Al-Lisan. Journal Bahasa ISSN 2442-8965 & E ISSN 2442-8973 Volume 2 Nomor 2- Agustus 2017 http://journal.iaingorontalo.ac.id/index.php/al 17 AN IDENTIFICATION OF STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN PRONUNCIATION Nikita Lasabuda Lasabuda10@gmail.com English Education Department of Tarbiyah and Teacher Training Faculty The State Institute of Islamic Studies (IAIN) Sultan Amai Gorontalo, Indonesia ABSTRACT This research aims to identify the difficulties of students‘ Pronunciation in 4th semester of the English Education Department of IAIN Sultan Amai Gorontalo. This research uses a qualitative method. The subject of this research is 4th semester students of English Education Department and focus of this research is on 15 Students. The location of this research is in IAIN Sultan Amai Gorontalo. This research was conducted for 3 months with data collection technique using interview and documentation. The technique of data identification using triangulation. The results of this research indicate that pronunciation and intonation required students to facilitate pronunciation while learning to speak in English. In this study the difficulties experienced by students in pronunciation is difficult to distinguish words that almost the same pronunciation, rarely practice in English, lack of vocabulary, often carried by local accent, shame, difficult to say sentences rarely found, nervous and less understanding of the contents of the context intended. Keywords: Difficulties in pronunciation. Abstrak Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengidentifikasi kesulitan pelafalan Mahasiswa di semester empat Jurusan Bahasa Inggris IAIN Sultan Amai Gorontalo. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif. Subjek penelitian ini adalah Mahasiswa semester 4 jurusan Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris dan fokus penelitian ini pada 15 mahasiswa. Lokasi penelitian ini di kampus IAIN Sultan Amai Gorontalo. Penelitian ini dilaksanakan selama 3 bulan dengan teknik pengumpulan data wawancara dan dokumentasi dengan teknik analisis data triangulasi. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa pelafalan dan intonasi dibutuhkan mahasiswa untuk memperlancar pronunciation saat belajar berbicara dalam Bahasa Inggris. Pada penelitian ini kesulitan yang dialami siswa dalam pelafalan adalah sulit membedakan kata-kata yang hampir sama pengucapannya, jarang berlatih dalam bahasa inggris, kekurangan kosakata, sering terbawa logat daerah, malu, sulit mengucapkan kalimat jarang ditemukan, gugup dan kurang paham terhadap isi konteks yang dimaksud. mailto:Lasabuda10@gmail.com Al-Lisan. Journal Bahasa ISSN 2442-8965 & E ISSN 2442-8973 Volume 2 Nomor 2- Agustus 2017 http://journal.iaingorontalo.ac.id/index.php/al 18 A. INTRODUCTION Language is the basic skill that is needed for real communication among people. By using language, we are able to express our ideas and feeling. In Indonesia, English learned by the students as a foreign language. English must be taught as early as possible because it is a compulsory subject from kindergarten until the university. For the junior high school student, English is very important to be learnt. Especially with pronunciation, the students are expected to be able to mastery in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Kelly Gerald (2000), states that pronunciation is one of the important things in learning English in order to make a good communication. To make a good communication needs to pronounce the words correctly. The pronunciation is when we use all the same organs of speech to produce the sounds in particular away. Furthermore, Corder (1980) explained pronunciation is the way in which a word is pronounced. Pronunciation is not an optimal extra for the learners anymore than grammar, vocabulary or any other aspect of language. To pronounce the words correctly, we should know how the sounds are produced. Our voice is produced by vibration of our vocals cords. According to Sahulata ―sounds are vibrations with characteristic of frequency, intensity and duration which produce certain sensation audibility when striking the ear‖. The sounds of speech can be studied from various points of view. One can investigate the physical of speech sounds as they are transmitted through the air, measuring the amount of energy present in the Acoustic signal, its distribution over the frequency spectrum, how this measurement change in the course of an utterance.11 In this case the writer would like to explain how English is pronounced in the accent normally chosen as the standard for people learning the spoken English. Unfortunately, numerous teachers are not aware of the importance of pronunciation. In the first place, they emphasize the role of grammar and vocabulary Al-Lisan. Journal Bahasa ISSN 2442-8965 & E ISSN 2442-8973 Volume 2 Nomor 2- Agustus 2017 http://journal.iaingorontalo.ac.id/index.php/al 19 learning in the acquisition of a foreign language. The overwhelming majority of English language teachers help students become competent above all in listening and reading. Secondly, many of them think that pronunciation study is too difficult and worse, boring for young learners. Besides, teachers complain about the lack of high quality and suitable teaching and learning materials and about the lack of time to practice pronunciation (Harmer, 2001). However, the acquisition of reasonable pronunciation by some students without any effort from the side of the teacher depends on a number of factors. Specifies some of them, in particular the phonetic abilities of learners, integrative motivation and ‗achievement motivation.‘ Equally, it appears that the number of students who appreciate the importance of good pronunciation is limited. Taking these facts into account, teachers ought to convince their students of the need to study pronunciation rigorously and help them to learn how to pronounce English sounds correctly (Kenworthy, 1987). However, it is tempting to suggest that the very first English lesson should deal with pronunciation. If students do not have an opportunity to practice good pronunciation at the beginning of their learning, they may build their habits in the wrong way. For this reason, learning words without pronunciation during beginning lessons is potentially damaging to their overall success. Pronunciation is important because it does not matter how good a learner‘s vocabulary or grammar is if no one can understand them when they speak! And to be understood, a learner needs a practical mastery of the sounds, rhythms and cadences of English and how they fit together in connected speech. Learners with good pronunciation will be understood even if they make errors in other areas, while those with unintelligible pronunciation will remain unintelligible, even if they have expressed themselves using an extensive vocabulary and perfect grammar. What is more, people are likely to assume that they don‘t know much English, and – worse – that they are incompetent or even stupid (Lynda Yates & Beth Zielinski, 2009). Al-Lisan. Journal Bahasa ISSN 2442-8965 & E ISSN 2442-8973 Volume 2 Nomor 2- Agustus 2017 http://journal.iaingorontalo.ac.id/index.php/al 20 B. METHOD The method of this study tried to describe the object of study is based on data and facts, as well as trying to analyze the concepts previously developed by the researches as the instrument itself in solving the problem (Lexy j. Moleong, 2002). This research subject is the 4th semester student majoring in English at the IAIN Sultan Amai Gorontalo. In this research used three data collection techniques, namely: 1. Interview, Burns (1999), contends that interviews are a popular and widely used means of collecting qualitative data.‖ To this end, the researcher wants to get firsthand information directly from some knowledgeable informants. 2. Documentation, Bogdan (Sugiyono, 2015)argued in most tradition of qualitative research, the phrase personal document is used broadly to refer to any first person narrative produced by an individual who describes his or her own actions, experience and belief. The process of analysis begins by examining all data starting by reviewing all available sources of interviews and recorder. After observing, the data obtained are still random, and then the next step is to conduct data reduction. Data reduction is a process of assessment, formulation of attention, simplification, validation and transformation of data that has been written. C. RESULT AND DISCUSSION The data are taken from the fourth semester in English Department of IAIN Sultan Amai Gorontalo. From twenty three students four semesters, researchers only take the data students who often use English as much as fifteen people based on the results of interviews and documentation. Al-Lisan. Journal Bahasa ISSN 2442-8965 & E ISSN 2442-8973 Volume 2 Nomor 2- Agustus 2017 http://journal.iaingorontalo.ac.id/index.php/al 21 Based on the interview there are three aspects of students‘ difficulties in pronunciation, those are: 1. Pronunciation Based on the theory that tested the pronunciation, the researchers found some students have difficulty in pronunciation such as, it is difficult to distinguish words that are almost the same pronunciation, rarely practice, lack vocabulary, carried regional accent, shame and difficult to say sentences rarely found. Based on interviews conducted by researchers obtained from 15 students studied, 6 students have similar difficulties. 2. Intonation Based on the theory that tested the intonation, the researchers found some students who are difficult in adjusting intonation such as, nervous, often carried away regional accent, lack of understanding of the content in question. Based on interviews conducted by researchers obtained from 15 students studied, 5 students have similar difficulties. 3. Liaisons Based on the theory that examined the liaison, the researchers found 4 students who had no difficulty in liaison. They tend not to eliminate liaison when speaking in English and interact with friends. While on documentation researcher obtained students‘ data from tests distributed to their pronunciation. In this research, the researcher observed 5 times by observing the students activity in speaking English by getting the result that is 6 students that difficulties in pronunciation from 15 students under study. 5 students have difficulty in intonation and 4 others do not eliminate liaisons when speaking. In this study the researchers added data to obtain more accurate information by taking data based on the English test distributed to students. This research use to answer the research question of my research about factors of students‘ difficulties in pronunciation, the research found it as follows: Al-Lisan. Journal Bahasa ISSN 2442-8965 & E ISSN 2442-8973 Volume 2 Nomor 2- Agustus 2017 http://journal.iaingorontalo.ac.id/index.php/al 22 1. Factors of students‘ difficulties in pronunciation In this pronunciation, researchers get the results of research students' difficulties in learning pronunciation, such as: a. Difficult to distinguish the vocabulary almost the same way of mentioning b. Rarely practice speaking in English so when talking the mention is still wrong. c. Lack of vocabulary so that when met with new words have difficulty in mentioning it. d. When speaking in English often carried the regional accent so that the mention of the word in English is wrong. e. It's hard to say a new word. 2. Factors of students‘ difficulties in Intonation In this strategy, the researcher for research results that students use to learn skills, such as: a. Nervous or less confident when speaking English for fear of being wrong, so it causes intonation to change. b. When speaking in English, it is often carried by regional accents. c. Often have difficulty when speaking English but do not understand the contents of the sentence. 3. Factors of students‘ difficulties in liaisons Based on the research, in the liaisons section 20% of students do not eliminate liaisons when speaking in English. According to them liaisons is very important in a sentence so that the sentence to be discussed more regularly. That's the result of research obtained by researchers from the analysis of difficulty of pronunciation in students based on research instruments used by researchers. In addition, in this study researchers analyze that pronunciation, intonation and Liaisons is very important because they think these three aspects are very influential in speaking in English. Al-Lisan. Journal Bahasa ISSN 2442-8965 & E ISSN 2442-8973 Volume 2 Nomor 2- Agustus 2017 http://journal.iaingorontalo.ac.id/index.php/al 23 D. CONCLUSIONS The researcher can conclude some of the conclusion as follows: In the pronunciation aspect of this study was found difficult to distinguish words that are almost the same pronunciation, rarely practice, lack vocabulary, carried regional accent, shame and difficult to say sentences rarely found which students experience in pronunciation. In the intonation aspect of this study was found nervous, often carried away regional accent, lack of understanding of the content in question which students experience in intonation. And the aspect of liaisons in this study include talking to themselves or with friends without removing liaisons on the sentence. Al-Lisan. Journal Bahasa ISSN 2442-8965 & E ISSN 2442-8973 Volume 2 Nomor 2- Agustus 2017 http://journal.iaingorontalo.ac.id/index.php/al 24 REFERENCES Burns, Anne. (1999). Collaborative action research for English language teachers. Cambridge: CUP Corder, S. Pit. (1980). Research of second language errors. Oxford; Oxford. Jeremy Harmer. (2001). The Practice of English Language Teaching (four edition; Cambridge. UK; Longman. Tth). J. Kenworthy. (1987). Teaching English Pronunciation. London: Longman. Kelly Gerald . (2000). How to teach pronunciation. Essex Longman. Lexy J. Moleong. (2000). Metodologi Penelitian Kualitatif. Bandung: RemajaRosdakarya. Lynda Yates & Beth Zielinski, 2009. Give it a go: teaching pronunciation to adults, Australia. Sugiyono. (2015). Metode Penelitian Pendidikan (pendekatan Kuantitatif, Kualitatif, dan R&D). Bandung: Alfabeta.