THE PROBLEMS IN PRONOUNCING ENGLISH CLOSING DIPHTHONGS ENCOUNTERED BY THE SECOND GRADE STUDENTS OF SMA PANCASILA PURWOREJO IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2011/2012

Abstract

Speaking is basically the activity of pronouncing words in order to express or convey thought or idea, and emotion. One of the ways to master speakingsomeone’s skill well for senior high school students is by teaching pronunciation.However, indonesian students often face difficulties in learning English, especially in pronunciation.One of the problems is in pronouncing English diphthong.In the matter of pronouncing English closing diphthong(eI, əu, aI, au, ɔI), the learners are still likely to face difficulties which are caused not only by the different element between their mother tongue and the target language but also their speaking habit of pronouncing the English closing diphthong(eI, əu, aI, au, ɔI). Therefore, this thesis intends to describethe problems in pronouncing English closing diphthong (eI, əu, aI, au, ɔI) encountered by the second grade students of SMAPancasilaPurworejo. Based on that explanation,the writer usesdescriptive qualitative method to describe the problems in pronouncing English closing diphthong (eI, əu, aI, au, ɔI).In collecting data the writer used research instrument to support theresearch.The writer collect the data by using pronunciation test of English closing diphthong(eI, əu, aI, au, ɔI) as the research instrument. After doing the research and analyzing the data for the pronunciation of English closing diphthongs(eI, əu, aI, au, ɔI), the writer concludes that the student still getinterlingual problem in pronouncing sound [əu]. This problem can be showed in the word codes, for example. For the pronunciation the word codes there are 69.6% of the students who pronounce the word unacceptably. The student pronounces the word codes as [kod] or [kɔd] instead of [kəud], the word coat there is 69.6% of the students pronounce the word unacceptably.The student pronounces the wordcoat as [kot] or [kɔt] instead of [kəut] then the word won’tthere are 69.4% of the students student pronounce the word unacceptably. The student pronounces the word won’tas [won] or [wɔn] instead of [wəun]. So, it makes the student fail to pronounce those words correctly.Therefore, the writer hopes that the students need to study more in studying pronunciation. They must be active in English learning process so the result can be utilized in the field of English language teaching.