A. Background of the Study
Some linguists doubt the importance of contrastive analysis for the teaching of a foreign language because not all problems which have been predicted before are difficult for the students to overcome. Sometimes English Noun Phrases (NPs) are not found in Indonesian, and is therefore predicted to be difficult for the students to contrast it. Contrastive analysis which makes a comparison between the systems of English and Indonesian noun phrases intends to find out the different and similar elements of such noun phrases. There is assumption that different elements cause learning problems, whereas similar do not.
The English teaching curriculum includes skills such as listening, speaking, writing and reading. Reading skill is emphasized although four of these skills should be taught in on integrated manner. It can be seen from the fact that one of the goals of English teaching in the institute where the writer constitutes as a student of it is to give the students an ability to read English texts. It is very important because there are many books written in English now.
Since English is not our own language, mastering English cannot be achieved in a short time. it is not also our second language but it is only the first foreign language in Indonesia. It has different systems of rule form Indonesian language. Many students find difficulties to interpret even very simple English noun phrases (NPs), such as ‘stone building’ and ‘building stone’. It indicates how important the problem is.
The writer is interested in conducting a research to help teachers or lecturers when they teach English especially in English reading and writing. It has propose to find more useful way to interpret the English noun phrase (NPs). Later it is hoped that the students can contrast English and Indonesia noun phrases without making any mistakes.
We can see the following examples of English noun phrases and their Indonesian equivalents :
1. one girl : satu orang gadis
2. all the facts : semua fakta
3. such limits : batasan-batasan semacam itu
4. your book : bukumu
5. no choice : tak ada pilihan
sometimes the students do not pay attention to modifier in English and Indonesian NPs which are different. So, they often do any mistakes in translating English texts into Indonesian or just the opposite, from Indonesian text into English.