ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN PRONOUNCING ENGLISH VOWELS MADE BY STUDENTS OF JAV LANGUAGE EDUCATION IN PURWOREJO MUHAMMADIYA UNIVERSITY

Abstract

This research is aimed at investigating the difficulties of pronouncing the English vowels made by students’ in discovering sounds that appear to be problem for them. The problems of this study are what kinds of difficulties the students makes in pronouncing English vowels and why these difficulties happen/occur. The research object of this study is second semester and fourth semester students  of Java Language Education in Purworejo Muhammadiyah University in the academic year of 2018/2019. The researcher took 15 students as sample of the research. The instruments used were questionnaire and descriptive text, the researcher use to  recorded  the students’  pronunciation.  The students’  pronunciations  are recorded  then analyzed by transcribing the students’ pronunciation into phonetic transcription. There are twelve types of difficulties in English vowels. There are [e] 9.75%, [ӕ] 8.53%, [ә] 82.9%, [ʊ]

3.65%, [ɒ] 39%, [Ʌ] 12.2%, [ɜ] 15.85%, [ɑ] 6.09%, [ɔ] 14.63%, [i] 43.9%, [u] 4.87%, [ɪ]

40.24%. The vowel [ә], [i] and [ɪ] is the most difficult English vowels pronounced by the students  of  Java  Language  Education.  The  vowel  [ʊ]  is  the  easiest  English  vowels pronounced by students of Java Language Education. The writers suggest   for treating the students’ difficulties by giving a lot of drills and practices of pronunciation so they can acquire the English language well with no interference of Javanese language.

Keywords: Pronunciation, Students’ difficulties, English vowels, Javanese language.