IMPROVING PRONUNCIATION OF GRADE 11 ABM LEARNERS THROUGH WORD STRESS

Abstract

This study focused on improving the pronunciation of Grade 11 ABM learners through word stress during the school year 2022-2023. Specifically, this study determined the significant difference between the learners' improved pronunciation before and after the word stressing. The study involved 44 Grade 11-ABM learners; 24 were males and 20 were females. A teacher-made test was used to determine the level of word stress in the learners' pronunciation. The data gathered were tabulated, studied, analyzed, and computed using the mean and t-test for dependent samples. It was found out that the highest score obtained in the pre-test was 36, while in the post-test it was 38. The lowest score obtained in the pretest was 24, while in the posttest it was 34. The pretest result manifested a "very satisfactory" score of 32 as the mean score. A significant difference existed between the pre-test and post-test results, as shown by the computed t-value of 13.66. This was higher than the tabular value of 1.684 at the 0.05 level of significance with 44 degrees of freedom. The result of the pre-test was already good, and after the execution of the post-test, it showed that the result had a great improvement, as it was described as outstanding.

Generally, the speaking activities strategy as an intervention in improving the word stress pronunciation of the Grade 11 ABM learners is effective. Based on the findings, the subsequent conclusion was derived: the word stress pronunciation of the learners had improved due to the employment of speaking activities as a strategy; a significant difference in the level of pronunciation word stressing skills was manifested in favor of the post-test; and using speaking activities is an effective strategy in improving the word stress pronunciation of grade 11 ABM learners.

It is highly recommended that word stressing is pivotal and should be presented for the learners to improve their pronunciation skills; teachers should be encouraged to continue using proper word stressing in selected word stress pronunciation problems and also in other fields of English; and for future researchers, the speaking activities can be their basis for exploring and creating new strategies and pronunciationtechniques that would help them address some problems in the teaching-learning process.