21 An Analysis on the Students’ Errors in Pronouncing English Vowel Robiatul Adawiyah and Nanik Retnowati English Education Study Program Ibn Khaldun University of Bogor Abstract This present research is aimed at finding out the kinds of errors made by students in pronouncing English vowels and identifying the ones which often appear. The writers used test that implemented in reading text. Then, they analyzed the errors that the students made in their reading and calculated them using simple statistic formula. There were 20 students in this study. Those who became the sample were the students who have attended the subject of Pronunciation Practice in the previous year. The result shows that the students’ pronunciations of English vowels were “good”, according to criterion but they still made errors; some errors were finally revealed. Keywords: Error analysis, English vowels, Pronunciation practices INTRODUCTION Pronunciation refers to the way of words or a language is spoken, or the manner in which people utter words. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect. According to (Jones, 2003, p.5), a word can be spoken in different ways by various individuals or groups, depending on many factors, such as: the area in which they grew up, the area in which they now live, if they have a speech or voice disorder, their ethnic group, their social class, or their education. Many people learning English language often do not pay any attention to their pronunciation. Even worse, some of them underestimate it. They think that pronunciation is less important than grammar and vocabulary. In fact, in my opinion pronunciation is extremely important. Many cases of misunderstanding in communication were caused by the mispronouncing of words or the improper intonation. Let’s take a few examples: if someone pronouncing the words fog and fox, sea and she, sick and six with relatively no differences, in some cases can lead to a misunderstanding. Another example: when one pronounces the word present with stress in the first syllable, whereas she uses in the sentence “I’d like to present” is certainly incorrect and irritating (Nasr, 1980, p. 2). Therefore, it has become more and more obvious that pronunciation cannot be underestimated. It must become one’s priority while he/she is learning English. At least, the learners of English should give the same proportion of their attention to pronunciation as they do to grammar and vocabulary. Pronunciation plays an important role in learning a second or a foreign language. Although students have English subject at school, most of them often make errors, for example: in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The writers explained before that language has three major components i.e.: phonology, vocabulary, and grammar. Among these components, phonology takes an important role. Automatically, phonology is related to pronunciation. Therefore, the writers are interested in doing research about pronunciation, (especially about vowels).