Is Tik-Tok a Helpful Application for Improving College Students’ English Pronunciation?

Currently English is an international language that makes it easy to use it to be able to communicate between each other. This study aims to provide an overview of the use of social media as a medium of learning English to improve pronunciation or pronunciation, using the TikTok application as a learning medium. This research uses descriptive qualitative methods on 10 6th semester students majoring in English at Mahmud Yunus Islamic State University Batusangkaryang who have used the TikTok application. In collecting data, researchers used in-depth interviews with participants to explore information about TikTok as a learning media in improving pronunciation. From the interview, the researcher analyzed each answer from the respondent and the researcher found that the use of TikTok as a learning medium could improve the respondent's pronunciation or fluency in speaking English. Based on the results that researchers get, most students state that the TikTok application can improve their pronunciation skills and TikTok can be used as a learning media for pronunciation in English because it has many benefits and is effective in helping students and lecturers in teaching and learning activities.


INTRODUCTION
English is an international language that makes it easy to communicate with each other.In the future, this ability will be a provision for students to be able to compete nationally and even at the international level.Every student needs to learn and master English because later after graduation they will be faced with an interview process in English if they want to work in a good institution or company (Mandasari et al., 2022). in relation to language learning, there are four language skills that must be mastered, namely speaking, listening, reading and writing (Christie, 2022).Therefore, learning English has many benefits, for example, they are easier to communicate with foreigners.
Pronunciation is one of the inseparable parts of speaking and is important to be able to understand the meaning that is changed in the communication process (Novianti & Kusumajati, 2019).Good pronunciation skills will help students in conveying talks, materials and can understand discourse in various communication contexts.In fact, most students still have difficulty in pronouncing English in daily communication (Harmayanthi, 2019).Mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) has been implemented since 2001 and impacted various MALL developments (Wongsuriya, 2020).More and more people are interested in engaging in technology and web development to facilitate language learning in a more practical and flexible way (Shadiev et al., 2020).
MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning) has experienced developments in computer-assisted language learning and m-learning (Liu, 2021).MALL is different from CALL because of its personal use and convenience in various contexts (Cakmak, 2020).In today's digital era, the use of social media in Indonesia is very much, from adults to children have social media (Afrizal, 2020).The advantages of MALL learning are as follows: It gives students the opportunity to make their own learning plans in terms of time, place and how they will use online information and learning materials (Arvanitis & Krystalli, 2021).MALL learning is very good to use in learning English, because this learning is based on cellular while CALL learning is more based on computers.So it is easier to learn using MALL, because it only uses cellulur which is easy to carry everywhere.By using MALL students can obtain language learning materials, quizzes related to teaching materials and communicate with teachers and peers anytime and anywhere (Juniarta, 2019).Peers anytime and anywhere in overcoming this problem requires a technology-integrated learning model which is currently needed (Suprayogi & Pranoto, 2020).One example of technology integration is social media.Because social media can be one of the learning media that is very popular with students and students.Because learning using social media is very fun and does not make students and students feel bored (M.Kom, 2020).Social media is a platform or as an online tool that allows people to create, share content and become a place to exchange information.
Social media has become part of modern society, because all over the world have used social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Youtube (Suryaningsih, 2020).Social media has many benefits such as socializing online, meeting old friends, making new friends, as an entertainment medium and a place to channel hobbies (Nasution, 2020).Social media has many functions, one of which is as a medium for language learning.Social media is also one of the effective learning media to help the teaching and learning process.Social media is one of the learning media for students who are able to facilitate doing anything in various ways, both anywhere and anytime (Sholekah & Wahyuni, 2019).By using social media, students are also able to be independent and more active in the world of lectures because they can easily find reliable sources to deepen their course material (Aprilizdihar et al., 2022).The utilization of social media in classroom learning needs to be implemented because in this era students cannot be separated from the name social media (Yusi Kamhar & Lestari, 2019).As said by Gupta and Bashir, there are four main purposes of using social media, namely: entertainment, socialization, academic and informative (Yang, 2020).
Social media also has negative effects such as addiction and the spread of misinformation or hoaxes.It is important for people to be careful and responsible in using social media.Actually, the impact of social media can be positive or negative depending on how gut or educators and people direct their children (Fitri, 2017).The development of social media in Indonesia is very rapid, because internet-based networks make it very easy to communicate with other users who can be accessed via cellphones and computers.The widespread utilization of mobile technology has resulted in tremendous opportunities in the development of language learning (Effendi, 2019).One of the social media platforms that is highly favored by all circles is TikTok.TikTok is a Chinese app launched in September 2016.Most TikTok users are students (Muslimah, 2022).
This application can be used as an entertainment medium in creating and sharing videos with other users of the TikTok application.TikTok application is a video content creator application and shares video content with other users.(Herlisya & Wiratno, 2022).TikTok is not only an entertainment media but also a learning media, especially related to English (Oktaheriyani et al., n.d.).Many content creators create English content such as pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and common errors (C.Dewi, 2020).The app allows users to create their own short music videos.TikTok also established itself as the most downloaded app with 45.8 million downloads (Xiuwen & Razali, 2021).This number also beats other popular apps such as Youtube, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram (Aji, 2018).
There are several findings from previous research related to this study, this study is about the use of TikTok as an English medium can be a learning medium for students' pronunciation or playback skills (Pratiwi et al., 2021).This research is about TikTok videos and Line video calls for teaching pronunciation in Thailand, this study aims to investigate the use of line call videos to teach pronunciation using tikTok videos from the perspective of teachers and students (L.K. Dewi & Arifani, 2021).This study is about the effect of TikTok videos on the pronunciation of Purwakarta state junior high school students, this factor causes students to read written English in the same way as they read written Indonesian text.This problem also affects 7th grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Purwanegara (Nuari, 2022).The researcher tried to identify the influence of TikTok on students' pronunciation to overcome this problem.
In the current era of globalization, with the advancement of science and technology, it is inevitable that the ability to speak a foreign language, especially English, is very important for every student (Khusniyah & Hakim, 2019).In Indonesian educational institutions, English language learning is only discussing the basics of English (Adzkiya & Suryaman, 2021).so this makes it difficult for students to learn English and greatly affects student performance in English language skills.Not only that, students also have difficulty in pronouncing English due to the lack of confidence of students in pronouncing English sentences, due to the lack of learning English at an early age, making it difficult for these students to read sentences in English, for fear of being wrong in pronunciation.
Therefore, learning English must start early, for example, learning English must already exist in kindergarten.When English learning has been introduced in kindergarten, they will be trained in pronunciation and speaking English, which will have a positive impact when they grow up (Amelia, 2021).Because they are used to hearing the foreign language, so when they become students they all will not be difficult to learn English, and they have confidence in reading English texts and speaking English.because it has been equipped when they are still in kindergarten.This situation makes it difficult for students to build interest and motivation to learn English.
Based on the explanation above, it can be concluded that learning using social media is very effective in learning English, especially in pronunciation skills.This study aims to provide an overview of the use of social media as an English language learning media to improve pronunciation or pronunciation, using the TikTok application as a learning medium.The research focuses on one application, TikTok, to find out how students can channel pronunciation skills through the TikTok application as a medium to find out how effective social media is for learning English, especially learning English pronunciation.So it can be concluded that this TikTok application fulfills the requirements of a good learning media, interesting for students, each video has its own creativity from the content creator.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This research uses a qualitative method with a descriptive approach, so that researchers get more detailed information from everything related to the use of the TikTok application in learning English pronunciation.Qualitative research is a research method used to examine and understand the behavior of a person or group, and social phenomena in a natural natural condition, so that descriptive data is obtained in the form of oral, written, which is then interpreted descriptively as well (Yusanto, 2020).quality researchers must investigate in depth, in a context that allows them to reveal subtle personal understanding (Gay et al., 2012).Reseach setting is the place and time where interviews are conducted with respondents (Yusanto, 2020).This research was conducted at Mahmud Yunus State Islamic University Batusangkar, because this place is researchable and accessible.The participants of this research are 6th semester students at UIN Mahmud Yunus Batusangkar.
The method in collecting data is interview.Interview is a method of collecting data by means of direct communication, namely through questions and answers conducted by two parties, namely the interviewer (interviewer) who asks questions and the interviewee (interviewee) who provides answers to those questions (Murdiyanto, 2020).Thus, in research, the data obtained is soft data, causing the research results received to possibly have changes.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION
In this chapter, the research will explain the data found through interviews with several respondents from the 6th semester TBI department about the use of TikTok in improving pronunciation.The following is a table of the interview results.Based on the interview results, most participants found the app useful in pronunciation.

Responden Statement YM
For me the benefits of this TikTok application, as an ee to improve.It can also improve my ee pronunciation ee and also can, there is also a lot that I can see there.

RN
There are many benefits in TikTok, especially in pronunciation, which is later taught in the video, taught good pronunciation.

SD
This TikTok application has benefits, namely first, maybe entertainment, which is entertaining, then it can also be all learning media for myself, ee where it is not only from Indonesian content, content from outsiders too.
Especially English where sometimes the chapter of using English in the content uses language that is quite fluent or fluent so that I become interested in learning or imitating the pronunciation mentioned by the content creator.

SW
The benefits are for pronunciation to train speaking and in the TikTok application, there is a lot of content, ee training us and teaching us ee in English, namely training, pronunciation.So if we do it regularly, it can improve our speaking or pronunciation.

RA
In my opinion, this tiktok application is very helpful for improving my pronunciation skills, because there are many videos that we can practice for pronunciation.

KS
After I use this application to improve my pronunciation skills, the benefits I get are that I am more interested in learning because there are many topics available and we can also choose the topics we need and there are also many videos that provide pronunciation exercises directly from native speakers so we can pronounce words like native speakers properly.

CK
The benefit is that I often use this app to learn pronunciation so my pronunciation is starting to gradually improve.UA first, the TikTok application is a social media application where it can also be a place of learning as well as a place for our entertainment.DA After using the application, what I get is that I am more interested in learning pronunciation because ee in the video we can see from native speakers seeing videos from native speakers, which makes me more eager to learn pronunciation by using the TikTok application.YS I think this tiktok application is very useful, if for learning we can learn various kinds of videos, such as English videos.Where it can help us in pronunciation.Researchers asked questions to interview participants regarding the utilization of the TikTok application used to improve pronunciation skills.Based on the results above, that the TikTok application has many benefits.this application can help students know the correct and good pronunciation by watching videos.And in this application can also improve the speaking skills of students.Not only that, the video on TikTok deserves to be like a native speaker, because the pronunciation in the video is very fluent or fluent so that students are very interested in learning or imitating the pronunciation mentioned by the content creator.It can be concluded that the utilization of this application increases the fluency of students in learning English pronunciation and videos displayed by content creators such as native speakers, therefore this application makes students eager to learn pronunciation by using the TikTok application.Most of the participants felt there was development after using the TikTok application, they got an improvement in pronunciation.

Responden Statemant YM
Practicing by myself first, then I also use this TikTok app as well and to improve my pronunciation.

RN
In this TikTok application, there are many words, words that are given and also later ee how the correct pronunciation will be, he does not give one speech, meaning one, presumably not just one time he said it, he will say it many times.So that we the word is in accordance with the pronunciation.

SD
By watching content about pronunciation, in the content there is a name for practice, that is, we can directly practice with the foreigner.Because what I said earlier, the English content on TikTok is quite fluent or fluent so I became interested in learning or imitating pronunciation.

SW
In my personal opinion, if for the use of the TikTok application to practice pronunciation, as I said earlier, there are many reels like that in practicing our pronunciation, well TikTok in a few minutes in one post, teaches some vocabulary or some pronunciation of words so, if we often practice pronunciation in this way we can train, further improve our pronunciation.RA Okay, for the TikTok application, there are many content creators who make videos that we can make to practice our pronunciation, so there they present conversations that can be used in everyday life, we can practice directly speaking with the videos they make.So it will be able to improve pronunciation too.

KS
In TikTok, in the TikTok application, there are so many useful videos provided, especially for improving pronunciation skills, so because there are many videos that are useful for improving pronunciation skills so we can practice, and also practice continuously and also the content is very interesting, continues to be very varied and ee the way the content creator is ee various kinds so we don't get bored when learning pronunciation.CK I saw a video shared by people who use TikTok, where in the video ee is given a word later and then gives how to pronounce it and later I will try to speak like he said in the video.UA Usually by using an application and one of them is with this tiktok application to improve my pronunciation.DA I use the app to broaden my horizons and improve my pronunciation.

YS
That is by listening to music, watching YouTube videos and one of them is by watching videos on TikTok.
From the results of interviews with participants based on the data from above, it can be concluded that the TikTok application provides many useful videos especially to improve pronunciation and in TikTok it can practice continuously.the content presented in the TikTok application is very varied because the way the content creator teaches it varies so that the audience does not feel bored when learning pronunciation.From watching TikTok videos, you can immediately practice with the foreigner.Because this application is very fluent or fluent and so students are interested in using this application.So it can be concluded that this TikTok application greatly improves Pronunciation and students can access videos, the use of the application is also very intective in its pronunciation learning videos.Most of the participants had difficulties or obstacles in using this TikTok application.

Responden Statemant YM
The difficulty I face, perhaps, is because the network or TikTok consumes a lot of data as well and it needs a good network.RN Usually, tiktok is probably due to the network or if there is no network, it sucks, and also the quota.SD This TikTok application, maybe the difficulty is that in using it you have to use a strong enough network, because the video in this TikTok has to play the video, so it needs a strong connection and may eat a lot of packages too.That's the difficulty.

SW
If the obstacle is, yes, the network because, this application uses cellular data, but if the network constraints the video can be paused.

RA
For the obstacle itself is only in the kouta, requiring internet kouta and also a good network in order to use the application smoothly.

KS
After I used this application, what became my obstacle was that because tiktok there was no direct feedback from this tiktok application so I didn't know what it was like, whether the pronunciation was correct or not so that was my obstacle.

CK
Maybe the difficulty is that during the correction, I can't ask directly how to correct the pronunciation that I said correctly or not and that matches the video.UA Because this application uses, this application includes social media, where social media requires an internet network, while in TikTok it is very dependent on the internet, a bad internet will have an impact on how the quality of the video or maybe and with a bad connection because the video video cannot be played.

DA
We know that the TikTok application is just a video, so we don't know whether the pronunciation we say is correct or not, according to what the native speaker says.

YS
The difficulty that I have experienced using this application, is constrained to the network if the network is not good then the video in this application, will not run smoothly and with maybe a little wasteful kouta.From the results of interviews with participants, based on the data from above, it can be concluded that the TikTok application also has several obstacles in its users, where the TikTok application must have a good internet network in its use, poor internet will affect the quality of the videos that will be played.This application also consumes a lot of internet quota, therefore students must have a rather large internet quota.In TikTok there is also no correction or direct feedback from native speakers.So the students do not know whether the pronunciation that has been taught is right or wrong, this is one of the obstacles in learning to improve the pronunciation of students who use the TikTok application.. Most of the participants get motivation in using this TikTok application.

Responden Statemant YM
In my experience, that is as.It can increase my motivation such as wanting to continue, practicing pronunciation by using this TikTok application, so that it becomes more efficient in the future.RN Ohh, it has improved a lot, because what I was talking about earlier, every word is taught to be read correctly.So after they speak we can repeat the correct one.SD Yeah, it can increase my motivation in learning pronunciation because the content is quite interesting, so I am interested in learning English by using this application.

SW
Well, it can increase my motivation, because when learning using the application there is its own excitement, not too burdened, not too limited by time either, so it is very motivated.RA Oh yeah this really increases my motivation to learn pronunciation, because from each video that we practice it has a variety of themes or discussions where, it can also increase our insight that for example what we didn't know before now we can know it and we can practice the pronunciation directly.

KS
Of course, because as I said earlier, TikTok provides a lot of videos that are very varied and also the content is very interesting, not monotonous so we when learning about pronunciation, do not feel bored and also do not feel burdened because I consider it learning while playing.CK Yes, because this TikTok application is not only one person who explains how the pronunciation is, but as a variety of interesting videos that are displayed by several people who are shared on the application.UA Yes very, I think it is enough to increase my motivation.Because what I mentioned earlier is that it uses a lot of video videos that are shera on this tiktok and the video videos are usually packaged by the content creator as creatively as possible to attract, to attract the audience so this really needs my motivation to learn also with this tiktok not only.TikTok is a global application so all native speakers can also create content so that it can motivate me to have better pronunciation with TikTok.DA If to increase motivation, yes, because of the many videos in the TikTok application.

YS
Yes, in my personal opinion it increases my motivation to learn, because it makes, learning using this TikTok application makes learning more interesting, because we, seeing the video becomes more interesting.
From the results of interviews with participants, based on the data from above, it can be concluded that the TikTok application also motivates students to improve pronunciation in learning English, because the TiTok application provides many videos that are very varied.and the content presented is very interesting to watch and the video is also not monotonous so students when learning about pronunciation, do not feel bored and also do not feel burdened because researchers consider it learning while playing.The TikTok application is not only one content creator who explains how about learning the pronunciation.But there are many content creators who discuss improving pronunciation to learn English.Therefore, students are very interested in using TikTok as a medium for learning English.
This study uses a qualitative method in the form of interviews, researchers only examined several participants, namely there were 10 (ten) participants who the researchers interviewed, then the researchers asked several questions to the participants regarding information about the use of the TikTok application in improving proununcition.What are the uses of the TikTok application in pronunciation, how to develop pronunciation using the TikTok application, what are the obstacles or difficulties felt by students in using the TikTok application, there is student motivation in improving pronunciation in English language learning.This will be described by researchers in detail again so that it is easier to understand.
The use of learning media really helps students in the teaching and learning process, for example by using the TikTok application, there are many benefits that can be obtained in learning in improving pronunciation or pronounciation, one of which is that it really helps improve the fluency of student pronunciation like a native speaker.Not only that, TikTok also has a lot of other learning videos, not only about pronunciation but every skill in learning English has a video about the discussion.Therefore, students are more interested in learning using social media, learning using social media is more interesting.Does not make students feel bored when using it.
As for how to develop pronunciation using the TikTok application, namely by the way in this TikTok application there are a lot of videos about pronunciation, so students can choose which video they will watch to practice their pronunciation.This video for practicing pronunciation is very good, worthy of this student being trained directly with native speakers.In this application, students can also pair their videos with one of the content creators who discuss practicing pronunciation.
During the learning process using the TikTok application, there are several obstacles that can be encountered when using it, the first is that in playing TikTok videos you must have a good internet network, if the student's internet situation is not good it can have a direct effect on the video to be watched, the video will not be able to speak smoothly.And this application from TikTok also consumes a lot of internet quota, therefore students must have a rather large internet quota, so that they can access videos from TikTok.Second, in this TikTok application when students practice pronunciation there is no direct correction or feedback from native speakers, so students do not know whether the pronunciation that has been taught is correct or wrong.Therefore, this is one of the obstacles experienced by students.
The motivation that students get when learning to use the TikTok application is that students want to continue learning to use the TikTok application to develop their pronunciation, because this application provides a lot of videos that are very interesting for students to watch, because in the video the fluency in speaking English makes students amazed by these videos and the videos are also not monotonous so students when learning about pronunciation, do not feel bored and also do not feel burdened because researchers consider it learning while playing.
Researchers can conclude that learning using the application is very helpful for students in the teaching and learning process, not only that, lecturers are also helped by the existence of learning through this application.Social media can be used as an effective tool in learning this pronunciation.Because the videos uploaded from TikTok content creators upload short videos about the pronunciation of common words or phrases, as students can watch the video and follow the correct and good pronunciation examples.
With this utilization of social media in learning pronunciation can allow students to learn in a more interactive way.This can improve their pronunciation more effectively and increase their confidence in speaking English.

CONCLUSION
It can be concluded that social media is an effective learning media to help the teaching and learning process, especially by using mobile devices to help language learning.The results of this study show that the TikTok application helps students improve their pronunciation, not only that using the TikTok application is very interesting for students.They can listen directly to native speakers speaking or practicing pronunciations, as if they are practicing directly with the right person.Students can also actively participate by creating short videos and practicing the pronunciation of certain words or phrases.The use of the TikTok application has a very positive impact because this application is useful and provides benefits to students making learning easy and fun and not only learning videos presented by TikTok content creators, they can also find out what is happening in this world easily using only this Tiktok application.From the answers given by respondents, many of them experienced an improvement in English pronunciation.Therefore, TikTok can be used as a medium for learning pronunciation in English because it has many benefits and is effective in helping students and lecturers in teaching and learning activities.