CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
Human being is a perfect creature, among others. He/she can do, think, and create everything by their abilities. Human cannot live alone; he/she needs others or at least a partner. Since human needs others, he/she requires media to transfer their ideas, aims, wishes, etc. The media might be signs, voices, and even, gestures. In short, human needs to communicate their mind to others by those media. Of all the media of communication, language is regarded as the most important and perfect media of communication. It plays a very important role in the life of community members. Raja T. (1978:01) says that Language is an acquired vocal system for communicating meaning. This statement tells us that language operates in a regular and systematic fashion, that language is basically oral, and that the oral symbols represent meaning as they are related to real life situations and experiences, and that language has a social function, and that without it society would probably not exist.
English is one of the foreign languages, which is taught in all levels of Indonesians Educational Systems. English has different rules from those of Indonesia language, so Indonesians studying English must be ready to face the rules. There are four skills in learning English: Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. Those skills are important to be understood by the learners, so it will be easy for them to master English as their foreign language and one of the communication way.
Writing, which is a part of English skill, plays an important role as communication. The person who has writing skills will be easier to get and give information. It also used to persuade someone about something true or false. And it also can be used to express emotion or some experiences, whether it is good or bad. As suggested by Halliday (1985: 40), writing has evolved in societies as a result of cultural changes creating communicative needs which cannot be readily met by the spoken language. In the modern world, written language serves a range of functions in everyday life, including the following:
1. Primarily for action
Public signs, for example, on roads and stations; product labels and instructions, for example, on food, tools or toys purchased; recipes; maps; television and radio guides; bills; menus; telephone directories; ballot papers; computer manuals, monitors and printouts.
2. Primarily or information
Newspaper (news, editorials) and current affair magazines; hobby magazines; nonfiction book, including textbooks; public notices; advertisements; political pamphlets; scholastic, medical, etc. reports; guidebooks and travel literature.
3. Primarily for entertainment
Light magazines, comic strip; fiction books; poetry and drama; newspaper features; film subtitles; games; including computer games.
Students will face many writing tasks in order to complete their education successfully. Then after graduating, they will write letters to business when they look for a job. Whether or not they are invited for interviews will depend on the impression their letter make.
For the Eleventh Grade students of SMK Yos Sudarso 1 Sidoarjo, it is found that among the four language skills, writing is the most difficult one for the students to learn. One of their reasons is in writing; they faced difficulties in using grammar which is different from Indonesian.
Basically, the writing is easy for some people, but writing is not something simple. It is a complex skill with components. According to Oshima and Hogue (1991:3), writing is a process, not a product. The writing skills are complex and sometimes difficult to teach, requiring mastery not only of grammatical and rhetorical devices but also of conceptual and judgment elements. The following analysis attempts to group the many and varied skills necessary for writing good prose into four main areas:
1. Grammatical Skills
The ability to write correct and appropriate sentences
2. Stylistic Skills
The ability to manipulate sentences and paragraphs, and use language effectively
3. Mechanical Skills
The ability to use correctly those conventions peculiar to the written language, e.g. punctuation, spelling
4. Judgment Skills
The ability to write an appropriate manner for a particular purpose with a particular audience in mind, together with an ability to select, organize, and order relevant information.(J.B. Heaton, 1974:138)
Because of the complexity of its demand, writing is considered by many students with and without disability to be their most challenging academic task. College and university professors often comment on the inadequate writing proficiency of their graduate and even graduate students.
In writing, grammar plays an important role to make sense of sentences or paragraph. Therefore, the students should learn grammar before they start to write. According to Byrne, (1980:97) writing is only an imperfect representation of speech and involves extra problems of orthography, the transfer in learning from the spoken to the written form in a greater than reverse.
Good writing in English requires good grammar and good organization. Grammar is needed so much in composing a written composition. Grammar is a certain rule that the writer should use when he/she wants to make a sentence, paragraph, essay, or written composition. There are three time signals found in the grammar: Present, Past, and Future.
In general, the Simple present expresses events or situation that take place always, usually, and habitually; they happen now, have happened in the past, and probably happen in the future. Simple past expresses events at one particular time in the past, and Future expresses events at particular time in the future (Azar, 1989:2).
Since English has many time signals as a rule in composing a sentence, many students are confused of them. Based on that observation, the thesis writer decided to make a research to find out the common error made by the Eleventh Grade students of SMK Yos Sudarso 1 Sidoarjo in composing a written composition using Simple Past Tense. It is important to study the capability of the First semester students about writing the written composition because in the following semester they will face a national examination to reach for their graduation on their senior high and the students should have mastered all the grammatical skills and understood all grammatical rules, including writing the composition using Tense in the Past form. How was their ability in using grammar, especially with kind of past tense in the written composition? What errors are made when they used Simple Past Tense on the written composition? Those will be described in this study.
B. Statements of the Problem
Based on the background of the study above, the writer states the problem of the study to be investigated as follows:
1. What types of errors was the Eleventh Grade students of SMK Yos Sudarso 1 Sidoarjo made in using Simple Past Tense?
2. What errors do frequently occur in the writing of written composition made by the Eleventh Grade students of SMK Yos Sudarso 1 Sidoarjo in using Simple Past Tense ?
C. Purposes of the Study
Based on the statement of the problem above, this study is aimed at:
1. To find out the types of errors on the written composition made by the Eleventh Grade students of SMK Yos Sudarso 1 Sidoarjo in Using Simple Past Tense.
2. To Identifying the errors frequently occur on the written composition made by the Eleventh Grade students of SMK Yos Sudarso 1 Sidoarjo in Using Simple Past Tense.
D. Significance of the Study
The contributions of this study are as follows:
1. It can help the teacher anticipate the common errors made by the students, then he/she can emphasize on that area when he/she is teaching.
2. It will indicate the most difficult problems which students encounter in using Simple Past Tense in writing a written composition.
E. Scope and Limitation of the Study
In writing a composition there are many aspects that should be considered, one of them is grammar. This study focuses in the process of English teaching learning especially in the writing class grammatical aspect. Since there are many rules in grammar, this study is limited in the using simple past tense in the written composition for the Eleventh Grade students of SMK Yos Sudarso 1 Sidoarjo of the school year 2012-2013. This study discusses the error in the form of Simple Past Tense of affirmative sentence.
F. Definition of Key Terms
To avoid misinterpretation of the difficult term, it is necessary to fine some key words in this study.
1. Error Analysis
Is an observation on something in detail to know the error or may be wrong from the object deeply and competently.
2. Written composition
a task which involves the students in manipulating words in grammatically correct sentences and in linking those sentences to form a piece of continuous writing which successfully communicates the writer’s thought and ideas on a certain topic
3. Simple Past Tense
is a tense or time signal to talk about activities or situations that began and ended at a particular time in the past.
G. Organization of the Study
Researcher organizes the thesis into five chapters. It is expected to get clear understanding in analysis. Chapter one is the introduction that consists of the background of the study, statement of the problems, purpose of the study, significance of the study, scope and limitation of the study, definition of key term, and the organization of the study. Chapter two is theoretical background consisting of some theories used to analyze the research such as the meaning of written composition, components of written composition, teaching writing, writing process, writing problem, teaching grammar, and tenses in the past form. Chapter three is research method consisting research design, population and sample, place and time of research, instrument, data collection, and data analysis. Chapter four discusses about the analysis of the study from the result and discussion of research. The last chapter is chapter five. In this chapter the writer tries to give the conclusion of the thesis and some suggestions.
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