The Mastery of dental fricative sounds [ð] [θ] of the third year students of SMP N 2 Karangawen

Abstract

A Research Paper, Faculty of Language andCultural Studies, Undergraduate Program of Stikubank University. Supervisor:Dra. Katharina Rustipa, M. Pd.    This research paper is entitled The Mastery ofdental fricative sounds [ð] [θ] of the third year students of SMP N 2Karangawen. In this research, the writer attempted to find out the mastery of[ð] [θ] pronunciation of SMP Negeri 2 Karangawen      students and to find out the way thestudents pronounce the dental fricative [ð] [θ] sounds. The writer gavepronunciation test for the students of SMP N 2 Karangawen to read 20 wordscontaining [ð] and 20 words containing [θ]. Then, the analysis is done by comparingthe native speaker’s pronunciation and the students’ pronunciation, transcribedthe recorded students’ speech sounds in phonetic transcription and found outthe errors of the speech sounds made by the students. In order to analyze thedata, the writer uses descriptive qualitative method. The subjects of the studyare 20 students. Three students (20%) pronounced the English terminologiespoorly. Six students (40%) pronounced the English terminologies very poorly.Three students (20%) pronounced the English terminologies fairly, and threestudents (20%) pronounced the English terminologies well. It shows that thestudents have difficulties in pronouncing the English sounds [ð] [θ]. Moststudents’ mastery (40%) to pronounce the dental sounds [ð] [θ] is verypoor.  Based on the findings, it issuggested that the teacher teach the way to produce the dental sounds [ð] [θ]and drill the words containing [ð] [θ] to the students who should practicepronouncing the words containing [ð] [θ] regularly.    Key Words: phonetic transcription, the organsof speech, English speech sounds, English consonants, English dental sounds [ð][θ].