Errors in Pronunciation of English Segmental Sounds by Javanese Students ERRORS IN PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH SEGMENTAL SOUNDS BY JAVANESE STUDENTS PDF

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Errors in Pronunciation of English Segmental Sounds by Javanese Students ERRORS IN PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH SEGMENTAL SOUNDS BY JAVANESE STUDENTS Eka Reski Fauziah English Department, Languages and Arts Faculty, Surabaya State University [email protected] Abstrak Kesalahan tidak dapat dipisa...

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Errors in Pronunciation of English Segmental Sounds by Javanese Students

ERRORS IN PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH SEGMENTAL SOUNDS BY JAVANESE STUDENTS

Eka Reski Fauziah English Department, Languages and Arts Faculty, Surabaya State University [email protected] Abstrak Kesalahan tidak dapat dipisahkan dari siswa dalam proses mempelajari bahasa Inggris. Dalam hal ini, siswa Jawa adalah sekelompok siswa yang mempelajari bahasa Inggris sebagai bahasa asing. Namun, mereka membuat kesalahan dalam kemampuan berbicara mereka terutama dalam hal pengucapan. Di dalam kelas, siswa memiliki kemampuan yang berbeda-beda dalam hal penguasaan pengucapan. Kemampuan pengucapan setiap siswa dapat dipengaruhi oleh beberapa faktor. Bahasa ibu merupakan faktor yang paling berpengaruh dalam kemampuan pengucapan siswa dari Jawa. Hal tersebut terbukti karena bahasa Inggris dan bahasa Jawa memiliki bunyi segmen yang berbeda, yakni vokal dan konsonan. Penelitian ini dilakukan untuk meneliti kesalahan yang dibuat oleh siswa Jawa dalam pengucapan bunyi segmen bahasa Inggris. Dalam penelitian ini, pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan memberi contoh dalam mengucapkan tugas pelafalan yang diberikan, merekam pengucapan siswa, dan menganalisis kesalahan yang dilakukan. Penelitian ini dilakukan menggunakan pengetahuan kualitatif dasar sebagai desain penelitian. Hasil dari penelitian ini menemukan bahwa siswa Jawa melakukan kesalahan dalam pengucapan vokal dan konsonan bahasa Inggris. Penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa siswa Jawa melakukan kesalahan pada sembilan bunyi konsonan yang bermasalah, [v], [θ], [ð], [ʃ], [ʒ], [tʃ], [ʤ], [d], [z]. Mereka melakukan penggantian dan penambahan ketika menemukan kesulitan dalam pengucapan bahasa Inggris. Selain itu, mereka melakukan penggantian dalam pengucapan bunyi vokal bahasa Inggris yang terdiri dari vokal tunggal dan diftong. Selain itu, hasil dari penelitian ini menyatakan bahwa kesalahan dalam pengucapan yang terjadi pada siswa disebabkan oleh faktor intralingual dan interlingual. Jadi, hasil dari penelitian ini mengindikasikan bahwa siswa Jawa masih menemui kesulitan dalam pengucapan bunyi segmen bahasa Inggris, konsonan dan vokal. Kata kunci : Kesalahan, pengucapan, dan bunyi segmen

Abstract Errors cannot be separated from learners in the process of learning English. In this case, Javanese students are group of people who study English as a foreign language. Yet, they made errors in their speaking ability especially in their pronunciation. In a classroom, students have different abilities in mastering pronunciation. The pronunciation of any students might be affected by a number of factors. Mother tongue is the biggest factors that affect Javanese students’ pronunciation. It is proved because English and Javanese have different segmental sounds, vowels and consonants. This study was employed to investigate errors made by Javanese students in pronouncing English segmental sounds. In this study, the data collection was done by giving example of pronunciation tasks, recording the students’ pronunciation, and analyzing the errors. This study was conducted by using basic qualitative studies as the research design. The results of the study found that Javanese students made errors in pronouncing English consonant and vowel sounds. The results showed that Javanese students made errors in nine problematic consonant sounds, [v], [θ], [ð], [ʃ], [ʒ], [tʃ], [ʤ], [d], [z]. They did substitution and insertion while facing difficulty in pronouncing English. Further, they did substitution in pronouncing vowel sounds which consist of single vowel and diphthong. Moreover, their pronunciation errors were caused by intralingual and interlingual factors. Therefore, the results of this study indicated that Javanese students still have difficulty in pronouncing English segmental sounds, consonant and vowel. Keywords : Errors, pronunciation, and segmental sounds

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INTRODUCTION In teaching learning process, errors cannot be separated from learners or teachers. Errors are when learners do not know the correct answer. There is a possibility that they have not gotten the knowledge from the teacher or they have lack of knowledge of the language rules of the target language. According to Ellis (1997:17), errors cannot be self-corrected by learners. Errors occur regularly and not recognize by the learners. Errors are consistent because learners produce errors repeatedly since they cannot correct it (Ellis, 1997: 17). Additionally, Richards (1974) in Bagheri (2012:1584) classified errors, based on their causes, into two categories: interlingual and intralingual. First, interlingual errors are related to learners’ native or first language (Hourani, 2008:11). Interlingual errors which are known as mothertongue influences or interference errors are kinds of errors influenced by the native languages which interfere the target language learning. Moreover, errors mostly occur in productive skills especially speaking. In speaking, between a speaker and hearers communicate and interact each other. There is a process of understanding and being understood. From that reason, mastering pronunciation of foreign language becomes crucial. A speaker can be understood by hearers if he or she has a good pronunciation. Therefore, what thing should be considered by language learners is the way they articulate foreign words. Nurpratiwi (2016:10) states when we are communicating with other people, we should have good pronunciation to avoid misunderstanding. Harmer (2001) assists that pronunciation is the knowledge of how to pronounce a word (as cited in Nurpratiwi, 2016:7). Pronunciation refers to production of sounds that are used by the speaker to make meaning. Kelly (2000:9) describes that there are two fields explaining the study of pronunciation, they are, phonology and phonetics. In line with Kelly’s opinion, Odden (2006) states pronunciation as the basis area of linguistics dealing with phonology which is the study of the language structure (as cited in Yostanto, 2008:79). Brown (1992) in Bowman (2002:1) clarifies what language learners must be understood about pronunciation is phonetics. Phonology is a part of linguistics which studies the sound system of a language or languages. Phonology explains the sounds function inside a language or across

languages, while, phonetics is knowledge about the physical production of the speech sounds (Roach, 2009:46). English pronunciation has two kinds of features; segmental and suprasegmental features (Pourhosein, 2012:120). Segmental features consist of phonemes which are sounds different in a language. Segmental features are divided into consonant sounds and vowel sounds. Consonants are produced with some closure in the vocal tract that blocks the flow of air from the lungs. Vowels are produced with little closure of the airflow from the lungs out both the mouth and the nose. Consonant sounds can be classified by voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation (Fromkin et.al, 2011:195). Suprasegmental features are divided into linking, intonation, and stress (Pourhosein, 2012: 120). In a classroom, students have different abilities which determine the way they pronounce English words. The pronunciation of any students might be affected by a number of factors. Gillette and Pennington (1994) as cited in Jesry (2005:3) states some factors that influence pronunciation mastery. They include age, personality, and mother tongue influence. First, age influences language mastery especially pronunciation of a person. Adults tend to feel that pronunciation is difficult to achieve especially native like. Second, personality deals with characteristics, attitudes, and motivation. Third, students’ mother tongue can cause students’ mispronunciation in pronouncing English words. Based on the three factors that have been explained above, mother tongue is the biggest factors that affects students’ pronunciation. Trudgil (1994) states mother tongue is the most influential factor for someone’s pronunciation who practice English in oral communication (as cited in Hakim, 2012:247). Mother tongue can be defined as the language that has learnt first and the language that used most in daily communication. In essence, Lanteigne (2006) claims that language learners’ problems in learning English occur due to the fact that some of English sounds do not exist in their native language. In line with Lanteigne’s statement, Yostanto (2008:111) stated that differences between the sound systems of target language and mother tongue are behind many pronunciation errors. They found that Indonesia learners have difficulty in pronouncing [v], [θ], [ð], [ʒ], [dʒ], and [t∫] which are non-exist sounds in Indonesian sound system.

Errors in Pronunciation of English Segmental Sounds by Javanese Students

Moreover, Perwitasari, Klamer, Witteman, and Schiller (2015:3) found that Javanese learners of English had problems producing the correct duration of long vowels such as [i:], [з:], [ɔ:], [u:] which can be explained by the fact that these features are not importantly existed in their first language. From those findings, it proves that different sound system between English and Javanese make students make many errors in their pronunciation. However, the fact happening in EFL classroom is pronunciation is considered to be difficult. Students make errors not only pronouncing sounds that do not exist in Javanese sound system, but also pronouncing sounds that exist in their mother tongue. Moreover, English and Javanese have different rules in pronunciation. For example, English has rule when speaker must change feature values in segments such as “brothers” should be pronounced as /brʌðə(r)z/ not /brʌdə(r)s/. In contrast, Javanese do not have such kind of rule. As example, Javanese pronounce “turu” as /turu/ without any changing rule. As a consequence of all problems provided by the English pronunciation, many language learners, in this case is the Javanese learners, tend to produce errors on the way they articulate the sounds. Therefore, this research is important to be conducted to investigate errors made by Javanese students in pronouncing English segmental sounds. Hence, the problem to be studied is ‘Do Javanese students make errors in pronouncing English segmental sounds?’.

their exam report. One student was categorized as poor student, one another was average students, and the last one was good student. The reason of having three subjects with different abilities in English is to get more various data about their pronunciation of English segmental sounds. The research was carried out in Kertosono. The specific place was on the researcher’s friend’s house. The reason choosing the place to conduct this research was this research was not a formal research. So, the researcher could conduct this research everywhere or outside the classroom. In this study, the data of the study were from students’ English segmental sounds. The first data to answer the first research question were students’ pronunciation errors of consonant sounds. The second data to answer the second research question were students’ pronunciation errors of vowel sounds. Then, the sources of the data in this study came from the students’ pronunciation that were recorded. The researcher used recording as a tool to collect the data. The data was analyzed and interpreted based on the researcher’s interpretation in the form of descriptive because in qualitative research, the researcher herself is the only instrument. Moreover, pronunciation tasks and students’ errors transcription assisted the researcher in interpreting the results. The pronunciation tasks were adapted from Gebhardt (2011). The researcher used a list of words and reading passage to collect the data. The list of words and reading passage contained sounds that the researcher was going to analyzed. The tasks were not aimed to obtain scores yet it was used to collect the data. Since the thesis was analyzing the students’ pronunciation that have been uttered, the researcher herself collected the data. In collecting the data, firstly, the pronunciation task was given to the students. Because of this research analyzed the errors made by students, then, the researcher gave the students example how to pronounce the tasks by giving them the recording from internet. It was done to know the errors made by the students because errors are consistent deviation. So, if the students made faults repeatedly in each sounds, it can be concluded that they made errors. Then, the researcher asked them to pronounce the task one by one. The students’ pronunciation was recorded as the documents. Then, the document was analyzed qualitatively.

RESEARCH METHODS As it is stated in the previous chapter that the purposes of this current study are to describe errors that are made by students in pronouncing English consonant and vowel sounds. To meet with the research objectives, this study was in the form of qualitative research. Denzin and Lincoln (1994b:2) stated that qualitative research focuses in multimethod, concerning an interpretive, naturalistic approach to its subject problem. This means that qualitative research studies things in their natural settings to understand phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them (as cited in Richards, 2003:11). In addition, qualitative research is defined as research which is mostly associated with words and language rather than statistic and numerical figures. The subjects of this study were three Javanese students in eleventh grade of Senior High School in Kertosono. They were one male and two females. They were chosen based on their English scores in 3

The data analysis is the final part of research method. It presents some steps how to analyze the data. The data were the students’ errors in pronouncing English consonant and vowel sounds. These data were taken from students’ transcription. Based on Ary,et. al (2010: 481), there are three stages in analyzing the data. First is organizing and familiarizing. Second is coding and reducing. Third is interpreting and representing. The first step was familiarizing and organizing. The researcher prepared the recording of three students’ pronunciation. The researcher listened repeatedly to familiarize the data. After that, all of data were transcribed. In addition, the transcription was in the form International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in which the researcher used Oxford dictionary to get the English standard transcription. Furthermore, the researcher organized the data into tables. In order to give labels and codes in the sama data, the resarcher did coding and reducing. The data were analyzed again carefully and sorted out similar data. Then, the data were classified and reduced based on two research questions observed in this study. For the classification, the researcher used two tables in analyzing the data. First table was about errors in pronouncing English consonant sounds. The second table was about errors in pronouncing English vowel sounds. The last step in analyzing the data is interpreting and representing. There were no specific rules in interpreting the qualitative data (Ary, et. al, 2013). Thus, the data interpretation were based on the researcher herself in understanding the theories. After the data were classified and reduced, the data were presented in the form of description and explanation to answer the research questions. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS In order to know what errors made by Javanese students in pronouncing English vowel and consonant sounds. Th results show the errors of pronunciation in English consonants and vowels. The data are presented in the table with detail description. The results are about in what position the errors occurred, how the students’ transcription, how the standard transcription should be, and what consonants and vowels errors made by the students. Then, the discussion is the reason why the students made errors, what causes of errors influence them, and what phonological rules made by them.

Errors in Pronouncing English Consonants Sounds Javanese students made some errors in the pronunciation of English consonant sounds. There are nine sounds which are pronounced wrongly. They were [v], [θ], [ð], [d], [z], [ʃ], [ʒ], [tʃ], [ʤ].. First Javanese students made errors in producing [v] sound. The results showed that students tend to make error in producing [v] in two positions, initial and final. For example, according to the standard transcription, the word ‘vain’ should be pronounced as /veɪn/, but the respondents’ transcription was /fain/. They pronounced [v] sound by replacing [v] with [f] since the sound [f] has the same place and manner of articulation, labiodental fricatives sound. The difference between those sounds is [v] is described voiced sound while [f] is voiceless sound. Second, they made errors by replacing [θ] with [t]. The results showed that Javanese students made errors in producing [θ] in all positions that provided, initial, medial, and final. According to standard transcription, the word ‘thinking’ should be pronounced as /θɪŋkɪŋ/, but respondents pronounced it as /tiŋkiŋ/. They pronounced the [θ] sound by changing [θ] with [t] since the two sounds are voiceless Third, the results showed that Javanese students made errors in producing [ð] in two position, initial and medial. Notably, Javanese students made four kinds of errors in pronouncing [ð]. They were the changing [ð] with [d], the changing of [ð] with [ḍ], the replacement of [ð] with [t], and insertion of [n] before [ð]. Fourth, they made errors in the pronunciation of [d] sound. The errors mostly occurred in two positions, initial and medial. According to standard transcription, ‘done’ is pronounced as /dʌn/, but respondents pronounced it as /ḍon/. The results show that Javanese students replaced the [d] with [ḍ] since those two sounds share the similar characteristics. They are voiced sounds and have the same manner of articulation, stops. The distinction is only on the place of articulation in producing those sounds. Fifth, the pronunciation of [z]. Javanese students tend to pronounce the word ‘doze’ as /dos/. However, the standard transcription is /deʊz/. The results show that Javanese students made errors by replacing [z] sound with [s] sound since they share the similar characteristics. They have the same place and manner of articulation, the

Errors in Pronunciation of English Segmental Sounds by Javanese Students

Javanese students are not familiar with some English sounds. There are seven English sounds that are non- exist in Javanese sound system. Those are [v], [θ], [ð], [ʃ], [ʒ], [tʃ], [ʤ]. Those sounds are included as original English sounds. It means that only English having those kind of sounds. Based on the theory of Richards (1974) as cited in Bagheri (2012:1584), there are two cause of errors, interlingual and intralingual. Errors that are made by Javanese students in pronouncing non-exist English sounds are caused by intralingual factor or the nature of the target language itself. In pronouncing those seven problematic sounds, Javanese students made substitution by replacing non-exist English consonant sounds with other sounds they knew as having similar characteristics. According to the theory of phonological rules by Fromkin et.al (2011:244), substitution is the process of replacing one sound to another sound. It occurs because Javanese students face the unfamiliarity of some problematic sounds. Then, they tend to pronounce the unfamiliar sounds by changing them into sounds they known their mother tongue. ...