A study on suprasegmental features produced by the English department students of UIN Malang

Language is made of sound. Study of sound is called as phonology. In phonology, there is a term named as suprasegmental features that is used in pronouncing English words. In relation to pronunciation, suprasegmental plays an important role to make the hearer understands what the speaker says. Every person in the world pronounces English words with their suprasegmental features. Thus, it is possible for us, as English students, to produce different suprasegmental features although in the same word or sentence. The suprasegmental features appears different in characteristic. Therefore, it is very interesting to investigate and analyze the difference of the characteristic of English students’ supraegmental features and English native’s suprasegmental features. The research problems are formulated as follows: (1) What are the characteristics of suprasegmentals features produced by the fourth year students of English Letters and Language Department of UIN Malang? and (2) What are the main differences between the characteristics of suprasegmentals features produced by the English Department students of and the suprasegmentals features produced by English native speakers? Meanwhile, the the objectives of this research are: (1) to investigate the characteristic of suprasegmental features produced the fourth year students of English Letters and Language Department of UIN Malang and (2) to find out the main differences between the characteristic of suprasegmental features produced by the fourth year students of English Letters and language Department of UIN Malang and those produced by the English native speaker.

To answer the problems, the researcher uses gold Wave Editor to measure stress amplitude that is introduced by JWM Verhaar and intonation contour that is introduced by Laurel J Brinton. The researcher, then, focuses on intonation and stress characteristic of English students and native speakers. Methodologically, the researcher exerts descriptive qualitative study as his research design. The data were collected by recording and analyzed the result by using Gold Wave editor to find each characteristic.

From all nine analyzed sentences, the findings show that the English students pronounced some words faster and junctures between a word and the coming word more frequently than the English native speaker. The differences of stressing of their utterances are in the way they pronounce and give junctures. When a word is pronounced faster and read with no pause or juncture, the amount of energy of the sound is lower. It means the amplitude is also low. The lower amplitude of a sound indicates that the word is stressed with weak stress.

The difference of the intonation contour of their utterances is caused by the weak and strong stress of some words. The English native speaker pronounces some words and junctures within two words more frequently, so the intonation contour of their utterances are more long falling than rising. On the other hand, English learners pronounce the words slower and give pause within two words, consequently the amplitude of the words are higher that results the rising intonation contour more than long falling intonation contour.

The researcher suggests that the future researcher conduct similar topic of the study but with different aspects of suprasegmental such as pitch, accent, rhythm, and tempo with more complete data and discussion and also with different subject of the research.