PHONOLOGICAL ERROR ANALYSIS ON INDONESIAN LEARNERS’ PRONUNCIATION IN ENGLISH PLOSIVE CONSONANTS

Abstract

This research has the main purpose to find out if there were errors in the subjects’ pronunciation of English plosive consonants /p/ initial and central positions of the syllable before the stressed vowel, /t/ in initial and central positions initial and central positions of the syllable before the stressed vowel, and /k/, /b/, /d/, // consonants in final positions of the syllable. The choice of these consonants is because they are the ones that are mostly encountered by the researcher during the teaching process. They give challenges for the subjects, because if produced incorrectly, they will end up in an un-English pronunciation. The students and the words they pronounced are respectively the subjects and the objects of the research. They are 87 subjects of English department of IKIP PGRI Semarang, 2nd semester. The writer takes 10% out of the population randomly, so there are 9 subjects as the sample. The words chosen are taken from the reading lesson text book Practice and Progress by L.G Alexander. There are 30 words containing the aforementioned consonant sounds. The subjects are required to pronounce a list of words that the writer selected and analyzed using Praat system and paired sample t-test to calculate the result. The writer gives scoring scale as 2: comprehensible, acceptable target form; 1: comprehensible, partially correct target form; 0: silence, or seriously incorrect target form. The writer gives drill to improve the subjects’ pronunciation. For data calculation, the writer applied paired sample t-test which resulted in significance value of .037 which meant there are significant differences in subjects’ pronunciation before and after the treatment. The result from triangulation done by another researcher using the same data is 0.006 of significance value. Hence, the H0 is accepted which means that there is a significance improvement in the subjects’ pronunciation after the treatment is given to the subjects. The treatment is in a form of drill practice and explanation on the use of speech organs. It is conducted for six weeks in a row by using the recording of a native speaker’s voice as the model for the subjects’ pronunciation. Failure to produce plosive sounds /p/ in initial and central positions of the syllable before the stressed vowel is due to the inaccurate position of the lips and subjects do not produce the puff of air in the process. Failures to place the correct stress for /p/ sound in the in the central position of the syllable before the stressed vowel is because the subject over-generalize the rule of English words pronunciation Hence they produced un-English pronunciation. This kind of error belongs to hypercorrection or overcompensation. The error production of /t/ in initial and central positions of the syllable before the stressed vowel is due to inaccurate tongue position. The subjects do not put the tip of the tongue on the alveolar ridge but in between upper and lower teeth, so they produced non-plosive /t/ sound initial and central positions of the syllable before the stressed vowel. The same case occurred for /t/ sound the central position. Subjects over-generalize the rule of English words pronunciation by putting the stress on the second syllable. Consonant sounds /b/, /d/, /k/, // in the final position of the syllable tha