Background of Study INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of Study

English is taught as a foreign language in Indonesia because there are so many regional languages which becomes Indonesian first language. While, Indonesian language becomes the formal language that should be mastered by all Indonesian people. So, English just becomes a foreign language in Indonesia for the limited English speakers in Indonesia. Nowadays, the teaching role of English is widely developed in Indonesia. Most education places headmasters tried to create an English milieu in their institutions because they want the best for their students. Many strategies have been done to achieve their goals. Includes applying curriculum which is stated by the government. Some institutions are succeeded and some are not yet for the condition of the area and the heterogeneous students’ backgrounds. In teaching-learning process, of course, English has four basic skills which should be mastered by the students, more over by the teachers: listening, speaking, reading, writing. Writing is called the last because writing is viewed as the most complex and hardest language skill among the others. Writing is viewed as a useful, effective, enjoyable and above all necessary component of a modern world. Because writing provides the pleasure of sending a personal message to a friend. It also assumes career and financial importance in the composition of a resume or a business letter. Thus, teaching writing needs extra effort to do because in mastering writing skill, someone should master many skills: words, sentences, essays, paragraphs, grammar and so on. Someone’s ability on the other three skills also influence his ability in writing. The more he reads the more sentences and words he gets, the correct he pronounces the words the correct he spells them and the more he listens the more he can distinguish the sounds. Unfortunately, the students of all levels especially the students of SMU Triguna Utama always find difficulties in writing. Each student faces different problems in writing such as in sentence patterns which contains the placement of S+P+O or clauses which contains main clause and sub clause, diction, usage, tenses, parts of speech, word form, word order, spelling and punctuation. The problem in sentence pattern of clauses sometimes appears because of the culture differences between Indonesian and English, the misconception in applying the target language rule, the context of teaching which sometime was not found in student’ real life, and the way the students get the massages across the listener or the reader. The incorrect sentence structure may cause the sentence not understandable and will make the paragraph even the text in a mess. Meanwhile, students need to use complex sentences in making a narrative essay efficiently. So, structuring the words to construct complex sentences correctly plays an important role to make the texts in senses. Referring to the brief explanation before, the writer would like to make a research about students’ problems or difficulties in structuring the words to construct complex sentences correctly. Somehow, hopefully, this research paper be useful and a reference for the next teacher to evaluate his teaching methods perhaps. Thus, the writer would give the title for her term paper skripsi: “ANALYSIS ON STUDENTS’ STRUCTURE COMPETENCE IN COMPLEX SENTENCES” A Case Study at 2 nd Year Class of SMU TRIGUNA UTAMA

B. The Limitation Formulation of Study