CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Research
Learning a second language is a lifelong process and
it is a challenging experience for second language learners. English has become
international language and it is used as the language in international
relations, and in exchanging knowledge and technology. English occupies the
status of a second language in Indonesian education system in both primary and
secondary school. It is taught as a compulsory subject in junior high school
(SMP) and senior high school (SMA), even it has been tried to be taught to the
students in some elementary schools.
Teaching English in Indonesia is focused on the
students’ communicative competence. The communication can be oral and written
forms. The learners should be capable of using the four language skills,
namely: listening, speaking, reading, and writing (National Department of
Education, 2004: 6). Hymes stated that communicative competence is what a
speaker needs to know in order to be communicatively competence in a speech
community. In order to gain communicative competence, a student has to acquire
not only knowledge but also ability of language use (Hymes in Richards et.al,
1986: 68). The learners should have abilities in reading and listening to
support their speaking and writing.
Celce-Murcia represented the model of communicative
competence (Murcia
in Curriculum 2004). In her model, Murcia developed the competencies
in order that the students can achieve communicative competence. The core of
communicative competence is discourse competence. Discourse competence is the
ability to understand and create forms of the language that are longer than
sentences, such as stories, conversations, or business letters. Discourse
competence concerns with selection, sequencing, and arrangement of words,
structures, sentences and utterances to achieve a unified spoken or written
text. It includes understanding how particular instances of language use are
internally constructed. (Murcia
in Curriculum 2004) Meanwhile, the students are able to acquire discourse
competence only if they can gain the supported competencies namely linguistic
competence, actional competence, sociocultural competence and strategic
competence. Linguistic competence deals with sentence pattern and types, constituent
structure, morphological inflection, lexical resources, and phonological
systems needed to realize communication such as spoken and written. The
actional competence relates with oral communication. It can be applied by the
teacher in class in order that the students are familiar with English
discourse. The sociocultural competence concerns with how to express message in
the socio and cultural context. It is very important in learning second
language because the students can not find the social and cultural context by
themselves. The teacher needs to create a part or the entire language
environment. (Brown, 2000: 7). Brown (2000: 7) stated that “Teaching is guiding
and facilitating learning, enabling the learner to learn, setting the condition
for learning”. The students learn to express, to interpret, and to negotiate
meaning according to culturally-derived norms and expectations. Thus, the three
components are accommodated with strategic competence. It is used to break down
the problem and difficulties encounter in communication.
Canale (1983) oulines four major components of
communicative competence: grammatical
competence, including knowledge of vocabulary, rules of words and sentence
formation, linguistic semantics, pronunciation and spelling; sociolinguistic competence, including
rules of appropriateness of both meanings (allowable messages) and grammatical
forms in different sociolinguistic contexts; discourse competence, the knowledge required to combine forms and
meanings to achieve unified spoken and written texts; and strategic competence, knowledge of verbal and and non-verbal
communication strategies that may be called upon to compensate for limitations
in one or more of the other areas of communicative competence (www.
Wikipedia.com).
Writing is one of the important skills in teaching
English. It has always occupied a place in most English language course. One of
the reasons is that more and more people can explain how people perform
different processes in a sequence of steps. To write well, people must have good
capabilities in writing. Moreover, someone who wants to write a text s/he
should know the steps in writing process and aspects of writing. The writer
must be able to organize the idea, to construct a sentences, to use punctuation
and spelling well. Besides, they must be able to arrange their writing into
cohesive and coherent paragraphs and texts. Byrne (1997: 1) defines “Writing is
producing sequence of sentences arranged in a particular order and linked
together in certain ways”. In reality, people always communicate to each other.
They do not only communicate with spoken language but also communicate in
written language. It is one of the reasons why the people need to master
writing-skill well.
Basically, in writing, learners are not only realizing
information message or idea in a sentence in correct grammatical but also they
must be packed in text formulation that conventionally have been agreed by the
society. So that, the reader or audience will more easily understand the content
in the texts. As for the criterion is; (1) purpose, (2) rhetorical structure,
(3) linguistic realization or grammatical pattern (Pardiyono, 2007: 2). In
other word, as consideration of the effectiveness of using language, each
written text should include these.
Mastering writing skill is not easy. Problem may rise
during studying writing. Trible (1996) says that learning writing skill is
difficult. His statement is as follows,; “Learning to write in either a first
or second language is one of the most difficult tasks a learner encounters.
Many native speakers leave school with a poor command of writing. Learning to
write is a difficult and lengthy process. One of that is induces anxiety and
frustration in many learners. Learning to write is not just a question on
developing a set of mechanical “orthographic skill”. It also involves learning
a new set of cognitive and social relation.” (Tribble in Qatawech, 2009:
Unplubished Journal).
When someone learns a foreign language, he often faces
interference, where he/ she applies his/her mother tongue or first language
structure to structure of the foreign language which is different from his/ her
native language. Indonesian students learn English as the first foreign
language. Therefore, English is a new language so that they get some
difficulties and they also need much time to learn. Competence based curriculum
2004 claims, “………………. when one learns a
foreign language, he is involved in creating and interpreting various kinds of
texts made form the foreign culture which are different from his own.”
Thus, kinds of texts which are colored by various communicative objectives,
arrangement of parts of the text, and certain linguistics features should be
noticed by every language learners. It means that the learners can not only
create English sentences in isolation, but also arrange them to become texts
that are accepted by the native speakers.
Moreover, Fauziati (2001) says that most of learning
problems are caused by different elements found between the two languages.
Therefore, he will be able to learn the elements of the target language which
are similar to those with his own more easily than those which are not found in
his native language. On the other hand, it is difficult for Indonesian to use
correct structure in English. This is mostly because the students are
influenced by their mother tongue on the acquisition of the new structure.
However, the students are still weak in English, especially in their writing
skill. They still seem to commit errors in all aspect of language. According to
James (1998) in Saadiyah Darus, errors in writing such as tenses, prepositions
and weak vocabulary are the most common and frequent type of errors that are
committed by learners. The learners usually face difficulties in learning the
grammatical aspects of the Target Language, such as in subject-verb agreement,
the use of preposition, articles and the use of correct tense. Such errors can
be seen clearly in the learners’ written performance (Nik Safiah (1978) in
Darus 2009). The problems that the students are bound to encounter would be
weak vocabulary, inappropriate use of grammar in sentence etc. teachers who can
analyze and treat errors effectively would be more able to help their students
to become more corrective techniques can give effective learning and teaching
of English. In fact, making mistakes is a natural process of learning and must
be considered as part of learning. As a result, errors must be viewed
positively. Therefore, EA is the best tool for describing and explaining errors
made by speakers of other languages. By investigating students’ written work,
it will provide a means to help the teachers to recognize the importance of
errors as one of the challenging areas in teaching English.
Interlanguage is a study on the language of the second
language learners, which currently receives a wider acceptance in the
literature of Error Analysis (Fauziati, 2009: 155). The notion ‘interlanguage’
means to “a language between two (or more) languages, i.e. a target language
(Lt) norm which a student is trying to achieve, and his first language (L1).
The interlanguage has charactheristics of both of these languages” (Ro, 2009).
The recognition as systematic rules also comes from Smith (1994). He defines
interlanguage as “the systematic linguistic behavior of learners of a second or
other language; in other words; learners of non-native languages” (Smith, 1994:
7).
Due to the intricacy of writing, it is understandable
that students usually fins difficulty in writing tasks. Commonly, they are
afraid of making mistakes and worry about their ability in reproducing and
arranging words of making mistakes and worry about their ability in reproducing
in writing tasks, they do not want to try and even they do not like writing. It
is teachers’ task to create an exciting and conducive writing class as well as
to give continuous guidance to students. Teachers should try to explore new
productive strategies in brightening the writing class. It is really a hand
job, but students should be given a strong foundation for their writing skill
before entering the higher level of education.
Writing a short text will make students really enjoy
the writing class. As learners know more about the language, many errors will
disappear. Not only do the they replace one tense with the other tense(s), but
also they fail to construct the correct verb forms for these tenses, for
examples:
·
My former teacher was Mrs. Esti. I study
with her for two year.
·
My teacher in class X was Mrs. Esti. I studyed
with her during two years.
·
I have visit Borobudur
many times, so I can tell you how it is like.
These errors were caused by the difference between the
rules of the language used by the students (Indonesian) and the rules of target
language. Although the writer admits that students, in their process of
learning, usually cannot prevent themselves from making errors, she still
thinks the errors made by the students need remedial work or otherwise they
will remain errors.
Related to the phenomenon above, in this research the
writer would like to conduct a research about "THE SISTEMATICITY OF INTERLANGUAGE OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS".
B. Formulation of the Problem
Based on this problem, the problem is formulated as
what is the writer rises some subsidiary research questions as follows;
1.
What is the linguistic system used by the students to
express past events?
2.
What is the linguistic system used by the students to
express future events?
3.
What is the linguistic system used by the students to
express present events?
4.
What is the linguistic system used by the students to
express negation.
C. The Objectives of the Study
In relation to the background of the study and the
problem formulation, there are some objectives that are expected to be achieved
in this study. The objectives are as follows:
1.
to describe what the linguistic system used by the
students to express past events is
2.
to describe what the linguistic system used by the
students to express future events is
3.
to describe what the linguistic system used by the
students to express present events is
4.
to describe what the linguistic system used by the
students to express negation is
D. Limitation of the Study
Problem limitation is made in order to avoid
misunderstanding and misinterpretation. It also hopefully can give a limitation
toward the given analysis. The writer only focuses the study on the errors in
English writing of class XI Accounting 1 students at SMK xxx,
so that the study in writing texts will be improved.
In order the study can be deeply examined, the writer
needs to limit the study as follows:
1. The subjects
of the study is limited to the secondary students of eleventh grade at SMK xxx in the Academic Year 2010/2011. There were 34 female
students in the class.
2. The objects
of the study is limited on the sistematicity of interlanguage and error
analysis in English writing of class XI Accounting 1 students of SMK xxx.
E. The
Benefits of the Study
Herewith, the author expects that this research would
give several benefits, both theoretically and practically.
1. Theoretical Benefit
The finding of the research will be useful as a
reference and comparison for the future research. This research is dealing with
the sistematicity of interlanguage of the secondary school students in SMK xxx.
2. Practically Benefits
a. For the teachers
1)
By reading the result of this study, they can get clear
description about the common errors made by the students so they find new methods
to anticipate the making of errors and to improve their teaching ability in
English class especially in teaching writing.
2)
By investigating the students’ errors in their written
works, it will provide help to the teachers to learn something about the effectiveness
in their teaching English.
3)
The teachers also get clear explanation about the
learning strategies that the students employ to master English.
b. For the readers: the study can serve as a reference
for those who want to conduct a research dealing with error analysis and
interlanguage.
