Monday, November 27, 2017

INDONESIAN STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN PRONOUNCING ENGLISH DIPHTONGS

 

Having a 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.

Here is the complete document of article
 


EmoticonEmoticon