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RESEARCH PAPER
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement
For Degree of Bachelor of Education in English Education
Dien Alfanita
1510631060043
INTRODUCTION
Every human being has a language. It is used to convey messagesto other people
and without a language the people will find it difficult to communicate and express their
ideas, thought and wishes. According to James (2010:5) Language is a system that
connects thoughts, which cannot be heard, seen, or touched, with sounds, letters,
manual signs, or tactile symbols (e.g., Braille) which can. In this way, one person’s
In learning a language, there are four skills involved. Those are listening,
speaking, reading, and writing. One of the most important skills to learn language is
speaking. Speaking is one of the language skills which are needed by the student for
experience of learning the language in the real life. To practice speaking is not easy for
the students. Therefore; many students get some problems to do it. The difficulties
which are encountered by the students can relate to their linguistic competence such as
lack of vocabulary, poor grammar, lack of idea to speak, wrong intonation, and
sounds, because they do not find them in their own language and also they have not
meaning. Pronunciation is one of the language components which are very important
for the students to know. In fact, there are many difficulties for students to express
everything in English because they lack of practicing and feel ashamed to pronounce
it. Pronunciation skill is certainly needed by the students in order to express the meaning
Because phonology relates with pronunciation, much has been said concerning the
Although students have English subject at school, most of them often make
errors, especially in pronunciation practice. With regard to this, this study was intended
to find and analyze the students’ errors in pronouncing English vowels hoping that the
comprehensive data on what the students lack and need to improve accordingly.
Based on the explanation above, this study is going to observe the errors
pronounciation will be the focus of the study. The researcher intend to observe the Error
Analysis of Pronouncing English Vowels at the second grade of junior high school.
The researcher does the research based on research that had been done before,
but in the exsiting research was examined about “An analysis of student’s errors in
pronouncing English vowels (A case study of the eleventh grade of SMA N 1 Sigaluh
Banjarnegara in the academic year 2006/2007”. In this study the researcher was
role and “An Error Analysis on the Pronunciation of Diphthong made by the Students
of the First Grade in Smk Puspajati Buluspesantren Kebumen in the Academic Year
researcher uses descriptive qualitative method. This study attempts to find out the
difficulties encountered by the students of the first grade vocational high school in
because in the exsisting research had not been any research on this, therefore researcher
vowel and the causes of error in pronouncing vowels. This limitation is essential since
it will help the researcher to focus on the object of the research. The researcher
The objective of the research is to find out the vowel sounds which are difficult
to be pronounced and to find the factors that make the students in the second grade of
D. Definition of Term
1. Error Analysis
The fact that learners do make errors, and that these errors can be observed,
analyzed, and classified to reveal something of the system operating within the learner,
led to a surge of study of learners’ errors, called error analysis (Brown, 2007 : 259). Error
analysis is a type of linguistics analysis that focuses on the errors learners make (Gass
that learner errors were not only because of the learner’s native language but also they
which considered native language interference as the major source of errors in second
language learning what behavioristic theory suggested. Errors can be taken as red flags;
they provide windows onto a system that is, evidence of the state of a learner’s knowledge
of the L2. They are not to be viewed solely as a product of imperfect learning; hence,
they are not something for teachers to throw their hands up in the air about. As such, they
are evidence of an underlying rule governed system. In some sense, the focus on errors
is the beginning of the field of second language acquisition, which at this point is
beginning to emerge as a field of interest not only for the pedagogical implications that
may result from knowing about second language learning, but also because of
thetheoretical implications for fields such as psychology (in particular learning theory)
Thus, error analysis is the study and the analysis of error made by language
learners which function as to give the information on how they learn a language, how well
they know the language and what difficulties faced by them in achieving the objective. In
addition, the students also make some mistakes in their learning procces. In order to analyze
errors and mistakes, technically two very different phenomena. According to (Brown,
2007: 257) an error, a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker,
reflects the competence of the learner. While, a mistakes refers to a performance error that
is either a random guess or a ‘slip’ in that it is a failure to utilize a known system correctly.
All people make mistakes, in both native and second language situation.
2. English vowels
Every language surely have vowel. Because vowel is very important for the speaker to
pronounce the word well, so they can deliver the message to another speakers.Richard
(2002:584) Vowel is a speech sound produced without significant constriction of their air
flowing through the mouth. Vowels are produced when the airstream is voiced through the
vibration of the vocal cords in the larynx, and then shaped using the tongue and the lips to
modify the overall shape of the mouth. The position of the tongue is a useful reference point
for describing the differences between vowel sounds. Nathan (2008:18) states that, vowels
are not classified in the same framework as consonants in traditional phonetics, because they
are not made with significant obstruction in oral tract. Consequently, they do not have a
point of articulation.
3. Pronunciation
Kelly (2000:1) says phonemes are different sounds within a language. Although there
are slight differences in how individuals articulate sounds, we can still describe reasonably
accurately how each sound is produced. Whereas syntax is syntax is about sentence
formation, and semantics about sentence interpretation, phonetics and phonology cover the
sounds system of language. Phonetics is a too necessary to the study of the phonology
aspect of language. Language have different accents: they are pronounced differently by
people from different geographical places, from different social classes, of different ages
and different educational backgrounds. The word “accent’ is often confused with dialect.
We use the word “dialect” to reefer to a veracity of a language which is different from other
not just in pronunciation but also in such matters as vocabulary, grammar and word-order.
Different of accent, on the other hand are pronunciation differences only, Roach Peter
(2000:4). On the other hand, Hornby (2000:64) states that pronunciation as a way in which
a language spoken. It means that the basis of pronunciation is not only consonants and
Pronunciation is one of the important matters every second language learners should
master. The other hand, pronunciation is the way a certain sound or sounds are produced.
Which refers to sounds in the mouth, pronunciation stresses more the way sounds are
perceived by the hearer, Richard (2002:492). Without the skill, it is impossible for the
learners to communicate with others people using the language they are learning. The
fact that the pronunciation is wrong sound can give a different meaning. In Indonesia
English pronunciation is one of the most difficult tasks in English learning. This is caused
by the large difference between the sound of Indonesian and their English. These
differences would certainly bring trouble for Indonesian students to pronounce English
words. The difficulty then overcome by transferring sound pronunciation Indonesian into
English. With this fact, no doubt to say that the students will make mistakes in
pronunciation.
CHAPTER II
A. Exsisting Research
Dealing with this study, there are some studies previously conducted by some
researcher before. First, “An analysis of student’s errors in pronouncing English vowels (A
case study of the eleventh grade of SMA N 1 Sigaluh Banjarnegara in the academic year
2006/2007”. In this study the researcher was conducted under consideration that
pronouncing English vowels plays an important role. The problem of this study are what
kinds of error the students make in pronouncing English vowels and why these errors occur.
The researcher tried-out to thirty three students. The instrument used by the researcher in
her final object was tape recorder which used to record students pronunciation. In analyzing
the data, error analysis was used in which there were four steps: transcribing students’
descriptive analysis to count all error and interpreting the result of the data analysis.
The total percentage of various errors in pronouncing English vowels is 23.33%. There are
five type of dominant errors. There are vowels [i:] (5.31%), vowel [ӕ] (6.22%), vowel [a:]
(6.67%), vowel [ɔ:] (6.67%), and vowel [ә] (0.76%). In this research, the researcher fined
the similarity and the difference from the previous study above. The similarities are the
study of error analysis on the pronunciation and the data were got from recording, and use
entitled “An Error Analysis on the Pronunciation of Diphthong made by the Students of the
First Grade in Smk Puspajati Buluspesantren Kebumen in the Academic Year 2012/2013”.
In this research study the researcher uses descriptive qualitative method. This study
attempts to find out the difficulties encountered by the students of the first grade vocational
high school in producing English diphthong. The difficulties are identified by errors made
and explained based on the error sources. The data are collected through recording the
utterances made by students. The students’ pronunciation were transcribed into phonetic
transcription and then analyzed. The test was given to 38 students. Based on the analysis,
the researcher finding indicates the 1458 or 76.74% of 1900 English diphthong produced
by the students constitute error. The data analysis clarify English diphthong [eә] are most
frequently error, on the contrary English diphthong [ɔI] is least frequently in error. The
diphthong error are mostly yielded by the interference errors, which comprise 85.32% of
the errors, 10.29% of them are interlingual errors and 4.39% by the developmental errors.
A. Definition of Pronunciation
making correct sounds of a particular language, as well as how the sounds are put
together in the flow of speech (not just in isolated words). A necessary part of
book, they stated that pronunciation in general terms as the production of significant
sound in two senses. The first sense is talk about pronunciation as the production and
make the foreign sounds with their own organ of speech. Moreover, it is also a
difficult that students must learn to use the sounds in proper places with accurate
usage of pitch, stress and length. To overcome the problem, the necessity of ‘ear-
training’ i.e. if the learners’ ear is good by nature, learning pronunciation can be
successful.
1. Age. The debate over the impact of age on language acquisition and specifically
pronunciation more difficult than children do and that they probably will not
3. Aptitude. Individual capacity for learning languages has been debated. Some
researchers believe all learners have the same capacity to learn a second language
Attitude toward the target language, culture, and native speakers; degree of
5. Native language. Most researchers agree that the learner’s first language
in accounting for foreign accents. 6 It is possible that students can not learn
D. Aspects of Pronunciation
Pronunciation has two main features; there are segmental and super segmental
features.7 Segmental feature includes phoneme that consist of vowel and consonant.
1. Segmental
The segmental feature concerns with the phonemes which includes of vowel
and consonants of a language. These have been well described on this figure below:
Figure 1.
2. Vowels
3. Every language surely have vowel. Because vowel is very important for the
speaker to pronounce the word well, so they can deliver the message to
Vowels are produced when the airstream is voiced through the vibration of
the vocal cords in the larynx, and then shaped using the tongue and the lips
to modify the overall shape of the mouth. The position of the tongue is a
useful reference point for describing the differences between vowel sounds.
Nathan (2008:18) states that, vowels are not classified in the same
1)Which part of the tongue is raised; 2)How high in the mouth some part of
the tongue is raised (the degree of the raising the tongue). 3)The position of
the two lips, that is, whether the two lips are rounded or unrounded. The
vowel.
Figure 2. The classification of Main english vowels
mouth where vowel sounds are articulated. 1)‘Close’, ‘Mid’, and ‘Open’
refer to the distance between the tongue and the roof of the mouth. 2)‘Front’,
‘Centre’, and ‘Back’ and their corresponding ‘vertical’ lines refer to the part
of the tongue. 3)The position of each phoneme represents the height of the
tongue, and also the part of the tongue which is (however relatively) raised.
which the organs of speech remain a given position for an appreciable period
of time. Kelly (2000:30) states that, the word ‘pure’ is used to differentiate
single vowel sound from diphthong. The sounds have been divided up into
symbols
1 / i: / bee [bi:]
5 / a: / Far [fa:]
8 / u: / who [hu:]
11 / ә: / bird [ bә:d ]
description:
e. The organs of speech are relatively forties or tense, which can be felt by
List of words: He [hi:] She [si:] Bee [bi:] Key [ki:] Eve [i:v]
Articulatory description:
a. In producing [I] the front of the tongue is raised; the raising is somewhat
List of words: Sin [sIn] Sit [sIt] Fill [fIl] Bid [bId] Live [lIv]
3. [ε] Articulatory definition: [ε] is an unrounded half close to half open front Articulatory
description:
b. The front of the tongue is raised to a point half way between the half
d. The opening between the jaws is medium, a bit wider than for [I]
List of words: Head [hεd] Fell [fεl] Set [sεt] Bed [bεd]
4. [æ] Articulatory definition: [æ] is an unrounded open to half open front vowel
Articulatory description:
b. The front of the tongue is raised a little bit to a point midway between
List of words: Band [bænd] Land [lænd] Bad [bæd] Bat [bæt]
description:
c. The raising of the tongue is only slight so that the tongue can be said to
be very low in the mouth, and is then at the fully open position. d. Hough
classed as a back vowel, the lips for the production of [a:] are not
List of words: Harm [ha:m] Hard [ha:d] Heart [ha:t] Barn [ba:n]
6. [ɔ] Articulatory definition: [ɔ] is a rounded open back vowel Articulatory description:
a. For the production of [ɔ] the back of the tongue is slightly raised.
b. The raising of the back of the tongue is so slight that it is almost near the
fully open position; thus the tongue is very low in the mouth.
List of words: Hot [hɔt] Cot [kɔt] Pot [pɔt] Lost [lɔs]
description:
c. The lips are more closely rounded than for [ɔ:], that is, in between open
lip rounding.
List of words: Caught [kɔ:t] Dawn [dɔ:n] Stalk [stɔ:k] Port [pɔ:t]
8. [U] Articulatory definition: [U] is a rounded half close to close back vowel Articulatory
description:
a. In producing [U] the back of the tongue is raised; this raising is advanced
c. The lips are fairly closely rounded, and slightly protruded, with no
List of words: Could [kUd] Put [pUt] Cook [kUk] Fully [fUlI]
9. [u:] Articulatory definition: [u:] is a rounded close back vowel Articulatory description:
10. [Λ] Articulatory definition: [Λ] is an unrounded half open centro-back vowel. (or an
a. In [Λ] some part between the front and the back of the tongue, almost
the central part of the tongue, is raised; (thus centro back vowel).
List of words: Bud [bΛd] Tusk [tΛsk] Lust [lΛst] Cud [kΛd]
11. [ә:] Articulatory definition: [ә:] is an unrounded half close to half open central vowel
Articulatory description:
a. In producing [ә:] the central part of the tongue is raised; the central part
of the tongue is that part of the tongue between the front and the back.
List of words: Lurk [lә:k] Curt [kә:t] Hurt [hә:t] Burn [bә:n]
12. [ ә ] Articulatory definition: [ ә ] Is an unrounded half open to half close central vowel
Articulatory description:
E. Definition of Error
wrong in beliefs or conduct. The term error also means the faulty side of learners’
speech or writing. They those part of conversation or composition that deviate from
learning.
deviation from student structure since the learners has not completely mastered the
rules of the language they learned15. He also states that the mistakes are structural
deviation, which occurs because the learners cannot determine the choice of
F. Error Analysis
errors need to be corrected. Studying about errors made by the learners is important
for the teachers because they will understand on their learners’ language acquisition
Besides, studying learners’ errors serves two major purposes: first, it provides
data from which inferences about the nature of the language learning process can be
made. Second, it indicates to teachers and curriculum developers which is the part
of the target language students have most difficulty producing correctly and which
The fact that learners do make errors, and these errors can be observed, analyzed
and classified is called error analysis. There are some steps of analyzing error, they
are:
this case, we have to compare the sentences learners produce with what seem
b) Describing errors: once at all the errors have been identified, they can be
There are four taxonomies of errors. Each of them is classified into several
categories errors.
The errors are classified according to the linguistic component, using linguistic
Omission
Addition
are not needed. For example, the word ‘car’ [ka:] is pronounced as
[kΛr].
Misformation
Misordering
a. Interlingual error
The errors are caused by negative transfer or interference of the learner’s mother
b. Intralingual error
The errors are caused by interference within the target language itself.
a. Local errors
Local errors are caused by the omission of one or more language elements in a
b. Global errors
Global errors are the errors, which cause the entire message conveyed not to be
METHODOLOGY
A. Research Approach
The research was designed using qualitative approach. Richard (2002:456) states that
research is the study of event, problem or phenomenon using systematic methods, in order
to understand it better and to develop principles and theories about it. According to Hornby
(1995: 734) method is a way of doing something. To conduct a research, the writer should
have a suitable method research. Commonly, there are two types of research method used,
firstly quantitative and secondly qualitative research. Quantitative research is related with
numeric data and uses statistic to count the data, while qualitative just present is through
description in words into a long sentence. In this research the researcher used qualitative
research. It offers analysis to look deeper into problems, qualitative approach helps to
B. Research Method
Descriptive method is used together which information about the real condition and situation
for the time being. By using the descriptive method, the researcher wants to analyze the
students’ pronunciation errors that made by the students of second grade at junior high
school in Karawang and finds its possible causes. By using the descriptive method, the
researcher wants to analyze the students’ pronunciation errors that made by second grade
This research took place at SMPN 8 Karawang in the second grade students. The reason
why the researcher choose that class, because there are a problem in some of the student
in pronouncing the vowels, and the technique used in determining participants is purposive
sampling. Purposeful sampling is a technique widely used in qualitative research for the
identification and selection of information-rich cases for the most effective use of limited
D. Research Sample
The subjects of the research is the 2nd grade students of SMPN 8 Karawang. There are
six classes in the second year; the researcher only took 6 students in one class based on
low achievement, middle achievement and high achievement. Because it’s the suitable
way to see how many student still cant pronouncing vowels correctly.
Research instrument has an important role to obtain the result of the research. It is a set
of methods which is used to collect the data. Sugiyono (2009:222) states that in qualitative
research is the primary instrument for data collection and analyzing the data and make the
conclusion. The researcher uses some pronunciation test items (English words), observation
and interview. Some supporting test items are Oxford Dictionary, Kamusku, and a recorder.
Those items are very important for they provide the detail of information for the researcher
to do the research.
objective of the research is to get the data. The researcher uses observation and interview
In this research, the data is collected once through recording the utterances produced
by the students of second grade at junior high school in Karawang. The researcher consider
that awareness of the subject about the object of this study may lead to the artificial
performance. In the gathering of the speech data, factors which may affect the authenticity
of the data are: the self-consciousness felt by the subject and the pressure in the situation
of the studio recording: unfamiliarity with the context or lexis of the test sentences; the
pressure to achieve a ‘good result’ for the tester, and the artificial environment and
discomfort associated with remaining still a studio recording. It can be conclude that the
data taken by the researcher reflects the actual performance of the subjects because the
factors that affect the authenticity of the data do not occur in the process of collecting the
data. In collecting data, the researcher did some steps. The steps explains in detail as
follow:
3. Then, the researcher listened to the recorded pronunciation several times and
G. Data Analysis
In analyzing the data, the researcher takes some steps. The first is finding out the error.
To find out the error, the researcher listens to the recording of the subjects’ utterances. The
pronunciations of the words are, then, transcribed into phonetic transcription. The researcher
uses Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary by Hornby as a standard pronunciation to
decide whether the subjects’ English vowels pronunciation is correct or not by using
KamusKu. After collecting the data, the next step are classifying the data and analyzing the
2. Secondly, the researcher made category the students’ pronunciation based on the right
4. The researcher found the dominant error of the students’ pronunciation produced by
the students and the reason why they dominantly made their error.
5. The researcher drew the conclusion and suggestion based on the data analysis. The
researcher employed the percentage descriptive analysis to count all error by using a
∑ 𝑬𝒓
𝑿𝟏 = 𝑿 𝟏𝟎𝟎%
∑𝑾
In which :
W : is words