volume 3, no. 2, 2018 Volume 3, No. 2, 2018 Bella Mulia Grandyna is an English teacher at a public high school in Central Lampung. She obtained a bachelor's degree from Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. She has been awarded an ELED graduate who received the best grades among students in the cohort. Her research interests include (but not limited to) teaching English as a foreign language, cultural influence on international students, teaching techniques and learning media. A University EFL Teacher’s Strategies in Solving the Teaching Pronunciation Problems Bella Mulia Grandyna Terbanggi Besar High School, Central Lampung bellagrandyna@gmail.com DOI: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3232 Abstract This study aimed to deal with a university teacher’s experience in teaching pronunciation, particularly on the problems faced by teacher and the strategies used in solving the problems in teaching pronunciation. To achieve the objectives, two interviews were done to Lily, an English teacher who has been given responsibility to teach pronunciation in a private university of Yogyakarta. The collected data was obtained from narrative inquiry design in qualitative method. The findings of the study discovered that problems faced by Lily in teaching pronunciation were familiarizing different sounds, timing, and students’ side problems. Moreover, increasing teaching quality, introducing pronunciation rules, and using various teaching techniques and classroom activities became the strategies to solve teaching pronunciation problems. Keywords: pronunciation; university teacher; teaching problems; teaching strategies. =========================================================================== mailto:bellagrandyna@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.3232 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 87 Introduction The English language is known as popular language. “English as a global lingua franca is increasingly important or even compulsory to learn in all nations through the world” (Panggabean, 2015, p. 35). English is very common learned and taught by people around the world for them to be able to communicate effectively with each other. Panggabean (2015, p. 35) added that “In Indonesia, learning and teaching English is conducted extensively in formal schools beginning from early education to university levels”. Even though the students learn the English language, they do not normally use English even after completing the learning (Mattarima & Hamdan, 2011) Indonesian language has different rules from English. The difference between how the word produced in Indonesian and English native speaker is the factor of difficulty in English pronunciation e.g. in pronouncing enough /ɪˈnʌf/ and should /ʃʊd/ (Tahereen, 2015). Indonesian tend to pronounce “g” word /ɪˈnoug/ and pronounce “l” to /ʃʊld/ (Yudanika, 2013). Based on my previous observation, Indonesian students in high school and college freshman tended to use Indonesian language patterns or styles when speaking in English because students’ first language often interfered with English pronunciation. Yoshida (2016) stated that students’ first language has a strong influence on the way they learn the pronunciation of a second language. Some of them will not speak out because they are frightened of making mistakes, and most of them feel embarrassed. Pronunciation ability is an important skill which needs to be learned by students because it is related to spoken communication. Teachers need to assist the students in learning how to pronounce language because it can give a positive impact on students’ pronunciation ability. There are many problems appear because of the different nature of sounds and patterns in English. Moreover, interesting strategies for teaching pronunciation are needed to make pronunciation learning pleasant. Pronunciation teaching is in form of presentation of new words, sentence patterns, and several practice activities (Brewster, Ellis, & Girard, 2004). The teacher needs to consider carefully the fact that pronunciation is not just about an individual’s sound which is only one aspect (Brewster et al., 2004). Tennant (2007) wrote in his article, there are only a few teachers who try and do some pronunciations, but the majority does very little or none. He added that the reasons to http://lingorado.com/ipa/ Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 88 avoid teaching pronunciation are divided into many aspects of pronunciation. The first aspect was difficult to teach, and the second aspect was pronunciation can be quite difficult to create a lesson around pronunciation point. Teachers sometimes feel underprepared to teach pronunciation, and many of them struggle to learn the phonetic alphabet. One of the Indonesian teachers in Moedjito’s study (2016) said that she was very unwilling to teach pronunciation because she really did not know how and what to teach because pronunciation does not belong as a mandatory in curriculum guideline currently. In addition, to meet the goals of this research, two research questions were formulated as follows:  What are the problems faced by the teacher in teaching pronunciation at ELED of a private university in Yogyakarta?  What are the teacher’s strategies in solving the problems of teaching pronunciation at ELED of a private university in Yogyakarta? Literature Review Problems in Teaching Pronunciation Difficulty happens in teaching pronunciation when the teachers teach the learners to try to pronounce strange, new sounds in a new language in their life. Stockwell (2013) mentioned that choosing the convenient tools and deciding accent to teach are the problems. The problems in pronunciation teaching written by Stockwell (2013) are explained as follows: Deciding accent There are countries where English is not their first language. The English variety is based on the different mother tongue that teachers around Indonesia find it hard and still struggle to decide the accent to be taught and to integrate the standard of English in their lesson. There are two standards accent that mostly used in books called British Receive Pronunciation and General American. Choosing a tool such as a textbook to integrate English into pronunciation practice is hard when the setting has different grammatical, lexical, and background cultures. For example, choosing a book for pronunciation teaching in a place that English is not the first or second language is hard because the students may not understand their course book. Besides, English book is mostly written in English to have a clear explanation of English usage itself. On the other hand, Yoshida (2016) argued that the problems in teaching pronunciation are fossilization and Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 89 hypercorrection. In his study, it focuses on the stubborn problems which develop wrong pronunciation and the way the teachers correct the wrong pronunciation too much. In addition, he also added that the problems often occur when teaching pronunciation including the fossilization and hypercorrection. For a more detailed explanation of those pronunciation problems mentioned, each problem is explained in the following paragraphs. Fossilization Fossilization is one of the most stubborn problems faced by teachers when teaching pronunciation. Fossilization is a process that occurs when the learners’ progress on a point, but it is hard to make further progress. Tahereen (2015) stated that the influence of local accent may affect learners’ English spoken skill concerning their pronunciation. Therefore, the learners will develop the wrong pronunciation as practiced for years by years. The example of fossilization is when the students said finger as /finjər/ not /finggər/. Even though they have known that /finjər/ is wrong, the habit to pronounce finger as /finjər/ always appear. It was hard for them to change the habit of saying that word. Hypercorrection It is common problem in teaching pronunciation than fossilization. Hypercorrection means “too much correction”. It occurs when a teacher has learned a rule and tried to apply it, but the teachers sometimes give too much correction on students’ mistake. For example, when the students do public speaking in front of the class, the teacher corrects the mispronounce word every time the students mispronounce it. It makes the students unconcentrated to deliver the meaning of their speech, but they focus on the pronunciation word, it also makes them nervous even scared of being corrected by their teacher. Besides, hypercorrection is a much rarer source of the problem in teaching pronunciation (Yoshida, 2016). Meanwhile, Tahereen (2015) stated that problems faced by the teachers while teaching pronunciation are not the same. The problem occurs from the spelling system which creates confusion in the way of teaching pronunciation. The problems mentioned by Tahereen (2015) are explained as follows: English spelling system English spelling system preserves sound-letter and does not follow one-to-one correspondence between sound and letter. Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 90 There are letters in English which have more than one sound. Taheeren (2015) showed the example, /c/ can be sounded as /es/ and /keh/. These features create confusion among students. Likewise, the teachers face this problem when they want to teach pronunciation, but they do not know the way to teach English spelling system. In addition, Moedjito (2016) mentioned that in Indonesia, there also includes the difficulty faced by teachers when teaching pronunciation. Moedjito (2016) mentioned that the problem comes from the first language. The explanation of interfering from the first language according to Moedjito is described in the following paragraph. Difficulties in teaching pronunciation somehow appear because there are some English sounds that do not exist in Indonesian language. English and teachers’ first language have the same sounds, but they have a different distribution. Besides, the same spelling is not always pronounced in the same way. This case somehow causes a problem in teaching pronunciation. Taheraan (2015) also has the same opinion that the differences between the native language and the target language can bring out problems. The more differences the students’ first language with the target language is, the more difficulties the students will face in achieving the correct target language’s pronunciation. Strategies in Solving the Problems of Teaching Pronunciation There are various problems in teaching pronunciation faced by the teacher. To solve teaching pronunciation, the strategies are included to prevent teaching pronunciation problems. According to Tahereen (2015), there are several techniques and activities to solve teaching pronunciation problems. The strategies are explained in the paragraphs below: Determining focus and goals The teachers should focus on students’ achievement more. Teaching pronunciation cannot go in a short period of time. The teachers should focus on making their students’ pronunciation intelligible and understandable. Thus, the teacher should have consistency and plan in learning process regarding the integration of vocabulary. Introducing International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols and knowledge of phonetic articulatory This knowledge will sooner or later help the students to understand everyone’s Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 91 sound and help them to know the articulation of every sound in pronouncing English sounds correctly. Also, the practice can turn the students’ knowledge into skills. Cook (2008) added that students are sometimes assisted by looking at verbal phonetic transcripts using IPA or by making their own speech transcripts. Therefore, the phonetic script allows students to see the pronunciation of individual words. Using communicative activities Learners can achieve some skills along with pronunciation with some communicative activities. Having a conversation or drama can be a very effective activity that the students can practice and correct their pronunciation skills simultaneously. Cook (2008) added that pronunciation materials could utilize the real problems of communication as a basis for teaching. Besides, he also illustrated that both natives and non-natives are confused due to the pronunciation ‘fifty’ /fIftI/ and ‘fifteen’ /fIft;n/ in real situations of stores. For the reason, the final /n/ sounds like nasalized vowel rather than a consonant. Using dictionaries and smartphones The students sometimes tend to ask the correct pronunciation. Using a dictionary can be used to check the pronunciation out on their own as they see the visual image in the dictionaries. The students can also use their smartphone in learning to hear and check pronunciation by using various softwares. However, the teacher should monitor the use of a smartphone so that the students do not lose their attention in the classroom. Tutoring session and individual counseling This is very easy if both teachers and learners have time. Tutoring session and individual counseling sessions can be arranged for students in which the teacher will talk personally about individual students’ issues in pronunciation. Accordingly, this strategy helps teachers to focus on their students’ problems to reach their achievement. Reading aloud This strategy is an easy and common strategy that the teachers can do to develop pronunciation understanding. The selected piece of writing includes difficult sounds which can be used in the class as a material. Moreover, the learners can recite the text aloud so that the teacher and the learners can identify their problems in pronunciation. Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 92 Using minimal pairs and tongue twister Creating sound awareness is very important to develop speech production. Practice using minimal pairs and tongue twister can help the students in developing sound awareness. Tongue twister can help the students especially those who have local accent influence on the production of their speech. Additionally, other strategies are based on Kelly (2000). In Kelly’s book, the strategy is giving feedback. The detailed explanation of the strategy is described in the following paragraph. Giving feedback The teacher gives feedback to the students in order to decrease the students’ mistake, especially in pronunciation. Besides, providing further feedback will help the students’ accuracy in their language. The teacher should present different types of correction techniques or strategies. Also, the teachers give feedback by practicing the rising and falling of their intonation, choosing true or false, and writing some corrections on board. By providing feedback, the students will be more confident in pronouncing English words. Methodology This study applied a qualitative research method. This study explored the problems and phenomenon by exploring the participant’s experiences and thoughts. Creswell (2012) stated that a qualitative research study explores a problem and develops a detailed understanding of a central phenomenon. In addition, he also mentioned that the purpose of qualitative research is to understand the participant’s experiences. The statements mentioned was in line with the purpose of this study which was purposed to investigate detailed information in teaching pronunciation such as experiences, opinions, problems, and strategies based on the participant. This research used narrative inquiry which present “data from a person’s experience and in person’s mind… it is the knowledge that reflects the individual’s prior knowledge” (Clandinin, 1992 as cited in Craig, 2011, p. 23). As Clandinin and Connelly (1996) mentioned narrative inquiry as “teacher stories – stories of teachers – stories of school” (as cited in Craig, 2011, p. 24). The researcher focused on teacher’s stories which explained the “stories teacher live and tell, re-live and re- tell, whereas the stories of teachers are shifting stories that others hold or expect of teacher” (Clandinin, D. J., Huber, J., Huber, Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 93 M., Murphy, S., Murray Orr, A., Pearce, M., Steeves, P., 2006 as cited in Craig, 2011, p. 24). Research Setting The research was conducted at ELED of a private university in Yogyakarta. English Language Education Department established in 2010 and A accredited in 2016. This Department aims to participate in improving quality, supporting facilities, providing teaching staff in Indonesia including English language teacher who can apply their theoretical knowledge in good teaching. Supported by 18 teachers holding doctoral and master’s degrees from local and abroad universities who teach compulsory courses and elective courses with higher education curriculum, this department provides more than 40 courses students can take and pronunciation was covered in course called Capita Selecta on Linguistics. There are three major reasons for deciding this department as the research setting. Firstly, the problems encountered in the statement of the problem were found in this department about the problems in teaching pronunciation. The researcher has been in this department for more than two years. That way, the researcher has already understood the situation and problems in this department further. Secondly, this department has several experienced teachers who teach pronunciation. This means that the teachers have already had full of experience, information, and knowledge that are appropriate for this study. Thirdly, the setting of the place is accessible because the participant and the researchers are part of this department. Research Participant This qualitative study was conducted to a participant called Lily, a pseudonym. Lily is one of the EFL teachers in English Language Education Department in one private university in Yogyakarta who has been given the responsibility to teach pronunciation. Lily was selected as a participant because she taught pronunciation in Capita Selecta on Linguistics subject for four semesters and Lily provided suitable information for this study. She had experience in teaching pronunciation in the mentioned subject. She was excited when I asked her to be my participant and she openly shared, discussed and reflected her experience in teaching pronunciation. Lily has been working as a teacher of English for more than 20 years. She taught English in middle school, high school, and university levels. Having a long teaching journey provided for sure very useful reflection to improve her teaching quality. Graduated Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 94 from English Literature Department from one of the leading universities in Indonesia made her have literary skills. She joined ELED in 2010 and she taught Capita Selecta on Grammar 1, Capita Selecta on Grammar 4, Capita Selecta on Linguistics and Literary Appreciation. In 2005, Lily graduated from Education Department for her master’s degree from one Islamic university in Malaysia. She graduated from teaching English as a Second Language (TESL). Lily has been teaching this subject before it changed to Linguistics, and it was called Capita Selecta on Grammar 2. Research Instrument The researcher used other tools such as an interview guideline, a notebook, and a recorder (voice recorder in her Smartphone). The researcher used an interview guideline to make the interview systematic and sequence. Also, in the interview, the researcher used notebook to take note of important information to follow-up questions. Besides, the recorder used in conducting the interview was to ease the researcher in analyzing the information obtained from the recorded interview. Data Collection Procedure The first procedure was preparing the instrument which was interview guideline. The second procedure was contacting Lily. The appointment was set up by sending messages via WhatsApp messenger. Also, it was used to discuss the place and time for the interview. We met twice on teacher office as Lily requested. During the interview, both Lily and I used English and unconsciously used Code- switching between English and Indonesian language. There were two interview sessions. The time allocation of the first interview took 35 minutes and 43 minutes for the second interview. Data Analysis There were three steps used in analyzing the data. The steps were transcribing the data, member checking, transcribing the second interview, and coding. The very first step in data analysis was transcribing the data. Transcribing the data was done to avoid lost data. The researcher transcribed the data from the recording into words. Cohen et al. (2011) stated that transcribing is a crucial step in an interview for there is the potential for data loss. After transcribing the data, the researcher did the member checking to get validity data. The researcher did once member checking of each participant. Member checking is known as participant Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 95 verification (Rager, 2005). In addition, Creswell and Miller (2000) mentioned that member checking consists of taking the data and interpretations back to the participants, so they can confirm the information. The result of member checking was the additional result of problems and strategies to solve the problems in teaching pronunciation and the participant’s approval of the transcriptions. After the researcher did member checking, the next step was transcribing the record of member checking data to complete and add data from the interview. The member checking also served as the second interview. According to Cohen et al. (2011), transcription can present essential word by word, so it is one of the truthful ways to present interview result. In the transcribing the first and second interview, the researcher eliminated the filler words to easier the reader and researcher in understanding the participant’s statements. The participant clarified the statements she made and gave additional strategies which were become strict and do an individual session. In addition, the transcription of the interview and member checking were analyzed by the researcher. To analyze the data, the researcher did coding. Coding is a translation of questions response and respondent information to specific categories for analysis (Kerlinger, 1999). Additionally, Cohen et al. (2011) stated that “a code is simply a name or label that the researcher gives to a piece of text that contains an idea or a piece of information” (p. 559). The researcher used three types of coding. The first was open coding. In doing open coding, the researcher described and gave label in the interview transcripts. The researcher went through the text by marking the text with a label that describes its text (Cohen at al., 2011). The second coding was analytical coding. In doing analytical coding, the researcher interpreted the code. Cohen et al. (2011) mentioned that an analytic code is more than a descriptive code, but it becomes more interpretive. The last was selective coding. The category results integrated into the study. As said by Cohen et al. (2011), “selective coding identifies the core categories of text data in integrating them to form a theory” (p. 562). Findings Lily has been teaching this subject before it changed to Linguistics, and it was called Capita Selecta on Grammar 2. The problems that she faced came from a different language system. She mentioned, “The problem, yes, of course, because the system is different from our language, there Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 96 is [are] many sounds that are not found in Indonesian phonemes”. She added the students’ problem lied on vowels and they were not clearly pronouncing the words. She said in the interview “so it brings difficulties for our students and then long and short vowels, so when the students pronounce that they [are] not all [the time], but sometimes, they still make a mistake”, and she also added “if it is with the quality then usually the students do not pronounce clearly”. She revealed that the problems from this affect the meaning and her way of teaching. In the interview, Lily stated, “this source of difficulties, of course, will affect the meaning also the way we teach”. Thus, the problems came from the different system language made Lily difficult to familiarize the different sounds, she also added, “the different sound that makes me as a teacher find difficulties and probably the students also faced that, how to familiarize the different sounds”. Lily implemented tongue twister, reading aloud, reading dictionary, and using song to solve the problems came from a different language system. She told me, “So, there are tongue twister, reading aloud, and then reading dictionary… to solve because of the difficulties [of] that two different systems, we have to apply several strategies”. When she used reading dictionary and tongue twister, she explained the students’ feeling, she said, “Although they got stressed because they have to memorize but I could see that they were happy, excited, when of course when they could not do then they got stressed”. When Lily said she used reading dictionary, she preferred to use a printed dictionary because the students could apply and read the symbol or called phonetic transcription. She said “yes, printed, why? Because they can apply, [symbol] like this, they have to read this [symbol]… eagle /ˈiː.ɡəl/ for example”. She stated that “phonetic transcription, the purpose is, or the outcome is that they can read dictionary by themselves”. By reading dictionary the students were able to differentiate the sounds of words even though they have the same spelling. Additionally, Lily added the strategy using song to solve the problem from different language system. She said, “Using tongue twister, reading aloud, and song”. She explained how she implemented song, “sing together using rhymes. I use rhymes, it is like words that has [have] similar sound, rhymes, song and what I notice my students were happy when using song”. She told me that her students were excited and happy to learn using song, and it also made the students not feel bored. Additional strategy also added after Lily told that she used Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 97 repetition and imitation and various activities. For the repeating activity, she said “asking the students to repeat the word or to pronounce the word in a smaller group like the first row, group one, group two, group three”. She addressed again the point “tongue twister and then repeat, imitate, repeat, imitate, various activities”. The activities covered the way she taught about stress in pronunciation and gave feedback. She said, “yes, when one by one [,] of course we give feedback, giving feedback and giving visual model”. Well, she gave the model by using stress pattern using dots and capital letter. She stated, “Giving visual reinforcement, giving pattern of the stress using dots, and or put the stress syllable in the capital letter”. When she did this activity, it helped the student identify the stress because in Indonesia people do not pay attention to the stress. She explained, “so it helps the students because [of] the different system in Indonesian, we don’t pay attention a lot on stress”. Related to the visual model, she used video to show the students the native speaker as the model and it also expected to reduce boredom. She stated “visualize, using video, if using video then they trust as the model, right? Because it’s native speaker, so they trust more”. Then. She added, “I expect it can minimize their boredom if they feel bored, when seeing the video, they will get interested”. Lily revealed that her problem also came from time. She needed more time while she is teaching. She answered, “The second difficulty… lack of time to revise or to check the students’ pronunciation one by one, yeah it is difficult, and it’s time- consuming”. She also addressed her problem in time was related to the time to prepare her teaching. In the interview she mentioned, “So the more time when teaching pronunciation, I need more time to like myself prepared, yeah get prepared”. Then, she said that her time in teaching used to correct the students’ mistake. She said, “my difficulties is[are] time, lack of time to correct the students’ mistake, that’s the most important thing”. Then, she added that she tried to find effective material and short time prepared and did reflection from her experience to find an effective way. It seems effective to find an effective way from her experience to reduce the time-consuming problem. The strategy she mentioned, “…find materials that seems [seem] effective, and can be prepared in shorter time because… we teach, I mean I teach, I have experience in teaching so I learn from the previous semester that material can be manipulated by doing this, and does not take a long time to prepare, so by learning, by reflection, I think Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 98 reflection we can find shorter time to prepare, as the time goes by, so learning from the practice experience, then I can solve the problems” Lily also mentioned the strategy to solve problem from time. The strategy was to apply group reading activity to make it easier to spot her students’ mistake. Lily said, “So to solve this problem I apply after the reading together in one class and divide into for the example the first row, the second row, so when they made mistake it will be easy to spot it, that’s my strategy”. She said that she applied this strategy hoping that she could easily spot the mistake rather than checking one by one because it is used to reduce the time-consuming problem. Following the problems and strategies above here, Lily mentioned another problem came from the students’ side. She said that the problem from students that they are still made mistake which is mispronounced the word. She stated, “so when students pronounce that, they [are] not all [the time], but sometimes, they still make mistakes, short and long [vowels] and then if it is with the quality [the correctness of pronunciation] then usually the students do not pronounce clearly”. Other problems are the motivation, lazy and underestimate the practice. She said, “also the student's motivation sometimes, they are lazy to practice, what they heard, what they say, daily, seems like all are correct so they feels [feel] like what’s for, what’s wrong like they underestimate their pronunciation, I mean underestimate the practice”. Another problem is from the different proficiency levels of the students in the classroom. Lily said, “The different levels of the students, yeah, some are fast learners, some are slow learners that really need more help and more attention from the teachers”. When I asked about how is students’ problem became Lily’s problem, Lily then mentioned that she felt she had responsibility. Here she said, “because we have responsibility in changing them, so when they feel difficulties [,] of course I have like empathize what problems actually they have”. She said that the different levels of student have different habit and she had to find different ways in teaching, so all levels of students can receive the lesson. She said, “We have to find special way, we have to think extra”. Lily’s strategy to solve her teaching problem was asking the students to practice and give assignment and assessment. She said, “Force them to practice by giving more assignment so it is very common for the students when it comes to the assignment then assessment, sorry, assessment they will work more seriously, yeah giving various assessment”. Then she added “So, with… Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 99 force them to practice, force them to practice, it is hopefully they become familiar with the sound “. Dealing with students’ behavior she used to be very strict and show that she is angry. The behavior was when the students were not doing pronunciation practices and show no excitement in learning pronunciation. She said “… when facing those kind[s] of students so forcing to be very strict, that’s my way, like solve the problem that coming from students’ behavior, I become very strict, getting angry sometimes, showing being angry”. She explained when she showed anger the students are afraid and then back to their responsibility and this strategy works. She said, “so like they are afraid and then try to do something, sometimes it works”. Besides that, Lily mentioned that individual session is also used as the strategy to solve the problems came from students’ behavior. Lily said “… individual then I have plenty of time to address special students”. Then she added, “I think individual session is effective to change the students’ behavior because they are like oh it wrongs something like oh it’s wrong”. According to Lily, this strategy made her students more aware of pronunciation and it made her happy as a teacher. She stated, “… to be more aware, yeah of course when the students change their knowledge”. She also mentioned that she forced her students to practice pronunciation to solve the problem came from the different proficiency level. She said, “forcing the students [to practice] until both of us are tired”. Discussions The strategies used by Lily in solving the pronunciation teaching problems were divided into several categories, the categories were as follows: Increasing teaching quality. The quality of the teacher is really required to make the students achieve the lesson. The problems came from the readiness and limited time in teaching this strategy could help the teacher to prepare effective teaching. Gilakjani and Sabouri (2016) also said that teachers should know the difference between the target language and mother tongue sounds because when the teachers know the differences and similarities, they can understand the difficult sound their students may encounter. Teacher can do self-reflection from their past teaching to analyze and evaluate their teaching. Teacher can evaluate their teaching to make an improvement to be better and effective. Reflect the activities and the ways in teaching to shed and to select the effective one. Preparing the effective ways and material can reduce time- Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 100 consuming problem because we can prepare ways and material in a shorter time. Introducing students to pronunciation rules. Introducing students about pronunciation rules in this finding means that the two teachers believe that teaching the English pronunciation rules is important because students need to know that English and Indonesian language have different language system. This is in line with Tahereen (2015) who said that pronunciation needs to be integrated with tasks, stress patterns of words, syllable patterns and phonetic rules. According to Gilakjani and Sabouri (2016), there are three features teachers need to know namely segmental features about the sound determined in phonetic, voice-setting features about general articulatory speech, and prosodic features about stress and intonation. Using various teaching techniques and classrooms activities. There are plenty of activities conducted by Lily to solve their problem in teaching pronunciation. Based on the exploration and analysis of the interview conducted, there were techniques and classroom which can be useful to solve teaching pronunciation problems. Teaching phonetic transcription. Introducing the important part of pronunciation is phonetic rules. Teaching the phonetic rules in the first place can help the teacher manage time. Regarding Lily, teaching phonetic to her students made them read dictionary where they can check the sounds rules by themselves, so the teacher does not have to repeat and explain overtime. She said, “yeah at least not repeating many times, just check your dictionary” (Lily, 2018). This is in line with Tahereen (2015) who said that giving the knowledge of IPA symbols will eventually help the students understand the sounds and at first this activity may seem time- consuming but when the students already understand it become practices to build knowledge into skills. Panggabean (2015) showed the priorities in pronunciation teaching, and one of them is teaching IPA transcription. Using dictionaries. Lily stated that using dictionaries is a way to solve the problem where students feel hard to pronounce the word correctly. This also helps them to check the correct pronunciation when they master the phonetic transcription. Lily said that dictionary is like giving the students the tools or preferences where the students face difficult words at higher levels. This strategy is in line with Tahereen (2015) who said that students often tend to ask their teacher about the correct pronunciation but when Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 101 students check out the pronunciation by themselves, and they see the visual shape of pronunciation. Also, the students will remember them. Using dictionaries can help the students to practice English pronunciation. Reading aloud. Reading aloud is a kind of activity which can help the teacher to easily spot the mistake in pronouncing the words. Teacher can hear the general mistake from their students made, and the teacher does correction. According to Tahereen (2015) reading aloud is a very common strategy in class for teachers and students to do to develop intelligible pronunciation. Lily said that the activities she used is reading together with repeat and imitate. Lily divided the class into two or three groups. Lily asked the first group to say the simple word like bird catch worm and the second group say the bird catch the worm followed by the third group say the bird is catching the worm. This activity also helps students who feel shy to say the word. The teacher can apply reading together, so they will do repetition together and pronounce the word loudly. This is in line with Tahereen (2015) who said that this activity helps both teacher and students identify their limit in pronunciation and teacher can use some signs to show the right pronunciation while the students are reading together. According to the Lily, she used the rhymes from song, storytelling from audio or video or handouts they prepared. Using games and tongue twisters. Games are mentioned by Lily. Sometimes in teaching, teachers are afraid of their teaching or the activities that make the students feel bored. Lily used games to reduce the boredom and make the students excited in class. Gilakjani and Sabouri (2016) said that games can enhance students’ stimulation in pronunciation lesson because it is important to stimulate the students’ pronunciation. Lily included tongue twisters in her teaching to make the students excited. She said that even though the students got stressed when they can’t do it, but they are happy. Lily said the example of tongue twister like Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Gilakjani and Sabouri (2016) said that tongue twisters also can enhance the students’ pronunciation stimulation. Moedjito (2016) showed that teachers use tongue twister as the technique for teaching English pronunciation. This activity can help the students, especially who have strong local accent influence (Tahereen, 2015). Kelly (2000) stated that tongue twister can be particularly useful for working on difficult consonant phonemes. Giving feedback. Feedback is a very common strategy used by teachers. Lily gave feedback to the students who make Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 102 mistakes. From my experience, teachers sometimes give feedback after the students pronounce words. According to Kelly (2000), the teacher gives feedback to students to help decrease the mistakes and students will be more confident in pronouncing English words. Lily said that the effective way the students will remember when teachers directly correct the mistakes. Teachers can use this strategy when they check the pronunciation one by one to students, or when they check the pronunciation in group activities. Individual session. The individual session is used to spot special students (Lily, 2018). This activity she used in assessment to be more focus on assessing and checking the students’ ability in the previous learning. Tahereen (2015) mentioned this strategy used where the teachers will talk about the student's individual problems and assign some practice to increase the student's pronunciation. This activity helps the teacher to focus on students’ problems and categorize the students’ ability given more attention to learning pronunciation. Become strict. In this situation, Lily explained that there are many times the students do not engage the pronunciation practice because they show no excitement. They just do not take it seriously and pronunciation homework. Lily answered that “when facing those kind[s] of students so yeah forcing to be very strict, that’s my way, like solve the problem that coming from students’ behavior, I become very strict, getting angry sometimes, showing being angry” (Lily, 2018). She said that how the students will learn and master the pronunciation if they do not do the practice even do not do the homework. She was not angry but only pretending and showing that she was angry to make the students focus on what the teacher was asked to do. Thus, to make sure that the students want to practice their pronunciation, she had to put a strict and angry face. Conclusion and Implication As a teacher, pronunciation knowledge is one of the skills to teach language. Having competency to teach pronunciation well can be a key to educate learners and add language skills to be used because pronunciation is the compulsory part of speaking (Boyer, 2002). However, to teach well, teachers need to know how to do it. Even though teachers know, they are still conscious of facing teaching problems. This study was conducted to identify a university teacher’s problem in teaching pronunciation and to investigate the strategies in solving the problems. Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 103 To answer the first research questions, this study addressed some problems happened in teaching pronunciation. The findings showed that the problems faced by Lily as a university teacher involved in three categories. Firstly, the problem was to familiarize the different sounds. The second finding was problems came from time included the lack of time to revise and need time to prepare in teaching. For the last finding, it was about the problem which came from the students’ side namely mispronouncing, lack of motivation, lazy, underestimating the practice, and the different levels of students. The second research questions answered the strategies found from Lily. The strategies were covered into three main topics. The first strategy was about teaching quality where teachers need to increase and improve her teaching quality from many sources, find effective material, and do reflection to prepare the material in shorter time and evaluate past teaching to improve the next teaching performance. The second strategy was introducing students the pronunciation rules where this strategy suggested the teacher to introduce the knowledge of pronunciation to the students to make them understand and build basic knowledge of pronunciation. The third strategy was teaching techniques and classroom activities where the teachers could implement technique or classroom activities such as read aloud, do individual session, use games, tongue twisters, practice using dictionaries, practice using storytelling through song, video or audio, give feedback, teach phonetic transcription and become strict. In conclusion, in teaching pronunciation, the teacher should have readiness and myriad of knowledge. Because as a teacher who teaches students in the country where English is not their second language with different background, the teacher must know how to teach pronunciation and make the students understand English pronunciation. Besides, teachers’ knowledge is the key to successful pronunciation teaching in order to reduce the chance of a problem arising. References Boyer, S. (2002). Understanding English pronunciation: An integral practice course- teacher's book. Glenbrook: National Library of Australia. Brewster, J., Ellis, G., & Girard, D. (2004). The primary English teacher's guide. England: Penguin Books. Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2011). Research methods in education (7 ed.). London: Routledge. Cook, V. (2008). Second language learning and language teaching. London: Hodder Education. Journal of Foreign Language Teaching & Learning VOLUME 3, NO. 2, 2018 104 Gilakjani, A. P., & Sabouri, N. B. (2016). How can EFL teachers help EFL learners improve their English Pronunciation? Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 7(5), 967-972. doi:10.17507/jltr.0705.18 Kelly, G. (2000). How to teach pronunciation (1st ed.). Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. Mattarima, K., & Hamdan, A. R. (2011). The Teaching Constraints of English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia: The Context of School Based Curriculum. SOSIOHUMANIKA, 4(2), 287-300. Moedjito. (2016). The teaching of English pronunciation: Perceptions of Indonesian school teachers and university. Canadian Center of Science and Education, 9(6), 30-41. Panggabean, H. (2015). Problematic approach to English learning and teaching: A case in Indonesia. Canadian Center of Science and Education, 8(3), 35- 45. doi:10.5539/elt.v8n3p35 Stockwell, C. (Ed.). (2013, August 26). Challenges of teaching pronunciation in ESL classrooms. 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