The Possible Causes For The Pronunciation Problem.

The Possible Causes of the Pronunciation Problem After we analysed the recording of the data, it can be fathomed out
that the subject has some visible pronunciation problems. There are several possible causes of the pronunciation problem. After listening to the recording for several times, we discovered five causes that can possibly interfere with the subjects English pronunciation. Such possibly causes are mother tongue interference, ethnicity, geographical aspect, social-economic background and educational background. Mother tongue interference is a common occurrence among second language speakers (Swan, 2008). As for the subject, English is not her first language but she has been exposed to English language since she was in primary school. Supposedly there should not have been any problem with her pronunciation. But, the subject still faces with some pronunciation problem. This is probably due to the fact that she uses her mother tongue widely in her daily life communication activity. The spelling or pronunciation patterns and habits of first language (L1) can influence the pronunciation of English learner (Dechert, 1983 and Ellis, 1997 as cited in Baljit Bhel, 1999). Other than that, the differences in written and spoken English language can also cause problems to English learners. Mohammad Maher Jesry (2005) mentioned in his research that the lack of a simple correspondence between the spelling system and the pronunciation system in English tends to cause problems for second language learners in which it can lead them to initially or repeatedly misspell words and mispronounce them. Besides that, ethnicity can also influence the interference of second language learners pronunciation. Our subject is a Malay girl raised up in Sabah (Borneo) and she is use to speak Malay language as it is her first language. Every ethic or race will
usually have their own language or dialect. In fact, there is a wide difference between the vowel in Malay language and in English (Deterring, 2005). In Malays language, there is no long vowel; therefore it effects subjects pronunciation as she tends to pronounce the long vowel short. Geographical demographic can also causes interference in subjects pronunciation. As for our subject who happens to be a Malay raised in Sabah (Borneo), her Malay language is highly influence with the local dialect. For example, the dialect spoke in Kelantan is totally different from the one spoken in Kedah. There is a possibility that when they learnt new language the accent interfere with their learning. As for the subject, who is a Sabahan who lives in Sabah in which is situated in East Malaysia and near to Kalimantan Indonesia. Therefore, her pronunciation might be effected by the Indonesian accent. Subjects socio-economical background also plays an important role in subjects exposure to English language. Subject comes from a farmer family as both of her parents are working as farmer. Therefore, we can safely assume that her parents might have not been able to buy her books or let her goes to tuition to further enhance here proficiency in English language, thus affected her. This might have been different case to the students who live in urban area and come from a loaded family as they can effort extra books and tuition classes to enhance their proficiency. Other than all the reasons mentioned earlier, the subjects educational background can also affect her pronunciation. As mentioned earlier, subject is a Sabahan and most of the schools in East Malaysia do not have enough facilities to cater to students needs. Besides, in rural area it is difficult to have enough and good
teaching forces to teach English in school. Compare to urban area where people can easily get access to the teaching forces.
References. Mike Swan, (2005). Retrieved from http://www.mikeswan.co.uk/elt-applied-linguistics/influencesecond-language.htm Mohammad Maher Jesry, (2005). Retrieved from Http://colleges.ksu.edu.sa/Arabic%20Colleges/CollegeOfLanguages/Documents/%D9%85%D8%AC% D9%84%D8%A9%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9/18%20%D8%A7%D9%84% D9%85%D8%AC%D9%84%D8%AF%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AB%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%86%20%D8 %B9%D8%B4%D8%B1/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D9%88%D8%B5%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%AA%20% D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D9%85%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9%20%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%AD%D8%B3 %D9%8A%D9%86%20%D9%84%D9%81%D8%B8%20%D8%B7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%A8%20%D8%A 7%D9%84%D9%84%D8%BA%D8%A9%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D9%86%D8%AC%D9%84%D9% 8A%D8%B2%D9%8A%D8%A9.pdf Dechert, (1983) and Ellis, (1997) as cited in Baljit Bhel, (1999). Retrieved from http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education/iej/articles/v1n1/bhela/bhela.pdf David Detering, (2005). Retrieved from http://www.ubd.edu.bn/academic/faculty/FASS_V2.1/staff/papers/DD/esea-comm.pdf

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The Possible Causes of the Pronunciation Problem After we analysed the recording of the data, it can be fathomed out

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