THE EFFECTS OF FORMAL INSTRUCTION ON THE ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH FRICATIVE CONSONANTS OF INDONESIAN EFL LEARNERS

Abstract

INTRODUCTION:(Gimson, 1985a) reveals that each of us uses infinitive number of different speech sounds when we speak English. Gimson therefore argues that it is true to say that it is difficult to produce two sounds which are precisely identical from the point of view of instrumental measurement: two utterances by the same person of the word 'cat' may well show quite marked differences when measured instrumentally.(Weda, 1998) states that as a foreign language, English presents great difficulties with regard to its pronunciation. The pronunciation of English poses many problems of a different kind from those which we face when we learn our mother tongue (first language). (Gimson A. , 1987) points out that, before we try to produce sounds which we are new to us, it is therefore essential that we should perceive the differences between the sounds in the new language, and between the new sounds and those of our own languages with which we have become so familiar. (Weda, 2009) reports from his study that Indonesian university students had difficulties in identifying the stress for 3 to 7 syllable words under the umbrella of phonology. (Weda, 2005) focused on studying stress because Indonesian speakers of English tend to stress words randomly and this phenomenon tends to produce incorrect pronunciation which will give negative effect in maintaing communication with others, especially for the native speakers of English. (Weda, 2014) emphasizes that stress studies under the umbrella of phonology needs serious attention, because there can be unsuitable stress used in communication that may lead to misunderstanding or miscommunication. Weda adds that the accuracy of acceptability of stress in utterances will give a clear signal to the listeners, and improve the quality of speakers' utterances.The study by (Brown, 2000) sought to experimentaly investigate how the grammars of Japanese speakers, Korean speakers, and Mandarin Chinese speakers affect their acquisition of English contrasts and whether, given the necessary conditions, novel segmental representations can be constructed. Brown found that the acquisition of a second language (L2) is clearly somehow different from that of a first language (L1): adult second language learners rarely (if ever) achieve the same native competence that children do learning their first language and, conversely, children never experience the degree of that L2 learners do.Language is unique, because the speaker of language A sometimes meets difficulties in uttering the sounds of Language B but the speaker of language B can produce the sounds of language A easily. This is because, the speaker B is familiar with the sound in his mother tongue, as an example is Indonesian speakers of English can produce [ņ] sound at the beginning of a word easily, because this sound can occur at the beginning of Indonesian language, for example at the word 'yambek and iyilu' while in English 'ņ' sound is absent at the beginning of a word and the English speaker find difficulties to pronoun the sound in at the beginning of a word. (Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2007) gave good example in keeping with this statement. They examplify that a sound such [ņ] is difficult for an English speaker to pronounce at the beginning of a word but easy for a Vietnamese speaker means that there is no general notion of difficulty of articulation that can explain all of the sound patterns of particular language. For some Buginese speakers in pronouncing plosive /p/, they tend to pronounce labiodental /f/, either in pronouncing Indonesian words, English words, and other languages.Second language (L2) or Foreign Langauge (FL) leaners sometimes meet difficulties in pronouncing new words in an L2 or FL. In adult language learning, the attempt to master the phonological subtleties of another language can become the source of great for teacher and student alike when the reality of a learner's target language production does not meet established goals (Reeder, 1997). …