In speaking there are five components of speaking, such as:
pronunciation, vocabulary, structure, comprehension and fluency. From those components, pronunciation is one aspect that important not only in speaking but almost in learning English.
1. Definition of Pronunciation
Pronunciation is the art or manner of pronunciation something;
articulate utterance (Webster‘s third new international dictionary: 1996).
Certainly, pronunciation cannot be separated from intonation and stress.
Pronunciation, intonation, and stress are largely learned successfully by imitating and repetition. Therefore, the teachers should have good standards of pronunciation in order that the students can imitate their teacher in any teaching and learning process, but we cannot expect our students to sound exactly like an American and Britain. There are some definitions of pronunciation given by linguists as follows:
a. Hay Graft in Samara (2003: 6) states that the pronunciation is the way of expressing the sounds of the words. He argues that in teaching pronunciation, Teacher‘s model the pronunciation and the later asks the students to judge every word he is saying. The words
that he says are consisted of two different words but almost it is the same pronunciation namely minimal pairs. The students‘ task is to judge which one of the words the teacher is saying. He further explains that to teach pronunciation through this way will enable the students to get the differences among several sounds.
b. According to Broughton in Rahmah (2010: 7) that pronunciation is the way to sound the words of which to give its meaning. He continues that in teaching pronunciation, the teacher has to repeat the sound of words the pronunciation as for as the students can get the perfect.
c. Byrne in Salma (2004: 4) defines that pronunciation is the sounds that a speaker can imitate from the other. In this case, a listener can imitate from the speaker and then say that something to other listener.
d. Hornby in Rachim (2007: 22) gives there definitions of pronunciation. First, pronunciation is the way in which a language is spoken. Second, pronunciation is a person‘s way of speaking a language, or words of a language. Third, pronunciation is the way in which a word is pronounced.
e. Hay in Rachim (2007: 22) state that by teaching pronunciation the teacher givea method or pronunciation and later asks the students to judge every word they say of two different kinds but almost the same as pronunciation namely, the minimal pairs. The students
task is to judge which one of the teaching of pronunciation through this way enables the students to get the different among several sounds.
f. Cook (1993: 31) in Nurwahidah. M. (2010: 4) states that pronunciation is considered a set of habits for producing sound.
The habit of producing the sound /i/ is acquired by repeating it many times and by being corrected when it is pronounced wrongly.
Pronunciation is usually found in the countries where English is thought and learned as a second foreign language.
2. Learning English Pronunciation
We should study English pronunciation because pronunciation is the biggest thing that people notice about our English. We should study if even if we think we can already communicate in English.
3. The level of Good English Pronunciation
There are three levels of English pronunciation as follows:
a. Level 1: People often don‘t understand what you want to say.
Use the wrong sounds in English words.
b. Level 2: People understand what you want to say, but it is unpleasant to listen to you.
c. Level 3: People understand you, and your English is pleasant to listen to you.
Level 3 will be called good pronunciation. Notice that good pronunciation is not ―perfect America or British accent‖ you don‘t have to
sound like the Queen of England or the President of the United State of America. Why not? because there are many regional kinds of English. In England, people from New castle spoken English differently from people in London.
4. Segmental Phonemes
Phoneme is the smallest meaningful unit of sound in a language. A meaningful sound is one that will change one word into another word. For example, the words cat and fat are two different words, but there is only one sound that is different between the two words - the first sound. That means that the ―k‖ sound in cat and the ‗f‘ sound in fat are two different morphemes Celce in Rahmah (2010: 45).
To classify and describe the sound of the speech, linguistics makes the use of the speech apparatus. The stream of speech is divided into segmental according to the way the sound is produced.
a. The English Vowel
What are vowels? According to Boy in Iskandar(1975: 16) that vowels are those segments speech produced without any interruption or stoppage of the air stream. Passage of air is continuous and frictionless.
According to Crystal (1991: 376) vowel is phonetically the sounds which are articulated without complete closure in the mouth or a degree of narrowing which would produce audible friction, the air escapes evenly over the centre of the tongue.
Jackson (1982: 20) states that vowels are the sounds which are made by many kind of closure or impediment to the escape of the air through the mouth.
According to Roach (1987: 10) vowel is the sounds in which there is no obstruction to flow of air as it passes from the larynx to the lips.
While Ba‘dulu (2004: 22) defines that vowels are sounds produced with little obstruction the vocal tract and are generally voiced. The English vowels, which are twelve in numbers, are classified in accordance with two factors, they are the position of the tongue in the mouth or risen in varying degrees in the front towards the hard palate or the back towards the soft palate.
The horizontal lines above show to what level of the tongue is raised or lowered while the vertical lines show to what part of the tongue is raised.
1) Classification of the vowels
The vowels are classified based on the horizontal and vertical movement of the tongue.
a) Based on the horizontal lines, they are front vowels, central vowels, and back vowels.
b) Based on the vertical lines. The vowels, which are in vertical lines, are close vowel, half-close vowels, half-open vowels.
2) Vowels in Detail
a) /i/- front vowel: close. The /i/ vowel is pronunciation by raising the front of the tongue high towards the hard palate and the distance between upper and lower jaw is small, the lips are spread and the tongue is tense. The vocal cards vibrate. This vowel occurs in the words like: tree, even, key, seize, people, etc.
b) /l/ - front vowel: half-close. It is pronunciation by raising the tongue to appoint between half-close and close. The whole body of the tongue is a little retracted from the front position the lips are spread. The /l/ vowel occurs initially, medially and finally. This vowel occurs in the words like: pit, remain, busy, build, etc.
c) /ʒ/- central vowels: nearly half-close: unrounded. To pronounce this vowel /ʒ/ vowel is pronounced in which the highest art of tongue lies where the front and the back meet. The lips are spread. It occurs in the word like: bird, heard, bum, her, serve, church.
d) /æ/ - front vowel: nearly open. This vowel is pronounced by raising the front of the tongue: it is very slightly, to appoint midway between half-open and open. The lips are spread. The /æ/ vowel occurs in initially and medially. It occurs in the words like: black, hands, rash, marry, etc.
e) /ð/ - central vowel: nearly half-close: unrounded. To pronounce this vowel the central part of the tongue is raised. It is raised to half-open position or slightly less. The lips are spread. It occurs initially, medially, and finally. The /ð/sound occurs in the words like: ago, father, payment, particularly, modern, effort, doctor, color, famous, etc.
f) /u: / - back vowel: close, rounded. This vowel is pronounced by raising the back of the tongue high towards the soft palate. The lips are considerable, rounded and slightly protruded. The /u: / vowel occurs in the words like: mood drew, do, group, June, juice, suit, lose, chew, and soup.
g) /u/ - back vowel: almost half-close. The /u/ vowel is pronounced by raising the part of the back of position between half-close and close. The lips show a fair degree of rounding.
This vowel occurs in medially only. It occurs in the words like book, put, fill, and look, could, should.
h) /ʌ/ - back vowel: half-open, not rounded. To pronounce this vowel, the fore part of the tongue is raised, somewhat higher than for /o /. The lips are spread and remain passive. The /ʌ/
occurs initially and medially. It occurs in the words like: nut, come, does, blood, country, couple, one, among, some, sun, etc.
i) /a: / back vowel: open. The tongue is held low down in the mouth and the back is slightly raised. The lips are neutral. It
occurs in initial, medial, and final position. This can be found in the words like car, father, march, etc.
The /a: / vowel has the spelling forms as follow:
1. Before r + consonants : bar, car, far, arch, arm, harvest, charm, etc.
2. Before sk, sp, ss, st: ask, cask, flask, rasp, grass, last, fast, etc.
3. Before ff, ft, lv, lm, and final th, the words are: chaff, staff after, raft, calf, half, calve, calm, bath, path, etc.
4. Before the groups: nce, nch, nt, and the ending, mand. The words are chance, dance, branch, can’t, grant, plant, command, and demand.
5. Au: aunt, laugh, draught.
6. Er: clerk, sergeant.
j) /o:/ - back vowel: half-open. The back of the tongue is raised: it is nearly to the half-open position. The lips are between open rounding. The jaws are fairly wide apart. It occurs in initial, medial, and final position. /o:/ sound occurs in the words like:
audience, august, house, stork, floor, more, saw, thought, sought, four, etc.
k) /o/ - back vowel: nearly open. The back of the tongue is in the upper molar. The lips are slightly rounded. This vowel occurs in initial and medial position. It can be found in the words like
dog, sorry, hot, was, what, swam, quality, because, sausage, laurel, knowledge and so on.
Vowels can be described in term of the manner and place of articulation are as follows:
Table 2.1 The Vowels of English:
Kelly (2000: 5) b. The English Consonant
Consonant are sounds used before or after a vowel or diphthong from syllable. According to Karim in Iskandar (2012: 25) in this case consonant are viewed according to the place of articulation and the manner of articulation.
1) Consonant according to the place of articulation
This system refers to the ways on which the sounds are made or how the air system is midfield by the vocal tract to produce the sounds. Jackson (1982: 45) defines consonant those speech sounds which are produced with some kinds of closure in the mouth, restricted to the escape of air, he further identified the consonant in six groups of closure discussed below:
No
Front Central Back
High
I, i: υ, u:
Mid ε: Ә, 3: Ɔ:
Low ae: ʌ a, ɒ:
a) Bilabial consonant, made with two lips, those are /p/, /b/, /m/, /w/
b) Labiodentals consonants, made with lower □ lips and upper front teeth, those are /f/ and /v/
c) Dental consonants, made with the tongue tip or the blade of the tongue and the upper front teeth, they are /θ/, /ð/
d) Alveolar consonants, made with the tongue blade and the back of the alveolar ridge, they are /t/, /d/, /n/, /s/, /z/, /l/
e) Palate-alveolar consonants, made with the tongue blade and the back of the alveolar ridge, they are /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, and /r/.
f) Palatal consonant, made with the front tongue and the hard palate that is /j/.
g) Velar consonants made with the back of the tongue and the soft palate, they are /k/, /g/, /ŋ/.
h) Glottal consonant, utilized to produce a sound in the glottis, that is /h/ it is hard, the sound between plosive and fricative.
Those sounds are /t/ and /d/ and they are called affricative.
2) Consonant according to the manner of articulation
This system refers to the ways on which the sounds are made or how the air system is midfield by the vocal tract to produce the sound. Jakcson (1982:50) defines consonantthose speech sounds which are produced with some kinds of closure in
the mouth, restricted to the escape of air. He further identified the consonant in six groups of closure discussed below:
a) Plosive (stop) the sounds which are produced by involved complete closure in the mouth, can‘t escape the air through nasal cavity and plosive after the release of the closure. It consists of /p/ in park, /b/ in beak, /t/ in town, /k/ in could, /g/ in good.
b) Nasal the sounds which are produced by involving a complete closure in mouth, but unlike to plosive, the soft palate in lowered so that air escape through the nose. Consonants which are produced consist of /m/ in meat, /n/ in next, and /□/ in young.
c) Fricative is the sound of the air produced by air escape through/f/ in leaf, /v/ in vast, h a small passage and makes a hissing sound. The consonant include /f/ in leaf, /v/ in vast, /θ/
in thief, /ð/in cloth, /s/ in sea, /z/ in zoo, /ʃ/ in shoes, /ʒ/ in work, /h/ in half.
d) Affricative sounds which are produced of the related to both plosive and fricatives. Consonants consist of /tʃ/ in choice, and /□/ in ridges.
e) Lateral is an obstruction to the air stream at a point along the centre of the oral tract, with incomplete closure between one or
both sides of the tongue and the roof of the mouth. Consonants consist of /l/ in long.
f) Approximant the sound involved a near closure in the mouth but without the friction. Consonants consist of /w/ in will, /r/ in room, and /j/ in use.
Consonants can be described in term of the manner and place of articulation are as follows:
Table 2.2TheConsonants of English:
Place of articulatio
n
Bilabial Dental Palatal Velar Glottal
Manner of articulation
Voi ce Les s
Voic ed
Voi ce Les s
Vo ice d
Voice less
Voi ced
Voi ce less
Voice d
Voice less
Voi ced
Stop p b t d k g ?
Fricative s z h
Affricates c,n,c j
Nasal m N h
Lateral l,r
Semivowel w Y
Kelly(2000: 7)
3) Word Stress
According to Iskandar (2012: 23) the when a word has many syllables, one of them is always pronounced more strongly, this is called word stress, and we say that the syllable is stressed. For example, in the word become, the stressed syllable is come.
Dictionaries tell us which syllable is stressed. The most popular system is to put an apostrophe (‗) before the stressed syllable in the phonetic transcription of the word. For example, the transcription for become is /bl’klim/.
If a words has only one syllable (for example: pen, house), the syllable I always stressed. Dictionary usually does do not put an apostrophe before the only syllable. So they do not write /’pen/- they simply write /pen/.