Phonological Awareness Therapy Through Articulation Training Strategy For Young English Learners

The production of English speech by particularly Balinese students must be essentially focused on their phonological awareness, therefore misarticulation that influences meaning and intention of utterance can be avoided. The aim of the research was to determine if articulation training strategy could result specific and generalized improvement in English phonology awareness. The method was investigating the speech of 35 junior high school students of SLUB Bilingual Denpasar and applying three strategies of Vertical – Horizontal - Cyclical technique. Data collection consisted of five subtests: rhyme matching, word initial matching, blending phonemes, word initial segmentation/matching and consonant deletion. The result shows that the deficit in articulation of English Phonemes was 532 in total. It consisted of 23% deficit in fricative, 72,7 % deficit in allophones, and 0,75% deficit in vowel. Types of deficit were omission (35,3 %), addition (6,01 %), misinformation (51,5 %) and disordering (7,14 %). The causes of deficit were 18 % overgeneraliza- tions, 31,01 % incomplete applications of rules 25 % false concepts hypothesized and 25,37 %) ignore of rule restriction. The application of phonological awareness through articulation training strategy has improved their weaknesses. It shows that the deficit decreased into 85% or only 80 deficit.; 20 deficit in fricative sounds, 57 deficit in allophone, 3 deficit in vowel production. It can be concluded that phonological awareness has significantly influenced students’ awareness in English phonology.