grammar rules. By mastering grammar of target language, especially English, it will be helpful in supporting the language student process in which in spoken or written
language, in this case is reading comprehension. In addition, in order to
understanding information or story, the reader should have knowledge about the sentence structure. In this case, in English, the readers who have mastered many
vocabularies and have knowledge about English sentence structure, they will get the idea of the information or story easily due to they know the meaning of vocabulary
based on the sentence structure. Furthermore, English vocabulary have many meaning based on the function of the word in a sentence. Moreover, it is important
having knowledge of sentence structure or grammar.
In second language reading research, Alderson points to the significance of a particular syntactic structures knowledge or the ability to process them to some
aspects of second-language reading and the ability to parse sentences into their accurate syntactic structure emerges to be an important element in understanding text
for him.
17
Following Nassaji, any understanding of reading texts and knowing the utterance need close attention to a numeral of factors; one fundamental factor of
which is the knowledge of grammar.
18
It can be concluded that grammar mastery has been the important part in getting the understanding of a text due to its knowledge
about the sentence structure which is essential in comprehending a text.
D. The Relevant Study
There are three studies that are related to this study. Those are the relationship between grammatical knowledge and the ability to guess word meaning:
the case of Iranian EFL students with upper intermediate level of proficiency written by Ranjbar, a correlation between grammar achievement and reading comprehension
17
Dongbo Zhang, Vocabulary and Grammar Knowledge in Second Language Reading Comprehension: A Structural Equation Modeling Study, The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 96, No.
4, 2012, p. 560.
18
Mehnoosh Ranjbar, The Relationship between Grammatical Knowledge and the Ability to Guess Word Meaning: The Case of Iranian EFL Learners with Upper Intermediate Level of Proficiency,
Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 2, No. 6, 2012, p. 1305.
achievement written by Darmono, and the correlation between grammar mastery and writing ability a correlational study at the sixth semester of Department of English
Education students of State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta written by Septiani.
The first study is the relationship between grammatical knowledge and the ability to guess word meaning: the case of Iranian EFL students with upper
intermediate level of proficiency written by Ranjbar, the study was conducted in June 2012. This study provided some empirical data to examine the contribution of
grammatical knowledge in getting the meaning of unknown words. Moreover, this study used correlation design. In addition the objective of the study was to see if
grammatical knowledge played any significant role in word guessing. Then, the participants of the study were thirty female students of Iranian EFL students with
upper intermediate level of proficiency. Furthermore, there were three kinds of instrument in this study; those are vocabulary test, grammar test, and unknown words
in context. In the result, it was indicated that grammar knowledge was a key factor in deciphering the meanings of unknown words and it was also concluded that the more
comprehensive the grammar knowledge was, the higher the student s’ proficiency
level in guessing words would be.
19
The second study is a correlation between grammar achievement and reading comprehension achievement written by Darmono in 2013. The research focused on
the correlation between grammar achievement and reading comprehension at the first semester of English Department of Islamic University of Malang and the aim was to
ascertain the relationship between grammar achievement and reading comprehension achievement. The population of this research was the first semester of English
Department of Islamic University of Malang and the sample is 33 students of 110 English Department students. The instrument in this research was the document final
score of semester test. Then the collected data analyzed by using Pearson Product
19
Ibid.
Moment Correlation Formula. In addition, the result showed that there was a very weak correlation between grammatical achievements and reading comprehension
achievements at the first semester of English Department of Islamic University of Malang.
20
The third research is the correlation between grammar mastery and writing ability a correlational study at the sixth semester of Department of English Education
students of State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta written by Septiani in 2014. The aim of the research was to know whether there is a significant
correlation between grammar mastery and writing ability at the sixth of Department of English Education students of State Islamic University Jakarta. Then, this research
used quantitative method and correlational technique. Furthermore, the population of this research was the sixth semester of Department of English Education of State
Islamic University Jakarta and the sample of this research was 33 students of B class. Finally, the result showed that there is a very low correlation between students’
grammar mastery and writing ability.
21
E. Theoretical Framework
Based on Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, Grammar deals with the sentenc
es’ form and the smaller units, such as clauses, phrases, and words. Compare with the pronunciation and the words’ stock, grammar of the Standard
English is much more stable and uniform; there is remarkably little dispute about what is grammatical in comp
liance with the rules of grammar and what isn’t.
22
It showed that the rules of grammar in Standard English is constant and there was little
disagreement in deciding which was the sentence was grammatical correct or no. In
20
Darmono, A Correlation between Grammar Achievement and Reading Comprehension Achievement, JP3, Vol. 1, 2013, p. 25.
21
Reni Septiani, “The Correlation between Grammar Mastery And Writing Ability A
Correlational Study at The Sixth Semester of Department of English Education Students of State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta
”, a SKRIPSI Presented To The Faculty of Educational Sciences In State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, Jakarta, 2014, p. v, not published.
22
Huddleston and Pullum, loc. cit.
