CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
In this chapter the researcher
discusses about background of study, research
problems, objective of the study, and significance of the study, scope and limitation, and definition of key term.
1.1 Background of Study The
primary data of language is sound. Sound is produced by human speech organ to convey message from the
speaker to the hearer. The study of human
speech sound is called as phonology, and the study of the meaningful units of sound and their arrangement into longer
utterances are called as grammar Ramelan
(1988:3). People speak a language as a means of communication with other member of society. Language is also
called as a tool to express the ideas and wishes. Without language, it is hard for
people to cooperate and get along with one
another.
There are around 5000 up to 6000 languages
around the world. From these numbers of
languages of course there are also many ways to produce them. People speak their first language well but it will
different if they learn other languages. In speaking other language or known as second
language most of people get difficulties
in imitating the way pronouncing, stressing, and the intonation. It is because of their organ of speech has set to
produce their first language. Mostly people
get their second language by learning while first language by acquiring. In learning foreign language, people will meet all kinds of learning language problems. The common difficultly is in
learning of the new sound system. The system
of sound can be pronunciation, stressing, intonation, pitch, accent, and relative height.
The degree of difficulties in learningforeign
language is also determined by the
differences between the mother language and the target language. Greater similarities between the languages become
easier to learn the target language.
Indonesian student will find many
difficulties in learning English, because the degree of similarities between Bahasa and
English is very low. The similarities element
between native and target language will make the learner easier to produce the sound, for example, Indonesian
sound of /m/ in word Mata is much like
the sound of /m/ in English in word mother. The similarities of the sound of /m/ make Indonesian student easily use this
native sound to produce the same sound
in target language. This process called as transferring one’s native sound into the native language.
In this research, the researcher
will focus on suprasegmental features.
Because suprasegmental features
concern with the production of the sound. The learner cannot overlook suprasegmental
features because they are usually different in different language. Learner may be produced
the foreign sound correctly, but if the
suprasegmental features of the mother tongue transferred to the foreign language the native speaker will stamp their
speech as “foreign.” (Fromkin, 1997: 216).
The phenomena of English Learner in Indonesia can be the simple example of what Fromkin said. Mostly, English learners
in Indonesia speak English in their mother
tongue or we can say medok. If the learner’s mother tongue is Maduresee, they will speak English as when they speak
Madureseeincluding the stress, intonation,
pitch, and even accent. So do the learners that their mother tongue is Javaneese, Batakneese, Sundaneese, and
Bugineese and so on. Generally, English is
extreme in using stress in speaking than other languages. They reduce unstressed vowel systematically, and will not
control their tongue when producing unstressed
vowel. Instead, the tongue body will reach whatever point is convenient in getting from the preceding
consonant to the following consonant.
The average position reached is
mid-central schwa. Failing to reduce unstressed vowels is one of the major contributors to an
accent in non-native speakers of English.
In many languages, the changing of which
syllable is stressed can change the
meaning of a word.
This research is very important
to be conducted due to mostly of foreign language learners, especially English learner
cannot stress the syllable where it should
be, so the speech they produced sometimes makes an ambiguous meaning, so this research aimed at minimizing
misunderstanding. In addition this research also useful for cross culture understanding.
By knowing the stress, intonation, and pitch
of the speaker we can recognize what is their mother tongue. As Liddicoat in Davies (2004:27) said that the core of
language is sound. This statement is the main reason of this research. Survey of
research topics that were conducted shows preference to make important written language
research and leave spoken language
research.
The data of the table below is taken from the
student thesis topics of English Language
and Letters Department of the Faculty of Humanities and Culture of UIN Malang 2005/2006.
From the
table we may conclude
that there is an unbalanced within
linguistics research, especially in this
University. This research is conducted to fill the discrepancy within language research, which the main data of language is sound.
This research is not the first,
because M. Mukhlas the student of UIN Malang,
Kholifani Utami and Aris Sasongko the student of State University of Malang have conducted the same research. They
were conducting research focus on
mispronunciation that produced by the foreign language learner, which includes as part of phonological study. Beside
those students, the study on phonological
also conducted by Muhammad; post graduated student of English Linguistics department in Sanata Dharma
University. He argues that, when we speak
English means we speak a strange language; when other person speaks English we will hear strange sound too. In
order we be familiar with that sound, we
have to know how to pronounce, stress, intonation, and to produce it.
Field of study Number
Percentage Phonology Discourse analysis Psycholinguistics Sociolinguistics Semantics TEFL (education) Other (literature) 2 34 10 14 22 7 51 2,8%
47,6% 14% 19,6%
30,8% 9,8% 71,4%
1.2 Research Problems 1. What
are the similarities between suprasegmental features produced by the students of English Language and Letters
Department of UIN Malang and those
produced by the speaker in NST TOEFL? 2. What are the differences between
suprasegmental features produced by the students
of English Language and Letters Department of UIN Malang and those produced by the speaker in NST TOEFL? 1.3 Significance of the Study The
phonological study is a pure linguistics study. The result of this study is hoped give contribution to; first, to
enrich cross culture understanding. By knowing
the way our partner speaking saying something such as the way to stress, intonation, pitch and also accent, we can
understand their culture background and their
mother tongue. Secondly is to minimize misunderstanding between native speaker and foreign language learners. Then to
understand imperfection in using language,
that different sound has different meaning thought it has the same phonetics transcription Finally is to develop
not only right English teaching for foreign
language learner but also for native speaker to understand the difficulties that faced by foreign language learner.
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