Mapping Students’ Phonological Problems in Pronouncing English Sounds: A Study on Speakers of Local Languages in West Nusa Tenggara

Abstract

Learning English to EFL learners must always be challenging since it requires not only the willingness for learning, but also students' awareness of the phonological differences between the students' mother tongue on one hand and English as the target language on the other. One of the potential problems is phonology. This study aims at describing the students' phonological problems in pronouncing English segmental sounds. There are 10 students' each of local language speakers taken as the sample in this study. Data is gained by using phonological test. In the test, the sample were asked to pronounce English words of which the sounds do not exist in each local language phonology. The result reveals that, there two English sounds found to be a problem encountered by Sasak students, both of which are consonants. The sounds

Monocentric Concepts in Phonetic Errors of ‘Bimanese’ EFL Learners

“…The detail classification of the most substituted in vowels were; /ʌ/ sound for short vowel, /ɑ:/ sound for long vowel, /əʊ/ and /eɪ/ for diphthong and most all sounds for triphthong as triphthong consists of diphthong + /ə/ sound which is considered as the fossilization sound of Bimanese. This finding also matches with the study by Arafiq, Yusra and Saputra (2020) who investigate the phonological error in West Nusa Tenggara that Bimanese tend to deviate the vowel sounds. By having the persentage of the correct sounds especially schwa sound /ə/, this present study refuted the research of Arafiq, Yusra and Saputra (2020) which states that the /ə/ is a fossilization for Bimanese.…”

“…This finding also matches with the study by Arafiq, Yusra and Saputra (2020) who investigate the phonological error in West Nusa Tenggara that Bimanese tend to deviate the vowel sounds. By having the persentage of the correct sounds especially schwa sound /ə/, this present study refuted the research of Arafiq, Yusra and Saputra (2020) which states that the /ə/ is a fossilization for Bimanese. On the contrary, in this study Bimanese clearly can utter the /ə/ sound, they just did not have a knowledge of the English vocabs that they tried to pronounced.…”

Identifying the Accuracy and Comprehensibility of Students’ English Word By Word Pronunciation at North Lombok Senior High School

“…According to Aarsleff (1989), pronunciation is the Cinderella of foreign-language teaching, because Western linguists have studied vocabulary and grammar for much longer than pronunciation, and thus grammar and vocabulary are much better understood by English learners than pronunciation. Also, Arafiq, Yusra, and Saputra (2020) state that the process of teaching English to EFL students must always be tough because it calls for not just a commitment to learn but also an understanding of the phonological distinctions between the students' native tongue and English as the target language.…”