Developing an Electronic Dictionary of Elements and Compounds in Chemistry to Improve the Tenth Graders‟ Pronunciation

Abstract

Inaccessibility of electronic dictionaries for learning pronunciation of elements
and compounds in Chemistry was found at Semarang State Senior High School 2. The
observed inaccessibility came from the Chemistry teacher who shared her problems
that her students got difficulties in pronouncing elements and compounds. Then, the
existing electronic dictionaries were lack of the words they needed. Hence, this study
would like to develop an Electronic Dictionary of Elements and Compounds in
Chemistry (EDECC) for assisting students, notably the tenth graders of Semarang
State Senior High School 2, to improve their pronunciation in learning elements and
compounds. This study employed Research and Development design to develop the
EDECC. This design was adopted and modified fromBorg and Gall (2003:772). Seven
stages were employed for developing EDECC were information and research collecting,
planning, developing, validating, revising, try out, and producing final EDECC.
Observation, interview, validation, and pre-test also post-test were administered to
collect the data while both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used to
analyze the collected data. From the result of observations, questionnaires, validation,
interviews, and pre-test and post-testwere found that applying the EDECC gained
positive perspectives toward teaching and learning process.Moreover, the test of
effectiveness consisting validity and reliability tests on pretest and posttest employing
quasi experimental design reported that there was significant difference between the
result of pretest and posttest. It means that all the result of collected data agreed that
the EDECC could be implemented in improving the students‟ pronunciation.
Keywords : Electronic Dictionary, Teaching Pronunciation, Chemical Elements and
Compounds