Pronunciation problems encountered by the Javanese students of SD Katolik Santa Angela Surabaya in the academic year 2000/2001 (an observational study)

Since English is an International language and is being more and more important in any field in the world it is good to learn English as early as possible. In Indonesia, the Elementary School provides English in the fourth grade as one of the subject. It is good start to provide English in the Elementary School as Finocchiaro said that the childhood is the ideal period of learning a foreign language. In order that, the teaching-learning activity in the Elementary School can go smoothly, there is a factor that should be considered. The factor is pronunciation. Considering that the pronunciation is a factor in determining the success of the students, a research on Pronunciation Problems Encountered by the Javanese Students of SD KATOLIK SANTA ANGELA SURABAYA in the Academic Year 2000/2001 is conducted. The objective of this study is described: (1) students whose mother tongue is Javanese face difficulties in learning English pronunciation, and (2) English pronunciation problems among the students of SD KATOLIK SANTA ANGELA SURABAYA whose mother tongue is Javanese. The study shows that the Javanese students face difficulties in learning English pronunciation. The English pronunciation problems among students are (1) segmental phonemes that involve voiced and voiceless sounds, final stop consonants, vowel diphthongs, and clusters. (2) Supra-segmental phonemes involve stresses and intonation. Considering the findings of the study, some conclusions and suggestions are given. For the results of this study, they can not be generalized and applied to a large population, as it was an observational study that only concerned with particular subject under study