English Pronunciation Errors by the Seventh Grade Madurese Students

Abstract

English teachers in Madura have more challenges in teaching English to Madurese students. Madurese students have different phonological system and accent. They often mispronounce words during the English lesson. They do not realise that they produce the errors when they reada text of English, and this happens from year to year. Considering the importance of pronunciation as a component of English, the teacher as the role model of the students’ pronunciation should give more attention to the students’ pronunciation. In fact the teacher do not pay much attention to their students’ pronunciation. They just teach vocabulary found in the text of the material but do not follow up the errors. Unfortunately, this fact become ordinary situation among the seventh grade students in Kamal Madura. This fact motivated the researcher to do a research which focused on the students’ pronunciation to find deeper information about the fact. This research aimed to investigate: (1) the pronuncciation errors the seventh grade students in Kamal produced and (2) what factors cause of the seventh grade students’ pronunciation errors. Employing the case study design the participants were limited only in a junior high school in Kamal Madura. It is a state junior high school that is located quite far from the city and has eighteen classrooms. The students have Madurese language background. The participants in this research only two classes were 7A and 7D. The total number of the participant is 50 students. A pronunciation test that consists of words, phrases and sentences was administered to collect the data. Then their pronunciation were recorded. Contrastive analysis and phonological analysis were applied to analyze the data that focused on vowels, consonants and diphthongs. The errors found mainly because of the different system of Madurese and English pronunciation, the influence of mother tongue, the interlingual and intralingual transfer. Further, the study were expected to be meaningful contribution for English teachers in the island to apply practical strategies to overcome their students’ pronunciation errors. Finally, the research found that the most errors of Madurese students found were in pronouncing consonants. The suggestion concerned on using drilling, phonetic pronunciation and offline dictionary that give the model of pronunciation.