ISBN: 978-602-74437-0-9
PHONOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES FACED BY STUDENTS IN LEARNING ENGLISH Ahmad Renaldi1, Ranni Putri Stefani2, Ingatan Gulö3
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] STBA Teknokrat Abstract Being exposed to English use at campus, the writers were interested in phonological difficulties faced by the students as second language learners of English. The question arised was about what kinds of phonological difficulties the learners are having in their effort to learn and speak English. Underlining this research question was the objective to focus on those difficulties when teaching English to L2 learners of English. In collecting the data needed, the initiation was to conduct a survey on talks, speeches, and presentations made by the students. From the findings, main areas where to focus on were decided. The results were then used to list possible difficult sounds and asked the students to pronounce them. How they pronounced the words were recorded to be analysed. The students were also interviewed in order to have another measurement to determine the difficulties they faced. As the result, most of the phonological problems found were related to consonant sounds such as voiced dental fricative, voiceless dental fricative, voiceless post-alveolar fricative, and voiced alveolar approximant sounds. These are the striking features among other phonological issues found after conducting the research. Keywords: consonant, difficult sound, L2 learning, phonology 1. INTRODUCTION This study came about as a result of observing the way language learners speak in English. As the researchers dealt with those learners both in academic and social contexts, pronunciation errors attracted their attention. General surveys were then done on the issue, starting from social media and the internet to the previous works conducted on the matter. There are various findings on the error analysis like those on grammatical errors (Alonso, 1997; Özşk, 2014; Erarslan, 2014) to those covering phonological problems (Bada, 2001; Lekova, 2010). As those studies vary in foci, objectives, and findings, the present researchers tried to conduct research to different participants with distinct linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Such consideration was the reason behind this study. The researchers intended to find out phonological difficulties faced by specific learners of English and pose the facts found to enrich linguistic elaborations on relevant issues. Because the result of the obervation indicated some consonant sounds as the most difficult ones, the report was then narrowed to those kinds of sounds. 2. REVIEW OF RELATED THEORY This research was based on Error Analysis Hypothesis introduced by Larry Selinker and friends in 1970’s (Lightbown, 2011: 79-81) in their reaction to the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis. While most of the previous works focus on why certain errors are made and how to predict further errors ocurring (Henderson, 1985; Yu, 2011), the present researchers in holding this theory just focused purely on finding out the errors made by the learners.
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Proceedings of the Fourth International Seminar on English Language and Teaching (ISELT 4)
3. METHODOLOGY The researchers began the study by observing talks, speeches, and presentations made by the students. From the findings, general understanding on the difficulties were obtained. This made it possible for the researchers to list certain difficult sounds and ask the students to pronounce them. In this phase, their pronunciation were also recorded in order to have proofs and data for further analysis. To strengthen the analysis and the conclusion made, the students were also interviewed related to the phonological difficulties they face when talking in English. 4. FINDING AND DISCUSSION The data processed by the researchers were classified according to the main points set forth below as they represent the most common errors made by the students. The phoneme /r/ in this research is used for that of Indonesian sound carried by letter r and // is for that of American English carried by the same letter, not to pose a new issue but simply to bridge problems that may arise between English and Indonesian phonetics on the letter. Voiced Alveolar Approximant Sound The first four of the six words shown below demonstrate the use of the turned R or voiced alveolar approximant sound in their pronunciation. Represented by letter r, this sound in English can be seen in red or zero. The pronunciation of the last two in the table, however, is somehow different from the first four. Being at the end of the words factor and car, the voiced alveolar approximant sound // becomes less stressed in English. No. Word 1 2 3 4 5 6
red write zero agree factor car
Correct Pronunciation /ed/ /a/ /./ // /.t/ //
Student’s Pronunciation /red/ /ra/ /r./ /r/ /e.tr/ /r/
From the data analysed by the researchers, it was found out that the students pronounced the letter r as voiced alveolar trill /r/. As the researchers were observing the presentations delivered by the students, the voiced alveolar approximant sound, looked more like that of Indonesian voiced alveolar trill sound. They also treated the one at the end of a word like those in (5) and (6) above the same way. Voiced Dental Fricative Sound The data found and analysed by the researchers showed that the learners also had problems with voiced dental fricative sound //. For this sound, among other variations that appeared in the data, there are two common pronunciation errors they made. No. Word 7 8 9 10
that them although brother
Correct Pronunciation // /e/ // /./
Student’s Pronunciation /de/ /de/ /t/ /r.dr/
Igniting a Brighter Future of EFL Teaching and Learning in Multilingual 98 Societies
ISBN: 978-602-74437-0-9
Seen from the table, the first type of mistake they made is by assuming that the sound // is pronounced like voiced alveolar plosive sound /d/. Examples are presented in (7), (8), and (10) above. The other type is seen in datum (9) in which // is treated as /t/ by the student. Other kinds of mistakes are also seen from the data. They can be seen from how the students pronounced the words although and brother and compared them to the standard pronunciation of the given words. In addition, they also made mistakes in treating other consonant and vowel sounds. Voiceless Dental Fricative Sound Still about dental fricative sounds, the students also found it difficult to produce the voiceless type of the sound. Compared to the previous kind discussed above, this sound is much more difficult for them. This is seen from the interview done and from the fact that they sometimes made it right in pronouncing voiced dental fricative sound but they hardly made it right when articulating the voiceless dental fricative sound. No. Word 11 12 13 14 15 16
think thanks mathematics something both mouth
Correct Pronunciation // /s/ /./ /./ // //
Student’s Pronunciation // /es/ /te../ /.t/ /t/ /t/
In the data given above, for example, they say the words think as //, something as /.t/, and both as /t/. Such phenomenon is commonly heard when the students deliver their presentations or when they talk to their friends outside the class. Just like in the data presenting voiced dental fricative sounds, the students also make mistakes related to sounds other than voiceless dental fricatives. They often pronounce think without the sound /k/, thanks with /e/ replacing // and without /k/, mathematics with similar case, or mouth with // replacing the sound // like in the data presented in (11) through (16). Voiceless Post-alveolar Fricative Sound The last common mistakes made by the students related to phonological issues of consonants is about voiceless post-alveolar fricative sound. In English, this sound is represented by the combination of letters s and h in succession. Below are six words chosen from the data indicating the difficulty the students face in pronouncing this sound. No. Word 17 18 19 20 21 22
shoe she cashier finishing English wash
Correct Pronunciation // // // /n/ // //
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Student’s Pronunciation /s/ /s/ /esr/ /ns/ /es/ /s/
Proceedings of the Fourth International Seminar on English Language and Teaching (ISELT 4)
It is obvous from the data reported that this and other kinds of phonological errors are potential to cause misunderstanding from the listeners. The pronunciations /s/ in (18) and /s/ in (22), for instance, might be misunderstood as they sound more like see or sea and was rather than sound like she and wash as the actual words being used. Problems with this voiceless post-alveolar fricative sound always occur whenever the students found s and h being grouped and pronounced together. 5. CONCLUSION From the data analysed by the researchers, there are other problems related to phonological difficulties in consonant sounds. However, those presented here are the ones occuring the most in the data and, thus, are representative of the difficulties faced by the students in learning English as a foreign language. In the previous works studied while conducting this research, there are findings which show that errors made by second language learners are caused by their linguistic backgrounds. The researchers do have a tendency to accept the possibility of such phenomenan occuring in the data analysed, but they also consider the arguments posed against that outcome. The issue should be left for further discussion, partly because the aim of this research was purely finding the difficulties the students faced and partly because a more comprehensive and throughout study is needed in order to arrive at a strong conclusion about it. It is strongly suggested, however, that these phonological difficulties should be paid attention to in teaching learning process of English. This conclusion is supported by the result of the interview done by the researchers. REFERENCES Alonso, M. Rosa. 1997. Language transfer: Interlingual errors in Spanish students of English as a foreign language. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, Vol. 10, 7-14. Bada, Erdogan. 2001. Native language influence on the production of English sounds by Japanese learners. The Reading Matrix, Vol. 1(2). Erarslan, Ali and Devrim Hol. 2014. Language interference on English: Transfer on the vocabulary, tense and preposition use of freshmen Turkish EFL learners. ELTA Journal, Vol. 2(2), 4-22. Henderson, Michael M.T. 1985. The interlanguage notion. Journal of Modern Language Learning, Vol. 21, 23-27. Lekova, B. 2010. Language interference and methods of its overcoming in foreign language teaching. Trakia Journal of Sciences, Vol. 8(3), 320-324. Lightbown, Patsy M. and Nina Spada. 2011. How Languages are Learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Özşk, Cem. 2014. Identifying preposition errors of Turkish EFL students. ELT Research Journal, Vol. 3(2), 59-69. Yu, Weihua. 2011. A review of studies of the role of native language. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 2(2), 441-444. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ISELT 4 The Fourth International Seminar on English Language and Teaching ISBN: 978-602-74437-0-9 English Department, Faculty of Language and Arts, Universitas Negeri Padang 2016 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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