Introduction

Language is a means of communication in our daily lives. Good pronunciation in

English results in successful communication and enabling us to get a message across
more effectively (Van Weeren & Theunissen, 1987). Beebe (1984) insists that
pronunciation always affects what we communicate and how well we communicate it. If
having poor pronunciation will cause the communication breakdown and lead to
confusion. In Malaysia, the students face the pronunciation problem. Hence , this report
is done to investigate the some of the pronunciation errors encountered by primary
school pupil. A year 4 pupil, from SJK (C) Kung Min is to study the ability to pronounce
the words correctly. There are five types of pronunication errors made by the students:

inconsistency of English consonants and vowels, consonants clusters, inability to

differentiate long and short vowels, misplace of articulation and unable and difficulties in
word stress.
Causes

First of all, the student faced the problem of inconsistency of English consonants
and vowels. This is because their mother tongue influences them to have difficulty with
pronunciation. Tinloy et al. (1988) claimed that people use their first language to help
them learn the second language thus many errors are made derive from the influence of
their native language. The learners tend to substitute those sounds with nearest
equivalents in their mother tongue when that particular sound does not exist in the native
language. For example, there are no consonants like //, // in Chinese language.
Hence, learners will substitute either /t/, or /f/ for // and either /d/ or /v/ for //.

To minimise this pronounciation error, a good language teacher should use some
learning strategies like self-help learning, self-directed learning to improve students
pronunciation (Tricia, 2002). For example, teacher could use tongue twister which is
good for pronunciation training. Tongue twister has many benefits. It is a language game
and very funny, besides it is a good practice to train Chinese English speakers who have
problem of mispronunciation. Teachers could encourage those students practice tongue
twisters before the blackboard, in groups, and even after class or at home. Hence, English
tongue twisters is a good way to correct the mispronunciation. To summarise, learners
should often read out loud their English vocabulary words not only tongue twisters as it

can help us to improve the pronunciation.

Next, the problems of consonants clusters. It is caused by the position of
phonemes and the way of combining them. They are different in the two languages. It is
a challenge for them to produce those sounds because there are no consonant clusters
in Chinese language. Chinese speakers tend to insert a schwa // in consonant clusters.
For example, /bk/ for the word blank or eliminate a consonant by pronouncing the
word stank as /tk/. Hence,the learners must speak English frequently and increase
the amount exposure to English to overcome the problem.
Thirdly, Chinese speakers tend to reduce the distinction between long and short
vowels in English (Zhao, 1995). This is due to an English sound occurs in the native
language, but not as separate phonemes. It means that Chinese speakers do not
perceive it as a distinct sound that makes difference to meaning. Hence, no matter the
vowel is long or short, it does not make any changes in meaning. However, in English
phonemes, /i:/ and /i/ differs a lot in meaning. For instance, the words of sheep and
ship. The sound // also exist in Chinese language but they are not aware of the
difference in English and Chinese and may not even hear that difference.

Hence, Tiee (1969) suggested a lot of exercises in minimal pairs needed to reinforce
the learners pronunciation and thus produce English sounds correctly. Minimal pairs, a
pair of words which differ only in the two sounds being focused on. For example, in the
English words Met and Net are a minimal pair which contrasts /m/ and /n/. When we
substitute /m/ for /n/ in this way and bring about a change in meaning, we say that the
sounds in question are phonemes and that there is a phonemic distinction between them
(Yang, 2005). It will definitely help the learners to distinguish the short and long vowels
in words.
Next, Chinese learners face the problem of misplace of articulation. The place of
articulation and manner of articulation function are not the same within the two
languages. Voiced and voiceless are the distinctive features in English. However, the
distinctive feature in Chinese is aspiration. For example, only /sh/ and /r/ in Chinese is a
pair of voiceless and voiced sounds, while the striking contrast between the two is /sh/ is
on voiced and voiceless sounds. Consequently, the erroneous substitution takes place

when they tend to produce the sound wrongly. For example, the English /r/ and // are
very different from the Mandarin Chinese /r/ and /sh/. This is because the place of
articulation and the manner of articulation of the sounds in two languages are not the
same. The words English, pronunciation and rose are uncomfortably heard when
produced by Chinese speakers. (Zhang & Yin, 2009). s

Effective measures should be taken to minimise or overcome this type of

pronunciation errors. Teacher need to give some pronunciation correction practice for the
students. For example, students are required to divide into few groups and practise Read
Out Loud activities. They should be divided into mixed groups, which are good for
learning practice (Huang, 2010). Mixed group is important as learners from different
background, races could easily detect the mispronunciation and how to make the
correction of English pronunciation. Thus, they will learn from mistake and improve the
pronunciation. It is effective approach to overcome the problems misplace of articulation
Last but not least, the aspect of stress including word stress is highly
problematical for Chinese learners. Some Chinese learners had a lot of difficulty with
the English phonological system which is influenced by their mother tongue (Juffs,
1990). The author claimed that Chinese students tend to make errors in stress as tone is
important in Chinese language and stress may be considered as tone. The number of
syllables is the basic for Chinese rhythm and every syllable takes equally long time.
However, in English rhythm, the basic is stress which takes more time to pronounce. If
Chinese learners produce a word with the wrong stress pattern, an English listener will
have difficulty in understanding the word.
In order to minimise the difficulty in word stress, language teachers must emphasis
on suprasegmentals. Both suprasegmental and segmental are one of the essential
features in pronunciation. It is vital to remember as they all work in combination when we
are speaking. Teachers should not neglect the suprasegmental features and pay more
attention to isolated sounds or phonemes. For instance, teacher can present a few
examples of sets related words, and ask the students to find the differences in the
placement of the main stress. This is the strategy to get them to discover the rules for
themselves. Therefore, it will foster them to master the English suprasegmental features

through plenty of imitation and exercise.

Conclusion
Pronunciation plays an important role in speaking correct English. Hence, everyone
must look into the the pronunciation error in oder to learn English well.

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