5 produce a large unit as the combination of sound and spelling. In addition to that,
Greenbaum and Nelson 2002 proposes an idea about grammar, according to them grammar is a set of rules that allowing us to combine words in our language
into larger units. As the center of language, it mediates between the system of sound or of written symbols, as well as the system of meaning.
Even though most languages have a grammatical system but Palmer 1984 argues that some languages have grammar, others do not. Palmer took an
example of English and Chinese languages; he said that the Chinese language has no grammar because in the Chinese language all words keep the same shape. It is
different with the English language; there are a few different forms of words in the English language. In the English grammatical system, there is a phenomenon
what so called as a tense. In which the words shape changes according to the tenses. Compared to English, there is no grammatical marking in the Indonesian
language. According to Dahl 1985, there are no perfective and imperfective grammatical aspects in the Indonesian language. Other than that, Dahl also adds
that the Indonesian language also does not have past tense, inflectional future, as well as perfect form. Therefore, the concept of tenses and particularly
grammatical aspect become a new idea for the Indonesian EFL learners. A tense is used to indicate the time when an action or event takes place or
when a state or process holds. A tense refers to the moment of speaking. According to Palmer 1984, morphologically, there are only two tenses in the
English language, past and present. Whereas the future is not considered as a tense because in order to refer to the future time the verb requires another word
such as will or be going to. In general, the tenses indicate whether the action
6 is taking a place in the past, in the present or in the future time. The different
indication is created by modifying the verbs by adding or altering the verbs with additional morpheme such as -ed Hamm and Bott, 2014.
In addition to English tenses, there is also another feature in the English language that is not present in the Indonesian language i.e. the grammatical aspect
that different from tenses. According to Quirk 1972, grammatical aspect refers to a manner in which the verb action is regarded or experienced. It means that the
grammatical aspects show how the action verb indicates the occurring experience. Palmer 1984 argues that in many languages there is an aspect instead of a tense,
a tense refers to time while aspects refer to completion, duration, and similar concept. The choice of an aspect is a comment on or a particular view of the
action. Grammatical aspects indicate the temporal state of an action. In brief, the grammatical aspect describes the duration of an action takes place in with a
particular tense. A grammatical aspect gives a feeling about a verb, about the action of a verb whether the action is happening at the moment of speaking, still
happening, connecting with the past time or in brief it tells us whether the action is continuing or finished. Moreover, according to Comrie 1976, a grammatical
aspect provides a way in interpreting temporal constituency of a situation. Dahl 1985 categories the grammatical aspects into perfective: imperfective,
progressive and habitual activities. Language acquisition has a slightly different meaning with language
learning. According to Krashen 1981, the language acquisition and language learning are different in the consciousness of the learners. In language learning,
the learners consciously learn about language, the rules, and the systems then
7 learn on how to use them correctly. In contrast, in language acquisition, the
language acquirers unconsciously acquire the language. They do not notice about language rules and systems; they are usually exposed by the language and get the
unconscious result of the exposure. There are numbers of studies on the acquisition of the English language
aspects. Rahman and Ali 2015 conducted a study on problems faced by Bangladesh EFL learners in acquiring the English language tense and aspects.
The study reveals the problem faced by Bangladesh EFL learners in mastering English tense and aspects is due to the interference of their L1 rule. The different
grammatical system of EFL learners first language and the English language influence the students understanding on the concept of aspects in the English
language system. Rahayu 2015 conducted a study on the English progressive aspects focused on the construction of be+V+ing. The study shows that students
problems lie in the understanding the meaning of English progressive while the understanding on simple aspects is not problematic for the students. To
understand the grammatical aspects means to understand a temporal state of an action, a study by Zhao and Juan 2011 on the influences of L1 and lexical
aspects in the temporal acquisition of the Chinese and Japanese EFL learners shows that L1 influence becomes an active factor in the Japanese learners
progressive marking performance. On the other hand, the L1 influence was not an active factor in Chinese learners. It shows that understanding temporal states or
aspects can be problematic because of the interference of L1. As showed by Bardovi-Harlig 2000; Gabriele 2009; Montrul Slabakova 2002 in
Yoshimura, et al. 2014, there are other studies in second language acquisition
8 showing that L2 learners facing difficulties in acquiring English tense and aspects
properties due to morphosemantic inconsistency between their first language and second language. Learners who have already been exposed with L1 will tend to
use their L1 rule over the L2 rule.
B. PROBLEM LIMITATIONS
In investigating the adult learners developmental pattern of the grammatical aspects in the English language, the cross-sectional study is
employed. According to Cohen et al. 2000, a cross-sectional study collects data that deals with a time-related process from the different group at a point in time
while longitudinal studies collect data from the same group at different points in time. Numerous studies conducted to find the developmental pattern on a certain
issue in language acquisition that uses longitudinal data collection method. It aimed at obtaining intensive data of a group of study objects in a certain period of
time. This kind of study has disadvantages; one of them is time-consuming. In contrast with a longitudinal study, cross-sectional study is not time-consuming as
it is conducted at a single point of a time. Given the fact that the population of this study consists of the students of
the English Letters Department who need at least four years or eight semesters to complete the program then it will take a long time to observe the developmental
pattern with the longitudinal study. Consequently, this study used a cross- sectional method to obtain data in a more efficient time. Instead of using a sample
group, this cross-sectional study using three sample groups from three different language levels.
9 As mentioned before, the focus of this study is on the acquisition of
grammatical aspects in the English language by the Indonesian EFL learners particularly students of the English Letters Department of Sanata Dharma
University. The grammatical aspects were selected as there are previous studies showing that many language learners meet difficulties in understanding the
concept of temporal state in the English language grammatical aspects. Therefore, a more comprehensive study on grammatical aspects acquisition of EFL learners
is necessary to be carried out in order to provide an additional source of information about this topic.
C. PROBLEM FORMULATIONS
Given the background of study as well as the problem limitation, this study was carried out to provide answers to these following research questions:
1. What is the developmental pattern of the acquisition of the grammatical aspects in English of the second, fourth and sixth semester students of the
English Letters Department? 2. Is there any significant difference in the development of the acquisition of
grammatical aspects of those three groups of students? 3. What grammatical aspects in English are problematic to them?
D. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
This study aimed at providing answers and elaborated discussions on the adult EFL learners developmental pattern on the grammatical aspect acquisition.
As mentioned in the background of study that the grammatical aspects in the English language can be problematic for some L2 learners especially for those
10 whose first language has a completely different grammatical system in which the
grammatical aspects is not present. For Indonesian adult EFL learners, the absence of the grammatical aspects in the Indonesian language system could be
problematic. Since most of the previous researches were about EFL learners but there is not any comprehensive research on grammatical aspects acquisition of
Indonesian EFL learners then there is a gap of study to be completed. Therefore, referring to the research questions presented in the previous
section, the first objective of this study is to obtain detailed information about the Indonesian adult learners developmental pattern of the acquisition of the
grammatical aspects in the English Language. Next, the second objective is to find out whether there is any significant difference in the mastery of grammatical
aspects among the adult EFL learners, particularly the students of the English Letters department from the second, fourth and sixth semesters. Finally, the third
objective is to find out which grammatical aspects in English are problematic for each group of those adult learners. Supplementary, it investigated whether each
group has a similar problem in certain grammatical aspects or, alternatively, each group has its own problematic grammatical aspects.
E. BENEFITS OF THE STUDY
The main purpose of conducting this study is to add a contribution to the study of the developmental pattern of EFL learners in acquiring the grammatical
aspect in the field of second language acquisition. Second language acquisition deals with an acquisition of languages other than the learners native language. In
this study, the second language refers to the English language for the Indonesian learners. Therefore, this study is trying to show particular information of how
11 Indonesian EFL learners understand the word structures that indicate different
aspects in the sentence. This study is expected to provide theoretical and practical benefits for the readers, writers and other parties who read and use this research
for their future studies, especially for those who are interested in the study of the acquisition of the grammatical aspects of the English language by the Indonesian
EFL learners. Theoretically, the study is expected to provide more information and to
construct a better understanding on the developmental pattern of the English language aspects acquisition. Subsequently, this study focused on providing
comprehensive information about the order of acquisition in the developmental pattern of the grammatical aspects in the English language. Practically, by
knowing the developmental pattern of the English language aspects acquisition by EFL learners could help either the teachers or students of EFL learners to reflect
and improve their performances in understanding the concept of the grammatical aspects in the English language. Hence, by comprehending the problematic
grammatical aspect in the English language the language learners become more aware and able to overcome any difficulties in understanding and using the correct
grammatical aspects either in their spoken or written language.
12
CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW
There are two main sections in this chapter. The first section, the theoretical review, provides information about theories as the scaffolding of this
study. Hence, this chapter aimed at elaborating the constructs in this study, namely second language acquisition, developmental pattern, grammatical aspects
in the English language, as well EFL learning in Indonesia. The second section is the theoretical framework of the study as the theoretical background or rationale
to elaborate the relationships among variables of this study.
A. THEORETICAL REVIEW
This section presents interrelates constructs adapted to provide information about the topic of this study. Hence, this theoretical review also gives in depth
analysis of each construct to provide a comprehensive knowledge. Subsequently, review of the related studies aimed at contextualizing this study with current
existing studies.
1. Second Language Acquisition
To get a robust understanding of second language acquisition there are three sub-sections elaborating three main ideas on second language acquisitions
the concept, stages and the influencing factors in second language acquisitions.
a. Concept of Second Language Acquisition
Discussing the language acquisition, there are two major concepts that need to be elaborated first language acquisition and second language acquisition.
