77 They stressed the second syllable likely because they had known the stress
placement of sustain, which is always on the second syllable. Same problem reoccurred in the pronunciation of the last word, unity where
twelve students mistakenly regarded it as phonologically related to unite. The word unite itself has its second syllable consisting of the diphthong a
ɪ stressed. Thus, they mispronounced it as [
juːˈnaɪ.ti]. In total, there were 17 penultimate stresses and 76 antepenultimate stresses. The student that previously preferred to use
θ in final syllables still used it until now. One student opted out of pronouncing unity. The
correct pronunciations were 54 in total. Those included [ˈjuː.nə.t|i, -nɪ-, US -nə.t̬|i].
As previously inferred from Figure 4.3, four students emphasized the importance of stressing English words properly since stressing changes the meaning
or the lexical category. Their lexicon allowed them to respond to the last item of the questionnaire in such a way that increased their awareness, as seen during their
oral test performance. They stressed the words under the -ity category well.
4. Students’ Pronunciation of Words with -ion Suffix
The suffix -ion attaches itself mostly to verbal bases Plag, 2003; Miller, 2006. These verbal bases are generally from Latin. This -ion suffix shifts the stress
of the base. As a result, the noun form has a different stress placement. There were 20 words under this category, to wit: action, attraction, collection, communication,
decoration, demonstration, election, graduation, imagination, intention,
78 justification, location, notification, option, pollution, protection, region, selection,
submission, and translation. The first word to appear under the -ion suffix category was action
[ˈæk.ʃən]. All 94 students stressed it properly but only 43 of them pronounced it accurately. It
was due to the mispronunciation of either the penultimate or the ultimate syllable. Another reason why only 43 students pronounced it accurately was that many
students mispronounced both syllables. The penultimate syllable should have been æk- and the ultimate syllable should have been -
ʃən. What students failed to do was pronouncing æ because they substituted it with e. In addition, most students
were unable to produce ʃ because they replaced it with sj. As a result, the
mispronunciation [ˈek.sjən] was very common. Ultimate syllable mispronunciations were also common for the rest of the
words under -ion suffix category. For instance, in the word attraction, 26 out of 94 students mispronounced the word. They either replaced æ with e or replaced
ʃ with sj. Students’ stress placement of this word was quite good since only one
student stressed the antepenultimate syllable. This student always stressed the initial syllable when it came to pronounce the rest of the words under -ion suffix. One
student apparently did not manage to read and pronounce attraction carefully because the student added the vowel s in the ultimate syllable so that it sounded
as [ əˈtrek.ʃəns]. Later, this particular student kept adding s in the ultimate syllable
of some words. According to LPD 2008, attraction is realized as [ əˈtræk.ʃən].
79 Even though the word collect is the base of collection, collection retains its
schwa in the first syllable. It means that the first syllable is a relatively weak one. Most of the students in this research understood this, as shown by the 65 students
who pronounced it correctly. However, one student separated the ultimate syllable, so that the mispronunciation [k
əˈlek.ʃ
ɪ.
ən] prevailed. Therefore, only 92 students stressed it correctly. The right pronunciation is [k
əˈlek.ʃən]. It seems unbelievable that final-year ELESP students could not manage to
properly articulate the first, the fourth, or the fifth syllable of communication. This word appears often in every-day situations and should be pronounced
[k əˌmjuː.nɪˈkeɪ.ʃən, -nəˈ-]. However, the fact that only 23 students pronounced it
correctly was surprising. The penultimate stress gained the most numbers, seventy- seven. Even so, one student stressed both the second and the fourth syllable. Until
now, the problems that remained were syllable shortening, syllable extension, and English sounds articulation.
Phonemic errors such as the use of ɔ and ʌ in the first syllable and e in
the fourth syllable of communication prevailed. Not only these, most errors also occurred in the ultimate syllable such as -
ʃɪn, -ʃəns, -ʒən, -sjən, and -ʃjən. Most students mispronouncing the final syllable happened to add j in it. As it
happened, a mispronunciation caused by a syllable shortening prevailed, for example [k
ɔm.nɪ
ˈ
ke.sj ən]. The student that previously extended the syllable of the
word collection did the same thing here since that student made communication into a six-syllable word. Thus, the mispronunciation [k
əˌmjuː.nɪˈke.ʃɪ.ən] existed. Eight
80 students stressed the antepenult, six students stressed the second syllable and two
students stressed the first syllable. This implied that roughly sixteen students appeared nonchalant regarding the appropriateness of the stress placement of a
common word. The student that double stressed communication also double stressed the
word decoration so that it appeared as [ ˈdek.əˈreɪ.ʃən]. This student might have
intended to put primary and secondary stress, but it turned out to be double primary stresses. The secondary stress of decoration is indeed on the first syllable but it is
definitely weaker than the primary stress. Another student extended the syllables of the word, which was realized as [
dek.oˈre.ʃɪ.ən]. What surprised the researcher was the mispronunciation uttered by a student that sounded as democration. The word
democration does not exist since the base is not a Latinate verb. Although 75 students managed to stress the word correctly, only seven pronounced it accurately.
Their accurate pronunciations were realized as [ˌdek.əˈreɪ.ʃən]. The student that
stressed the word twice was not admitted. Therefore, the total number of students who performed was 93. Fifteen students stressed the antepenultimate syllable while
three students stressed the initial syllable. Vowels of the second, the third, and the fourth syllables of decoration were
often replaced by the students. For example, many students could not appropriately articulate the third syllable since they did not pronounce the diphthong e
ɪ. Instead, they only pronounced the e, which caused mispronunciation. The schwa that
should have been on the second syllable was replaced by an o or an . This shows
81 that the students participating this research were unaware of the vowel quality they
should have known. As a result, they pronounced decoration the Indonesian way. Most students, when pronouncing demonstration
[ˌdem.ənˈstreɪ.ʃən], did too. They did not articulate each syllable as a unit. Consequently, there were many
mispronunciations such as [dem. n ˈstre.ʃjən] or [dem.ɔnˈstre.ʃjən]. These two
examples are the ones occurred frequently among students that stressed the penult. Other
mispronunciations included
[dem ˈ n.stre.ʃjən], [dem.əsˈstreɪ.ʃjən],
[dem. ɔsˈstre.ʃjən], and so on. Penultimate stress placement dominated, with 74
stresses while antepenultimate and initial stress placement received 18 and two respectively. In the end, seven students were able to pronounce demonstration
correctly. The majority of the participants, 89 students, stressed the penultimate
syllable of election [iˈlek.ʃən]. Among these, 29 students succeeded in pronouncing
it. Thirty-nine students, although they stressed penultimately, mispronounced the ultimate syllable as -
ʃjən. The number of the antepenultimate stress was four while the number of the ultimate stress was one. Four students who stressed penultimately
silenced the antepenult so that the word sounded as [ ˈlek.ʃən]. Students’ muffled
voice caused this to happen. One student mispronounced the vowel e in the penultimate syllable. The vowel, which should have been an open e, was
pronounced as a relatively closed one. The result was obvious; the vowel e became similar to the e in the Indonesian word korek [ko.rek]. Some students even
mispronounced the antepenultimate syllable as e-, ɪ- or ə- instead of i-, the
correct one.
82 Pronouncing the vowel æ remained troublesome for almost all of the
students. Only two students in this research successfully pronounced graduation [ˌɡrædʒ.uˈeɪ.ʃən, ˌɡræd.juˈ-, US ˌɡrædʒ.uˈ-]. Almost all students were unsuccessful
in pronouncing the æ located in the initial syllable. These students mispronounced it as e since it was the closest equivalent of æ in Indonesian. Thus, the
mispronunciation [ ˌgred.uˈeɪ.ʃən] was often heard. Many students also missed
pronouncing d ʒ in the initial syllable; they only pronounced the d as in the
example. One student, who added an s in the ultimate syllable of some words previously, added an s to the ultimate syllable of graduation so that it became
graduations. Other ultimate syllable mispronunciations of graduation included, but were
not limited to - ʃjən, -ʒən, and -ʃjənt. In addition, most students failed to
articulate the penult since they pronounced it as -e-. Such was the case that most students did not realize the vowel quality that should have been maintained in the
penultimate syllable, namely e ɪ. Fifteen students that stressed antepenultimately
lengthened the vowel u. Thus, it became u ː. Eleven students abruptly stressed the
initial syllable as if they had been too hasty to pronounce. Despite all mispronunciations that prevailed, 67 students knew where the stress was, i.e. on the
penult. An invalid stress placement was found because there was one student that stressed both the initial and the third syllable.
Students’ failure of pronouncing æ seemed to continue during the pronunciation of imagination [
ɪˌmædʒ.ɪˈneɪ.ʃən, -əˈ-]. Not only this, failure of articulating a diphthong also became the issue. Most students often mispronounced
83 the diphthong e
ɪ in the penult as e. Therefore, [ɪ.medʒ.ɪˈne.ʃjən] emerged more frequently than the other mispronunciations of imagination. As the result suggests,
there was one student who kept stressing the initial syllable in previous words. This student continued doing so when pronouncing imagination. A particular student
that extended the syllables of some words previously also did the same when pronouncing imagination, making it [
ɪ.medʒ.ɪˈne.ʃɪ.ən]. Double stressing still happened here, where one student abruptly stressed both the second and the fourth
syllable. Among 78 students stressing penultimately, only two managed to pronounce it accurately. Three inaccurate vowel variations of the second syllable
included e, ː and ɪ. Seven students stressed the second syllable while six others
stressed the third syllable. The number of students stressing the initial syllable did not cease to exist.
Six students did so when they pronounced intention [ ɪnˈten.tʃən]. These students
were not part of those who stressed correctly in previous words. The number of appropriate stress was 87 in total. An example of an irrelevant pronunciation was
realized as [ ɪnˈteːn.e.ʃjən]. This example suggests a second-syllable stress as well
as a syllable extension. Thus, the stress was inappropriate. A student muffled the antepenultimate syllable that resulted in an incorrect word, namely [
ˈten.ʃən]. Tension has its initial syllable stressed and is not the base of intention.
As suggested by Plag 2003 and Miller 2006, -ion attracts verb bases and shifts the stress. In this case, the verb base of intention is intend, which has an
ultimate stress. Although the stress seems to be preserved because it falls on the second syllable of both words, it actually moves from the ultimate syllable to the
84 penultimate one. That is why, according to Kenworthy 1987, one needs to address
this issue so that understanding how stress and intonation work comes at ease pp. 13-14.
Twenty-two students understood how word stress worked and they were able to pronounce intention properly. The ultimate syllable was the syllable mostly
mispronounced since it had some mispronunciations such as - ʃjən, -e-, -ʃɪən,
ʃjəns, and -ʃjənd. The researcher found that -ʃjəns was pronounced by the same student that previously added an s to the ultimate syllable even when there was no
addition of letter ‘s’ to the ultimate syllable. The most common ultimate syllable
mispronunciation was - ʃjən.
It would seem that the more syllables a word had, the more challenging it became for students to arrive at a decision to stress it properly. This was what
happened during students’ performance in pronouncing justification and other words having more than two syllables later on. Even though 81 students were able
to stress justification properly, only nine students were able to pronounce it correctly. Both the first and the third syllable had five students stressing them.
Those who stressed the first syllable thought that the first syllable was the heaviest syllable while in fact, the heaviest was the penult -ke
ɪ-. The correct pronunciation variations are
[ˌdʒʌs.tɪ.fɪˈkeɪ.ʃən, -tə-, -fəˈ-, US -tə-, -tɪ-]. Katamba 1996 suggests that a heavy syllable contains a long vowel or a
diphthong although it also contains a short vowel followed by a consonant pp. 176- 177. It is clear that the first syllable, to wit d
ʒʌs-, contains a short vowel followed
85 by a consonant. However, there is a heavier syllable and that is the penult. The first
syllable bears the secondary stress while the penult bears the primary stress. Those five students should have placed the primary stress on the penult. This was caused
by the impression that the verb base, justify, always bears its primary stress on the first i.e. the antepenultimate syllable.
It was unclear why three students stressed the second syllable of justification. They made the vowel of the second syllable longer. As a result, mispronunciation
[ ˌdʒʌsˈtiː.fɪ.ke.ʃjən] prevailed. Five other students, who stressed the antepenult,
lengthened the vowel so that the word sounded as [ ˌdʒʌs.tɪˈfiː.ke.ʃjən]. Most
students also failed to articulate the diphthong of the penultimate and substituted it with an e instead.
Poor pronunciations continued to prevail when students had to pronounce location [l
əʊˈkeɪ.ʃən, US loʊ-]. Surprisingly, only four out of 94 students pronounced it correctly. Despite the fact that 88 students stressed the penultimate
syllable, mispronunciations did not stop to cease because almost all of them could not articulate the diphthong of the penultimate syllable. Even so, these students did
not fail to notice the diphthong of the antepenultimate syllable, namely əʊ or oʊ.
With regard to this, five students preferred the American version of the first syllable and one student preferred the British version. Some of them substituted the weak
diphthong with an o or an ɔ. The researcher used the term ‘weak diphthong’
because the diphthong of the antepenultimate syllable consisted of a nuclei or a schwa
ə. Poldauf 1984 argues that in an unstressed syllable, the vowel become a nuclei or a short vowel for most of the time p. 15.
86 As what happened before, one student extended the syllable of location and
made it into a four-syllable word, hence [lo ˈkeː.ʃɪ.ən]. Another poor representation
of this word was [lo.ka.l ɪˈʃɪ.ɔn] uttered by one student that seemed unsure of how
to read it. This syllable extension would have never happened if students had known about the role syllables play in regulating pronunciation, as proposed by Katamba
1996: 164-166 An intriguing phenomenon that interested the researcher was the mispronunciation of the ultimate syllable. This mispronunciation, realized as -
ʒən, existed in communication, demonstration, graduation, imagination, justification,
and location. This particular student might have regarded the words ending with - ation as -
ʒən. However, this particular student did the same thing when pronouncing notification, option, pollution, protection, and translation. It was still
unclear why this was the case. In contrast, it was clear that 93 students could not determine the appropriate
sound of the initial syllable of notification because only one student pronounced it correctly. This might be unbelievable, but it was true that the other 93 students
ignored the diphthong of an unstressed syllable. What they did was replacing it with an or an
ɔ. Other reoccurring errors were of the diphthong quality of the penultimate syllable, where most students mispronounced it as -ke-. Moreover, all
but one student failed to pronounce the ultimate syllable correctly since most of them mispronounced it as -
ʃjən. This fact contradicts the previous evidence of correct pronunciations where some students could pronounce
ʃən. This new phenomenon suggests that some students might have been unable
to pronounce the phoneme ʃ due to the difficulty in connecting it to the diphthong
87 of the penultimate syllable e
ɪ. It was easier for them to link eɪ or e to j hence, -ke
ɪ.ʃjən and -ke.ʃjən existed. Five students stressed the initial syllable possibly because they believed notification had the same stress as notify although they did
not pronounce the initial syllable as n əʊ or noʊ. Six students stressed the
antepenultimate syllable. As a consequence, they replaced the vowel ɪ with iː.
There were 83 students that stressed penultimately. Two appropriate variations of notification include
[ˌnəʊ.tɪ.fɪˈkeɪ.ʃən, -tə-, -fəˈ-, US ˌnoʊ.t̬ə-]. Eleven correct pronunciations of option
[ˈ p.ʃən, US ˈ ːp-] shows that most students still made the same mistake, namely mispronouncing the ultimate syllable.
The most common mispronunciations were [
ˈ
p. ʃjən] and [
ˈ
ɔːp.ʃjən]. Other ultimate syllable mispronunciations included [-
ʒən], [-ʃjəns], [-ʃjənt], and [-ʃjənd]. There was no syllable shortening or extension during the pronunciation of option.
Stress misplacement did not occur since all students successfully stressed the penultimate syllable.
In the word pollute, the stress falls on the ultimate syllable because it has a heavy syllable, namely a long vowel
uː. The initial syllable itself remains weak since it has no full vowel. Thus, the same thing goes for pollution, in which its first
syllable is weak and its penultimate syllable bears the stress as in [p əˈluː.ʃən, -ˈljuː-
, US - ˈluː-]. Among 86 penultimate stresses, five correct pronunciations prevailed.
There were six antepenultimate stresses where its antepenult bore a full vowel ɔ
.
However, this kind of full vowel also prevailed in examples where the stress was on the penult, such as [p
ɔˈluː.ʃən] and [pɔˈluː.ʃjən]. Students mispronouncing the initial syllable did not realize that the base itself, pollute, never maintains a full
88 vowel in its initial syllable. Their mere assumption led them to mispronounce the
initial syllable of pollution. Uncommon ultimate syllable mispronunciations such as -
ʃjən, -ʒən, ʃjəns, -ʃjənt, and -ʃjənd were pronounced by one student each. Ninety-one students stressing the penultimate syllable of protection seemed
aware that it had the same stress as the base protect in terms of syllabic property. Phonologically, the stress is of different syllable due to the effect of stress-shifting
attribute suffix -ion has. However, what most students failed to achieve was pronouncing the initial and the ultimate syllables properly. That was why only five
students managed to pronounce it accurately as in [pr əˈtek.ʃən, US prə-, proʊ-].
Almost all students regarded the initial syllable as having a full vowel o while in fact it has only a reduced vowel
ə or diphthongs əʊ or oʊ. Two students stressing the antepenultimate syllable used an o instead of a reduced vowel. Two
unintelligible pronunciations of the penultimate syllable containing a seemingly similar phoneme to Indonesian e prevailed. Another awkward mispronunciation
existed because it sounded as [pro.tek ˈʃjən]. Even though most common mistakes
were due to inappropriate pronunciations of the first and the last syllable, some mistakes happened due to the mispronunciations of the penultimate syllable. These
included -t ɪk-, -teːk-, and -θek-. In addition, ultimate syllable
mispronunciations as in the previous examples were also found. Since stress is a part of a syllable, it is natural that a vowel, a consonant or a
diphthong does not carry the stress Hayes, 2009: 272. This notion seemed congruent with what occurred so far. Students were able to assign stress to its
corresponding syllable, not phoneme. However, three students were unaware of
89 their stress misplacement when they pronounced the word region because they
stressed the ultimate syllable. One student opted out of pronouncing it. Ninety other students stressed the first syllable although 39 of these students mistook the word
for having three syllables. Thus, there were 42 inappropriate stresses and 51 appropriate stresses. Among these 51 appropriate stresses, only seven were
regarded as correct pronunciations. These seven correct pronunciations were realized as
[ˈriː.dʒən]. The main problem faced by students besides their inability to recognize the
number of syllable was articulation. Most students could not articulate the ultimate syllable of region properly. As a result, mispronunciations such as -gj
ən, -dʒjən, and -d
ʒənd existed. Another problem was separation of the ultimate syllable by 39 students. This made the stress placement invalid since what should have been a
disyllabic word became a trisyllabic word. Therefore, there were 39 antepenultimate stresses. A student even went as far as mispronouncing it as
religion. The syllable separation was realized as -d ʒi- for the second syllable and
- ən or -ɔn for the last syllable. In addition, the penultimate syllable was where
many students failed to recognize its sound. They mispronounced the penultimate syllable as re-.
Kager 2007 claims that stress stays within the frame of a syllable weight and usually exists in the most sonorous syllable p. 198. In the word selection
[s ɪˈlek.ʃən, sə-, US sə-], the most sonorous syllable is the antepenult -lek-. By way
of comparison, the totals of correct British pronunciation and American pronunciation were 19 and 37. That made 56 correct pronunciations. The number
90 of the appropriate stress was 92 while the antepenultimate and the ultimate stress
had one student each. Most students were unable to articulate the ultimate syllable properly, which resulted in mispronunciations such as
-
ʃjən, -sən, -ʃjəns, ʃjənt, -
ʃjɔŋ, and even -ʃjɔn. One can see that there were -ʃjɔŋ and -ʃjɔn indicating students’ unawareness of how to properly read the test item. Although there were
92 penultimate stresses, some students mispronounced the vowel of the penultimate syllable that became an
eː. It appeared that the word submission [s
əbˈmɪʃ.ən] was one of the most challenging words to pronounce under the -ion suffix category since only one
student was able to pronounce it accurately. Eighty-seven students failed to pronounce the ultimate syllable correctly because most of them mispronounced it
as -j ən. Six students managed to pronounce the ultimate syllable properly,
although they failed to pronounce the initial syllable. Instead of pronouncing it as s
əb-, they confidently pronounced it as sʌb-. Besides, there were two four- syllable versions of submission realized as [s
əbˈmiː.sɪ.ən] and [səbˈmiː.ʃɪ.ən]. Most students were under the impression that the first syllable contained the vowel
ʌ even though it is considered incorrect by CEPD 2011. Another intriguing fact was
the number of the antepenultimate stress that reached 21 students. It means to say that only 73 students stressed the penultimate syllable.
Twenty-three students were under the impression that the word translation had its first syllable stressed as is the case in translate, in which the first syllable
bears a primary stress. Nevertheless, the stress in translation and translate is different because the suffix -ion affects the stress placement of the base and puts it
91 in the penultimate position Plag, 2003: 91. The other 71 students successfully
stressed the penultimate syllable although only six students were able to pronounce it correctly. One student stressing the antepenultimate syllable made a mistake in
reading the item since this student mispronounced it as a very different word, to wit transation - [trans
ˈeɪ.sjən]. Another student even mispronounced it as [trens
ˈklɪ.ʃjən], which was a total absurdity. Syllable extension also prevailed and was carried out by one student. Therefore, [trens
ˈleː.ʃɪ.ən] existed. The appropriate pronunciation variations of translation are
[trænzˈleɪ.ʃən, tr ːnzˈ- træntˈsleɪ-, tr
ːntˈ-, US trænˈsleɪ-, US trænzˈleɪ-].
92
CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This chapter discusses three major sections, to wit conclusion, implication, and recommendation. The conclusions drawn are based on the findings of this
research. The researcher made the recommendations by connecting them to the findings and the research benefits. These recommendations include those of ELESP
lecturers, ELESP students, English teachers, and future researchers.
A. Conclusions
The researcher formulated two questions in this research. The first research question inquires how students see English word stress as part of pronunciation and
its relation to -eous, -ic, -ity, and -ion suffixes. The second research question inquires into
students’ mastery of English words ending in -eous, -ic, -ity, and -ion suffixes.
1. Students’ Perception of English Word Stress and English Words Ending
with -eous, -ic, -ity, and -ion Suffixes
Most students in this research 53 strongly agreed that word stress is an integral part of English pronunciation. Some students decided to agree as shown by
the 39 of the sample. Even so, this did not mean that their performance in pronouncing English suffixed words was satisfactory. Almost all students 73
