The Goals of Teaching Pronunciation
he or she knows the substitution of d or z for the English th δ as in that is
a typical example. 2.
A sound does exist in the mother tongue, but not as a separate phoneme: that is to say, the learner does not perceive it as a distinct sound that makes a
difference to meaning.for example, both the i and i: ship sheep sounds occur, but which is used depends only on where the sounds come in the word
or phrase, not what the word means; and if one is substituted for the other, no difference in meaning results.
37
The problems showed by Ur seem the common problems that are appeared and faced by the foreign language learner. Those problems are also existed in the
Indonesia students’ pronunciation when they speak English. In addition, Harmer
assumed that “some students have great difficulty hearing pronunciation features which I want them to reproduce. Frequently,
speakers of different first language have problems with different sound that the students’ first language does not have the same sounds.
38
In this case, the students’ problem is lack of students’ knowledge for English sound, so they might
face difficulties when they find the different sound between their target language and their first language. They seem confused to imagine what kind of sound they
heard. This problem may influence the students’ listening and speaking comprehension because when they are asked to reproduced that English new
sound or word they may be quite or cannot respond the spoken. Moreover, different sounds between English
language and the student’s native language exist in some moments. This problem is also supported Avery and
Herlich, which the mostly problem in pronunciation is because of the uncommon sounds for the students’ first language that exists in English.
39
For example, learners from most language backgrounds have difficulty with the English of
sounds.
37
Penny Ur, A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p.52.
38
Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, New York: Longman, 2007, 4th ed., pp. 249- 250.
39
Peter Avery and Susan Ehrlich, Teaching American English Pronunciation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, Second Edition, p. 95.
Furthermore, Ur added, “sometimes the foreign learner of English may
have difficulty with the sequences and juxtapositions of sound typical of English words”.
40
For example, word „crisps’, the foreign learner is usually pronounced by crisp or crips, the phoneme „s’ is omitted. Meanwhile, word „crisps’ should be
pronounced by crisps. It happens because the three consonants rarely appear in their native language and or even it disappears.
Based on the writer observation, some of these problems were found in the teaching learning process at students class VII SMP Muhammadiyah 17 as it had
been explained in chapter one. The problem mostly was because of the stu dent’s
difficulties in transferring their mother tongue into target language. The problem was because the different sound system between their native language and their
target language which were they could be contrasted. In table 2 below, the writer tries to show the contrastive phoneme between
English and Indonesia language. These are taken from any sources.
Table 2.2 The Contrastive Phoneme between English
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and Indonesian
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Vowel Phonemes Consonant Phonemes
No. English
Indonesian No.
English Indonesian
Short Vowels 01
ɪ ɪ
01 p
p 02
e e
02 b
b 03
ӕ 03
t t
04 ɒ
o 04
d d
05 ʌ
a 05
k k
06 ʊ
ʊ 06
g g
07 07
f f
40
Penny Ur, Teaching Listening Comprehension, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1984, p.12.
41
San Diego State University, Phoneme Chart: English Vowel and Consonant Sound, 2003, www-rohan.sdsu.edu.
42
Abdul Chaer, LinguistikUmum, EdisiBaru, Jakarta: RinekaCipta, 2007, p.119.
Long Vowels 08
v v
08 i:
09 Ɵ
09 α:
10 Ǒ
10 ɔ :
11 s
s 11
ɜ : 12
z z
12 u:
13 m
m Diphthongs
14 n
n 13
e ɪ
15 ŋ
ŋ 14
αɪ αɪ
16 l
l 15
ɔ ɪ ɔ ɪ
17 r
r Vowel Phonemes
Consonant Phonemes No
English Indonesia
No English
Indonesia 16
ɪ 18
w w
17 e
19 h
h 18
ʊ 20
j y
19 ʊ
21 ʃ
sy 20
a ʊ
a ʊ
22 ʒ
23 t
ʃ c
24 d
ʒ j
25 ?
26 x
27 ny
This table displays the contrastive analysis of sound system between the students’ native language Indonesian and their target language English. As the
writer discusses previously that one of the students’ troublesome in producing
English sound is because some the English sounds does not exist in their native language, contrastively even the sounds exist in their native language, it is
pronounced differently.