Error Analysis in Pronouncing English Diphthong By Mandailing English Students

Abstract

This study aims to find out the mistakes of first semester English students in pronouncing English diphthongs. Efforts made are tests and interviews. This study was conducted using a qualitative method and was carried out in three stages, namely recording students' pronunciation in pronouncing English diphthongs, secondly classifying the types of errors in the sounds produced by students, and interviewing students to find out why students made mistakes when pronouncing English diphthongs. Of the three stages, it will be explained in detail what the wrong English diphthongs are and the reason for the error clearly. The results of this study show that there are several English diphthong sounds that are often found incorrectly when students pronounce the sounds [ɛə], [eu] and [au] the most commonly found errors are surface strategy taxonomy in misformation type errors and intralingual. The data shows that the sudents still confuse in pronouncing diphthong properly as one of speaking's part in English learning, who must be mastered as university students who take English major. All the reasons for the pronunciation errors made by these students are due to lack of understanding of phonetics and diphthongs, mother tongue, carelessness, translation. owever, in this study, students could also pronounce several diphthong letters almost correctly, such as [ei], [ai], [oi], [ie], [ue].