The Background of the Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. The Background of the Study

By the time a human does the communication with others by means of speaking or writing, they will use a language. Language is an important communication tool that people can use it to express their feelings, thoughts and also share ideas so they can interact and get in contact with others easily. It is necessity to human life and civilization is certainty not possible without it. All sciences depend upon it and also all education in human life is conducted through it. Nowadays, the existences of English language are not odd anymore in the world. It has become the popular language which is learnt by most people in many areas of the globe. English is an international language. 1 It is the world’s most widely used language by society for communication and international contact. English has become the most popular language in the world, through the long road of its historical background. The predominance of English is mainly the result of two periods of world domination by English speaking countries: 1 Christopher Brumfit, English for International Communication, London: Pergamon Press, 1982, p. 1. 1 British imperialism in the nineteenth century and the economic influence of the United States in the twentieth century. 2 In another word, it may be shortly concluded that these are two dominant reasons for popularity of English as a world language and the factors which have influenced and sustained the spread of the language. In this globalization era, everyone is demanded to prepare a great resources for hisher life particularly in science and technology. Of course, to compete the global requirement, the people should have an adequate knowledge and good skills. Therefore, mastering English language both oral and written English actively is necessity for academic and global media communication requirement because it has become compulsory for everyone who wants to compete against the globalization era. The Indonesian government itself considers that mastering English is one way to absorb the sciences and technology in order to create the great human resources. Of course, the great human is important for Indonesian development and existence toward other nations. Therefore, English language is the 1 st foreign language which has been taught to the students since them in elementary school. In addition, English language is the medium of instruction in teaching particular subject in certain school. As in the International school and the school based on International standard. When students are learning English, they will learn language skills and language components. Grammar is one of English language components that it must be learnt and understood by students. It is a very basic knowledge and an important tool for students to master English. It is a science that teaches students how the way to speak, to read, and to write English correctly. Besides, by learning grammar the students will know about system of language so they will be able to combine and build words into meaningful sentence. As Penny Ur stated in her book A Course in Language Teaching Practice and Theory, “Grammar is defined as words are put together to make correct 2 Christopher Brumfit, English for International Communication ..., p. 2. sentences it does not only affect how the units of words are combined in order to make correct sentences but also affects their meaning.” 3 It can be concluded from the statements above, it is no doubt that by mastering grammar, the students will have a way to be able to speak, to read, and to write English correctly and understandable, so finally the students can create a good communication and interaction in English language actively both in oral or written English between each other in their lives. In English grammar, reported speech is one of many grammatical categories which is important to be learnt by students. It is needed to be learnt because it is one of three ways for students to report or share their statements or thoughts to other people especially when they communicate between each other. It is as Marianne Celce Murcia and Diane Larsen Freeman stated in The Grammar Book An ESLEFL Teacher’s Course, “Grammar and rhetoric books generally recognize three ways for a speaker and writer to attribute statements or thoughts to other people: direct quotation, indirect reported speech, and paraphrase.” 4 Reported speech is commonly used to report what other people have said or thought without reporting the exact word. With reported speech, one wishes to report the content of the original source without necessarily repeating sentences exactly as they were originally uttered. 5 To report people word’s, thoughts, and beliefs there are two main ways: direct and indirect speech. Reported speech is also used when people are interested not in the words that someone has chosen, but in the essential information they conveyed. 6 Reported speech is found in newspaper reports, fiction, talking or writing in conversation, reports, articles or speeches peoples have heard or read. 3 Penny Ur, A Course in Language Teaching Practice and Theory, London: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 75. 4 Marianne Celce and Diane Larsen, The Grammar Book an ESLEFL Teacher’s Course, NewYork: Heinle Publisher, 1999, 2 nd ed, p. 68. 5 Marianne Celce and Diane Larsen, The Grammar Book..., p. 687. 6 Martin Parrott, Grammar for English Language Teacher, London: Cambridge University, 2000, p. 217. By learning reported speech definitely students will able to quote somebody’s words or thoughts, whether in direct or indirect speech and also the students will learn and understand the way to report speeches such as statements, questions and commands. In addition, the students should learn reported speech because it is one of the linguistic features that are used by students when they try to write the text of news item or report text. Therefore, it can be denied that the use of reported speech has important role because it is often used by people in writing or communicating in their daily conversation. It is as Marianne Celce Murcia and Diane Larsen Freeman stated in The Grammar Book an ESLEFL Teacher’s Course, “Indirect reported speech plays an important role in everyday conversations.” 7 Furthermore, reported speech is also included in English syllabus as a subject matter which is must be learnt by the students at the first year or after considering to these importances that has been explained above. Learning reported speech is not easy for many Indonesian students as it has already known that Indonesian language doesn’t has similar grammar such as in English grammar. They have many different aspects in grammatical form. Of course, by this differentiation, there are many difficulties will be faced by students when they learn reported speech. In fact, there is a little different process which is happened when the students want to report somebody’s word from direct into indirect form in English language, that the students should have made grammatical changes in their effort to reproduce the words. It is as Llewelyn and Menezes stated in Matriculation English, “When turning the direct into indirect form certain grammatical changes have to be made.” 8 7 Marianne Celce and Diane Larsen, The Grammar Book..., p. 687. 8 Llewelyn Tipping and Menezes, Matriculation English, London: Macmillan, 1937, 2 nd ed, p. 106. As it can be known that the words that are spoken, thought or asked in one place by one person may be reported in another place at a different time, and perhaps by another person. Therefore, they should change the tenses in other word the students reporting uses tenses that relate to the time when they make the report, not to the time when the authentic words were used, and they need to change the pronoun or speaker in order to make it acceptable and meaningful within a language. On the contrary, when the students want to report somebody’s word, thoughts and ideas in Indonesia language, then, the grammatical changes won’t be happened or they do not need to change the tense or pronoun like in English language. It means there are often grammatical differences between Indonesia and English language. That is why students often do mistake and find difficulty when they quote direct into indirectreported speech in English. It can be concluded from statement above, that the grammatical changes which happened when the direct form transformed into indirect form has become one of difficulties that occur when the students learn reported speech. Therefore, it is important for learner to have a good understanding on it and memorize the rule or form very well. Based on the description above, the writer would like to conduct the research on the students’ difficulties in learning reported speech. The study is done in first year students of MA Pembangunan UIN Jakarta. So, the writer would like to discuss it in her “Skripsi” under the title: “ An Analysis on Students’ Difficulties in Learning Reported Speech at the First Year Students of MA Pembangunan UIN Jakarta”

B. The Identification of the Problem