INTRODUCTION

Pronunciation Problems Among Primary School Pupils.

Nowadays, English language is so widely spoken and it has been referred as a

global language. Although, English is not the official language in many countries such

as Korea and Japan, it is the language that most often taught as a second language in

many countries including our country which is Malaysia. Moreover, English is the

primary language that used in international academic and business communities.

We as a Malaysian are known as non-native speakers of English often have

problems with pronunciation of vowel or consonants sounds. This is because most of us

started to learn English formally in primary school. Pronunciation problem occur starting

from primary school which became the reason why most Malaysian have speak broken

English because they are always used the wrong pronunciation of English words.

From my observation, I have identified many mistakes of pronunciation done by

the primary school students, but here I would like to discuss two of them including the

cause of those problems.

Problem 1 : Diphthong pronunciation problems

Many of the primary students have the difficulties in pronouncing diphthongs.

According to Kristn Denham (2010), diphthong is a sound made by gliding from one

vowel position to another. It means that diphthongs are represented phonetically by

sequences of two vowels, the first showing the starting point and the second indicating

the direction of movement. For example, some of the students cannot pronounce the

word ‘sky’ as / skaɪ /. They can pronounce the /ᴂ/ sound but they cannot glide and

moved into another vowel sound. Another example is most students pronounced the

word ‘pay’ as /pᴂy/ instead of /peɪ/.

Problem 2 : Words with ‘N’ pronunciation problem

Some students make a mistakes when pronouncing the word ‘man’ as ‘mang’

which the phonetic symbol is / məŋ/. Some of the students pronounce the word ‘began’

as /bɪ’gᴂŋ/ instead of /bɪ’gᴂn/. Obviously they have difficulties to pronounce the nasal

consonant ‘N’. They preferred to sound ng /ŋ/ as the replacement of silent N. Another

example is the word ‘rainbow’ which is pronounced as / ˈreɪŋbəʊ/ instead of /ˈreɪnbəʊ/.

In oder to pronounce that word correctly, their tip of tongue should meet with alveolar

ridge to sound a proper /n/ that supposed to be uttered.

Cause of the problem

Based on my observation, the first problem which is diphthong pronunciation

problems are caused by the words that most students do not know that words contain

diphthongs and they do not know the kind of English sounds. Some students are lack of

vocabulary that caused them difficult to pronounce the unfamiliar words. Sometimes,

the words that they are pronounced are influenced by their mother tongue since most

students use their mother tongue widely in their daily life communication activity.

For the second problem, I have identified students have different English’s

accent that influenced by their dialect. Under normal circumstances, some Malay

speakers speak Malay language using different accent depends on where they are live.

This problem is happening to Kelantanese whereas their English affected by their

accent. Based on my observation, when a Kelantanese speaks, there will be no /n/

sound at the back of a word but /ŋ/ is always used as their choices in speaking. That is

the reason why some students from Kelantan and Terengganu find that are difficult to

pronounce words that contain /n/ sound.