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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. 

  

 

 

 

 

  


