Fossilized Pronunciation Errors Committed By the First Year Students of the English Graduate Program of State University of Padang Registered in 2014 Academic Year during Class Discussion.

Pronunciation in English language is very crucial as the listeners have a tendency to judge speaker’s credibility trough the accuracy and the precision of how s/he pronounce the sounds of that language. This research was intended to find out, determine, and analyze the fossilization errors phenomenon based on phonological view, which occur on the pronunciation of the graduate students of English language of State University of Padang Registered in 2014 Academic Year during class discussion. The research was focused on the errors that commit by the graduate students in pronouncing English word persistently that they no longer realize whether the sound they produced were accurate or not. Thus, the fossilization errors commit by the graduate students was fossilized and hardly difficult to be fixed. This situation makes their pronunciation were far from accurate and unintelligible. The fossilized pronunciation errors committed by the students were classified based on the sound types, the factor that causes the students to commit the fossilization errors, and the process of how the phenomenon occurs during the class discussion. The research method was descriptive-qualitative. The data were collected by using video recording during class discussion and finalized with interview, so that each finding was analyzed entirely. The finding showed that fossilized pronunciation errors were found in the vowel sounds (monophthong and diphthong) and consonant sounds (voiced and voiceless). Then, the factor that causes the emergence of this phenomenon were learning method, L1 interference, persistent errors, lack of learner self-monitoring, lack of understanding of the English pronunciation, lack of correction by the lecturer, social influence, and the nature of the feedback on learner’s use of L2. Lastly, the process of the phenomenon occur was perceived throughout three phases, they are random error, systematic deviation, and fossilization. Based on the finding, it is concluded that, the types of fossilized errors were mostly appear in the consonant sounds, meanwhile the main causes were persistent errors, L1 interference, and lack of graduate students understanding to the pronunciation, and the process of how its occur was started from the random errors made by students in the first place.