63 presents two suggestions to improve students’ understanding, namely giving
feedback and increasing practices through interesting activities.
1. Giving Feedback
The most effective suggestion to improve the student’ understanding of basic noun phrases is by giving feedback. Feedback can be obtained through self-
editing, peer feedback and classroom error correction. Self-editing involves the students checking their own work, for example, correcting a simple error like
adding a plural marker to plural nouns which need it. Simple errors can easily be corrected by the students themselves if they think about them carefully. Therefore,
the students need to be convinced that checking their own work is useful. Feedback could also come from the fellow students, usually called peer
feedback. Correcting the other students’ work will create opportunities for discussion and learning. The more they discuss, the more they will find the errors
and the correction in their work. This method will work if the teacher manages the group of the peer feedback well. If all of the students of a class have sufficient
knowledge of English grammar, peer feedback will work well. Otherwise, the teacher should organize the students into groups of similar abilities; meaning that
each group has one or two members who have sufficient knowledge in order to heshethey can give feedback on the other students’ work.
The teachers also play a role in giving feedback. The teachers should give the students one-to-one written or spoken feedback whether the students’
production of basic noun phrases whether or not they have produced them
64 correctly. Furthermore, the teacher could do classroom error correction which is
more efficient. For instance, the teacher takes students’ errors without mentioning students’ names and then corrects the errors in front of the class. It is hoped that
all of the students will pay attention to the teachers’ explanations of the errors and
then the student can revise their errors themselves. 2.
Increasing Practice of the Language through Interesting Activities
Most of the interviewees suggested that keep drilling and practicing is one of the effective ways to improve the students’ understanding of basic noun
phrases. However, the teacher should avoid the monotonous drilling and practicing by breaking down the class into a number of interesting activities.
Actively practicing English in the classroom is very useful. It aims to provide input and opportunities for meaningful language use. It also aims to internalize the
structures taught so that they can use English in daily conversation. The practice could be in the form of written and spoken activities. For
instance, the teacher gives clear and interesting explanations about how to form basic noun phrases and then gives opportunities to the students to ask if they find
difficulties. After that, the teacher asks the students to practice through a game. The teacher distributes worksheets related to basic noun phrases to the students.
The example of the worksheets is briefly presented below.
Table 4.7: Game
List 1 Things in Nature
List 2 Things you eat and drink
List 3 Animals
List 4 Things you wear
A Air
Apples B
Bear Bandanna
… Z
Zebra Score:
Score: Score:
Score:
65 The students are asked to work in groups or individually. They should write nouns
that begin with each letter of the alphabet and must be belong to the category of the list. When they finish writing their lists, ask them to exchange their works
with other friends and count the correct number of nouns that they have. The result is their scores. The objective of that game is the students are expected to be
able to mention and write singular and plural countable and uncountable nouns correctly. If it is done, the teacher should praise the students who have done their
best and encourage the students who make errors so that they will do better. In addition, the teacher should also give feedback based on what they have written.
Another way to practice basic noun phrases is through speaking activities. The students are asked to mention lists that they have written in front of the class.
The teacher should ensure that the students make well-formed basic noun phrases in their lists by correcting them after they mention their lists. Hopefully, by
through interesting activities, the students will be motivated, involved and enjoy learning English, especially learning basic noun phrases.
66
CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This chapter consists of two sections, conclusions and recommendations. The first section is the summary of the research findings in relation to basic noun
phrase errors, which responds to the problem formulation of this study. The second section gives recommendations for other parties who may be interested in
this topic.
A. Conclusions
This study focused on an error analysis of basic noun phrases in descriptive writing made by VIIF graders of SMP Pangudi Luhur 1 Yogyakarta.
This study responds to three research problems presented in chapter 1. The first research problem focused on the kinds of basic noun phrase errors made by the
seventh grade students. The researcher took data from the students’ descriptive writing assignment to answer the first research problem. The assignment was
written in paragraphs based on a picture provided. The researcher concluded that there was only misformation error made by the students in forming type 1 basic
noun phrases. There was 8 type 1 basic noun phrase errors were found. While type 2 basic noun phrases, there were 76 omission errors 43.6, the most frequent
being the omission of plural markers. In addition, there were 36 addition errors 20.9 which cover regularization and simple addition, 53 misformation errors
30.4 and 1 misordering error 0.5.
