Formal Instruction and Its Effects on the Acquisition of English Affricate Consonants

Abstract

Indonesian and English have some differences dealing with their symbols or phonemes in the points and manner of articulation. On the other hand, they have the same symbols and phonemes in affricate consonants, voiceless alveolar-palatal /ʧ/ and voiced alveolar-palatal /ʤ/. This study therefore aims to find out whether formal instruction improve the acquisition of English fricative consonants by Indonesian learners of English. The study employed quasi experimental design, the nonequivalent control group design. It used two groups, one received treatment (formal instruction) and another group was taught conventionally. The population of this study is students of English Literature Study Program Faculty of Languges and Literature Universitas Negeri Makassar Indonesia. There were 64 students participated as subjects of this study. The subjects ranging from 17 – 19 years old attended an English phonology subject in 2016/2017 academic year. The study reveals that formal instruction improves the acquisition of English affricate consonants by Indonesian learners of English. There are two main conclusions of this study. The first one is that the Indonesian learners of English met difficulties in transcribing English affricate consonants [tʃ] and [dʒ] in pretest, either for control group or experimental group. The second main finding as the primary concern of this study is that the formal instruction improved students’ acquisition of English affricate consonants [tʃ] and [dʒ], where the subjects’ answers toward the list of words significantly improved.