Students’ Pronunciation of English Sounds; Long Vowels and Diphthongs.

Cahyani, Eka Puspa

Journal of English Teaching, Applied Linguistics and Literatures (JETALL)
Vol 1, No 1 (2018): Jetall Volume 1 No.1 2018

Pronunciation is a fundamental part in learning English because not only we learnthelanguage;we’regoingtousethelanguageaswell.Inordertobeabletousethelanguage,we need to learn how to produce it first. Pronunciation helps students to pronounce the words,phrases,andsentencesintherightway.Itdoesn’tmeanthatwehavetospeaklikethenative,but it means that we can pronounce the language intelligibly so that we can be understood. Theresearch aims to find out the most difficult long vowels and diphthongs sound pronounced byfifth-semester students of Lambung Mangkurat University academic year 2016/2017. Thepopulation of this study was fifth semester students Lambung Mangkurat University academicyear 2016/2017. The researcher takes 35 students by using purposive sampling technique. Testand interview were used in collecting the data. The result shows that students have difficultiesin pronouncing long vowels and diphthongs duetostudents’firstlanguageandthelackofpractice in speaking English. The most difficult long vowels and diphthongs soundpronounced by students are /ɔ:/; /i:/; /eɪ/; /ɪə/; /əʊ/. Based on the resulting research, it is suggestedto a teacher to use drilling and listen-repeattechniquesmoreoftentopracticestudents’longvowels and diphthongs. Students also need to practice English sounds especially long vowelsand diphthongs more by doing recording, imitating and speak English a lot.