English Consonants Production on School-Age Children

This study aims to reveal the production of consonant sounds in children aged 6-9 years old whose first language is Indonesian and/or Gorontalo language, as well as to reveal the facts about the consonant sounds that can and cannot be produced by the children. This study applied qualitative method by collecting the data using audio and video recording to record the consonant sounds produced by the participants, and transcribing the sounds using IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). The data of this study were taken from School-Age Children from six until nine years old, that consisted of five students from Ronal Hutagalung Learning Center. The data analysis was carried out through the stages of data reduction, data display, and the drawing and verifying conclusion. Furthermore, the classification of NAE Consonant Phonemes by Parker (1986) was used as the main theory in data analysis. The findings show that from five participants, three participants can produce 23 consonant sounds, and two participants can produce 24 consonant sounds. In addition, the results also show that the participants were mostly unable to produce consonants Voiceless Dental Fricative /θ/, Voiced Palatal Fricative /ʒ/, Voiced Palatal Glide /y/, Voiceless Palatal Fricative /ʃ/, and Voiced Dental Fricative /ð/ , which means that most of the sounds that they cannot produce are the consonants that do not exist in their first language. The findings of this study are expected to be a reference in teaching English pronunciation to children, as well as overcoming the problems related to the consonant production in children.


Introduction
The language production specifically consonant production and between the difference of reality of English and Indonesian consonants production in children are totally interesting to explore, especially in school-age children. The difference itself is referring to, which consonants are produced and are not produced based on the theoretical point of view of phonological acquisition. Some of the theories describe, in the cases of the pattern of phonological acquisition because of different factors of background such as family, environment, and also drills (Dardjowidjojo, 2008). The pattern of consonant acquisition theoretically will be passed by children step by step, from bilabial sounds to glottal sounds. On the other hand, some children can construct consonants out of the order of acquisition.
There are a lot of studies of Indonesian children's language acquisition that reveal that there is a difference between the result of studies and the theory of language acquisition. The result of (Darjowidjodjo, 2008) research of children's acquisition supports the phases of language acquisition are different for each child. The difference goes to the pattern of language acquisition. As stated by the theory and several studies of language acquisition, the phases of language acquisition generally are cooing (6 weeks), babbling-mixture of consonant and vowel first appearance of the word is at 12 months (English) or 21 months (Indonesia), and consonant cluster begins at 36 months (Dardjowidjojo, 2008).
Furthermore, the majority of the theory of language acquisition is only based on the acquisition of English children as the participant of research which is different with Indonesian children concerning some aspects of language acquisition. The phase of phonological production is different between one child and another child. Some children can produce the sound /r/ at the age of 4 but some of the children could have produced the sound /r/ at the age of 3. This result of previous research strengthens the gap between the theory of phonological acquisition, especially consonant acquisition, and the reality of the difference between English and Indonesian children acquisition. This fact shows that the research of language acquisition especially the acquisition of consonants is an essential requirement for us. The research of consonant acquisition can answer the problems of the gap between the theoretical framework of consonant acquisition and the reality of the difference between English and Indonesian children's consonant acquisition. Therefore, after the language acquisition appears, the next one is language production itself, language production is a production of written or spoken language. It also describes every stage from having a concept and translating that concept into linguistic form. The 4 stages of language productions included the following conceptualization, formulation, articulation, self-monitoring.
The focus of this research is English Consonants, referring to Parker (1986), that approximately there are 44 sounds in English and divided into 2 groups; Consonants sounds and Vowel sounds. Consonant sound is a sound that involves contact of organs of speech, which means that when we are going to produce consonants sound, our organs of speech (lips, tongue, teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate, and soft palate) are having contact between each other.
The researcher took school-aged children as the participant in this research. It is because school-aged children are a golden age for learning in children's age. Regarding Merriam-Webster, a school-age child is a child who is old enough to go to school, (Nippold, 2006) also stated that school-aged children ranged from (6 -12 years), adolescents are ranged from (13 -19 years) and adults are (20+ years) This is the definite phenomenon as the reason the researcher choose this topic to investigate the consonant production on school-age children specifically on which consonant can or can not be produced by them. Therefore, the researcher focuses on the process of consonant production to know the consonants can be produced by schoolage children or cannot be produced by school-age children. Due to the covid-19 pandemic situation which causes the limited opportunities and space to have contact with the children as the participants, so this research only took 5 participants in data collection. Regarding mountsinai.org, school-age children should be able to use simple, but complete, sentences that including an average of 5 to 7 words. Grammar and pronunciation become more normal as the child progresses through elementary school. As they grow older, children will use more complex sentences. Generally, a school-age child is a child with the age of 6 to 12 years old, so the research participants are children at the age of 6 to 12 years old.
Regarding those reasons, this research takes place in Gorontalo Province specifically in Ronal Hutagalung Learning Center located in Gorontalo city. The place of research is chosen based on some considerations. The consideration is; research participants are the citizen Gorontalo, research participants are ranged from 6 to 12 years old or school-age children.
There are several studies or research, which is having a pretty close topic or having a correlation with this research with this one. The previous study conducted by Merry Montoliang researching the English consonants Volume : 7 Nomor : 4 Bulan : November Tahun : 2021 production of Indonesian pre-school aged children revealed that there are several consonants sounds that can be produced by pre-school aged children; they are bilabial sound, labiodental sound, interdental sound, alveolar sound, alveolar palatal sound, palatal sound, velar sound, and glottal sound. (Metruk, 2016) (Hajar, 2008) she studied about Student Production of English Siblant Phonemes. (Hamzah & El-Weshahi, 2018)  Meanwhile, this research can be used as a basic assumption of consonants production`. The focus of this research on consonant production is based on the role of consonants as the specific distinctive feature of a language. The function of consonant as the distinctive feature of language makes consonant has an important role in phonotactic construction of language. As an addition, the consonant sound is also making a speech became clear, crisp, and intelligible, which means that it makes our speech much easier to understand. It is also often to find in social life that people often to paid more attention to fix their accent, into American or British accent. To reduce their native accent, without paying more attention to their pronunciation. It is much better to speak English clearly with our accent and having a proper pronunciation in both consonants and vowels. Therefore, the existence of consonants in language needs to be explored during the period of the golden age.

Method
This research used qualitative method. Referring to the objective of this research, which is to analyze the production of English consonants in School-age children, the natural method was used to let the participant talk naturally to gather the data of participant utterances regarding English Consonant production. This research was conducted by doing an audio & video recording to school-age children. The site was in Ronal Hutagalung Learning Center; an English course for children located in Gorontalo city. There were 6-9 years old school-age children chosen as the participants. The selection of the participants was based on several considerations; the participants were between the ages of 6 to 12 years old, in the process of learning English, able to pronounce English words, and available to become the participants of this research.
The data that had been collected were analyzed by using the procedure of analyzing the data by Sugiyono (2008) which are the data reduction, the data display, and the drawing verification and conclusion. In data reduction step, the data were collected by doing audio-visual recording for the participants. Then, they were made into a transcript about the participants' visual recording and illustrated through words the position of organs of speech of the participant referring to visual recording. After that, the consonants produced by the participant voice recording were identified by using distinctive features. Then, the unnecessary data were erased.
The data display was a process that helps the researcher to understand and analyze the data. In this step, it was used an essay to compare consonants sounds which were produced by the participants and the proper consonants sound in English. The last step in analyzing those qualitative data was drawing verification and conclusion. In this step, the result of the research was concluded based on the research problems and the theory used. The data were then re-checked to make sure that they were relevant to the research questions.

Results and Discussion
In this research, the sounds produced by the participant were analyzed by using an IPA sound chart from (IPA Chart with Sounds: International Phonetic Alphabet Sounds, n.d.) and consonant table from Department of Linguistic, n.d. The list of words in the NAE Consonants table with words below was used to collect the data from participants:

Results
The data in this section will be explained per participant to make it easier to analyze the production of consonant sounds.

Participant 1
The first participant is a six years old student from Ronal Hutagalung Learning Center. This participant can produce 23 consonant sounds and each sound is represented in three words per sound. The consonant sounds that can be produced by this participant are the sounds /p/, /b/, /m/, /w/, /f/, /v/, /ð/, /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /n/, /l/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /r/, /y/, /k/, /g/, /ŋ/, and /h/. The consonant sounds are in various positions in the word. Some are at the initial position of a word, some are in the medial position of a word, and some are at the final position of a word. There are sounds that can be pronounced well when they are at the initial position of a word, but cannot be well-pronounced when they are in the medial or final position of a word, and vice versa. As indicated by the findings, that this first participant can produce 23 consonant sounds, however he cannot produce the Voiceless Dental Fricative sound /θ/ in all words that have this sound.
Furthermore, besides those consonants that can be produced well by this participant, there are also some consonant sounds that cannot be produced by this participant.  In Voiced Bilabial Stop sound, the participant cannot properly produce /b/ sound only on one word, apart from the two other words that have been given by the researchers. The participant cannot properly produce /b/ sound in the word "December" which is located at the medial position of the word. While in Voiceless Dental Fricative sound, the participant cannot properly produce /θ/ sound. Unfortunately, from the three words that have been given by the researcher, all of them are mispronounced by the participant. The participant cannot properly produce/θ/ sound in the word "thank", "anything", and "north". While in Voiced Dental Fricative /ð/, the participant cannot properly produce /ð/ sound. Unfortunately, from three words that have been given by the researcher, two of them are mispronounced by the participant. The participant could not properly produce/ð/ sound in the word "this" and "father".
Furthermore, in Voiced Palatal Fricative /ʒ/, the participant has mispronounced /ʒ/ sounds. The participant mispronounced the words "usually" into /ˈjusuəli/ and "usual" into /ˈjusuəl/. While in Voiced Palatal Affricate /dʒ/, the participant cannot properly produce /dʒ/ sound in the word "large". The proper pronunciation should be /lɑːrdʒ/ and the sound is located in the medial position of the word. Unfortunately, the participant pronounces it into /lɑrd/. The last, in Voiceless Velar Stop /k/, the participant cannot properly produce the /k/ sound only on one sound, apart from the two other words that have been given by the researchers. The participant cannot properly produce /k/ sound in the word "could". The proper pronunciation should be /kʊd/ and the sound is located at the initial position of the word. Unfortunately, the participant pronounces it into /kaʊl/. Participant 2. This second participant is a seven years old student from Ronal Hutagalung Learning Center. Based on the findings, the second participant can produce 24 consonants sound and each sound consists of three words per sound. There are some of consonant sounds that the participant can produce only one / two sounds. The consonant sounds that can be produced by this participant are /p/, /b/, /m/, /w/, /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /n/, /l/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /r/, /y/, /k/, /g/, /ŋ/, /h/. Similar to the results found in the first participant, that not all of these sounds can be pronounced well by participant 2. There are sounds that can be pronounced well when they are at the initial position of a word, but cannot be well-pronounced when they are in the medial or final position of a word, and vice versa.
Besides the consonant sounds that can be produced by the second participant, there are also some consonant sound that were pronounced mistakenly by this participant. They are Voiceless Dental Fricative /θ/, Voiced Dental Fricative /ð/, and Voiced Palatal Glide /y/. They shortly can be seen in this table: In Voiceless Dental Fricative /θ/, the participant only does not successfully produce one word from three words in /θ/ sound. The participant did not successfully pronounce "north" otherwise she pronounces it into /nɔːrt/ by replacing /θ/ with /t/. As an addition, the sound of /θ/ is located at the final position of the word. While in Voiced Dental Fricative /ð/ sound, the participant cannot properly produce /ð/ sound only in one word, apart from the two other words that have been given by the researchers. The participant cannot properly produce/ð/ sound in the word "this". The proper pronunciation should be /ðɪs/ but the participant pronounces /d/ instead of pronouncing /ð/ Volume : 7 Nomor : 4 Bulan : November Tahun : 2021 which is located at the initial position of the word. In the last sound, Voiced Palatal Glide /y/, the participant cannot properly produce two sounds of /y/ sound, apart from the one other word that has been given by the researchers. The participant cannot properly produce /y/ sound in the word "usually" and "usual". The proper pronunciation is /ˈjuːʒuəli/ for pronouncing "usually" and /ˈjuːʒuəl/ for pronouncing "usual".

Participant 3
The third participant is a seven years old student from Ronal Hutagalung Learning Center. Based on the findings, the participant can produce 24 consonants sound and each sound consists of three word per sound. There are some of consonant sounds that the participant can produce only one / two sounds. The consonants sound categorized by place of articulation that can be produced by this participant are /p/, /b/, /m/, /w/, /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /n/, /l/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /r/, /y/, /k/, /g/, /ŋ/, and /h/. As provided in table 1, each sound is represented in three words. There are some sounds that can be produced well by participant 3 when the sound is in the initial position, but the sound is difficult to pronoun when it is in the medial or final position. On the other hand, there are sounds that can be pronounced well when they are in the medial or final position, but are not successfully pronounced when they are in the initial position of the word.
Besides, there are also some consonant sounds that cannot be produced by the participant 3; they are shown in the following table. The table shows that the participant mispronounced /θ/ sounds. Instead of pronouncing Thank /θaeŋk/, the participant pronounced it as /taeŋk/ by replacing /θ/ sound into /t/. The same problem is also found in the word "Anything" which should be pronounced as /ˈeniθɪŋ/, otherwise the participant pronounces it as /enitɪŋ/. Same as the problem above, the participant replaces /θ/ into /t/. /θ/ sound is a voiceless dental fricative. Regarding the data, the participant has mispronounced the dental fricative sound, and the participant replaces it with /t/ which is a voiceless alveolar stop, however, the participant successfully produces a voiceless sound, both /θ/ and /t/ is voiceless. Furthermore, the participant has also mispronounced Voiced Palatal Fricative /ʒ/ sounds. The first one is "usually" that should be pronounced /ˈjuːʒuəli/ and the second one is "usual" which should be pronounced /ˈjuːʒuəl/. The participant mispronounced both of the words; the participant pronounces "usually" into /usuali/ and "usual" into /usual/.
Additionally, the table also shows that the participant cannot properly produce Voiced Palatal Liquid /r/ sound only in one word, apart from the two other words that have been given by the researchers. The participant cannot properly produce/r/ sound in the word "three". The proper pronunciation should be /θriː/and the sound is located at the medial position of the word. Unfortunately, the participant pronounces it into /ðer/. Besides that, the participant cannot also properly produce two sounds of Voiced Palatal Glide /y/ sound, apart from the one other word that has been given by the researchers. The participant could not properly produce/y/ sound in word "usual" which should be /ˈjuːʒuəl/ and "usual" which should be /ˈjuːʒuəli/. The participant fails to produce "usual" into /usual/and also fails to produce "usually" into /usuali/.

Participant 4
This fourth participant is an eight years old student from Ronal Hutagalung Learning Center. This participant can produce 23 consonants sounds and each sound consist of three word per sound. There are some of consonant sounds that the participant can produce only one / two sounds. The consonants sounds are categorized by place of articulation that can be produced by participant 4 are /p/, /b/, /m/, /w/, /f/, /v/, /ð/, /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /n/, /l/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /r/, /y/, /k/, /g/, /ŋ/, and /h/. In the findings, this fourth participant can produce 23 consonants. However, the Volume : 7 Nomor : 4 Bulan : November Tahun : 2021 participant cannot produce all words that contain the sound of Voiceless Dental Fricative /θ/. In addition, the participant can produce only one word of Voiceless Palatal Affricate /tʃ/ sound. Here is the table that shows the consonant sounds that cannot be produced by participant four. The table shows that the participant four cannot properly produce /θ/ sound. Unfortunately, from the three words that have been given by the researcher, all of them are mispronounced by the participant. The participant could not properly produce/θ/ sound in the word "thank", "anything", and "north". In the first word, "thank", the position of the sound is located in the initial position of the sound and it should be pronounced /θaeŋk/, however, the participant mispronounced it into /taeŋks/. On the second word, "anything" that should be pronounced /ˈeniθɪŋ/ and the position of the sound is located at the medial position of sound, the participant cannot produce the /θ/ sound and pronounced it as /enitɪŋ/. At the last word, "north" the position of the sound is located at the final position and should be pronounced as /nɔːrθ/ but the participant pronounced it as /nɔːrt/.
Another sound that connot be produced by this participant is Voiceless Palatal Africate /tʃ/. The participant could not properly produce/tʃ/sounds in the words "marching" and "lunch". The proper pronunciation for the first word "marching" is /ˈmɑːrtʃɪŋ/, but the participant pronounces it as /markɪŋ/ and the sound is located at the medial position. For the second word, which is "lunch", the proper pronunciation is /lʌntʃ/, but the participant mispronounces it as /lʌnts/ and it is located at the final position of the word.

Participant 5
This sixth participant is a nine years old student from Ronal Hutagalung Learning Center. The participant can produce 23 consonants sound and each sound consists of three words per sound. There are some of consonant sound that the participant can produce only one / two sounds. The consonants sound categorized by place of articulation that can be produced by this participant are /p/, /b/, /m/, /w/, /f/, /v/, /ð/, /t/ & /d/, /s/, /z/, /n/, /l/, /ʃ/ & /ʒ/, /tʃ/ & /dʒ/, /r/, /y/, /k/, /g/, /ŋ/, /h/. The same as the findings in previous participants, participant 5 can also produce 23 consonant sounds. However, he has difficulty pronouncing the Voiceless Dental Fricative sound /θ/ in all words containing this sound, whether the sound is in the initial, medial, or final position. The participant can produce only two words in Voiced Alveolar Fricative /z/ and two words in Voiceless Alveolar Fricative /s/. Additionally, there are also the consonant sounds that cannot be produced by the participant 5, as this table reveals. As mostly found in the other participants, the participant 5 also cannot properly produces Voiceless Dental Fricative /θ/ sound. From the three words that have been given by the researchers, all of them are mispronounced by the participant. The participant cannot properly produce /θ/ sound in the word "thank", "anything", and "north". In the first word, "thank", the position of the sound is located at the initial position of the sound and it should be pronounced as /θaeŋk/, but the participant mispronounces it as /taeŋks/. In the second word, "anything", that should be pronounced as /ˈeniθɪŋ/ and the position of the sound is located at the medial position, the participant cannot Volume : 7 Nomor : 4 Bulan : November Tahun : 2021 produce the /θ/ sound and pronounced it as /enitɪŋ/. At the last word, "north" the position of the /θ/ sound is located at the final position and pronounced /nɔːrθ/ but the participant pronounced it into /nɔːrt/.
Furthermore, the participant cannot also properly produces Voiced Alveolar Fricative /z/ sound only on one sound, apart from the two other words that have been given by the researchers. The participant cannot properly produce/z/ sound in the word "reason". The proper pronunciation should be /ˈriːzn/ and the sound is located at the medial position of the word. Unfortunately, the participant pronounces it as /resɔn/. The last sound that cannot be produced by this participant is Voiceless Palatal Fricative /ʃ/. At the first word, the participant mispronounces "She" which should be pronounced /ʃi/, otherwise, the participant pronounces it /si/ by replacing the /ʃ/ with /s/. Based on the data and the explanation above, it can be concluded that the participant could not produce /ʃ/ sound which is a Voiceless Palatal Fricative sound.

Discussion
There are some of the most significant results regarding "how are the English consonant production in school-age children". Firstly, there are some consonant sounds that cannot be produced by the participants, though the words have been given in a list and each word has been divided into three positions of the word, namely the initial position, the medial position, and the final position. In addition, some participants can correctly produce consonants sounds, but unfortunately, the pronunciation of the remaining participants does not match the correct IPA transcription of each word. Secondly, for a consonants sound that cannot be produced categorized by age from six to nine, there is a six years old participant that cannot produce a Voiceless Dental Fricative /θ/ and replaces it with Voiceless Alveolar Stop /t/. There are also seven years old that cannot produce some consonant sounds like Voiced Palatal Fricative /ʒ/ which is replaced with Voiceless Alveolar Fricative /s/, and Voiceless Palatal Glide /y/ which is replaced with a vocal sound. Likewise, an eight years old participant also cannot produce a Voiceless Dental Fricative /θ/ and replaces it with Voiceless Alveolar Stop /t/. It is similar to the fact found in participant five whose age is nine years old. He also cannot produce Voiceless Dental Fricative /θ/, and replaced it with Voiceless Alveolar Stop /t/, Voiced Palatal Fricative /ʒ/ and they substituted it with Voiceless Alveolar Fricative /s/, Voiced Palatal Glide /y/, one of the participants replaced it with Voiceless Alveolar Fricative /s/ and the other one replacing it with a vocal sound.
Results that have been found from this research can be correlated with other researches regarding this topic entitled "An Analysis of English Consonants Production in School-Age Children". The first, the consonant sound, Voiceless Dental Fricatives /θ/, is mostly replaced with Voiceless Alveolar Stop /t/. That data has a correlation with the previous research conducted by (Jekiel, 2012) who stated that the studies on production, perception, and acquisition of these sounds show that /θ/ and /ð/ are difficult to master both by a native English speaker and for an English as second language speaker, usually realized as /t, d/, /t̪, d̪ /, /f, v/ or /tθ, dð/ across many English dialects. The second one is a Voiced Palatal Fricative /ʒ/ and Voiced Palatal Glide /y/, they replaced it with Voiceless Alveolar Fricative /s/. That data has a correlation with previous research conducted by (Randell, 2004) on (Mousa, 2015) who found that there are speakers Finglish which is an English spoken immigrant from Finland in U.S and Canada. They do not have interdental and postalveolar / palate-alveolar fricative and affricate, and they treat palate alveolar fricative /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ in "short" and "azure" become /s/.
This study also reveals that the problems in language sounds production experienced by learners of English as a foreign language or a second language are generally the same. They generally have difficulty in pronouncing English sounds that are not owned by their first language. Moreover, this is not supported by the environment, where people in their environment do not use English as their everyday language. So, of course, it will be difficult for them to learn to pronounce English sounds and pronounce English consonants fluently.

Conclusion
To sum up, this study reveals that the school-age children in the age range of 6 to 9 years old at Ronal Hutagalung Learning Center are mostly unable to produce consonants Voiceless Dental Fricative /θ/, Voiced Palatal Fricative /ʒ/, Voiced Palatal Glide /y/, Voiceless Palatal Fricative /ʃ/, and Voiced Dental Fricative /ð/. In addition, from all the consonants, the most difficult sound for the participant to produce is the Voiceless Dental Fricative /θ/. This is indicated by the findings which show that all 5 participants are not able to pronounce that sound correctly. Some of them even pronounce the sound /θ/ as /t/. It can be understood that for native Indonesian speakers, to pronounce those consonant sounds is a challenge, because some of the sounds do not exist in Indonesian language. So, it needs continuous effort and practice for them to be able to produce English consonant sounds fluently.