Marian P.

Timtiman
2nd & 4th Sunday Class Schedule

Rationale of the study

Communication plays a big role in human life. It is a way of conveying

thoughts and expressing ideas and means of mutual understanding of message between
the speaker and the receiver. There are factors that affect good transmission and one of
this is pronunciation in which if words are not uttered properly it will lead to
misinformation and misconception.
The importance of pronunciation cannot be overstated. However, the
pronunciation of English is sometimes neglected in the classroom because it is generally
taught with the priority of developing reading and writing rather than listening and
speaking skills. Speech errors can affect effective communication and the communicative
development of the students depends on what kind of model is shown to them. Many
leaners of English language have major difficulties with English pronunciation even after
years of learning the language (Mulya and Mujiyanto 2018).
The lack of knowledge of the English vowels is also expected to
contribute English pronunciation problems. As noted in (2018) Ahmad that the
errors of pronunciation of the learners in English varies from different languages
background that makes it systematic not accidental. Those incorrect representation of
producing of sounds adopted by the learners can be also a responsible for speech
production problems. The observations limited to pronunciation skills can undermine
learner’s self-confidence, restricted social interaction, and negatively influence estimation
of speaker’s credibility and abilities González (2019).
Levis and Wu (2018) described that the learning of L2 as an organic rather than
linear process and students should learn pronunciation lessons at early stage. The
pronunciation should be accurate enough to be clearly understood and it should enable
students to communicate in an efficient way to be intelligible.
González (2019) explained that being able to speak English includes a number of
skills which is pronunciation is the most important. She argue that with good
pronunciation is intelligible of other errors; with poor pronunciation, understanding a
speaker will be very difficult, despite accuracy in other areas. In spite of the importance,
teaching pronunciation has been neglected by teacher in field of English language
teaching.
General observation suggested that it is those who start to learn English after their
school years are most likely to have serious difficulties in acquiring intelligible
pronunciation, with the degree of difficulty increasing markedly with age. As Fadhilah
(2019) revealed that an area of concern and indeed one of the top priorities of ESL
students after completing elementary English courses is pronunciation. It is important to
make distinction between speaking and pronunciation. Pronunciation is viewed as subs-
kill of speaking. Generally, if we want to change the way a learner pronounces the words,
we have to change the way we think about the components sounds of those words.
 As point out by Mulya and Mujiyanto (2018) that teachers tend to view
pronunciation at the least useful of the basic language skills and therefore they generally
sacrifices teaching pronunciation in order to spend valuable class time on other areas of
language. Possibly, they do not have the background or tools properly teach
pronunciation and as a result it is disregarded.
In Saito (2018) found out that a second language learners meet some difficulties,
because his L1 affects his L2 especially in adulthood and this result is the effect of L1
transfer, so it is significant source of making errors for L2 learners. (Fitriani and Zulkarnain
2019) showed that the mother tongue has clear influence in L2 pronunciation where L1
and L2 rules in conflict, errors are expected to be committed by foreign learners.
Thus, the speech communication should be a regular activity in order for the
students to use the English effectively as a means of communication. With the emergence
of more holistic communicative methods and approaches to L2 teaching today,
pronunciation is address as context or real communication.
The main purpose of this study is to identify pronunciation errors of Speech
Communication students in English segmental. The study wants to elicit the errors
committed in sounds of vowels and consonants. The reading test will be administered in
pre-test and post-test to illustrate the difference of the data taken from the same group.
With these, determining the errors committed will serve as an avenue to know what
sounds they are tend to commit errors. This study will adheres with the problems of the
students in pronouncing words and other possible aspect that hinder correct utterances
of the English language. This will also help student’s awareness of the importance of
learning English language.

Statement of the Problem

This study aimed to identify the pronunciation errors in English segmental of the
speech communication students of Jugaban National High School – Carigara, Leyte.
Specifically, the study intended to answer the following questions:
1. What are the personal profile of Speech Communication students in terms of the
following;
1.1 Age;
1.2 Sex;
1.3 Attitudes towards pronunciation; and
1.4 Grades in Speech Communication
2. What are the common pronunciation errors made by the students?
2.1 Vowels;
2.2 Consonants
3. Is there a significant differences on the common pronunciation errors made by
the Speech Communication students during the pre-test and post-test?
Bibliography

1. Ahmad, Y. B. (2018). Teaching English pronunciation of suprasegmental features on students of

English education. In SHS Web of Conferences (Vol. 42, p. 00048). EDP Sciences.
2. Fadhilah, D. A. (2019). An Error Analysis in Pronunciation of English Vowels Of The Fourth
Semester Students Of English Education Department In Iain Tulungagung in The Academic Year
2018/2019.
3. Fitriani, N., & Zulkarnain, S. I. (2019). An Investigation of Mother Tongue Influence on EFL
Learners during their Speaking Performance. SALTeL Journal (Southeast Asia Language
Teaching and Learning), 2(2), 30-35.
4. González Guerra, K. S. (2019). The phonological factor in the pronunciation of vowel sounds in
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