AN ANALYSIS OF THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS’ ABILITY 0F ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF FKIP BUNG HATTA UNIVERSITY TO PRONOUNCE ENGLISH DIPHTHONGS

Abstrak

This research was aimed at describing the second year students’ ability in pronouncing diphthongs at FKIP English Department Bung Hatta University Padang. The design of this research was descriptive in nature. The number of population members of this research was 102 students. The researcher used cluster random sampling technique to choose the sample. There are A, B, and C.The instrument used to get the data was oral pronunciation test. The test was tried out to the students out of the sample. The researcher used inter-rater technique. It was found that reliability index of the test in the form of pronouncing diphthong was very high (.83) (see appendix 4). It means that the instrument is reliable.The data of the study were the student’s ability in pronouncing diphthongs. Generally, the result of the data analysis of pronouncing diphthongs showed that 6 students (20%) had high ability in pronouncing diphthongs. Specifically, from data analysis of oral pronunciation test showed that 12 students (40%) had moderate ability in pronouncing centering diphthongs and 24 students (80%) had moderate ability in pronouncing closing diphthongs.Based on the finding of this study, a simple conclusion could be drawn that the students had moderate ability in pronouncing diphthong. So it is suggested to the students to practice more in pronouncing diphthongs. Besides the teacher should give more exercises in pronouncing diphthongs. For the next researcher, the researcher suggests to find what the reason why the students had moderate ability.

Key words: Pronunciation, Phonetics &Pnonology, English Diphthongs