Problem Formulation Problem Limitation

B. Problem Formulation

Considering the research background, this research is going to answer three questions. The first and second question is directed to find out how the basic clause patterns are distributed as well as what patterns commonly used in students’ written compositions are. Meanwhile, the third question is directed to reveal students’ mastery over the basic clause patterns in relation to each clause pattern distribution. The questions are: 1. How are the basic clause patterns distributed? 2. What basic clause patterns are commonly used by students of SMKN 2 Depok in their compositions? 3. How is the mastery of SMKN 2 Depok students over the basic clause patterns?

C. Problem Limitation

The research focuses on the mastery of the eleventh grade students of SMKN 2 Depok over the basic clause patterns. The discussion directs to the patterns and distributions of the basic clause patterns which students use in their written compositions. The compositions, which are applied, are descriptive compositions. The reason of choosing this kind of compositions is because descriptive compositions are included in the school curriculum and are taught to all students of SMKN 2 Depok from the tenth grade until the twelfth grade. In brief, this research works on the patterns and distributions of the basic clause patterns in students’ written descriptive compositions. In addition to students’ compositions, there are also errors that they possibly make in their sentences or clauses. Therefore, the errors that students possibly make are included in this research. The errors are involved because errors are included to the part of students’ mastery. Corder 1967 quoted in Walz 1982: 1 says that “learning a new language requires a trial and error approach, and errors are evidence that the learners are testing hypotheses of underlying rules, categories, and systems.” However, in this study, the errors are not the focus, but are treated as other research result. The scopes of the errors, which can be revealed, are used to find the important information of students’ weaknesses towards the basic clause patterns and other grammatical aspects on them.

D. Research Objectives