Background of The Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of The Study

Language as the tool of spoken and written communication over the nations is responded by every country in the world. In Indonesia, English has become the most widely studied foreign language and it becomes the international language. In responding this phenomenon, Indonesian government in the Competence Based Curriculum determines English as obligatory subject to learn in elementary school, junior high school, senior high school and university. The purpose is to develop science, technology and culture in every aspect. English also has many purposes for the education in Indonesia. Mata Pelajaran bahasa inggris memiliki tujuan sebagai berikut : 1. Mengembangkan kemampuan berkomunikasi dalam bahasa tersebut, dalam bahasa lisan dan tulis. Kemampuan berkomunikasi meliputi mendengarkan listening, berbicara speaking, membaca reading, dan menulis writing. 2. Menumbuhkan kesadaran tentang hakikat dan pentingnya bahasa inggris sebagai salah satu bahasa asing untuk menjadi alat utama belajar. 3. Mengembangkan pemahaman tentang saling keterkaitan antar bahasa dan budaya serta memperluas cakrawala budaya. Dengan demikian siswa memiliki wawasan lintas budaya dan melibatkan diri dalam keragaman budaya. According to the Competency Based Curriculum the main purposes of Teaching English to SMA, are : 1. Developing the communicative competence of spoken and written English. It skills includes listening, speaking, reading, and writing. 2. Constructing the awareness of the importance of English as a foreign language and primary tool to study. 3. Developing the students’ comprehension about the relation between culture and language. So that they have a broad cross- cultural understanding. 1 For SMA students, English covers language skills, sub-competency, and positive attitude as explained by the Competency Based curriculum below : Ruang lingkup mata pelajaran Bahasa Ingris meliputi: 1. Keterampilan berbahasa, yaitu mendengarkan, berbicara, membaca dan menulis. 2. Sub-kompetensi yang meliputi kompetensi tindak bahasa, linguistik kebahasaan, sosiokultural, strategi, dan kompetensi wacana. 3. Pengembangan sikap yang positif terhadap bahasa inggris sebagai alat komunikasi. the English scopes, are : 1. Language skills including : listening, speaking, reading, and writing; 2. Sub-competency including : actional competence, linguistic competence, socio-cultural competence, strategic competence, and discourse competence. 3. Developing the positive attitude to English as a tool of communication. 2 Sub-competency refers to apply competency, understanding structure grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and spelling in the text well. English is different from Indonesian language. Every language has its own rules and its own skills, and grammar has a great role on one’s acquisition in English. Widson as quoted by Broughton et al says, “Grammar is a component language enables us to make our message clear and precise”. 3 Grammar is no longer the core of study of a language since the communicative and functional approach has replaced it. However grammar is still crucial thing to learn especially by learners of Senior High School even English teacher. By having the knowledge of grammar learners are capable of putting across the sense of how grammar interacts with the lexicon as a communicative system. In Senior High School, linguistic competence refers to clausesentence, morphology, vocabulary, phonology, spelling and punctuation. If every learner learns these competences well, they will master enough and will not have any 1 DEPDIKBUD RI, Kurikulum 2004 Bahasa Inggris SMA, Depdikbud RI, Jakarta, 2004, p.310 2 Ibid 3 Geofrey Broughton et.al, Teaching English as Foreign Language, London: Tj Press Ltd, 1980, p.116 problems in communication. In fact these components especially sub-component have not been achieved yet by the most SMA students including SMAN 6 Pandeglang. Many students of SMAN 6 Pandeglang do the mistakes even errors in sub- competency especially in understanding structure grammar, for example on using concord : e.g. Every student and teacher have a locker. Every student and teacher has a locker. e.g. Mathematics are also thought at school. Mathematics is also thought at school. In English, a verb agrees with its subject in person and number. If the subject is the first person, the verb must be the first person am; if the subject is plural they, the verb must be plural are. The rules is simple enough in theory, but in practice, occasionally, there are concord or agreement errors for a number of reasons. 4 One of the causes of concord errors is the verb which does not go straight forward after the subject. It needs efforts to match the verb with its subject and sometimes the result can be false. Other reason is because there are numbers of words semantically plural but stand in the form of singular word. Those cases can bring out complication in learning concord. Based on the information above, the writer intends to make an analysis of grammar on using grammar tests. In doing the research the writer chooses the first year of SMAN 6 Pandeglang.

B. Limitation and Formulation of the Study