ASSESSING PRONUNCIATION

Group 1
Alifiardi Aditya Maulana R (20020084001)
M. Reval Fadhillah (20020084006)
Daffa Putra Amrullah Sigit (20020084022)

PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS

FAKULTAS BAHASA DAN SENI
UNIVERSITAS NEGERI SURABAYA
2021
TABLE OF CONTENTS.

TABLE OF CONTENTS. 2
A. Introduction 3
B. Definition 3
C. Pronunciation Subskills 4
D. How to Assess Pronunciation and the scoring procedure. 5
1. Oral repetition 5
2. Multiple-choice Hearing-identification 6
3. Read Aloud 6
4. Interview 7
E. Scoring Procedure 8
a. Scoring procedure for Oral Repetition 8
b. Scoring procedure for Multiple-choice Hearing Identification 8
c. Scoring procedure for Read Aloud and Interview 9
E. Conclusion 10
References 11
Appendix 12
A. Introduction
In the process of learning a language, especially in learning English, there are four
basic language skills that are interrelated with each other in language learning, such as
Listening, Writing, Reading, and Speaking. As an example, by using speaking skills,
students are expected to be able to communicate with each other in an efficient way.
In speaking ability, students are assessed by their teachers in various aspects, one
of them is by assessing how well the students are able to pronounce some words in
English with the pronunciation assessment. To understand what are the learning stages in
pronunciation, we need to understand its receptive aspect and its productive aspect.
Pronunciation also has four main subskills namely, the production of individual
sounds as in consonants and vowels, word or phrase intonation, rhythm appropriateness,
and appropriate connection between words or phrases. Further explanation about
assessing pronunciation will be explained in the next chapter.

B. Definition
As Madden (1997) stated, pronunciation can be simply defined as the production
of phonetic/phonemic sounds of a language, and it also strengthened by the definition
of pronunciation stated in Oxford Dictionary where pronunciation is explained as the
way in which a language or a particular word or sound is spoken. In addition,
assessment is a process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting any information in
order to make a decision (Airasian, 1991). Thus, we can say that the meaning of
pronunciation assessment is an act of assessing a pronunciation ability based on its
subskills.
C. Pronunciation Subskills
According to Madsen (1983), in his book titled Techniques in Testing,
pronunciation has various kinds of sub-skills that can be taught and practiced. Those
sub-skills are the production of individual sounds as in consonants and vowels,
intonation, rhythm appropriateness, and appropriate connection between words or
phrases.
The first subskill is about knowing how to correctly use and produce individual
sounds where the sounds themselves can be divided as consonants and vowels.
Generally, consonants are divided into two kinds, and those are voiced consonants
and the voiceless one. Some of these consonants are easy to produce, however, some
of them are pretty troublesome; for instance, the ‘th’ sound in ‘the’ needs to be
carefully produced to distinct it from the ‘d’ sound. Vowels, similarly, are also
divided into simple vowels and diphthongs which basically combine two vowels into
one. An example of diphthongs can be seen from the word ‘stole’ where the ‘o’ sound
is longer, and it is more similar to the combination of ‘o’ and ‘w’.
The second subskill is related to the intonation where it can give a certain subtle
meaning to the word or phrase produced. Intonation itself has the meaning of the rise
and fall of the speaker’s voice. In one sentence, the intonation can vary where it can
rise in the end, or it can even stay flat.
The third subskill is about the rhythm where the word, phrase, or even sentence is
spoken. It deals with how a certain word or phrase in a sentence can be stressed and
unstressed. The particular part that is stressed, generally, is the main concern of what
the speaker is trying to convey. For example, the important and subtle meaning of the
sentence ‘I did not do that’ could vary, based on what part does the speaker puts
stress into.
The fourth subskill is understanding the appropriate pronunciation connection in
words or phrases in a sentence. This sub-skill often can be seen in how native
speakers state sentences in a natural way. As an example, we can see how the word
‘did’ and ‘you’, instead of produced individually, can be assimilated when being
spoken. Not only that, this sub-skill also deals with word linking, such as the word
 ‘say’ and ‘I’ could be linked together, and how consonants could also be linked in a
cluster, like the ‘s’ and ‘t’ in ‘stole’ are spoken.

D. How to Assess Pronunciation and the scoring procedure.

There are several ways to assess pronunciation ability, namely, oral repetition,
multiple-choice hearing identification, read aloud, interview, and peer assessment.
This assessment is supposed to be a general testing way for students and people in
general.

1. Oral repetition
Oral repetition is a test in which the students need to repeat a word or
sentence that the teacher said in order to evaluate student word stress in a
sentence. The purpose of the test is to find out students’ understanding about
intonation, stress, the correct sound produced, and the word connection. Oral
repetition is a kind of integrative test. Here are the steps on how to do the oral
repetition test:
a. Teachers prepare some sentences that challenge students’ intonation,
stress, the correct sound produced, and the word connection.
b. Students should repeat sentences correctly in terms of rising or falling
intonation and syllable stress of the sentence.
c. Teachers analyze student correctness and mistakes of target words when
pronouncing sentences, and give scores based on student ability to repeat
sentences correctly.
Example: The sentence is “Did you say I stole the meat?”, then the
teachers can dictate it to the student where they are expected to repeat the
sentence. This way, the teachers can assess the subskills related such as,
intonation, stress, the correct sound produced, and the word connection.
2. Multiple-choice Hearing-identification
In this method of assessing pronunciation, hearing-identification items
which require students to listen to the sounds of consonants and vowels produced
by the audio carefully are used in the form of multiple choice. This method
emphasizes on students’ ability to differentiate sounds in consonants and vowels,
as mentioned in the subskill. These sound differences will be contextualized to a
simple sentence where students will be provided answers based on the context.
a) Teachers can undergo this method by preparing audio that covers problems
that students have with identifying a contrast in certain consonants and
vowels.
b) Then, to test the related subskill to the students, the teachers will provide two
to three choices that are similar in the context of the pronunciation contrast.
c) Students will be asked to choose the right choice after the audio is being
played.
For example, if the teachers want to test students’ ability to differentiate between
the sound /t/, /p/, and /b/, they can play a recording of the sentence “He bought a
new cab”. After that, the teachers can ask the student, “What did he buy?” and
provide them with choices such as “animal, hat, or car”. The correct choice is
“car”.

3. Read Aloud
The Read-aloud test is one of the tests to check student pronunciation
ability. Students need to read aloud the passages that are given by the teacher.
Like the oral repetition, this test has a purpose to find student understanding about
intonation, stress, the correct sound produced, and the word connection. Reading
aloud is also a kind of an integrative test. Here is how to do the read-aloud test:
a. Teachers prepare some written passages that challenge students’
intonation, stress, the correct sound produced, and the word connection.
The passages that the teacher chose need to be as natural as possible.
 b. Students individually read aloud the written passages correctly in terms of
intonation, stress, the correct sound produced, and the word connection.
Students are expected to read them naturally without getting pressurized.
c. Teachers analyze students' correctness and mistakes on their performance
of reading aloud the passages that have been given by the teacher.
d. Teacher should evaluate only one or two items per sentence.

4. Interview
Interview test is one of the tests to check student pronunciation, especially
on fluency. This test purpose is to evaluate student fluency and readiness on
answering subjective questions about the teacher. Interview is a kind of an
authentic assessment test. Here is how to do the interview test:
a. Teachers prepare several subjective questions based on the topic that’s already
agreed by the student and teacher.
b. The teacher asks the subjective question to the student.
c. Students answer the question from the teacher as fluently as possible, and they
need to pay attention to intonation, stress, the correct sound produced, and the
word connection.
d. Teachers analyze students’ fluency on answering the questions, incorrect and
right intonation, stress, the correct sound produced, and the word connection
of students’ spoken answers.
E. Scoring Procedure
Here is the procedure to scoring a pronunciation test (the question test is available
in Appendix)
a. Scoring procedure for Oral Repetition
Teachers can choose a sentence that consists of two or more subskills
or items of pronunciation that can be assessed, for example, the sentence
“Did you say I stole the meat?” it consists of subskills or items, such as:
1. The sound of key vowels and diphthongs (/i/, /iy/, /uw/, /ey/, /ow/)
2. The sound of important but troublesome consonants (/th/)
3. The sound of words assimilation (in the word “Did” + “you”,

students optimally should pronounce it as

4. The sound of consonant clusters (/st/ in the word “stole”)
5. The sound of the intonation that should be rising towards the end of
the sentence
After that, the teachers dictate the sentence clearly to the student. The
students then repeat the sentence clearly. Teachers, after that, can assess
their students by how well the students can produce the sounds based on
the subskills or items that they have determined before choosing the
sentence to test.
b. Scoring procedure for Multiple-choice Hearing Identification
Teachers can choose the sentence consisting of the subskill(s) that
they want to test in the form of audio. As an example, the teachers want to
test students’ ability to differentiate between the sound /t/, /p/, and /b/, so
they choose the sentence, “He bought a new cab”, in the form of audio.
After then, the teachers can provide questions in form of multiple choice
to the students and play the audio for them. The multiple choice can be
made such as:
 “What did he buy?”
A. Animal
B. Hat
C. Vehicle
Because this method uses multiple-choice questions, teachers can
assess it objectively by scoring 0 to incorrect answers, in this context, it is
A and B, and 1 to the correct answer, which is C.

c. Scoring procedure for Read Aloud and Interview

In terms of read aloud, the teacher can ask the student to read aloud
a simple book. Whereas, for the interview method, the teacher can ask
simple and basic questions about students’ daily life, hobbies, likings, and
etc. Then, teachers can use rubric of assessing pronunciation for both of
these two methods. An example of the rubric for pronunciation assessment
can be seen below.

Figure 1: (Rubric adopted from “ELT Assessment A” Google Classroom by Ma’am

Kusumarasdyati)
E. Conclusion
Pronunciation assessment is a process of assessment that is used to evaluate,
analyzing how well the student’s pronunciation ability based on its subskills.
Therefore, the subskills of pronunciation assessment such as consonants and vowels,
intonation, rhythm appropriateness, and appropriate connection between words or
phrases.
On the other side, the teachers use these types of pronunciation assessments
depends on their purpose, such as:
1. Oral repetition
2. Multiple-choice Hearing-identification
3. Read-aloud
4. Interview
References
Madsen, H. S. (1983). Techniques in testing. New York, NY: Oxford University Press
Madden, M., & Moore, Z. (1997). ESL Students’ Opinions about Instruction in Pronunciation.
Texas Papers in Foreign Language Education, 3(1), 15–32. https://eric.ed.gov/?
id=ED416716
The Definition of Pronunciation. (n.d.). Oxford Learner’s Dictionary. Retrieved October 12,
2021, from https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/pronunciation
Appendix
1. Oral repetition.

2. Multiple-choice Hearing-identification
3. Read Aloud
4. Interview
 5. Pronunciation Test

Pronunciation Test

Level : Beginner-Intermediate
Time : 60 minutes
Instructor : Ms. Dita Leni Ravia, S.Pd.

Part A
Instructions: Students should read the following sounds out loud and record themselves doing it.

1. I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!

2. How much is all that? I haven’t got the cash. Can I pay by check?
3. A little duckling was terribly unhappy because he thought he was the ugliest amongst all
his brothers and sisters.
4. The drops of blood fell down on the snow. The red color of the blood that was stuck
within the white of the snow looked terribly pretty.
5. She sells seashells by the seashore, and the shells she sells by the seashore are seashells
for sure.

Part B
Instructions: Students should answer the following questions in a 15 minutes interview session
with the teacher

Questions:
1. What is the food that you like the most and the one that you hate the most?
2. What is your favorite color, and why do you choose that color?
3. What are the activities that you like and the ones that you hate?
4. What is your hobby?
5. What is your dream job?
6. Scoring Procedures for Oral Repetition

Items Score
5 4 3 2 1
The sound of key vowels and
diphthongs (/i/, /iy/, /uw/,
/ey/, /ow/)
The sound of important but
troublesome consonants (/th/)
The sound of words
assimilation (in the word
“Did” + “you”, students
optimally should pronounce it

as
The sound of consonant
clusters (/st/ in the word
“stole”)
The sound of the intonation
that should be rising towards
the end of the sentence
7. Rubric for Read Aloud and Interview Test