AN ANALYSIS OF PRONOUNCIATION ERRORS MADE BY NINTH GRADE OF
JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL OF SMP 1 TENGARAN
A Research Proposal
Submitted as a Partial Fulfillment of Requirement for Getting Bachelor Degree od
Education in Department of English Education in English Department
Proposed by:
Octa Wibawa Mukti
A320170169
FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION
MUHAMMADIYAH UNIVERSITY OF SURAKARTA
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
A. Background
Today English has become a main subject taught in junior high school. A new
program like English for young learner has been offered by most senior high
school in Indonesia,which is, try to fit with the curriculum based competency.
According to the curriculum,four language skills namely speaking, reading,
writing, and listening are involved on thatprogram. Then to support the four
language skills, some basic language components likevocabulary, structure,
pronunciation, and spelling are also given in teaching English foryoung learner.
From the four components above, there is a component of the language that has
very important role in learning English, especially in speaking and listening. The
component is pronunciation. Pronunciation is a key of communication in which
listener will catch the message of what the speaker say without misunderstanding
if the pronunciation is correct. Therefore, pronunciation is essential to be
developed. Observed at a glance, however, most young learners today are believed
to be having low ability in pronunciation. Their pronunciation are still unfulfilled
the standard of English pronunciation yet and still far from what the teacher
expectation as something satisfied.
A lot errors are made especially when they read aloud passage or speak
English, forexample, learners heard to pronounce [ð_] for ‘the’ with [nd_] and
[ðis] for ‘this’ with [ndis]. Even there are some students still couldn’t differ how to
pronounce the words that having quite the same pronunciation like the words an,
end and ant. They heard the words with the same pronunciation [_n, end, ænt] with
[_n]. They are also pronounce the sound the same as the letter lie Indonesian
pronunciation.The error they made for example they heard to pronounce the sound
[sΛn] for “son” with[s כn].
Pronunciation errors that occurred were not exclusively intended do by
learners. Some reasons may be could explain why learners make a lot of errors in
pronouncing a sound. First of all, English is not our first language, therefore,
learners sometime fee lstrange to pronounce the English word. Secondly, learners
rarely practice in pronounce the English sound because there is limited time to do
in the class, and then they do not practice it at home. Thirdly, learners find that
English is difficult to pronounce because there are different sound system between
English and their language, in this case is Javanese. Finally, the learners have low
motivation in learning English because they think that English is a difficult
subject.
As in the previous, English said is taught in Junior high school. It is
purposed tominimize the errors that made by learners when they are in junior high
school. Because stated by Richard and Sampson in Richard (1974: 10) young
learner are good imitators who are able to imitate English sound better than adults.
This opinion is reaffirmed by Nunan (1982: 101) saying that “most learners
who begin learning the second language after the onset of puberty never manage to
acquire native like mastery of the sound system.”Learning English pronunciation
from very early age is expected not only to prevent fatal errors but also to reach
satisfactory result. But the problem is whether their pronunciation really correct.
Sometime teacher let their students utter incorrect pronunciations and did not make
some corrections to them.
Therefore, till they become adult, their pronunciation will be wrong
because of their habit to pronounce the incorrect pronunciation. That is why i tried
to research on the error of English pronunciation, especially pronunciation made
by the junior high school students. I also interested in pronunciation research,
because it is important in speaking and listening. When someone speaks, they want
to transfer the message to another people or listener. If his or her pronunciation
incorrect, there will be misunderstood between the speaker and listener. The fact
that learners make of errors in pronouncing a sound interest me to make a research
in pronunciation error. Based on the reasons above, the writer was focused on the
research on English pronunciation and chooses the title of the research” an analyis
of pronounciation error made by ninth grade of junior high school of SMP 1
Tengaran
B. Identification of the problem
Lado (1961: 70) states that: “the language sound system are different from
another. In this case, Javanese and English sound system are different in many
ways. Firstly, English consonants, vowels, and diphthongs do not exist in
Javanese. English consonants [θ, ð], and 3 long vowels and diphthongs do not
appear in Javanese. Some Javanese consonants, on the other hand, are also absence
in English, for example [n, t, and d]”.
Secondly, the word and the sentence stresses are important in English. The
stresses may change the meaning of words. The English word “record” has
different meaning if it is pronounce as [rik⊃:d] and [rekכd]. In Javanese on the
contrary the stress does not change the meaning of the word. The Javanese word
“buku” can be pronounced as [buk] or [buku] without changing the meaning.
Finally, the English spelling rules are very complex. The spelling of words does
not show the pronunciation of words. Contrastively, one written symbol presents
one sound in Javanese. Because of the differences, consequently the pronunciation
will occur. Lado (1961:72) states “the learners transfer the sound system of his
native language and use it instead of that as the foreign language without fully
realizing it.” Learners automatically use the Javanese sound system during
learning the English sound system.Therefore, the learners’ pronunciation will be
different from the native speakers’ pronunciation
Today, however, according to Bram (1987:70) : “errors are considered as part of
learning. An error is seen as something natural in the learning process. These
errors must be analyzed so that they can be considered as an important step in
teaching learning process, because it can be use by the teacher to know how far the
learners acquire the target language”.
C. Statement of the problem
As started in preceding section, conducting an error analysis is an important
step in improving the English learning. However study a pronunciation analysis
especially a young learner is hard to be found. Therefore i was interested in
conducting a research on this area. Hopefully, it will give information, which can
help the teacher, much to help the learners in improving their pronunciation.
Young learners in this study are those learners aging twelve to fourteen years
old, who are learning English as the beginner. They are the Junior High School
students in the ninth grade of SMP 1 Tengaran. Besides that most of the students
are Javanese. Therefore, the writer decides to conduct the student in this junior
high school.
I was focused on the study of the production of a comprehensible diphthong,
vowels and rising and falling information used in simple questions in order to get
satisfy result. Because those are the first features which are taught by the teacher in
young learners’ classes. Besides, those are the basic pronunciation features, which
may lead young learner to have a native like pronunciation
D. Formulation of the problem
In line with the limitation presented in the previous section, the problem of the
study are formulate as follows:
a. What kinds of pronunciation errors on vowels and intonations are made by the
students of SMP 1 Tengaran?
b. What are the causes the English pronunciation errors on vowels and intonations
made by the eight grade students of SMP 1 Tengaran?
E. The objective of the problem
The study of this field is limited with the following objectives:
a. To describe the pronunciation errors on vowels and intonations made by the
students of SMP 1 Tengaran
b. To analyze and discuss the sources of errors of English vowels and intonation
sounds in the relation to Indonesian language sounds experienced by the second
grade students of SMP 1 Tengaran
F. Significance of the study
In the objectives of the study are attained; the following advantages are expected
to be obtained:
a. The result can give information for the junior high school’s teacher to improve and
develop English language teaching.
b. For the sake of the development of language teaching program, this study can give
contribution to further studies in the field.
CHAPTER II
THEORITICAL REVIEW
A. Definition of Error
According to Hornby (1987:29), error is something done wrong or condition of
being wrong in beliefs or conduct. The term error also means the flawed side of
learners’ speech or writing. They those part of conversation or composition that
deviate from selected norm of mature language performances (Dulay, Burt,
Krashen, 1982:138). Richards et.al. (In Masari, 1999:17) states that error in speech
or writing as second or foreign language learners is the use of linguistic item (e.g.
a word, a grammatical item, a speech act, etc.) in a way in which a fluent or native
speaker of the language regards as showing faulty or incomplete learning.
Error is different from mistakes. Therefore, it is crucial to make a distinction
between them in order to analyze learners’ language in proper perspective. Error is
deviation from student structure since the learners has not completely mastered the
rules of the language they learned Corder (In Roeckhan, 1990:56). He also states
that the mistakes are structural deviation, which occurs because the learners cannot
determine the choice of expression in proper accordance the situation. A mistake
refers to a performance error that s either a random guess or a “slip”, in that it is a
failure to utilize a known system correctly (Brown, 1980:205) and an error is a
noticeable deviation from the adult grammar or nature speaker, reflecting the
interlanguage competence of the learner.
There are two factors cause errors: the native language interferences or first
language and the target language being learned. The error that is caused by the
interferences or reflects the native language structure is called interlingual error.
The other error caused by the target language and do not reflect native language
structure but usually caused by overgeneralization because of the lack of target
language competence. It is called intralingual error.
Slinker, 1972 (in Richard, 1974: 37) repeated five sources of errors:
a. Language transfer,
b. Transfer of training,
c. Strategies of second language learning,
d. Strategies of second language communication, and
e. Overgeneralization of target language linguistic material.
B. Significance of error
a. The nature of error
Human learning is fundamentally a process that involves the making of
mistakes Brown (1987:69). Mistakes, misjudgments, miscalculation, and
erroneous assumption form an important aspect of learning virtually any skills or
acquiring information. This principle also prevails in language learning. Making
errors is an inevitably part of learning. Hence, people cannot learn a language
without first systematically comity errors.
Errors have played on important role in the study of language acquisition in
general and in examining second and foreign language acquisition on particular.
Errors are believed to contain valuable information on the strategies that associated
with strategies that people employ to communicate in a language.
According to the facts, errors analysis has become an important thing to do.
Error analysis is a type of linguistic analysis that focuses on errors learners make.
By doing error analysis, one can determine the learners mastery level of language
system from the errors that learners commit, besides determining the kinds of
errors and construct for remedial teaching. This statement is suitable to Richard
and Sampson’s (1974:15): “At the level of pragmatic classroom experience, error
analysis will continue to provide one means by the teachers assesses learning and
teaching and determine priorities for future effort.
b. Kinds of errors
There are four taxonomies of errors. Each of them is classified into several
categories errors.
1. Linguistic category taxonomy
The errors are classified according to the linguistic component, using linguistic
terms, namely phonology, morphology, syntax, semantic.
2. Surface strategy taxonomy
a. Omission
Omission is characterized by the absence of one more elements, which are
needed in a phrase or a sentence construction. For example, the word ‘test’ [test] is
pronounced as [tes].
b. Addition
Addition is characterized by the presence of one or more elements that are
not needed. For example, the word ‘car’ [ka:] is pronounced as [kΛr].
c. Misinformation
Misinformation is characterized by the use the wrong form of elements in a
phrase or a sentence. For example is when the learner pronounced the word ‘thin’
[ðin] as [tin].
d. Misordering
Misordering is characterized by the incorrect placement or order of one more
language elements in a phrase or a sentence. For example, the word ‘ask’ [a:sk] is
pronounced as [a:ks]
3. Comparative category taxonomy
There are two categories of errors, as follows:
a. Interlingual error
The errors are caused by negative transfer or interference of the learner’s
mother tongue in the language. For example,
b. Intralingual error
The errors are caused by interference within the target language itself.
4. Communicative effect category taxonomy
It consist of two categories. They are as follows:
a. Local errors
Local errors are caused by the omission of one or more language elements
in a sentence construction, which disturb the process of communication. An
awkward sentence is usually the result of this kind or errors.
b. Global errors
Global errors are the errors, which cause the entire message conveyed not
to be understandable for readers or listeners.
C. Errors in Pronunciation
There are different opinions that are stated by some people about the sources of
errors in pronunciation. Although they stated different opinions, but at core the
sources is quiet same one to another. One of the opinions is as stated by Carey.
According to Carey in [email protected], there are ten
interlanguage phonology sources of L2 pronunciation errors:
a. Interlanguage transfer
When a language learners attempts to produce an L2 sound, their relative
success at approaching the target reliant on their ability to disassociate their L2
utterance from their repertoire of L1 phonemes and allophones. Disassociation is
often necessary because two language may contain sounds, which seem to be the
same bur are produced by differing articulatory motions. They are therefore
acoustically different and may be perceived to be divergent from the target by the
listener.
While it is possible for adult speaker to: earn to produce acoustically
acceptable approximations of targets such as the troublesome /I/ and /r/ distinction
over time (Flege, 1995) the level of success varies between individual speakers. It
is common remark that the more successful producers of near‐native sounding
pronunciation are rare, gifted or talented. Their success could be more reasonably
attributed to their ability to disassociate phonological aspects of the L1 and L2 and
thus minimize the transfer of phonological features from one language to the other.
Assumptions regarding the variable success of learners’ L2 also concern the
relative difficulty different nationalities encounter in their production of acceptable
English pronunciation. A very useful observation to consider in the contrastive
analysis of various language groups and their L2 English production is that
nationalities with a vastly different phonetic inventory to that of English, often find
it easier to learn to produce an acceptable phonetic target in the L2 than a
nationality whose L1 contains contrasting sounds (Flege, 1987, 1995). Therefore, it
may be assumed that is a simpler task to learn totally foreign sounds than sounds,
which bear a resemblance to sounds in the L1. Furthermore, fossilized errors,
which are attribute to the negative transfer of L1 to L2, may moreeasily be unlearn
when they are of the foreign rather than the familiar variety.
Each language has its own pattern related to the length of vowels.
Language vary widely as to whether and how much vowel duration is affected by
the following consonant. English has extremely exaggerated pre‐consonantal
vowel duration when preceding voiced consonants (Takahashi, 1987).
There are however some universal (interlingual) consistencies in vowel
length. Low vowels are always longer than high vowels. For this reason, vowel
duration is often regarded to be a universal. More of this phenomenon of
universals and their significance to interlanguage transfer is discussed in the
following section.
a. Phonological universal
Phonological universals are phonological patterns, which are common to all
known languages. They are also referred to as being unmarked, (common …and
/θ/ regularly occurring phenomena), or inversely, as being marked (distinctive and
unique phenomena) in English for example, /s/ unmarked and /θ/ is marked.
Another notion, implicational universals, is that the presence of a marked segment
/θ/ in a language implies the presence of an unmarked segment /s/, but the reverse
is not true (Greenberg, 1966).
Many studies have been undertaken to determine the degree of difficulty in
acquisition of the various elements of L2 phonology (Altenberg and Vago, 1983)
based on ‘marked ness’ theory of universals. Takahashi (1987) concluded from an
analysis of their studies:“Those less marked phonetic or phonological
characteristic of L1 are harder to unlearn. That is, those characteristic which are
acquired early in L1 acquisition and are important (yet commonly occurring)
characteristics of L1 are easily carried over in the production of the L2
phonological system and remain persistently as the L2 learners’ foreign accent.”
The development of an absolute hierarchy of marked ness in and between
languages is an almost impossible task given the enormous number and diversity
of languages. Marked ness theory has however contributed to a general
understanding of the tendencies of simplification adopted by L2 learners.
b. Avoidance
Avoidance is a general tendency for learners to avoid those aspects of
production that they know to be problematic from them (Schachter, 1974).
Avoidance strategies may be employed at the grammatical as well as at the
phonemic level.
At the grammatical level an article (an/an, the) may be left out of the
utterance when the student suspects an article is necessary and yet chooses to
avoid using rather than running the risk of selecting the wrong one.
At the phonemic level, a typical example of avoidance is the avoidance of
using words, which contain difficult at pronounce phonemes such as /v/.
Therefore, the speaker may give a false impression of the extended of their
phonemic pronunciation errors by avoiding the use of words such as very.
c. Over‐generalization
Over‐generalization is described by Richards (1973) as the application of a
newly learnt target language rule to an inappropriate from or context. For example,
pitch, duration, and intensity as features of stress being used to often to highlight
every content word in an utterance.
Over‐elaboration is usually caused by exposure to language acquisition
strategies that are heavily reliant on reading and writing, to the detriment of
speaking. In an attempt to produce accurate target language utterances, the learner
produces un‐ native like sited and formal speech, which may be syntactically
accurate but unnatural (Tarone et al, 1983)
d. Hypercorrection or overcompensation
This phenomenon can be found to occur after students have become aware
of a negative transfer effect and rises from the strategy they employ to deal with
this (Wardhaugh, 1986). For example, Indonesian does not posses the CV /∫I:/
(She) but does contain the CV /si:/ (See), so the expected negative transfer effect is
the production of /si:/ (see) for the word she. An Indonesian English learners may
realize that the sound /s/ and /∫/ must be distinguished before the vowel /i:/ in the
L2 but has not learnt exactly when to do this. The learner therefore acquires the
notions of /∫/ + /i:/ is not allowed in English and applies it even when it necessary
in the production of the word she. Thus, the learners overcompensates and
produces /si:/ instead of /∫i:/.
e. Elision and epenthesis
Elision is the noun‐articulation of a sound and epenthesis the addition of a
sound to a word in the L2. Both are a negative transfer effect of phonotactic
constraints in the L1.
f. Stylistic variation
Variations is style of speech occur according to psycholinguistic factors
such as the situation, the context, the addresses (s) and the location (Bolinger,
1975). In the gathering of speech data, factors which may effect the authenticity of
the data are: the self consciousness felt by the subject and the pressure to perform
in the situation of a studio recording; unfamiliarity with the context or lexis of the
test sentences; the pressure to achieve a ‘good result’ for the addressee (the tester);
and the artificial environment and discomfort associated with remaining still in a
recording studio.
g. Letter to sound rule confusion
A learner of English, who’s L1 contains a phonemic orthography, often
learn to speak English through reading and writing and consequently attempt to
interpret English pronunciation from the orthography. The inconsistent letter to
sound rules of English lexis may result in mispronunciation, not because of an
inability to produce the phonemes, but due to the interference of spelling.
h. The developmental model
This model of language acquisition suggest that there are significant
parallels between the replacement strategies employed by infant L1 learners of
English and infant – adult L2 learner of English. Various studies (Flege and
Davidian, 1984) across a variety of nationalities of L2 English learners have
revealed replacement strategies for the production of new phone in L2, which are
similar to the substitution strategies found in the L1 speech of infants. This model
therefore suggest there is a hierarchy for substitution of new phonemes
(consonants), which is sequential and consistent (perhaps universal) across all
language.
i. Significant errors: current views
Jennifer Jenkins (1966) outlines the need for a change in pronunciation
modification priorities from system based on a native model of pronunciation
towards a system that modifies the errors, which impede communication across an
international context. The motivation for this new system of priorities stems from
CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHOD
A. Place and time of the research
I take place in SMP 1 Tengaran. It would be conducted in the English class
of the ninth grade students of SMP 1 Tengaran. Time followed
B. Research Method
According of Hornby (1985) research is investigation undertaken in order
to discover new facts, get additional information, etc. there are two types of
research method: quantitative and qualitative; which qualitative is used in this
research.
The study is a descriptive study, which comes from a case study at SMP 1
Tengaran. The data is taken from a pronunciation test. To support the findings
some qualitative data resulted from the test are employed.
C. Population and Sample
I choose the ninth grade students of SMP 1 Tengaran as the population for
the research. I choose them because of these reasons:
1. English has been taught in SMP 1 Tengaran begin form class first until
third, which it is expected the students will do the test easily.
2. would make a research whether there are differences among the second grade
students of SMP 1 Tengaran in pronunciation accuracy.
I took 15 students as the sample from four class that consist of at least 150
student ; Therefore, to achieve the optimal validity, I took the student randomly.
D. Data Collection Technique
In the data collection for the research, i was collecting data from the ninth grade
students of SMP 1 Tengaran in their English class. As mention before that i used
qualitative method, furthermore it is expected the students will speak naturally.
There are several steps to collect data:
1. Preparation of the instrument
Preparation here means prepare everything that the i need before doing
research, namely, pre‐observation to the SMP 1 Tengaran and ask help from the
teacher. Then listening the students who are in the ninth grade. The preparation is
also including preparing the material that been become a test.
2. Recording
In this step, I begin to record the student’s pronunciations during they the
test. The process of recording need several days according to the schedule of the
English class on that school. There are two kinds of data should be recorded as
follows:
1. Pronunciation that utterance by student when answering the teacher simple
questions through the picture naturally, without reading.
2. Pronunciation that utterance by students when they are reading a text.
E. Data Analysis Technique
The technique used in this research is descriptive analysis. The data
collected in this research are raw data. Therefore, to make them meaningful, there
would be some steps to analyze it.The steps of analyzing data used are:
1. Identifying errors
Here, I will made the written text that was phonetic transcription of the data
before finding out the errors. After making the phonetic transcription of the data, I
will listening to the recording and compared the sounds repeatedly with the correct
phonetic transcription.
2. Classifying errors
Form the written data of student’s speech, and then I would classifying the
errors by categorized each error into those features then put them into table
distribution of errors.
3. Quantifying errors
In this case, i used the descriptive analysis. Therefore, I will present the
total number of the errors found in SMP 1 Tengaran in systematic table.
4. Determining the source of errors
Based on the data analysis, I will interpret the causes of errors that were
interlingual and intralingual error, and then described why the errors could be
happened.
