Distinction Between Acquiring First Language and Second Language Acquisition

Distinction Between Acquiring First Language and Second Language Acquisition

Acquiring the first language is not at the same way as the learners did in acquiring the second language, where the first language is relatively easier because the learners did it in well motivation and unconsciously built because the learners need the language urgently to communicate with the people around. On the other hand, we are being forced by the need of social communication. This factor is missing in acquiring the second language, because the learners think that only the “complement” no forces, no an urgent need and we did with relatively low motivation. Consciousness and unconsciousness also one of the different ways learners acquiring their first and second language, the infant did not know what actually they learn while the learner learn the second language in well monitor.  First language is acquired by the learners followed by the growth of physics and physicist and it is commonly done in informal environment. While the second language is learnt with the native language has already existed and commonly set in formal situation.

A.    Introduction

It has been continuous for thousand years, the human being use “the language” as the means of communication, as the media to share their idea what they think and what they feel to other people. Language has become an important aspect for the human being to interact among their social life. Language consists of so many complex systems, and it is begins to acquired by the infant in a very early age with a complex explanation how infant manage the task. .

How language is acquired has been explained by many psychologists by providing some theories about language acquisition such as Skinner from Behaviorism (Nurture) argued that language is acquired through a form of operant conditioning (Brown, 2000:34). The children give their language responses through the stimulus given that perform the reinforcement which enable the children to understand particular utterance, it is about contextual probability. In contrast, Chomsky’s theory from Nativism (Nature) stated that language is learned by special genetically programmed procedures that are unique to language learning (Chomsky, 1968:53). However, how to acquire the second language is not the same with how children acquire their first language that used to call “mother tongue”. The second language acquisition is relatively more restricted and difficult compared to the first language acquisition, it is caused by some different factors exist in acquiring the second language and it’s mainly come from the environment factor. Even, the environment factor determines whether the language that the learner acquired is the “good one” or “the bad one”.

Acquiring the second language is not at the same way like when the children acquire the first language “the mother tongue”. The first language acquisition begins from the basic one (when the children still empty of any language even word) and also this first language acquisition followed by the growth of physics and physicist that informally done with well motivation and unconsciously built because they need this language to communicate with the people around. On the other way around, in the second language acquisition the learner has mastered their first language and not followed by the growth of their physics and physicist and it is done formally with a lower motivation because they do not need this language to communicate to the people around them.

So, the second language must be acquired through some process that is done consciously and cannot be acquire automatically as the learner did in acquiring their first language.

A.  Theories in Language Acquisition

The development of language acquisition theories arose from the views of some psychologists about how language is acquired. Mainly, there are two different principles in psychologist views. There are Behaviorism and Nativism that lead to other psychologists to propose their view that is Interactionism.

1.    Behaviorism

This theory believes that language is acquired through a form of operant conditioning. The children will give their language responses through the stimulus given that perform the reinforcement which enable the children to understand particular utterance, where the environment act as the determiner. The language is a part of human behavior like another behavior. Therefore, the language must be acquired through the stimulus (Brown, 2000 : 34)

The language is developed through learning.  Researchers, such as B. F. Skinner has found that infants learn language through operant conditioning, reinforcement, imitation and observational learning. The infants acquire their language through the interaction with the environment by imitating what they heard and what they see. In this case, the important factor is how often that word is repeated so that the word or utterance will be reinforced in the children’s brain. 

2.    Nativism

In contrast to the first theory, Nativism believes that language cannot be acquired through learning. Reinforcement is also not necessary in producing the correct sentences in this theory. Because parents and caregivers will reinforce an incorrect sentence as often as a correct sentence.

Noam Chomsky a psychologist from Harvard University is behind this theory. He said that the first language skill come from the universal grammar that determine the basic form of natural language.  Every child was born into this earth with some competencies one of them is the competency to recognize the utterances (Brown, 2000: 21).  

Noam Chomsky comes up with the idea of a language organ, which is known as the Language Acquisition Device (LAD).  The children were accomplished with language acquisition device (LAD) that contains of four competencies as follow (Brown, 2000: 22):

a)    Competency to distinguish between language sound and another sound

b)   Competency to organize the linguistics unit into some classes

c)    The competency about the language system, analyzing which one is correct and which one is incorrect.  

d)   The competency in using language system that is based on linguistics system development.

3.    Interactionism   

The Interactionist comes up with their belief that language development is a combination between biological and environmental influences.  Constructivism is when a child uses his innate biological influences along with the environmental stimulus to develop language.

B.  The Process in Acquiring First Language

The first language acquisition refers to the process in the children or infants’ brain when they acquire their “mother tongue”. The language acquisition commonly distinguished to the language learning. The acquisition refers to first language, while language learning refers to the second language (Chaer, 2003:167).

Chomsky stated that there are two different processes in acquiring the first language by the children. They are process of competence and process of performance.

1.    Competence process

This stage refers to the process in which the children begin to acquire the grammatical of their native language start from phonology, morphology, syntax, and then semantics. The grammatical awareness happens unconsciously in the children’s brain because every child was born with the competency that we call a language acquisition device (LAD). By using language acquisition device the infant are able to acquire the language in a relative short time with a complex grammatical. The infant can also distinguish which one is language sound and which one is not by using this LAD.

Howard Gardner in Campbel stated that the infant has accomplished with some intelligences one of those intelligence is language intelligence (Campbel, 2006: 3). However, this competency still needs some developments and guidance from the people around to perform this competency becomes a qualified performance in communication.

2.    Performance process

This stage refers to the process in which the children able to perform the language as a communication media that can be categorized into two levels. The first level is understanding where the children begin to observing, understanding and then give their perception to the words or sentence that they heard. The second level is producing where the children begin to give their expression and producing the sentence completely by themselves (Chaer 2003:167).

C.  The Stages in Acquiring First Language

The children are not automatically producing a complete sentence for their communication. In fact, the children’s first language development through some stages to make it equal to what the adult say or communicate. Those stages are chronologically discussed as follow:

1.    Phonology

In this stage the children try to produce a single word by saying “maamaa” “paapaa”. Even though, they do not know the meaning of that word (semantics), whether its word or what (Morphology) or a sentence (Syntactic). Djardjowidjojo (2005:245) said that the parents assume that the words “papaa” “maamaa” refer to them, despite we do not know what it’s really refers to. Perhaps, just the children articulation drill it can be.  But the main one on this stage is saying something or producing the sound (phonology). Therefore, the first stage in children’ first language is phonology.   

2.    Morphology

The next stage is the stage in which the children are able to perform some morphemes or words. Even begin to recognize and use derivation or inflexion, performing word added by affixes or suffixes. Around hundred words are memorized during this stage. However, grammatical correction commonly found as the reflection of the grammatical development. 

3.    Syntactic

In this stage the children are able asking a question, ignoring, and requesting something. Begin imitating, classifying the morphemes, and arranging the words together to perform the sentence (Alamsyah, 2007: 21). In this stage the children also begin to interpret a simple instruction even though with an error interpreting. For example, interpreting the notice “the fire is hot” but in fact they try to grasp it.

4.    Semantics

The children are able define and distinguish the meaning of the goods even sentences by comparing them into the size, form and characteristic of goods. For example, “the elephant is big” so everything that has the same size is also big.

Why Do We Pause In Speaking?

Why Do We Pause In Speaking?

While in speaking, a speaker sometimes pauses in a moment. Pause in language is one of the common phenomena that occur in processing language within the brain. Pause may happen as speaker hesitates to speak or stops for breathing. Therefore, from those classifications, the psycholinguists divided the pause into two; silent pause and filled pause. Silent pause is when speaker stops to think of the next utterance he is going to say without any fillers. In addition to silent pause is filled pause. It works the other way around; it fills the silence as speaker stops talking with ‘ah’, ‘oh’, ‘well’, and many others. Furthermore, there are some pause locations where the psycholinguists agree such as grammatical juncture, other constituent boundaries, and before the first content word within a constituent. Moreover, pauses in speaking may become conversational strategy for EFL students to give them more time to plan the utterance they want to execute while trying to avoid the silent interval and nervousness. Here is an article discussing about pause in speaking.

Tips for improving pronunciation skill

Tips for improving pronunciation skill

First of all, don't worry about not having a native-English accent. It's important to be able to speak clearly, so that people can understand you. However, it's almost impossible to sound exactly like a native English speaker if you are learning English as an adult in a non-English speaking country. There are some factors influencing someone pronunciation skills. However, there are many things that you can do to improve your pronunciation and speaking skills.

Here are some tips to help you improve your English pronunciation.

 

1. Listen to spoken English as often as possible.

Listen to how speakers pronounce various words and phrases and "model" your pronunciation on what you hear.

2. Learn the phonetic alphabet.

Use the phonetic alphabet page (at the beginning of most good dictionaries) as a guide to pronouncing new words.

3. Don't forget to learn the word stress of a new word.

Every English word has its own stress, or intonation. For example, the word "believe" has two syllables (be and lieve), but only the second syllable is stressed. We say be'lieve and not 'be lieve. Your dictionary will show the syllable stress by an apostrophe (') before the syllable to be stressed.

Word stress is important. In fact, it is more likely that someone misunderstands you because of wrong word stress than because of the wrong pronunciation of a sound.

4. Work out which sounds cause you most problems in English.

Depending on what your first language is, you may have problems with certain sounds. For example, French speakers have difficulties with "th"; speakers of Mandarin have difficulties with "r" or "l", and Arabic speakers have difficulties with "p" and "b".

5. Practise the sounds you find difficult.

A useful exercise is a "minimal pair" exercise. For example, if you have difficulty distinguishing between "p" and "b", try practising pairs of words which are the same except for the sound "p" and "b":

For example, "pair" and "bear"; "pond" and "bond"; "pie" and "buy" etc.

6. Be aware of intonation and sentence stress.

Not all words in a sentence have equal stress, and generally only the "information" words (nouns and verbs) are stressed.

'Where's the 'pen I 'gave you?

'Where's the 'red 'pen I 'gave you?

Where's the 'red and 'blue 'pen I 'gave you 'yesterday?

The unstressed words (such as "the", "I", "you" and "and") don't carry as much "weight" as the stressed words. They become much smaller in length, and are almost abbreviated. For example, "and" becomes "un".

Changing stress

Sentence stress isn't "fixed" like word stress. In fact, you can stress words that are normally unstressed in order to highlight different meanings.

For example:

I 'love you. (Love, rather than just like.)

'I love you. (With the stress on I to highlight that it's me rather than another person who loves you.)
I love 'you. (And nobody else.)

Intonation

There are a couple of easy to remember rules about intonation. Usually our voices go up at the end of the sentence to show a question, and down at the end to show a statement.

Intonation is also important in "tag questions":

You know him, don't you? (With rising intonation on "don't you?" to show it's a question)
You know him, don't you. (With falling intonation on "don't you" to show it's a statement you expect the other person to agree with.)

7. Learn to recognise spelling patterns.

For example, "tion" on the end of a word is pronounced "shun", while "sion" can be pronounced "zhun". There are often many ways to pronounce a particular spelling pattern, but it certainly helps to know what the variations are. For example, the pattern "ough" can be pronounced "uff" as in "enough" and "tough", or "or" as in "ought" and "bought" or "oh" as in "although" and "dough".

8. Don't rush.

If you speak too fast, the danger is that you could skip over some words, fail to pronounce them completely, or mix them up. If you speak too slowly, you might end up sounding unnatural. But it's better to speak slowly and clearly than too quickly.

Besides that, learning pronunciation also needs more practice and guides from experts. Many sites help new or foreign learner in improving their pronunciation. Here is one of the best site that can help us.  click here

Why Pronunciation Is Difficult?

Why Pronunciation Is Difficult?

Among eight English diphthongs, Indonesian students tend to have difficulties in pronouncing diphthongs [аυ] and rather easier in pronouncing diphthong [ɔɪ]. There are some factors influencing students have difficulties in pronouncing English diphthongs. First is the influence of students’ mother language. Second is the lack of knowledge in English sound system. Third is unsuccessful in using borrowed English words. For example in word “horizon” [hə:raizn]. Because in Indonesia, the word horizon is also used and modified as horison, Indonesian students pronounced it based on Indonesian language version.

INDONESIAN STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN PRONOUNCING ENGLISH DIPHTHONGS*

Andri Donal

University of Pasir Pengaraian

andriando1101@gmail.com

                                               

ABSTRACT

One of Indonesian students' difficulties in learning English is pronouncing English sounds correctly. Indonesian language as mother tongue influences significantly to the way of Indonesian students in pronouncing English sounds. Compared to English, Indonesian language generally does not have differences between spelling the letter and pronouncing the sounds. Among all English sounds, diphthongs are assumed as one of the most difficulties pronounced by Indonesian students. This study is to explore the difficulties got by Indonesian students in pronouncing English diphthongs. This study was conducted to thirty five students of University of Pasir Pengaraian, Riau Province by using mix method where the researcher gave test to measure students' pronunciation mastery and observation to strengthen the data. The result of study showed that the most difficult of English diphthong was [аυ] sound. Factors influencing students have difficulties in pronouncing English diphthongs were mother language interfere, lack of knowledge in English sound systems and unsuccessful in using borrowed English words. This study is expected can give contribution in improving Indonesian students pronunciation especially diphthong sounds.

Keywords: pronouncing, difficulty, English diphthong,

            Havinga good speaking like native speakers is one dream of foreign language students including for Indonesian students who learn English as foreign language. However, to realize it is not easy. One of Indonesian difficulties in learning English speaking is how to pronounce English sounds correctly. Cruthers (1987:191) explains the reasons why learning another language pronunciation are difficult; first, some sounds of the new or target language do not exist in the learner’s native language. The second is in the difference of distribution between native language and the target language. In addition, Nation and Newton (2009:78) mention there are five factors affect on learning of another sound system. They are, the age of the learner, the learner’s first language, the learner’s current stage of proficiency development, the experience and attitudes of the learner, and the condition for teaching and learning. It means that the differences between learner native language and target language will impact to sounds produced by foreign language learner.

      Moreover, Derwin and Murno (2005) argue that having a good pronunciation of the language can help in normal communication, particularly intelligibility. In other words, learning how to pronounce another language sounds is very important in interaction and wrong in pronunciation can make misunderstanding in conversation. So, introducing the correct English pronunciation to the English students can reduce the error produced in pronouncing English pronunciation. Pennington and Richards (1986) divided pronunciation into articulation of individual sounds and the distinctive features of sounds like voicing and aspiration, voice-setting features, and stress and intonation. Dalton and Seidlhover (2005) distribute speech sounds belong to one or other of the four main classes known as vowels, consonants, diphthong and triphtongs. According to Jones (1975:23) a vowel (in normal speech) is defined as a voiced sounds in forming which the air issues in continuous stream through the pharynx and mouth, there being no obstruction and no narrowing such as would cause audible friction. Roach (2009) defines consonant as a sound, voiced and voiceless, in which the airstream an obstructed through a narrowing or complete closure of the mouth passage. While diphtongs sounds occur when there is a deliberate glide made from one vowel position to another vowel position, and which is produced in one syllable (Ramelan 1999). According to Roach (2009:30) triphthongs is a glide from one vowel to another and then to a third, all produce rapidly and without interruption.

These classes of speech sounds have different difficulties for foreign language learners especially for Indonesian. There are some studies conducted to find out related to how English sound learned by Indonesian students. Prananingrum and Kwary (2006:1)  proved that Indonesian learners also faced difficulties in producing English sounds since English and Indonesian have different sounds distribution. Tiono and Yostanto (2008) conducted a study about English Phonological Errors Produced by English Department Students where the result shows that the students produced thirty-four kinds of phonological errors and that the deviations occurred most frequently before, after, or in between vowels. However, this study focuses on students’ difficulties in pronouncing English diphthongs. The phenomena during teaching in English department where students have difficulties in pronouncing English sounds especially in pronouncing English diphthongs has triggered researcher to conduct this study.

According to J.D.O'Conner a diphthong is a glide from one vowel to another, and the whole glide acts like one of the long simple vowels. While "pure" vowels, or monophthongs, are said to have one target tongue position, diphthongs have two target tongue positions. Diphthongs are represented by two symbols, for example English "same" as [seim], where the two vowel symbols are intended to represent approximately the beginning and ending tongue positions         [J.D.O'Conner 1980, 84]. Although a diphthong is normally represented in phonetic writing by two vowel symbols, this does not follow that both vowel sounds are equally syllabic. Ramelan (1999) writes that “a diphthong is pronounced in one syllable, or produced with one single impulse of breath. Therefore, when the sequence of two vowels is produced with two impulses of breath, it is not a diphthong, but it is said to be dissyllabic or just an ordinary sequence of two vowel sounds”.

Gerald Kelly groups the 8 diphthongs of English language in the following way [Kelly 2000, 34]:

a) Centring diphthongs which end with a glide towards central vowel [ә]. The examples are as follows:

1. Diphthong [ɪə]. The glide of /ɪə/ begins with a tongue position approximately that used for /ɪ/, centralized front half-close, and moves in the direction of the more open variety of /ə/ when /ɪə/ is final in the word; in non-final positions. Example: ear, era, here, fear, beer, dear and career.

2. Diphthong [υә]. /υә/ glides from a tongue position similar to that used for /υ/ towards the more open type of /ə/ which forms the end-point of all three centering diphthong with, again, a somewhat closer variety of /ə/ when the diphthong occurs in a closed syllabel. Example: tour, moor, poor, sure, pure, and cure.

3. Diphthong [ɛə].  The glide of /ɛə/ begins in the half-open front position, approximately c [ɛ], and move in the direction of the more open variety of /ə/, especially when the diphthong is final; where /ɛə/ occurs in a syllable closed by a consonant the /ə/ element tends to be a mid /ə/ type, the lips are neutrally open though-out. Example: heir, care, bare, where and chair.

b) Closing diphthongs which end with a glide towards [ɪ] or towards [υ].The glide is towards a higher position in the mouth. Examples:

4. Diphthong [eɪ]. The glide begins from slightly below the half-close front position and moves in the direction of /I/, there being a slight closing movement of the lower jaw; the lips are spread. Examples: eight, veil, weigh, rein, they, prey, and grey.

5. Diphthong [ɔɪ]. For /ɔɪ/ the tongue glide begins at a point between the back half-open and open positions and moves in the direction of /I/. The tongue movement extends from back to centralized front, but the range of closing in the glide is not as great as for /aɪ/; the jaw movement, though considerable, may not therefore, be as marked as in the case of /aɪ/. Examples: boy, toy, noise, voice, boil, ointment, and point.

6. Diphthong [ɑɪ]. The glide of /ɑɪ/ begins at a point slightly behind the front open position, and moves in the direction of position associated whit /I/, although the tongue is not usually raised to a level closer than C [ё]; the glide is much more extensive than that of [eɪ], the closing movement of the lower jaw being obvious. Example: time, write, bite, climb, cry, dry, by, and try.

7. Diphthong [әυ]. The glide of /əʊ/ begins at a central position, between half-close and half-open, and moves in the direction of /ʊ/, there being a slight closing movement of the lower jaw; the lips are neutral for the 1^st element, but have a tendency to round on the 2^nd element. Example: ocean, over, open, cold, both, omen, only and those.

8. Diphthong [аυ]. The glide of /aυ/ begins at a point between the back and front open positions, slightly more fronted than the position for /a:/, and moves in the direction of /ʊ/, though the tongue may not be raised higher than the half-close level. Example: owl, ounce, down, brown, sound, our and towel.

In learning English diphthongs, students often got difficulties. Harmer (2007:250) mentions problems faced by English foreign language learner in learning diphthongs. They are as follows:

1) What students can hear.

Some students have great difficulty hearing pronunciation features which we want them to reproduce. Frequently, speakers of different first languages have problems with different sounds

2) What students can say.

Learning a foreign language often presents us with the problem of physical unfamiliarity (i.e. it is actually physically difficult to make the sound using particular parts of the mouth, uvula or nasal cavity).

3) The intonation problem

Some of us (and many of our students) find it extremely difficult to hear tunes or to identify the different patterns of rising and falling tones.

To help students in facing pronunciation difficulties, Kelly (2000:16) suggests two strategies in pronunciation teaching: drilling and chaining.  Basic form of drilling involves teacher saying a word or structure, and getting students to repeat it. Aim of drilling is to help students achieve better pronunciation of language items, and help them remember new item. It is assumed can encourage students to bring up a word, phrase of structure as they study before. Teachers generally use prompts, pictures, mimes etc, to help learning process along. Here, the role of teacher is as a model of the word, phrase or structure for students to copy.  Different with drilling, chaining is used to drill long sentences involving difficult words and sounds. Teachers separate certain words from sentence, and model them separately for students to repeat, and gradually build the sentence up until they become complete sentences.

METHOD

There were thirty five students of English Study Program, University of Pasir Pengaraian participating in this research. They have different mother languages: Malay, Bataknese, Javanese, Sundanese, and Minangnese. The data of research were collected by recording students’ pronunciation while reading English text and observation during teaching learning process. After identifying the words containing diphthong sounds, researcher categorized them based on the kinds of English diphthongs. There were eight kinds of diphthongs with the total diphthongs was thirty five diphthong sounds. The next steps were describing and analyzing the data. The data were analyzed quantitatively to find out students’ ability in pronouncing English and qualitatively to describe students’ difficulties in pronouncing English diphthongs.

 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

There are eight English diphthongs that were analyzed in this research. They are English centering diphthong consist of [ɪə], [ɛə], [υә]. The English closing diphthong consists of [aɪ], [eɪ], [ɔɪ], [aʊ], and [əʊ]. The raters identified students pronounce and the researcher analyzed was categorized into following table.

Table 1 Students’ Ability in pronouncing English Diphthongs

No	Diphthongs	Average Score
1	[ɪə]	68,0
2	[υә]	54,5
3	[ɛə]	51,4
4	[eɪ]	75,0
5	[ɔɪ]	82,0
6	[ɑɪ]	61,5
7	[әʊ]	60,2
8	[аʊ]	48,2

            From the table 1, it can be seen that students’ tend to have difficulties in pronouncing diphthongs [аυ] and rather easier in pronouncing diphthong [ɔɪ]. Based on the test given to students, there were some students had difficulties in pronouncing English diphthongs.

1. Diphthong [ɪə].

 In diphthong [ɪə] some students pronounce the word “deer” [dɪər] wrongly. Some of them pronounce it as [der] and [di:r]. Here there are two wrong ways in pronouncing diphthong [ɪə] in word “deer” and changed it into short vowel [e] and long vowel [i:]. Another example was in the word “year” [yɪər] that pronounced wrongly as [yɪr] and [yer].

2. Diphthong [ʊә].

Among some examples of English words that have diphthong sound, the word “during” mostly pronounced wrongly by students. They should have pronounced it as [djʊəriŋ] rather than [dariŋ] or [du:riŋ].

 3. Diphthong [ɛə].

From thirty five students as sample, thirty two students pronounced the word “there” /ðεər/wrongly. Some students pronounced it such as [ðɪer], [ðeɪr] and [ðer].

 4. Diphthong [eɪ]

From the test, it can be known that some difficulties in pronouncing diphthong [eɪ] were the word “day” [dei] which pronounced as [dai]. It can be difficult for students because of the influence of Indonesian language where the letter “y” usually pronounced become [i]. Another pronunciation mistake made by students was the word “lake” [leik] that pronounced became [laik].

5. Diphthong [ɔɪ].

Diphthong [ɔɪ] seems not too difficult for Indonesian students, because there is similarity in the way of pronouncing the [ɔɪ] sound between Indonesian language and English. For example in the word “boy”, most students can pronounce it well. However, there were some students pronounced the word “ointment” [ɔɪntmənt] wrongly and changed into [ɑɪntmənt].

6. Diphthong [ɑɪ]

Looking at the pattern of words, the sounds of diphthong [ɑɪ] usually occur in the following pattern; consonant letter followed by vowel “i” such as “time, write, bite, climb” or consonant followed by letter “y’ such as “cry, dry, by, and try”., students should be easier in pronouncing diphthong [ɑɪ]. However, in this study, some students still have difficulties in pronouncing diphthong [ɑɪ]. For example, they pronounced the word “why” [wai] to [wei]. The habitual of pronouncing English word that has been used/borrowed by Indonesia language also affected to pronunciation error of diphthongs such the word “horizon” [hə:raizn] that  pronounced as [horizon].

7. Diphthong [әυ].

The sound of diphthong [әυ] mostly is produced in letter “o” such as words “ocean, over, open, cold, both, and those. For Indonesia students it is rather difficult because they used to pronounce letter “o” with [o] sound. In this study, most students pronounced the word “home” [həʊm] became [hom]. It can be caused there is Indonesian word has the sound [әυ]. It is clearer in word “no” [nəʊ] that was pronounced [no]. It means the habitual of Indonesian students in pronouncing “o” letter affected to error they produced.

8. Diphthong [аʊ]

The sound [aʊ]  is produced when the word constructed by “ou” letters such “mountain, found, wounded, and out”. Some student in this study made error in pronouncing diphthong [аʊ], for example in word “mountain” [maʊntən] that pronounced into [mountein]. The same case also occurred in words “out”, “found”, and “wounded”, where students did not pronounced letter “ou” into sound [aʊ] but same with the letter.

From the explanation above, it can be summed that some students still have difficulties in pronouncing English diphthongs. There are some factors influencing students have difficulties in pronouncing English diphthongs. First is the influence of students’ mother language. Dulay (1982:97) stated that the first language has been considered the villain in second language learning as the major cause of a learner’s problem in mastery the new language. Most of Indonesian students can speak more than one language. This will affect to them when learning English especially in pronouncing English sounds. Second is the lack of students’ knowledge about English sound system. The sound system between Indonesian language and English is different. In Indonesia, the letter or word tend to have similarity with it sound. So it makes Indonesian students made error or difficulties in pronouncing English word. For example,  “go”, mango, do, does, and etc. It was related with data from AGPS (1986) there are three diphthongs in Indonesian [ɔɪ], [eɪ] and [әʊ]. The third factor is unsuccessful in using borrowed English words. In digital era, era where there is no border among countries, the spread of language cannot be stopped. One language can easily take from other languages. It also happens to Indonesian language that borrows some words from other languages to enrich its vocabulary especially from English. However, when Indonesian students use these words, they pronounce them with Indonesian pronunciation. For example in word “horizon” [hə:raizn],  Because in Indonesia, the word horizon is also used and modified as horison, Indonesian students pronounced it based on Indonesian language version [horizon]. The other examples are words “domain”, “voucher”, “July” and etc.

In addition, Nesgoda (1980) states that language learners may find difficulties in learning to speak English well because several spelling may be represented by a single sound. In addition, Lanteigne (2006) confirms that difficulties in learning English occur due to the fact that some of English sounds do not exist in the mother tongue of the learners. In this study it also occurs in diphthong [әυ] for letter “o”. As a consequence of all the difficulties provided by the English pronunciation, many English language learners as well as the Indonesian learners tend to generate errors in the articulation of the sounds (Tiono and Yostanto, 2008).

Conclusion

Among eight English diphthongs, Indonesian students tend to have difficulties in pronouncing diphthongs [аυ] and rather easier in pronouncing diphthong [ɔɪ]. There are some factors influencing students have difficulties in pronouncing English diphthongs. First is the influence of students’ mother language. Second is the lack of knowledge in English sound system. Third is unsuccessful in using borrowed English words. For example in word “horizon” [hə:raizn]. Because in Indonesia, the word horizon is also used and modified as horison, Indonesian students pronounced it based on Indonesian language version.

References

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* This article has been presented in The 10^th Free Linguistics Conference held by Bung Hatta University on September 30 to October 1, 2016