miscalculations, and erroneous assumptions form an important aspect of learning virtually any skill or acquiring information Brown, 2000: 216. Dulay 1982:
138 has the same opinion by stating that making errors is an inevitable part of learning and people cannot learn language without first committing errors.
Errors are the flawed side of the learner speech or writing Dulay, 1982: 138. They are those parts of conversation or composition that deviate from some
selected norm of mature language performance. They are usually systematic, predictable, universal, and reflecting learners’ attempts to make the task of
learning and using the second language simpler Ellis, 2003: 18-19. Moreover, errors happen because the learners have not yet internalized the formation rules of
the second language Corder, 1979: 259. The rule of making errors in the second language can be explained by the
notion of transfer which is called negative transfer of interference Corder, 1979: 132. In transfer, the learners use some of the rules they already know to produce
and understand the second language Corder, 1979: 132 and when the learners make errors they do the transfer imperfectly. This opinion is agreed by Corder
1967 as cited in Dulay 1982: 139 who is stating that the term ‘errors’ is reserved for the systematic deviations due to the learner’s still developing
knowledge of the second language rule system.
B. Theoretical Framework
This research summarizes theories from many researchers. The theories that are used are those which are related to English word stress especially stress
placement of nouns. In English, word stress is not an optional extra; however, it is a part of it. Comprehending English word stress is a magic key to understanding
the spoken English. By paying attention to the stress placement, native speakers could still understand the word although they do not hear the complete word.
Nevertheless, if a non-native speaker produces a word with the wrong stress pattern, an English listener may have difficulty in understanding the word, even if
most of the individual sounds have been well pronounced. Related to stress placement of nouns, the writer uses several theories.
Avery and Ehrlich 1992: 67 states that more than 90 per cent of all English disyllabic nouns are stressed on their first syllable. Moreover, for trisyllabic
nouns, the penultimate syllable will be stressed if it is heavy Giegerich, 1992: 187. However, if the penultimate syllable is light, the antepenultimate syllable
will be stressed McMahon, 2002: 120. For suffix nouns, the writer uses theory from Roach 1991: 96-98 that states that there are three main characteristics of
suffixes. The characteristics are suffixes may carry primary stress themselves, suffixes may not affect stress placement, or suffixes may influence stress in stem.
However, the stress of prefix nouns is unpredictable Roach, 1991: 98. For compound nouns, the writer uses the theory from Jones 1972: 258 which states
that most of the compound nouns that consist of two elements have stress on their first element. Since there are many theories about stress placement of nouns, the
writer tries to summarize them by consulting the dictionaries to answer the first and second questions. The dictionaries that are used will be Collins Cobuild
Dictionary for Advanced Learners and The New Oxford American Dictionary.
CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
This chapter presents the methodology employed in the study. This includes the descriptions of the research method, the research participants, the
nature and source of data, the research instruments, the data gathering technique, and the data analysis technique.
A. Research Method
Basically, this study was a qualitative research. Qualitative research focused on understanding social phenomena from the perspective of the human
participants in the study Ary, Jacobs and Razavieh, 2002: 22. Moreover, qualitative problems looked at the context of events, natural setting, subjects’
perspectives, unfolding and uncontrolled events, reasons for the events, and phenomena needing exploration and explanation Ary et al., 2002: 426. Also, this
kind of research did not use statistical analysis. The methods being used were content analysis, and library research. The
researcher used content analysis since the data were gathered by recording the participants’ speeches. Content analysis was a technique for examining the
content, or information and symbols, contained in written documents or other communication medium Neuman, 2006: 44. The documents could be books,
newspaper or magazine articles, advertisements, speeches, official documents, films or videotapes, musical lyrics, photographs or pictures, articles of clothing,
34 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
