CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A. The Background of the Research Man speaks a language.

He uses the language as a means of communication with other people, as a tool to express his ideas and wishes. Without language it is hard to imagine how people can cooperate and get along with one another. According to Sapir quoted by Lyson (1981:3) in Language and Linguistics, Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols. The signals used to convey message in language are speech sounds, which are produced by mans speech organs. The study of language in general is called linguistic. According to Lyson (1981:36) in Language and Linguistics, Linguistic is usually defined as the science of language or, alternatively, as the scientific study of language. One of the branches of linguistics is phonetic and phonology which concerns with speech and the way humans produce and hear speech. Nowadays, communicating in English is very important because the English language has been recognized to be an International Language in the world. So it is not suprising if English language has to be learnt in every school started from kindergarten until university, because it has become one of the subjects curriculum in the school. The teachers especially who teach English as a foreign language are supposed to use many alternatives in

improving their pronunciation of the students by using cassettes, games, making conversation class and listening the native speakers. By the varied alternatives, it is possible to make the students interested and like to study English very much. Study speaking is easier and happier than learning grammar, writing and reading comprehension, actually language is action because based on Yule (1996:47) in Pragmatics states In attempting to express themselves, people do not only produce utterances containing grammatical structures and words, they perform actions via those utterances. So it should be applied directly what has already been known in daily life. The learners will remember it easily, not only in theory but also in practice. So, pronunciation errors will frequently appear when they learn speaking. Thus, the difficulty encountered by the students in learning a second language is caused by the different elements found between his language and the target language. For example an Indonesian student will find it more difficult to learn English than Dutch student to learn the same language, for instance, because the degree of similarity between Indonesian and English is lower than that found between Dutch and English. There are main supported aspects in society which make the students exactly different with native speakers. The students mother tongue, mostly in big cities in Indonesia, is Indonesian Language. The second language is vernacular language because Indonesia consists of thousand ethnic groups and each of them has different languages.

The foreign language is English. Their languages may influence the foreign language fluency. For that, pronunciation is one of the fundamental elements of language that should be learnt when someone learns a language. One way that is used by the students is by looking for an English course or English community which supports the environment and gives special attention to the pronunciation. This study is about pronouncing errors of vowels, diphthongs and consonants by the second grade students of the Senior High School 24 and the Senior High School 12 Bandung to know the studentss pronunciation and the errors made in their oral English. Because both of them are the favorite schools in Bandung, the writer assumes that the students from those two schools are able to perform their English with correct pronunciation. B. The Aims of the Research There are several aims of the research. Among others could be put forward, as follows: 1. to find out the errors made by the second grade students of the Senior High School 24 and the Senior High School 12 Bandung in pronouncing the simple vowels, diphthongs and consonants, 2. to compare the mispronunciation of the simple vowels, diphthongs and consonants made by the second grade students of the Senior High

School 24 and the Senior High School 12 Bandung without considering the positions. C. The Limitation of the Problems There are several points of limitation of the problems: 1. The writer limits the member of words given to the students. Here she chooses common words, familiar to them. 2. This study is limited to find the phonemic errors and the analysis is based on the way English sound production. D. The Basic Assumptions of the Research The writer would like to present some basic assumptions for the research with the title The Comparative Study of the Errors in Pronouncing the English Vowels, Diphthongs and Consonants between the Second Grade Students of Senior High School 24 and Senior High School 12 Bandung,: 1. The second grade of Senior High School has already obtained enough practice in pronouncing common words. Both of them belong to government school so the students, more or less, have been given the same materials. 2. The lack of quality of time and frequency of learning and practicing the language as well as the amount of materials may present different result. The more practice they do the better achievement they get. 3. The percentages of mispronunciation in simple vowels, diphthongs and consonants may be the same but they may vary in the kind of errors in pronouncing them.
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E.

The Benefits of the Research There are some benefits of this research, they are: 1. For the Writer a. b. c. 2. It can give knowledge about English pronunciation. It can help improve her English pronunciation. To practise the theory of producing English sounds correctly.

For the Teachers a. b. To be a teaching materials in explaining pronunciation in class. To be a source of information in improving the pronunciation of the English vowels, diphthongs and consonants of the students.

3.

For the Institution a. b. To enrich the source of reference about English pronunciation. To be a source of research matters about English pronunciation.

4.

For Knowledge Development a. To contribute knowledge based on a research about pronunciation errors of the English simple vowels, diphthongs and consonants. b. To be input for knowledge development about English

pronunciation. c. To support the development of teaching foreign languages, particularly English