Analysis of Journal titled "Vowel Duration in English as a 2nd language among Javanese Learners, Journal by Leiden University's students Analysis by Brawijaya University's English Department students

1. Vowel Duration in English
as a 2nd Language
Among Javanese Learners
Perwitasari, Klamer, Witteman, Schiller
Leiden University Centre for Linguistics,
Netherlands
Shanis Irsamayanti (155110100111022)
Sinta Dewi Anggraeni (155110100111024)

2. Arum Perwitasari, Marian Klamer, Jurriaan
Witteman, and Niels O. Schiller (2013) conducted a study
about the vowel duration in English among the Javanese
learners.
The authors interested in this topic because there
were some significant differences about the vowel system
between Javanese people who learn English and the
native English speakers.
There are 2 hypotheses about this topic which are
Feature Hypothesis and Desensitization hypothesis.

3. • Feature Hypothesis
Javanese learners of English will have difficulty in producing the
target vowel duration. Specifically, they are predicted to have
difficulties in producing long sounds /i:, /ɜ:/, /ɑː/, ɔ:/, /u:/ and
are expected to pronounce short sounds /I/, / e/, /æ/, /ʌ/, /ʊ/
successfully.
• Desensitization hypothesis
Javanese learners of English will not have any difficulties to
produce English long vowels /i:/, /ɜ:/, /ɑː/, ɔ:/, /u:/.
Based on these two hypotheses, the authors would
like to prove which one of these hypotheses that could best
explain the pattern of English vowel duration delivered by the
Javanese people who learn English.

4. Participants
• 10 native speakers of American English aged 21-30 who
have no idea about Javanese language
• 20 Javanese learners of English aged 21-25 who have
never lived in English speaking country

5. Method
• Each participant took a seat in front of a computer with
active mode recording tools.
• All participants produced a set of words contained 10
Monopthongs (contained 5 long vowels and 5 short vowels)
in a random order.
• It was recorded and repeated twice.

6. Findings
• Javanese learners of English had problems in producing
the correct duration of long vowels /iː/, /ɜː/, /ɔː/ and /uː/
• The way Javanese learners produced short vowels /ɪ/, /e/,
/æ/, /ʌ/, /ʊ/ were shorter than the native speakers of
English.
• It will be difficult for people to produce vowels in the
second language if the phonetic features do not exist in
their first language.
• The authors then concluded that the Javanese learners
seemed unaware of both long and short duration of
English vowels.

7. Conclusion
• The results are similar to the Feature Hypothesis, which
states that Javanese learners have difficulties in producing
duration in native like manners.
• However the results are contrasted to the Desensitization
hypothesis which claimed that the Javanese learners of
English will not have any difficulties to produce English
short and long vowels.

8. Review
From our point of view, we are agreed with the findings
that stated by this research. Moreover, we are also
Javanese and we still find it hard sometimes in
pronouncing English short and long vowels in the
correct durations. This means that we as a Javanese
learners of English should try our best to pronounce
English vowels in the correct way.