The background of the Study

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUTION

A. The background of the Study

English as a foreign language in Indonesia has influenced many aspects of life. Language has an important role in the intellectual, improvement, society, and students emotional. So in order to improve student’s ability in English, the government has tried to teach the English from the beginning. English has been taught from Elementary to University. The government has shown its concerns about the importance of English in use. It is stated in the 2004 English curriculum: “Mata pelajaran Bahasa Inggris bertujuan mengembangkan kemampuan berkomunikasi dalam bahasa tersebut, dalam bentuk lisan dan tulis. Kemampuan berkomunikasi meliputi mendengarkan listening, berbicara speaking, membaca reading, dan menulis writing.” 1 Surely, the government recognize the role that language plays are in listening, speaking, reading and writing. In line with the curriculum of Department of Education, the teaching learning process of English language concentrates those four skills. One of four skills above, which play a significant role in mastering English is writing. The writing skills are complex and sometimes difficult to teach, requiring mastery not only of grammatical and theoretical devices but also of conceptual and judgmental element The writing skills are complex and sometimes difficult to teach, requiring mastery not only of grammatical and theoretical devices but also of conceptual and judgmental elements In writing, the use of correct grammar, spelling and diction should be understandable as well as possible. There is no doubt that writing is the most difficult skill for second language learners to master. The difficulty lies not only generating and organizing ideas, but also in translating these ideas into readable texts. 2 There is no doubt that the writing is 1 Depdiknas, Kurikulum SMP dan MTs 2004 Jakarta: Departemen Pendidikan Nasional, 2004p.7 2 J.B Heaton, Writing English Language Test, London and New York, Longman 1995 p.135 the most difficult to teach. However, some important things to improve quality of writing that the students should have a wider vocabulary, understanding of the In writing, students must also be able to write in different ways for different purposes The students problems in the descriptive text are diction, word order, word form, singular and plural, addition of word, omission of word, tenses, spelling, article, and capitalization. In writing, the use of correct grammar, spelling and diction should be understandable as well as possible. There is no doubt that writing is the most difficult skill for second language learners to master. The difficulty lies not only generating and organizing ideas, but also in translating these ideas into readable text. 3 In writing, students must also be able to write in different ways for different purposes. In this research has shown that students need to be exposed to and have practice with various genres. Researcher finds some problems in the description text. Description text is one of types of writing, which is learnt by the students in the junior and senior high school. Descriptive text is to describe particular person, place, or thing, the features are used of simple present tense and used of adjective. The feature is important because each text of writing is different features such as narrative text, the feature is used of past tense. Student problems in the descriptive writing is about grammatical error. Teaching English grammar is not easy because it is too broad. The teachers must be know the problems and the necessary in student’s English writing. By doing some correction in student’s English writing the teachers can find some problems solving to teach English writing well. Because of that, teachers role is very important in teaching English grammar. The knowledge of grammar is very important in expressing what we want to say and interpreting correctly not only the basic meaning of what has been 3 Jack C Richard and Willy A Renandya, Methodology in Language Teaching, Cambridge : Cambridge University press, 2002p.303 said to us but also to force the utterance of piece of writing. Because of that, teachers role is very important in teach English grammar. Finally, based on the background above, the writer should carry out a research under title: “ Error Analysis on Descriptive Text”.

B. The limitation of the Study