CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Background Of The Problem

Reading is one of the four language skills in language learning. It is the ability to

draw meaning from the printed page and interpret this information appropriately (Grabe and

Stoler in (Mailis etc,2014:2). Comprehension is the process of simultaneously extracting and

constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language (Snow in

Mailis etc,2014:2).

Nowadays, the ability to comprehend English text is necessary for millions of people.

By understanding English, people are able to communicate in English and also able to read

many kinds of English texts as Harris (1980:39) said that “the ability to read is crucial in

contemporary society. People find many texts written in English, from holiday brochures to

academic books, newspapers, pamphlets, magazines, traffic directions, advertisements, etc.

Therefore, the ability to read English text in any form will give a lot of many plenties of

advantages in our lives.

Pronunciation is one of the important aspects of English, especially in oral communication.

Every sound, stress pattern, and intonation may convey meaning. The non-native speakers of English

who speak English have to be very careful in pronouncing some utterances or they may create

misunderstanding.

Pronunciation skill is an English skill which has a correlation between other skills.

Someone reading means producing sound by saying the words those are read and someone

will listen to the reader which is the speaker. If the speaker makes a mistake in pronouncing

the listener could be confusing.

 Talking about pronunciation means talking about the spoken language by studying its

sounds, this study is called phonetics (Crane, 1981: 57). The better a speaker pronounce

words, the better he can explain what he means to native speakers. On the other hand, it will

be hard for native speakers to understand non-native speakers if their pronunciation is not

clear. The writer, of course, cannot improve his pronunciation unless he becomes interested

in phonology itself.

Another factor that affects learner‟s pronunciation is the teacher‟s teaching methods.

According to Clark (1983:184), teaching methods are the means by which the teacher

attempts to bring about the desired learning. The method in teaching concerns the way

teachers organize and use the technique of teaching subject matter, teaching tools, teaching

material, and teaching procedures that will best achieve these objectives, carrying out the

procedures, evaluating the success of the learning activities and following up their success

and failure. Techniques, according to Gerlach (1975:197) are the ways and means adopted

by a teacher to direct the learner's activities toward an objective. Techniques are the tools of

the teacher. Techniques are the means for teaching, and objective can be part of the

expository for inquiry approaches.

Based on the explanation above, the writer is interested to conduct research about:

“THE CORRELATION BETWEEN STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION MASTERY

AND READING COMPREHENSION OF THE ELEVENTH YEAR STUDENTS OF

SMK N 2 SALATIGA IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2018/2019”

Statement Of The Problem

Based on the background above, the writer would like to identify the problem as

follows:
 How is the student profile of is reading comprehension for the Eleventh year students’

of SMK N 2 Salatiga in the academic year of 2018/2019?

How is the profile of students’ pronunciation skill for the Eleventh year students’ of

SMK N 2 Salatiga in the academic year of 2018/2019?

Is there any correlation between pronunciation mastery and reading comprehension for

the Eleventh year students’ of SMK N 2 Salatiga in the academic year of 2018/2019?

The objective of the Study

Based on the statement on the problem above, the objective of the study are:

To find the profile of students’ levels of students’ reading comprehension for the eleventh

year students SMK N 2 Salatiga in the academic year of 2018/2019

To find the profile of students’ the levels of students’ pronunciation skills for the Eleventh

year students SMK N 2 Salatiga in the academic year of 2018/2019

To find out if there is any correlation between the students’ pronunciation mastery and

reading comprehension eleventh year students SMK N 2 Salatiga in the academic year of

2018/2019?

Limitation of the Study

In this case, the writer focus on the correlation between students’ pronunciation

mastery and reading comprehension. The writer chooses this topic to find out the writer

choose this topic to find out further information and to know how deep the students’

pronunciation mastery for the Eleventh year students’ of SMK N 2 Salatiga in the academic

year of 2018/2019 master the pronunciation on the reading comprehension.

The Benefit of the Study

 The writer will give a contribution to the process of teaching and learning the English

language. The result of the research also may give benefits for the teacher, students, readers

and institutions which are described as follows:

For the Writer

By doing the research the writer expected more information to identify the problem in

both pronunciation mastery and reading comprehension. As a candidate of the teacher in

the future, this research will be useful for her

For the Students

The result of this study will provide a reference and reflection for students so that their

pronunciation master as well as reading comprehensions, improve then the students can

increase scores in learning pronunciation and reading comprehension.

For the Teacher

English teacher can use this result as feedback on teaching pronunciation mastery and

reading comprehension. Teacher gets some information about pronunciation and

reading, can be as guidance when their students facing some problems in mastering both

of them.

For other researchers

The result of this research can be a consider and additional information for other

researchers who will conduct any further studies in the same field.

Definition of the Key Term

This research is some key term should be defined. They are correlation study, the student

pronunciation mastery, and the student reading comprehension. The description of these

term as below:
 The student’s mastery in pronunciation

Mastery

Mastery is a complete control or the state of having control over something

superiority in competition, victory element skill or through knowledge (Hornby,

1974:153)

Pronunciation

Pronunciation is never an end in itself but a means of negotiating the meaning of

discourse, embedded in specific sociocultural and interpersonal contexts (Seidlhofer

1995 as cited in Celce Murcia (2006:117)

Reading Comprehension

According to Snow (2002:14), reading Comprehension as the process of

simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and

involvement with written language.”It means that reading comprehension is the

complex process to gain some information needed.

Theoretical Background

Review of Previous Researches

There is some related research which has been conducting previously by other

researchers:

Yoseph (2014) in his thesis entitles “The Correlation between students’

Pronunciation Mastery And Their Speaking Ability”. This research is aimed to find
some difficulties in learning English. One of the difficulties that the students find in

English learning activity is speaking.

The students’ speaking ability in SMAN1 Abung Pekurun, Kotabumi, North

Lampung. It was also found out reveal the correlation between students’ pronunciation

mastery and their speaking ability. The results of the research showed that pronunciation

mastery and speaking ability have a correlation.

The research entitles “The Correlation Between Students’ Vocabulary Mastery

And Their Writing Ability in Descriptive Text” was conducted by Yuyun Azizah in 2018.

The objective of this research is to find out whether there is a correlation between

vocabulary mastery and their descriptive writing ability. The instruments to collect the

data were vocabulary mastery test and descriptive writing test. The findings of this

research reveal that there is a significant correlation between students‘ vocabulary

mastery and their writing ability in the descriptive text for the seventh grade students of

SMP Islam Sudirman 1 Bancak, Semarang district in academic year 2016/2017.

The Correlation Between Students’ Vocabulary Achievement And Reading

Comprehension is a research which is done by Mega Valentia in 2017. The writer

analyzed the ability of reading comprehension and their components, especially the

mastery of the vocabulary of the on the 11th grade students of SMA Islamiyah

Pontianak in the academic year of 2016/2017. The results of the research show that

there is a correlation between students’ vocabulary achievement and students’ reading

comprehension. The correlation is positive and significant.

Method The Research

Type of Research

To answer the research problem, the researcher conducts a correlational study.

Correlation means a relationship between two variables. The whole purpose of using

correlations in research is to figure out which variables are connected. It gives an

understanding to the readers that, at least, two things or more are linked by a cause.

According to Widodo (2009:41), correlational used to find the possibility of the

existence of a relationship between two or more independent variable with the

dependent variable. Based on the direction of the relationship it can be divided into a

positive and negative relationship, and based on a number of distinguished variables

single, multiple, multi, cycle and path correlation.

According to Suryabrata (1995:24), the correlational research aims to detect

variations in factors related to variations in one or more other factors based on the

variation.

Data Collection

Sample and Sampling

The subjects of this research consisted of eleventh grade students XI BKP A

and KGSP of SMK N 2 Salatiga. Because this research belongs to the correlational

study, the researcher applies the measurement technique. The data will be collected

using a pronunciation test and reading test.

Population
 Arikunto (1997:108) stated that population is all participant of the research

subject. Population is all individual that are collected by the data. This, populations

of this research are the all of eleventh grade of SMK N 2 Salatiga.

Data analysis

Find the score of student pronunciation mastery of first semster student of

SMK N 2 Salatiga in the academic year of 2019/2020, the writer use instrument:

Test

Arikunto (1997:127) stated that test is a series of question or other

instrument to measure the skills, knowledge, intelligence, ability, or talent

which owned by individuals or grup. In the research, the writer use reading

comprehension and pronunciation mastery test in order to get the data about

studens’ reading comprehension and pronunciation mastery.

Documentation

According to Arikunto (1997:206) documentation is getting the data of the

object from many resources like book, note, magazine and many more. In this

reserch, the writer use the documentation about the picture of student who

became the object of this research and general condition class of XI BKP A

SMK 2 Salatiga.

Technique of data analysis

In analyzing the data collect by using both instrument, the writer analyzed

the data using descriptive statistic. There are several steps to analyze the data. First,

writer calculated the average using descriptive statistics in order to find out ability

pronunciation student. Second step, the writer calculated the score of students‟
 reading comprehension and averaged the score . The last step, the writer find out the

correlation of both variables. To know the correlation the writer calculated the data

used SPSS (Statistical Product and Service Solutions).

Graduating Paper Outline

As the guidance for either researcher in writing the graduating paper or reader on the

whole content of the graduating paper, the researcher who also the writer needs to set up

graduating paper outlines. There are five chapters in this graduating paper. Chapter I is an

introduction that discusses the background of the study, statement of the problem, objective

of the study, limitation of the problem, benefits of the study, definitions of the key terms,

Review of Previous Researches and graduating paper organization. Chapter II describes the

review of literature, this discusses the theory that will be used in this study, taken from some

book that describes the vocabulary, writing and descriptive text. Chapter III is a research

method. This chapter will explain how the researcher will be analyzed. It consists of the

setting of the research, research design, population and sample, instrument of the data

collection, procedure of the data collection, technique of the data collection, and technique

of the data analysis. Chapter IV is a research finding and discussion.

This chapter the writer would like to explain the description of data presentation and

discussion. Chapter V is closure. It presents conclusion and suggestion. The last part is

bibliography and appendix.