CHAPTER II – LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
Present study examines the English pronunciation errors which are related to the long and short vowels in English made by eight undergraduates of Chinese Studies. The data is collected after the respondents read the words that are given, listen to the recording of their pronunciation and analyze the errors based on contrastive analysis and error analysis. This chapter will begin by introducing the contrastive analysis and error analysis and the comparison of English and Mandarin vowel systems. Then the discussion continues by reviewing several past studies.
Contrastive Analysis and Error Analysis
Contrastive Analysis was first proposed by Charles C. Fries and is a comparison of the similarities and differences between the native languages and the target language (Fauziati, 2014). Error Analysis is a procedure for analysis on second language data which focuses on learner errors and the evidence of how learner errors could provide an understanding of the underlying processes of second language acquisition (Fauziati, 2014).
The comparison of English and
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According to Liang (2014), Mandarin-Chinese speakers have difficulty in pronouncing dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ and the regular plural forms. The major problems appear in the vowels and diphthongs. For example, they were confused between /i:/, /I/ and /eI:/. The substitution of /s/ for /θ/ is typical for Mandarin speakers from the Northern part of China. It is believed that the Chinese pronunciation has an impact on learners’ production of English sounds. So certain pronunciation features of Chinese speakers are closely related to the Chinese language. Their pronunciation features usually follow systematic patterns rather than randomly happening (Liang,