Errors In English Pronunciation

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Strategies to overcome the errors
Due to the pronunciation errors the participants committed, it is found that, as a matter of fact, the participants do realize the difficulties they experience in English pronunciation. Having realized the difficulties, they have put several efforts to overcome their difficulties such as consulting friends, looking up dictionary and checking unfamiliar words from internet. All these efforts can be categorized self-regulated effort since the efforts come from the participants’ inner motivation to overcome their difficulties.
Consulting to those who are assumed to have better English pronunciation has become the most effort the participants did. Unfortunately, a response from an interview revealed that only …show more content…

The above case where the participants tried to imitate the sound from the online dictionaries and yet still find it difficult to pronounce some sounds is one example of Fraser’s statement. Pronouncing alveolar affricative /ʃ/ as in /ˈʃɪp/ or voiceless dental fricative /θ/ which does not exist in Indonesian consonantal system, for example, is not as easy sound to pronounce. Imitation is actually a more complex process than it seems (Fraser, 2006). Further, she stated that the reason is that sound does not simply pass from the ear to the mouth. There is an intermediate step: the sound is heard, subconsciously broken down or processed, and then recreated. According to the cognitive approach, this breaking down and recreation involves the application of concepts. It is failure to recognize the role of concepts that makes the task of learning pronunciation seems so hard, and therefore understanding the role of concepts is the key to helping with pronunciation. Unfortunately, the findings in this study reveal that 92% of the participants admitted they did not have ample knowledge on English …show more content…

The key insight is that pronunciation is a form of behavior, which, like all behavior, is driven by concepts – in this case, concepts of speech (Fraser, 2006). Therefore, though the participants put efforts by looking up both printed and online dictionary. They might still get difficulty for some English sounds that need more attention. Elliot (1995) argues that attitude plays a crucial role when improving pronunciation. This means those who are more concerned about their pronunciation have better pronunciation when learning English as a second or foreign language. In other words, awareness of pronunciation may lead to improving it. However, not only admitting not to have ample knowledge, the fact that they only look up both printed dictionary and online dictionary, which is insufficient, only when they face difficulty in pronunciation without doing other efforts show their less effort. Their less effort might be because of the lack concept of English sounds and its importance. Vivid example of lacking ample knowledge/concept on English sounds come from the evidence that they do not know the existence of the long vowel /I:/ and short vowel /I/, long vowel /ʊ:/ and short vowel /ʊ/. Finally, the condition is worsened by their unawareness of making errors on English

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