

RESULT
The following is the result of pretest of students’ pronunciation before they were given the
treatments of teaching reading aloud.
Table 2. The result of students’ score in pretest

No Students Code Accuracy Score Total Score

1. A1 188 65.27
2. A2 109 37.84
3. A3 107 37.15
4. A4 165 57.29
5. A5 191 66.31
6. A6 105 36.45
7. A7 112 38.88
8. A8 195 67.70
9. A9 102 35.41
10. A10 110 38.19
11. A11 200 69.44
12. A12 170 59.02
13. A13 185 64.23
14. A14 107 37.15
15. A15 103 35.76
16. A16 105 36.45
17. A17 100 34.72
18. A18 183 63.54
19. A19 168 58.33
20. A20 103 35.76
21. A21 172 59.72
22. A22 163 56.59
23. A23 102 35.41
24. A24 187 64.93
25. A25 104 36.11
26. A26 174 60.41
27. A27 171 59.37
28. A28 104 36.11
29. A29 167 57.98
30. A30 111 38.54
31. A31 105 36.45
Total 1516,51

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 Putri Wahyuni 52

Then the result of posttest are depicted in the following.

Table 3. The result of students’ scores in posttest

No Students Code Accuracy Score Total Score

1. A1 227 78.81
2. A2 139 48.26
3. A3 136 47.72
4. A4 185 64.23
5. A5 231 80.20
6. A6 134 46.52
7. A7 146 50.69
8. A8 238 82.63
9. A9 129 44.79
10. A10 142 49.30
11. A11 236 81.94
12. A12 212 73.61
13. A13 223 77.43
14. A14 137 47.56
15. A15 132 45.83
16. A16 130 45.13
17. A17 128 44.44
18. A18 219 76.04
19. A19 208 72.22
20. A20 127 44.09
21. A21 211 73.26
22. A22 183 63.54
23. A23 102 35.41
24. A24 187 64.93
25. A25 131 45.48
26. A26 214 74.30
27. A27 206 71.52
28. A28 129 44.79
29. A29 193 67.01
30. A30 146 50.69
31. A31 158 54.86
Total 1847,23

Then, the scores of pretest and posttest on Table 2 and 3 are statistically calculated using
non-parametric Wilcoxon test to find out the significance difference of both test scores.

The Effect of Teaching Reading Aloud Technique in Improving English Pronunciation

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Table 4. The Result Wilcoxon Sign Rank Test

Mean Sum of Asyimp. sig.
N Z
rank rank (2-tailed)
Negative Ranks 0a 0.00 0.00
Score pretest Positive Ranks 29b 15.00 435.0 -4.704b 0.000
and posttest Ties 2c
Total 31

Table 4 shows that there is a significant difference on students’ pronunciation of English by

using reading aloud technique after two times of treatment given. Hence the treatments given
to the subjects succeed to improve students’ pronunciation. This is specified by statistical
test values where Z = -4.704 and p < .001.

DISCUSSION
The result of this research shows the reading aloud technique gave improvement on English
pronunciation to students. This is in line with some studies related where reading aloud is
proven to be able to improve students’ pronunciation. Muflikhati (2013), for instance, used
a classroom action research method to teach reading aloud in improving English
pronunciation to eleventh graders of SMA. The research was conducted in two cycles. From
the observation and interview result, students’ pronunciation was improved in every cycle.
Then, she made a conclusion that reading aloud could improve the pronunciation ability.
Furthermore, Adita (2014) carried out the classroom action research method to
investigate reading aloud technique to improve eight graders’ pronunciation by reading
narrative texts. The result again showed the use of reading aloud technique can also improve
the students’ pronunciation in reading narrative text and students’ participation during
teaching and learning pronunciation was very motivated.
In addition, the result of this research also confirms Huang‘s (2003) study that
reading aloud can motivate students to read and provide them a model of excellent
expression and pronunciation. Furthermore, this research also confirms what Lundy (2004)
yielded in his study that reading aloud technique can make his students confident and also
improve their pronunciation of English.
Besides, from this research it is also found some factors that may improve students’
pronunciation such as students are given the way how to pronounce difficult words
containing consonant clusters. By doing so, students are familiar with English pronunciation
which then makes them easier to follow the instruction and feedback during the treatments.

CONCLUSION
The reading aloud technique can help students to improve their English Pronunciation. The
researcher believed that despite of the succession in attracting and motivating alternative
technique in learning process, using reading aloud technique can make learning English
pronunciation to be more effective and challenging. As the result, students’ accuracy to

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 Putri Wahyuni 54

pronounce targeted words after being given reading aloud technique has improved
significantly.
In relation with this result, teachers should provide appropriate technique in teaching
English pronunciation. Reading aloud technique is one of the appropriate techniques in
enhancing students’ accuracy to pronounce English words. This technique can be a reference
for teachers to make their students interested in drilling English pronunciation. Besides,
teachers should also motivate their students to be interested in reading aloud since reading
aloud bears positive things in enhancing students’ pronunciation. Again, this research is far
from perfect, so many more models and designs can be used to study the similar cases with
the more ideal technique to be implemented to research subjects.

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The Effect of Teaching Reading Aloud Technique in Improving English Pronunciation