BELIEFS AND ATTITUDES TOWARD ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION
OF FIRST YEAR STUDENTS IN INTERPERSONAL SPEAKING
COURSE
Anatasya Rivona Uneputty
Abstract
The objective of the present study is to investigate the beliefs and attitudes of first year students in Interpersonal Speaking Course of English Department of Satya Wacana Christian University. For this objective, twenty-one students who are enrolled in Interpersonal Speaking Course were selected. The study addressed the following research questions: 1) What are first year students of interpersonal speaking class of English Department in Satya Wacana Christian University beliefs and attitudes toward pronunciation in English speaking? 2) What are their beliefs and attitudes towards native and non-native pronunciation also accents of English? The semi-structured interviews were performed to collect the data and there are about thirteen to fifteen items provided in the interview transcript to reach the purpose of this study. The results showed that participants are tend to aspired, appreciated as well as preferred to have native-like pronunciation to the non-native one; even though the majority of them are completely fine and revealed positive attitude towards others who speaks non-native pronunciation. Another findings revealed the
relationship between participant’s positive attitude and their motivation in especially
improving own ability in English speaking and pronunciation where respondents are positively viewed the fluent speakers especially among their friends and as a result, they admitted to become motivated and believed that if their friends can reach such fluency. The
present’s study findings hopefully can contribute a better knowledge for students to take
special consideration of their pronunciation skill as well as enabled teacher to have a better
perception on these learners’ attitudes that could greatly affect the acquisition process of the
students.
