ABSTRACT
The final project mainly aims at determining the dominant errors made by the students in pronouncing the words containing English voiceless plosive consonants. This study was conducted because in Indonesia have one variant only. On the other hand, in English has more than one variant. They are aspirated and not aspirated. Therefore, it is possible that the students find some difficulties to pronounce the words containing English voiceless plosive consonants.
A pronunciation test was used to gather the data. Twenty four (24) sentences were pronounced by the students. The students’ pronunciation were transcribed into phonetic transcription and then analyzed. The test was given to 33 students as the samples or 14.6% out of the fifth semester students of the English Department of UNNES in the academic year of 2008/2009 numbering 226 students. A purposive random sampling was used to get the samples.
The errors were classified into two categories. They are English voiceless plosives consonants [p], [t], and [k] in stressed syllable and English voiceless plosive consonants [p], [t], and [k] in unstressed syllable. Based on the analysis, the mean or proportion of the errors made by the 33 students in pronouncing English voiceless plosive consonants [p], [t], and [k] was 35.61%. Meanwhile, they made 53.28% errors out of the English voiceless plosive consonants in stressed syllables and 17.93% errors out of the English voiceless plosive consonants in unstressed syllables.
From the analysis of students’ wrong pronunciation, the writer took some conclusions. The students are “excellent” in pronouncing English voiceless plosive consonants [p], [t], and [k] in unstressed syllables but the students are “fair” in pronouncing English voiceless plosive consonants [p], [t], and [k] in stressed syllables.
Based on the result of the research, it could be suggested that for the teachers, they should be good model in pronouncing English sounds, pay more attention to their student’s pronunciation and teach them more about English sounds. For the students, they should learn and practice more in pronouncing English sounds especially English voiceless plosive consonants [p], [t] and [k].
