Interlingual Errors in Indonesian EFL learners' Pronunciation: From Minimal Pairs to Speaking Ability

The majority of previous research observed phonemes produced individually to examine errors. As a result, based on the concept of minimum pairings, this study offered a novel way of assessing interlingual errors based on the concept of minimal pairings. This study examines the interlingual errors in consonant minimal pairs to see the correlation between the errors and the speaking ability that happened to high school students. There are several consonants which are being used such as /v/, / θ̠ /, /ð̠/, /ʃ/, /t̠ʃ/, /ʤ/, /f/, /t/, /d/, /z/, and /s/ as indicators to find the interlingual errors. This study is descriptive qualitative research that examines the interlingual errors produced by high school students when utilizing English minimal pairs of consonants. All of the consonants acted as the test tool for the 19 selected students in the form of 10 minimal pairs. The research found that students did have difficulties when they were pronouncing the consonant minimal pairs such as /d/ & /ð/, /f/ & /v/, and /ʃ/ & /t̠ʃ/. Thus, the difficulties that occurred in the students’ pronunciation also generate speaking ability between students based on the interlingual errors. The findings showed that high school students mostly struggled with their pronunciation when uttering consonants that do not exist in the Indonesian language. In conclusion, interlingual errors play an important role as a method in teaching a foreign language to see the consonant errors happen in high school students when pronouncing the English language.


Introduction
Learning how to pronounce words in foreign language is difficult since a foreign language may have a different sound systems from the mother tongue's system (Sokip, 2020). According to a study performed by Pardede (2018), pronunciation of a language is difficult since its L1 strongly impacts the speakers in the L1 in various characteristics, such as accent, rhythm, intonation, and, of course, the language spoken every day. As a result, it is reasonable to conclude that learning how to pronounce the sounds of other languages is difficult. It takes longer to memorize new or unknown vocabulary, which is problematic because learners may memorize all of the sound systems of vocabularies. First to speak fluently, it can also influence students to feel fear of being evaluated by others when speaking in a foreign language, or the fear of not being able to use all of the vocabulary that has previously been memorized.
The faults or inaccuracies in pronouncing the English language are caused by learners producing vowels, diphthongs, and, consonants in English (Ramasari, 2017). These mistakes or errors might be caused by a variety of factors. First, most English language teachers ignore the pronunciation aspect in order to focus on the grammatical aspects of the language (Pourhosein Gilakjani & Sabouri, 2016). Interference/interlingual errors are the next element that might cause a departure from appropriate English language pronunciation, which refers to errors that occur when the mother tongue or native language has a negative impact on the second language. In interlingual or interference errors, the individual speaking the foreign language tends to follow the way he or she pronounces his or her native language (Sari, 2016). Another significant barrier is that the majority of English foreign learners are unable to distinguish consonants in the form of minimal pairs (Rahman, 2018).
Many studies looked at the pronouncing minimal pairs when learning a second language. This study is being undertaken to investigate pronunciation errors made by English language learners in Indonesia and to raise awareness about the importance of pronunciation for anyone who wishes to learn another language, particularly English as a foreign language. The majority of previous studies examined phonemes that are produced separately in studies aimed at examining errors. As a result, this study proposed a novel method for examining interlingual mistakes based on the notion of minimum pairings. This study proposed using the idea of minimal pairs to evaluate and examine interlingual mistakes. The reason is to make it easier to distinguish and categorize mistakes amongst minimal pairings. As a result, its categorization is simpler and easier There are two factors that cause errors in learning foreign languages, namely internal factors and external factors (Fadhillah & Miftakh, 2020). Internal factors refer to students' motivation in learning English, while external factors are related to students' learning environment (Lestari et al., 2020). Errors are defined as a failure to use the language system correctly. Language learners should be aware that speaking like a native speaker requires them to improve their organ of speech to the tense articulations of English words (Martanti, 2022).
Phonological intervention in learning English is very important in improving critical skills in identifying sounds in language (Romupal et al., 2021). Phonological decoding in learning to speak English is proven to be effective in improving initial ability to identify phonological sounds in English (Yeung et al., 2013;Huo & Wang, 2017). When you pronounce words in English, you must be conscious of specific characteristics, such as the sound of the phonemes, the rhythm, or even the form of the phonemes. Speakers must be aware of these things (Hu, 2019). The phonological awareness can be expanded to include the capacity to differentiate phonemes (syllable, prefix, suffix), the ability to create sounds of words or phonemes, whether consonant or vowel, and the ability to express things properly (Khan & Khan, 2021).
The need to increase awareness of phonemics as a form of the ability to pronounce sounds and analyze sounds as meaningful units is necessary (Bunce, 2020). Phonemic awareness, which is the same as phonological awareness, consists of three sub-skills that language users and learners, particularly language learners, must master in order to survive when learning and communicating in a language (Rokhman et al., 2020;Alhumsi, 2020). With this awareness implemented in the classroom, students can avoid some barriers when uttering sounds in English (Daud & Salamah, 2016).
The language errors may occur when language learners accept the rules of the L1 and apply them when learning the L2 (Zhu, 2019). Errors are common in all areas of language that we are aware of, such as phonological features, grammatical aspects as in writing or reading, and so on (Crystal, 2008, p.173). Phonemes such as /v/, /z/ are frequently mispronounced by Indonesian English language learners since all of the phonemes stated above are not used on a daily basis by Indonesian language learners because they do not exist as Indonesian phonemes or consonants (James, 2013, p.179). The investigation of language errors must be conducted as a preliminary step before teaching English language (Mubarok & Nur'aisyah, 2020).

Method
This study is descriptive and qualitative because it aims to examine, identify, analyze, and describe one specific case that the researcher finds interesting to investigate (Kim et al., 2017), in this case, the interlingual errors caused by high school students when utilizing English minimal pairs consonants. The research purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between interlingual errors and the pronunciation skill ability In order to achieve the desired outcome, 11 consonants will be employed in this study. These consonants are /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /ʤ/ /t/, /d/, /z/, /t̠ ʃ/, /ʃ/ and /s/, and this study will investigate 10 minimal pairs for this study which will be displayed in 10 tables, which are minimal pairs / Nonetheless, if no procedures are used to check the mistakes, the aforementioned source data would be squandered. The researcher employed two data gathering techniques. The first technique is a survey, which is used to collect information from students such as their names, class, and desire to have their data evaluated by the researchers. After the researchers have gathered the raw data from the students, an interview approach will be used to collect data on interlingual errors of minimal pairs consonants, the interview technique has been conducted utilizing Google Meet and WhatsApp voice notes due to the restrictions of Covid-19 pandemic. The use of the Received Pronunciation style, which is the mainstream English language speaking style that originated in England, or as other people may know it, the BBC's English (Cao & Jin, 2018). Able to use all phonological features and prosodic features perfectly, no interference from any other features of accent from other languages C1 Able to use all phonological features and prosodic features perfectly, a little interference from any other features of accent from other language, but still clear B2 Able to use all phonological features and prosodic in an a good way, influenced by other languages' accents, but still clear enough B1 Able to use all phonological features and prosodic features in an adequate manner, influenced by other languages' accents, but still clear enough A2 Not able to use all phonological features and prosodic, heavily influenced by other languages' accents, but still clear enough A1 Not able to use all phonological features and prosodic, heavily influenced by other languages' accents, needs repetition, some clear enough and some are not The data analysis method is content analysis, which is a way of evaluating data that is highly reliant on recorded and written material, and to expose what is under previously obtained data (Bengtsson, 2016). The CEFR (the Common European Framework of Reference for languages: learning, teaching and assessment) Phonological Scale was used to analyze and examine errors in order to obtain a conclusions and explanation. It is the most comprehensive pronunciation and language utilizing scaling that can be converted into many languages; and this phonological scale is separated into three branches: overall phonological control, sound articulation, and prosodic characteristics (Piccardo et al., 2018, p.136).
After knowing about the triggering variables, the researchers can certainly identify which students are engaged in creating the errors in this research, which students make the most errors, and which students excel at pronouncing the minimum pairings given in question 1. As a result, in question 1, This research can identify that the students who are poor at pronouncing the minimal pairs and create more interlingual mistakes, as well as the students who are good at pronouncing the minimal pairs and generate less interlingual errors. The graph is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Chart of number of interlingual errors in every student
The students who are always making interlingual errors in question 1 may be classified into four groups based on the amount of interlingual errors and the CEFR Phonological scale for pronunciation abilities. The first group is not able to use all phonological features, which are at the A1 level on the CEFR Phonological scale. I discovered some resemblance among all of the students in this pronunciation group with the A1 level. For starters, it is well known that all of them violated the majority of the consonants in the minimum pairs provided. This already violates one requirement of phonological awareness, which states that language users must understand the distinctions between vowels, consonants, and diphthongs. All of the students in the severe pronunciation group struggled with the pronunciation of the minimal pairings supplied. Most of them are unable to distinguish between consonants, vowels, and diphthongs; nevertheless, the mistakes with vowels and diphthongs are not as bad as the problems with minimum pairs. The clear articulation for consonant minimum pairs is the second criterion they violate. The articulation for the consonants when they were uttered by the severe category is not distinct enough to be used in communication since they occasionally said one consonant and then stated another consonant. Hence, the students in this group continue to talk haltingly during the pronunciation of the words, as if they are truly thinking and attempting to grasp the words in the table, but fail to do it correctly. Moreover, the pronunciation category is significantly affected by the Indonesian language, students in this category do not use a native-like manner while pronouncing these consonants.
The next category is the poor category, or the A2 level on the CEFR Phonological scale. Overall, students in this group are almost identical to students in the severe pronunciation category since the number of errors they made is nearly identical to the number of errors in the severe pronunciation category, albeit not as many as the severe pronunciation category. Nonetheless, despite the similarities with the severe group, students in this category can distinguish the vowels, consonants, and diphthongs listed in the tables. They can distinguish them, but only in terms of basic skill. Sample 6 represents the middle category or B2 level in the CEFR phonological scale, where students have made significant progress. During the interview and her voice messages of the consonants, she was able to distinguish the vowels, consonants, and diphthongs and pronounce them correctly, despite the Indonesian accent still influencing her pronunciation. Most importantly, there was no hesitancy when pronouncing the consonants, which is beneficial for future communication with speakers and learners of other languages.
Sample 6 represents the middle category or B2 level in the CEFR phonological scale, where students have made significant progress. During the interview and her voice messages of the consonants, she was able to distinguish the vowels, consonants, and diphthongs and pronounce them correctly, despite the Indonesian accent still influencing her pronunciation. Most importantly, there was no hesitancy when pronouncing the consonants, which is beneficial for future communication with speakers and learners of other languages. The final category in which students can be found is outstanding, or C1 on the CEFR Phonological Scale. They all spoke English at an extremely high degree in this category. They can already distinguish between vowels, consonants, and diphthongs, and they did it admirably.

Discussion
This study explored the interlingual errors of consonants produced by Indonesian high school students when using English minimal pairs in the initial, medial, and final positions.
Ambalegin and Arianto (2018) performed a study that supports the concept that the consonant /v/ is an anomaly for English language learners to the Indonesian people since we Indonesians do not use the consonant /v/. This study also indicated that the change from /v/ to /f/ by Indonesian EFL 0 50 100 150 S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 S10 S11 S12 S13 S14 S15 S16 S17 S18 S19

Excellent
Good Bad Severe learners in initial postion is very common (Purba, 2018;Andi-Pallawa & Alam, 2013). The transition from consonant /v/ to consonants /p/ and /b/ is common among Indonesians because we utilize the other labial consonants in our daily lives as Indonesians, which are consonants /p/ and /b/ (Hasyim, 2020). Untoro & Rustipa (2020) also claimed that the start position for the consonant /v/ is more difficult to speak than the medial and final positions since the first sound in the word is always difficult to pronounce Another interlingual error happened in English pronunciation because the students presume that the sounds of consonants in English like in Bahasa (Irianto, Imranuddin, & Sabaruddin, 2018). When it comes to the mistakes that the students made, each one had its own cause and elements for why the dental fricative /θ/ transformed into different consonants, and we can already detect a pattern in it. To pronounce both of these dental fricatives, we must additionally narrow our airway from the vocal chords, which happens spontaneously when we place our tongue behind our incisors. As a result, we already have our first answer as to why the majority of students struggle to pronounce the voiceless dental fricative, which is that they are unable to produce a breath of air from the air passage in the vocal chords when they place their tongue behind the incisors (Wafi et al., 2020), and this occurrence is typical of people who are pronouncing the voiceless dental fricative (Fauzi, 2020). When the point of articulation to pronounce the dental fricative consonant /θ/ is incorrect, the consonant /θ/ is also put as the consonant /f/ in by the students (Putra, 2019). This occurrence is also seen in Slovakian students (Metruk, 2017), and it appears that in this study, the percentage of students who chose consonant /f/ as a replacement for / θ/ is greater since both are in the form of a minimum pair. The consonants /d/ and /s/ have the same place of articulation, which is in the alveolar ridge in the mouth (the area where you can feel a slight non-flat thing behind your rabbit teeth) (Fuchs & Birkholz, 2019), and this is the tricky part for English language learners, because the place of articulation between the two is the same. However, additional study is required to determine why the deviation of the dental fricative consonant /θ/ can be changed into the alveolar consonants /d/ and /s/ (Puspandari, 2013). Not only that, but the mistake of the palato-alveolar consonant /t/ is surprising to exist since the place and manner of articulation are already distinct from the dental fricative consonants (Situmeang & Lubis, 2020).
The most prevalent error discovered during the interview part with the students was that they separated the pronunciation of the consonant /t/ and the sound /h/. They follow their native consonant sounds when producing English consonant sounds (Silalahi, 2017). To pronounce the dental fricative consonant /θ/, we can observe that the consonant is produced by the consonants /t/ and /h/ in the words. This may be attributed to a lack of knowledge of how the dental fricative consonant /θ/ functions in the English language, as the dental fricative consonant /θ/ does not exist in Indonesian (Trisnawati et al., 2020). The pronunciation of voiceless dental fricative sounds /θ/ in the initial position is often pronounced /t/ by students (Merrita, 2021). Meanwhile, the pronunciation of /θ/ in the middle of a word is often produced using the sound /t/, /ð/, /d/ followed by the alveolar /s/ (Firdaus et al., 2020).
The low motivation of students in learning English is due to weakness in the correct pronunciation of English words. This actually makes difficult for students to practice articulating consonant sounds that are not found in Indonesian. The inappropriate pronunciation in EFL students are caused by the incomprehensive prior instruction on the sounds by teachers (Bui, 2016). Another factor that can influence someone's perception is ear's perception. Indonesian EFL learners sometimes ignore the production of consonant sounds in English (Fadillah, 2020). EFL students have lack of phonological and phonetical awareness of the phonetic differences between their own native pronunciations and English sound consonants (Plailek & Al, 2021). This research is far from ideal in terms of mistake analysis and interlingual errors, therefore we have a few suggestions for future researchers. First, because it is still new, the newly proposed approach of assessing interlingual mistakes, which uses minimum pairings, requires additional research and development. Second, the novel research topic of determining the relationship between interlingual mistakes and speaking skill in English language learners requires more development and future research since the results of one successful study do not guarantee the same results in another. Third, numerous random mistakes were discovered in this study, and further research will be required to determine the unknown components that cause the random errors or unknown errors. Finally, the economic element is likely to occur since students in the C1 level of outstanding category stated that they learned English on their own, which is noteworthy because typically, someone who self-taught themselves English has enough or suitable facilities. Nonetheless, additional study will be required in this area.

Conclusion
By using The CEFR Phonological Scale of Overall Phonological Control as a method, this study concludes that the consonant minimum pairings /d/ & /ð/ are the most often deviated minimal pair used by students in this study. The minimum pair of /f/ & /v/ comes the second, and the minimal pair of /ʃ/ & /t̠ ʃ/ comes the third in the most interlingual errors in this study. The minimal pairs of /d / & /ʤ/ are in the fourth place, and the minimal pairings of /t/ and /θ/ are in the fifth place. If the consonants do not sound comparable to Indonesian consonants, students will have a difficult time pronouncing them. Third, for the remaining consonants that do not exist in the Indonesian language, the difficulty in determining the appropriate location of articulation and manner of articulation while pronouncing the English consonants minimum pairs is the primary effect of their absence in the Indonesian language. Furthermore, despite the fact that consonants such as /z/ exist in the Indonesian language, the students found it difficult to pronounce it since Indonesians do not typically use the sound /z/ in everyday speech, but only to signify something specific.
As a result, it may be inferred that students with lower or higher scores in the good (B2) and outstanding (C1) categories have good speaking ability since their phonological and phonemic awareness are in place. Meanwhile, students in the poor (A2) and severe (A1) categories do not have strong speaking ability due to a lack of phonological and phonemic awareness while uttering the consonant minimum pairs supplied. This demonstrates that interlingual mistakes are connected with students' speaking ability, the greater their speaking ability owing to the fulfillment of the norms in phonological and phonemic awareness.