PERCEPTIONS OF EFL LEARNERS ON THE APPLICATION OF READING ALOUD TECHNIQUE IN LEARNING PRONUNCIATION

The objective of this research was to find out whether or not the use of Sequence Pictures Technique can improve the ninth grade students’ skill in writing procedure text. The researcher applied a quasi-experimental research design. The population of this research was the ninth grade students of SMP Negeri 14 Palu which consisted of 119 students. The sample of this research was 30 students of class IX Ahmad Yani as the experimental class. Meanwhile, 29 students of class IX Cut Nyak Dien categorized as the control class. The sample was selected by using cluster random sampling technique. The technique of data collection was test. The test included pre-test and post-test, with the mean score of 56.11 for experimental class, and 71.67 for control class on pre-test. While on post-test, the results were 73.33 for experimental class and 77.22 for control class. By applying 0.05 level of significance and 28 degree of freedom (df), as can be seen that the value of t-counted was (3.58) and t-table was (1.701). The t-counted value was higher than t-table value, which meant that the research hypothesis was accepted. This study suggests that the use of Sequence Pictures technique can improve students’ writing skill in procedure text.


INTRODUCTION
Pronunciation is the component of speaking which the speaker produces a right sound of every word to make a meaning. It is very needed in speaking in order to make 54 | e-Journal of ELTS | Vol. 9 No. 1 | January-June 2021 | pp. [53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64] listener s understand about what the speaker says. According to Otlowsky (1992:1), "Pronunciation is a way speaking a word especially a way that is generally expected or generally understood." In addition, Harmer (1991:11) defines, "Pronunciation is made up of three areas; sounds, stress, and intonation." Pronunciation should be promoted to students. Knowing the fact that English is a foreign language in Indonesia, students may get many difficulties in communication.
Having a good pronunciation of the language can help in normal communication, particularly intelligibility (Nation and Newton, 2009). However, Nation and Newton (2009) argue that it is not the only reason why pronunciation teaching should be conducted. There is another more important reason. He explains that learners' phonological loop affect learners gain stable pronunciation. Nation & Newton (2009:75) explains phonological loop is the brain saying a word or phrase over and over to itself in order to keep it in working memory or to help it move into long-term memory and if learners do not have a stable pronunciation for a word, it cannot easily enter long-term memory because it cannot be held in the phonological loop (Ellis & Beaton, 1993;Baddeley, Gathercole and Papagno, 1998;Singleton, 1999: 148-151).
However, during the process of pronunciation learning, some problems happen because English is not a mother tongue for many students. One of the problems is about the differences in sounds. The study by Hassan (2014) implied that Sudanese students of English whose language background is Sudanese Arab, faced problems with the English pronunciation, especially vowels. It is because they have more than one way of pronunciation. It is even worse when contrasting the certain vowels with consonants.
Based on that fact, it concludes that the mother tongue interference of sounds or the different sound system is seen as a problem in learning a foreign language. Begum & Hoque (2016) investigated the students' pronunciation problem in Bangladesh. Based on the findings, it was found that the students found three main problems in pronunciation. They are: problems in English vowels, problems in English consonants, and problems in minimal pair. Saputra et al. (2020) conducted a study to investigate the Indonesian EFL students' problems in pronouncing "s" and "es" suffixes in the simple present tense verbs and in plural form of nouns. This is also because the students are not familiar with the change of sound in English.
Perceptions of EFL Learners on the Application of Reading Aloud Technique in Learning…| 55 Many techniques have been applied to help EFL learners in pronunciation learning. One of the techniques that is used and found to be beneficial is Reading Aloud Technique. Reading Aloud Technique requires EFL learners to read words, sentences, or paragraphs out loud. Kailani (1998) states that reading aloud is characterized by the clear articulation of words, flexibility in stress, intonation, and rhythm, and the effective use of pauses. Kelly (2000) also says that reading aloud is a classroom activity which has fallen in and out of favor with teachers at various time.
In addition, the main purposes of Reading Aloud Technique as adopted from Huang (2010:149) are to: (1) practice pronunciation, in which reading aloud is a kind of comprehensive practice of pronunciation itself as well as aid to help EFL learners correct their dialects and accent effectively; (2) get deeper understanding as reading aloud is the reappearance of all the original content of idea, feeling, and style in the form of voice; and (3) strengthen the knowledge, in which it is to strengthen what EFL learners have learned by listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
For its advantages, Yu (2015) found that reading aloud is beneficial for students to enrich their vocabulary knowledge, improve pronunciation, word stress awareness, and help to identify sentence structures and understand the texts. It is also found by Ninsuwan (2015) that reading aloud boosted the students to have more self-confidence to pronounce the different or unfamiliar words and it could build up potential for students to memorize words as researcher observed in class and in test paper on how students explain and answer the questions. Senawati et al. (2021) revealed that reading aloud benefits students' English regarding their vocabulary, pronunciation, comprehension, listening skills, reading skills, speaking skills, communicative skills, and motivation, literacy, and critical thinking skills. Furthermore, Adita, Bindarti, & Wahyuningsih (2014) found that Reading Aloud Technique improves the students' pronunciation achievement in reading narrative texts. Additionally, Reading Aloud Technique benefits the students with their new vocabulary and syntactic awareness.
On the other hand, Reading Aloud Technique has disadvantages. Yu (2015) found that Reading Aloud Technique does not completely help students understand what they read because the main focus is to improve the students' pronunciation, vocabulary, intonation, and rhythm. Therefore, this technique does not help students with their comprehension. Further, according to Ocvika (2017:21), reading aloud will 56 | e-Journal of ELTS | Vol. 9 No. 1 | January-June 2021 | pp. 53-64 frequently slow down the students' reading speed that has always been emphasized to improve. It gives a few students chances of practice while the others feel bored.
Additionally, the students are easy to be embarrassed when reading. They will read worse when being corrected by teacher.
Furthermore, it was found beneficial to analyze and describe the perceptions of EFL learners on the application of Reading Aloud Technique in teaching pronunciation.
Therefore, the research question was formulated as follow: "What are the EFL learners' perceptions toward the application of Reading Aloud Technique in teaching pronunciation?"

METHOD
In this research, the researcher used qualitative research design. This design aimed at describing the information. In line with the previous statements, According to Fitrah & Luthfiyah (2017), descriptive research is research that aims to describe existing phenomena, which occur now and in the past. This study does not make manipulations or changes to the independent variables but illustrates a condition based on facts.
Lodico, Saulding, & Voegtle (2010) explain that qualitative research focuses on the study of social phenomena and giving feedbacks to the perceptions by the participants of the study. Creswell (2014) explains that qualitative research is a research with an approach to understanding the meaning of individual or group and exploring social or human problems. Yin (2011) also explains that qualitative research exists to collect, integrate, and present data of any given study from a variety of evidence. Yin (2011) also concludes that this research design covers contextual condition.
The samples of this research were 13 students of the second year students (batch 2018) of English Education Study Program. To be specific, from about 25 active students in each class of batch 2018, there were only 13 students participating in the research. In collecting the data, the researcher conducted and collected open-ended responses to questions in an online questionnaire. Due to that, the researcher also conducted an in depth interview with five informants consisting of students. According to Yusuf (2014), questionnaire is an investigation carried out by sending a questionnaire to respondents who have been determined and after the being-filled out questionnaire is returned to the researcher. The interview used was the semi-structured interview.
Perceptions of EFL Learners on the Application of Reading Aloud Technique in Learning…| 57 According to Lodico et al. (2010), semi-structured interviews are typically planned carefully before the interview is carried out. The interview is only semi-structured in that the researcher can change the order of questions, omit questions, or vary the wording of the questions depending on what happens in the interview.
The research questionnaire consists of 17 closed questions that focus on the EFL learners' perceptions on the application of Reading Aloud Technique in teaching pronunciation. In addition, there are a few questions about Reading Aloud Technique.
Since the type of questionnaire used was a closed questionnaire, students only chose the answers available without having to think about their own answers. The researcher told the informants that the questionnaire remained confidential and do not affect the value of English lessons. The data analysis comprises data reduction, data display, conclusion and verification (Miles and Huberman, 1994). The data collected in the research were reduced from selecting, categorizing, reducing, displaying, and interpreting data. After reducing the data, the researcher presented the data into a diagram in order to make the data can be easily understood.

FINDINGS
The findings of this study relate to the classification of the EFL learners' questionnaire assessments and interview section. Data from the questionnaire used the characteristics of open-ended responses and questions. The conducted interview determined the students' abilities, views, and responses in learning pronunciation through Reading Aloud Technique.

Questionnaire Result
In obtaining the EFL learners' responses, each statement has provided four degree of agreement to be selected by the learners. Those are SD (Strongly Agree), A (Agree), D (Disagree), and SD (Strongly Disagree). The result of the data is shown in the percentage form. Furthermore, the researcher provides samples of the answers on part 2 (questions) of the questionnaire. in a wrong way, moreover others can also correct us when they find mistakes from our pronunciation.
say the words correctly in terms of phonology. By using the technique habitually, the pronunciation can be improved automatically. RW Yes, because I can practice to pronounce word better.
Reading Aloud Tehcnique gets me used to pronounce words S Yes, it will, because through this technique I will be able to know how well I pronounced english words, even it a word that I know before or a new word. Reading aloud technique will help improve my english pronunciation, because reading aloud helps me understand how every sound is pronounced.

Interview with the EFL learners of batch 2018 of English Education Study
Program was conducted on May 25, 2021. In line with that, 13 EFL learners were interviewed to give their perceptions or answers about how they describe the pronunciation of their batch in general, difficulties they find in learning pronunciation, the major difficulty in pronunciation learning, special technique they use to learn pronunciation, their solutions to problems they find in learning pronunciation, and their opinions about the use of Reading Aloud Technique in learning pronunciation. The result of the interview shows that the EFL learners think their pronunciation in general is still good, but there is a lot of aspects need to be improved. Because the students' answers on the interview are quite similar, the researcher only transcribed and provided five students' interview results. The results of five interviewees have described the students' answers in general.

DISCUSSION
In this part, the researcher provides discussion in case of answering the research question which is about what are the EFL learners' perceptions toward the application of Reading Aloud Technique in teaching pronunciation. In line with that, some theories are used to support the discussion. The previous responses show that the EFL learners gave their responses positively. Students' auditory perception shows that the application 60 | e-Journal of ELTS | Vol. 9 No. 1 | January-June 2021 | pp. 53-64 of Reading Aloud Technique is good and important because the technique will help them to improve their pronunciation. Most of the students' responses on the related item is on SA (Strongly Agree) and A (Agree) answers. Additionally, the EFL learners gave positive responses on the items that are related to the strong points of Reading Aloud Technique in teaching pronunciation. Therefore, based on this result, it can be inferred that the EFL learners' perceptions toward the application of Reading Aloud Technique in teaching pronunciation are positive because they believe that the technique is important and good to apply in pronunciation learning.
Some studies believe that difficulties in learning English pronunciation arise due to the differences between the target language and the mother tongue of the language learners. Mother tongue influence in learning English has been studied by many researchers. Some of them were by Hassan (2014) who imply that students were interfered by their mother tongue which is Sudanese Arab; Begum & Hoque (2016) who found that mother tongue interference affect the students' pronuncation on English vowels, consonants, and minimal pair; and Saputra et al. (2020) who found that the students' pronunciation on suffixes "s" and "es" are influenced by their Indonesian mother tongue.
According to Shak, Lee, & Stephen (2016), most EFL learners have difficulties in learning pronunciation because they are not interested, not exposed to target language often, and that teachers do not highlight the importance of pronunciation, nor have the right tools to help EFL learners dealing with their pronunciation. This case might be true for EFL learners of batch 2018, Tadulako University as they are not really aware of the importance of pronunciation in language learning. It is the thing that will guide them to a more understood spoken English. This is showed by the fact that most samples in this research obtain B on their pronunciation class.
Another problem faced by EFL learners which is obtained from interview is that their native language affects the way they speak or affect their English sounds. Dealing with it, Silalahi (2016) explains that native speakers of Indonesian will use Indonesian phonological system to pronounce English words and expressions. A famous example would be some Indonesian native speakers will automatically pronounce /sarǝk/ for "shark" because there is no English "sh" (phonetically transcribed /ʃ/) in Indonesian phonological system. This statement from Silalahi is relevant to what happens to the Perceptions of EFL Learners on the Application of Reading Aloud Technique in Learning…| 61 EFL learners of bacth 18, Tadulako University in which they find difficulties in pronouncing words that have unfamiliar sounds with Indonesian's. For example, there are some EFL learners respond that pronouncing words that end with /r/ and /l/ sound are difficult, such as: girl, world, pearl, etc.
The problem faced by EFL learners earlier can lead them to mispronunciation.
Mispronunciation is commonly occurred in the non-native context. In EFL context, mispronunciations are generally caused by several reasons as explained by Silalahi (2016). Firstly, the students follow or apply the pronunciation of basic words. Secondly, students tend to use their native phonological rules. Thirdly, the mispronounce words are rarely used by the EFL learners. Lastly, they imitate the wrong pronunciation from their instructor. Improving students' ability to pronounce English expression can be done by using suitable materials. The substitution of sound also include in this problem. Hassan (2014) found that Sudanese students substitute the sounds and get confused of the sounds. They changed pronunciation different consonants as the same one. For example: /z/ and /ð/, /s/ and /θ/, /b/ and /p/, /ʃ/ and /tʃ/. In the case found by Begum & Hoque (2016), the students replace long vowels with the short ones: /iː/ ~ /i/, /uː/ ~ /u/, /ɔː/ ~ /ɔ/, /ɜ/~ /ʌ/, and /ɑː/ ~ /ɑ/.
In line with the previous paragraph, the need for more in-depth research into EFL learners' pronunciation problems cannot be ignored. A thorough analysis of EFL learners' pronunciation problems should be conducted in order to find ways to help learners pronounce words more accurately. As much as it is important to know why learners have pronunciation problems, it is of equal if not more important that ways on how these pronunciation problems can be corrected is dwelt into (Shak et al., 2016). In addition, special programs should also be introduced and implemented to help students improve their pronunciation. One of these is to use Reading Aloud Technique in pronunciation teaching and learning.
In line with it, there are some studies that focus on the application of Reading Aloud Technique in pronunciation teaching. Nurani & Rosyada (2015) conducted a study on the technique and found that the EFL learners' motivation and ability are improved. The EFL learners' enthusiasm also improved as well as the interaction between EFL learners. Another study conducted by Layli (2016) found that there is an improvement of the learners' pronunciation after the application of Reading Aloud 62 | e-Journal of ELTS | Vol. 9 No. 1 | January-June 2021 | pp. 53 -64 Technique. Also, the EFL students' understanding in pronunciation is also affected. Ocvika (2017) confirms that the EFL teacher had done Reading Aloud Technique less effective and less maximal because there were some weaknesses in several sides during the process of teaching and learning. The situation during the process of teaching and learning pronunciation through Reading Aloud Technique was that the EFL students read the text with a low sound and read so slowly as they had never seen the words before, so the EFL teacher seemed difficult to hear EFL students' sound.

CONCLUSION
This study was carried out to find out the EFL learners' perceptions toward the application of Reading Aloud Technique in the teaching of pronunciation. In order to obtain the information, the questionnaire and interview were provided to the EFL learners. Then, based on the findings, the researcher concludes that the EFL learners who were interviewed in this research give satisfying answers. Most of the students perceive that the application of Reading Aloud Technique is good and important to support their pronuncation improvement. Also, most of the EFL learners' answers on the questionnaire, for items that require their perceptions on Reading Aloud Technique, are in SA (Strongly Agree) and A (Agree) answers. This can be implied that the students have positive responses toward the application of Reading Aloud Technique

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The researcher would like to express his gratitude and appreciation to Siska Bochari, S.S., M.Hum., who has given constructive comments and suggestions to the researcher. Another appreciation is also sent to Abdul Kamaruddin, S.Pd., M.Ed., Ph.D., for his valuable comments, suggestions, and revisions since writing the proposal until the completion of this skripsi. Additionally, the researcher would also like to deliver his thanks to Drs. Mochtar Marhum, M.Ed., Ph.D., who has given ideas and motivation to the researcher. All of whom are the lecturers at English Education Study Program, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Tadulako University.