MR - Kalend.o. Grammar in Use (Speech Presented at Seminar Farewell at BASIC ENGLISH COURSE /BEC Pare Kediri, Indonesia, 2006)

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Grammar is an essential part of the use of language process, both in spoken

and written language. The grammar of a language is a description of the ways in

which the language uses patterns of structure to convey the meaning, so it would be

impossible to learn language effectively without knowing the grammar, because

grammar helps learners to identify grammatical forms, which serves to enhance and

sharpen the expression of meaning.1 Thus the researcher interests to do research

related with grammar of language that cannot separated from the language itself.

The importance of grammar is also strengthened by Mr. Kalend O. He states

“Having a good grammar system of a language, learners will be helpful in delivering

their ideas, messages and feelings either to the listeners or readers, language without

grammar would be disorganized and causes some communicative problems, for

example we can not say something in passive sentence using English if we do not

know the grammar concept of passive voice”.2

In other hand it is also like in English writing, based on the researcher’s

perspective learners need to know the grammar system of language they can conduct

in producing a good writing, because a good writing should be comprehensive and

1
www.digilib petra university.com(accessed on October 23,2011)
2
Mr.kalend.O. Grammar in use (speech presented at seminar farewell at BASIC ENGLISH COURSE
/BEC pare Kediri,indonesia,2006)

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easy to be understood by the readers, so it would be imposible to write affectively

and maximally without concerning grammar, therefore for the language learners it is

very important to learn correct grammar at the beginning of learning a new language,

because grammar is one of the supporting aspects in English skill especially writing.

In the process of language learning, learners will get more problems and face

great difficulties when they learn foreign language. 3for example it might be in their

pronounciation, vocabulary, grammar and other aspects of language, and of course

this problem will cause the errors,it sometimes happens due to the interference from

mother tongue.4 Besides by making errors, learners will build their new knowledge

to use the target language, and making errors during studying the second language

can be considered as a means of building learners’ abilities because they can learn

something from making errors.5

As we know that an error is noticeable grammar from the adult grammar of

native speakers, reflecting the interlanguage competence of the learners. These errors

occur because of many things. Richards distinguishes three sources of competence

errors:6

1. Interference errors occur as a result of the use of element from one language while

speaking another. The errors that caused by mother toungue or it is called

interlangua. To identify interlingua errors the researcher usually translates the

3
H.Douglas Brown,Principle of languageg learning and teaching,(New jersey:Prentice hALl,1980),p.41
4
D.A. Wilkins, Linguistic in Language Teaching,(London: Edward Arnold Publisher Ltd, 1980), 197.
5
Mei Lin Ho, Caroline. 20011. Empowering English Teachers to Grapple with Errors in Grammar. TESL
(online), Vol.9. No.3, (http// itesl.org/).p.1
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Richards, Jack C. 1974. Error Analysis. London : Longman.124
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grammatical from learner’s phrase or sentence into the learner’s first language to

see if the similarities exist.

Example : The car black it should be The black car

2. Intralingual errors reflect the general characteristics of rule learning such as faulty

generalization, incomplete application of rules and failure to learn conditions

under which rules apply.

3. Developmental errors occur when the learner attempts to build up hypotheses

about the target language on the basis of limited experience.

e.g: we can look at the way Indonesian sentences for English sentences

a. Kami sedang belajar sekarang For We are studying now

b. Kami belajar kemarin For We studied yesterday

c. Kami akan belajar besok For We are going to study tomorrow

From the description above, it is clear that the way Indonesian sentences

formed is different from the English way, Therefore it is important to analyze the

errors made by the students because by learning the errors there are many advantages

such as (a) a device which the learner uses in order to learn (b) to fully grasp and

understand the nature of errors, and (c) instead of just being able to recognize errors,

the learners are now able to explain the rules and correct the errors.7

As the writer’s experience of practice teaching (PPL) on the SMA Mahardika

Surabaya when teaching English, she found that the errors usually occur in the

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Mei Lin Ho, Caroline. 20011. Empowering English Teachers to Grapple with Errors in Grammar. TESL
(online), Vol.9. No.3, (http// itesl.org/).p.1
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productive skills, especially in writing. In composing a good writing, we should

notice some aspects. Grammar is one important aspect that should be mastered in

order to make a well structured writing, but writing in different language is not

always as easy as writing in our own language since there are some different rules in

the writing systems and these differences sometimes make us make errors. Writing

also plays an important role in a modern society. Writing language is getting more

and more essential today. It should be mastered in order to be literate, but Indonesian

students of senior high school commonly have only little enthusiasm for their writing

tasks. It is proved when every time they have writing tasks, they feel it is quite

difficult to do the writing task in composing a good writing, but they should have

strong foundation for their writing skill grammatically before entering a higher level

of education. So, it is crucial for the students to master this skill.

In the competence based curriculum 2004, the genre of text such as Hortatory

exposition text is being taught on the second year in senior high school, so that year

students have mastered how to write a good Hortatory exposition text composition in

English. They have had the basic of making a good composition in English, therefore

it is interesting to observe the grammatical errors in writing made by the eleven year

students of senior high school. This study primarily deals with the students’ English

grammar mastery, specifically in writing, So this study conducted on analyzing

grammatical errors in the Hortatory exposition text made by students of the eleven

grades of SMAN 1 Baureno Bojonegoro in Class XI-IA 3, it focused on sentence


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problems include: tenses (simple present only),article, conjunction, preposition,

singular and plural, passive verb form ,and sentence structure.

Based on that, it has been done to make simpler and detail for collecting the

data and researching. The writer choose the SMAN 1 Baureno Bojonegoro because

this place is known as the school that often wins the English competision in that area,

this school also has English club program to develope the students comperhenshion

in English skill; the English teacher of that school usually uses English languange in

delivering the English materials during the teaching learning process; the students of

the eleven grades of SMAN 1 Baureno Bojonegoro have good mark in english

subject and they are also considered having studied all English language features on

Hortatory exposition text and it needs evaluations and measurements how deep the

students of the eleven grades of SMAN 1 Baureno Bojonegoro understand English

writing on Hortatory exposition. So they are expected to make writings which are

correct in grammar, so it is important to know whether the students produced

grammatical errors or not and what kind of grammatical errors that students made.

The writer hopes the result of the research will be useful; not only for the students of

the eleven grades of SMAN 1 Baureno Bojonegoro, but also for the teachers and any

other people in the Education environment.

Based on the previous research conducted by Isani Astasari year 2009 from

state University of Malang on her thesis by the title Grammatical Error in Students’s
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Narrative text.8 Her study shows that students still make errors in Narrative text and

they need improvement to develop their skill, especially in writing narrative text.

This study reveals that there are 860 errors found from the data. The highest

frequency of errors is omission errors(41, 51 %), the second highest frequency of

errors is error of misformation(35,5%), the next highest frequency is errors of

addition (21,74 %), then Misordering errors come as the lowest frequency of errors

that only amount (1,3 %). Interlingual and intralingual interference are considered as

the major causes of these errors. According to the writer, the researcher’s study

explains the result of her study systematically, but it is lack of detail. She only

explain generally, without including more explanation about the different meaning,

so that it can make the readers still confuse, even missunderstanding about the

researcher’s mean. Related to the writer’s study, her study also explains the

grammatical errors made by the students, but she focuses her study on narrative text

which is different from the writer’s study.

Furthermore A study on Grammatical Errors in the Descriptive Composition of

English Produced by the Seventh Grade students of MTS Ahmad Wachid of

Surabaya, year 2010 by Olivia Yuniar Renata from IAIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya.9 In

her research, she finds that the students also still produce a lot of errors, such as

omission, addition, malformation and disordering errors, and the highest frequent

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Isani Atasari , Grammatical Error in Students’s Narrative Writing(Universitas Negeri Malang ;Unpublished
bachelor thesis, 2009)cited from <http://karya ilmiah.um.ac.id/index.php/sastra-
inggris/article/view/1516>[accessed May 11,2012]
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Ollivia Yuniar Renata A study . Grammatical Errors in the Descriptive Composition of English Produced by the
Seventh Grade students of MTS Ahmad Wachid of Surabaya. IAIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya.2010.unpublished
thesis
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types of errors was omission errors that occured 49 times or 58.3 % out of 84 errors,

then the lowest was belong to disordering with the frequency occurences 7 times or

8.3 %. This study also explains grammatical errors made by the students, but she

focuses her study on the descriptive text which is different from the writer’s study.

B. Statements of the Problems

1. What are the types of grammatical errors made by the students of the eleven

grades of SMAN 1 Baureno Bojonegoro in their Hortatory exposition text?

2. What are the possible causes of those grammatical errors?

C. Objectives of the Study

The purposes of this study are;

1. To classify the types of grammatical errors in Hortatory exposition text made by

the students of the eleven grades of SMAN 1 Baureno Bojonegoro.

2. To find the causes of errors in Hortatory exposition text of the students of eleven

grades of SMAN 1 Baureno Bojonegoro.

D. Significance of the Study

This study is hoped to give some concrete informations to the English teachers

of SMAN 1 Baureno Bojonegoro about the most errors made by their students, so

that they can solve the problems. After knowing the students’ grammatical errors, the

teachers will be able to design and improve more suitable techniques and method in
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their teaching process. And for the students, they will able to know their grammatical

errors in their writing so they will try for studying them well and seriously, So it will

be hoped giving some better changes in the process of learning english especially in

composing a good English writing.

E. Scope and Limitation of the Study

The limitation of this study is to find the errors in Hortatory exposition writing

made by XI - IA 3 Class of SMAN 1 Baureno Bojonegoro, and the writer just

concerns on analysing errors of problems on the sentence in the students’ Hortatory

exposition writing and ignores other errors. The sentence problems include tense and

the tense discussed is only simple present, because this tense is commonly use in the

Hortatory exposition text, and the others are article, conjunction, preposition,

singular and plural, passive verb form, and sentence structure; they are commonly

occured in the students’ writing of Hortatory exposition text.

F. Definitions of Key Term

1. An error is a deviation which is made by the students in the Hortatory exposition

writing

2. Grammatical errors are errors which happen in the Hortatory exposition writing.

3. Hortatory exposition text is one of the text genre that is taught in the second year

of senior high school, it is a type of spoken or written text that is intended to


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explain the listeners or readers that something should or should not happen or be

done.

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