IMPROVING PHONETICS AWARENESS OF KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS TO ERADICATE ENGLISH LANGUAGE FOSSILIZATION AMONG KINDERGARTEN STUDENTS

Children's language development is largely determined by the surrounding environment. This is often associated with the opinion of experts who say that children at an early age have a 'golden period' to absorb and imitate what they hear. The abilities of absorbing and imitating need to be understood thoroughly both by parents at home and educators who deal directly with young children so that phonological fossilization does not occur. One way to reduce phonological fossilization is to increase teacher awareness about phonology because not all teachers who teach in kindergartens are graduates of English Education courses. In this community service program, the teacher is first given a pre-test to measure initial abilities. Furthermore, teachers were given knowledge and exercises related to phonology with several teaching techniques. At the end of the meeting, the teachers were given a post-test and the post test results showed a significant improvement of their phonetics awareness.