Background of the Study

I. INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background of the Study

Gerund is a verb form which ends in –ing and is used in a sentence like a noun. These verbal forms are often found in many sentences with different functions such as subject, direct object, used after preposition, and after possessive which often lead to some confusion. To know how the verbals work, it is essential to understand their meaning and purpose. Verbals in gerund are derived from verbs but function as a noun by adding the suffix-ing to verbs. According to Allen 1974:177 the part of the verb that ends in-ing has two very important functions: 1 It can have the force of an adjective as well as that of a verb. We call this the present participle, and 2 It can have the force of a noun as well as that of a verb. We call this the gerund. Unfortunately, this actually causes errors and problems due to not only the gerunds use verbs + ing in the sentence but also the present participle. This is consistent with a statement of a thesis entitled “Teaching Gerund to the Second Years Students of SMPN3 Peusangan by Using the Five Finger Tehniques ” in www.kapabeujaya.wordpress.com website which states that many students may get confused on gerund because gerund has exactly the same form as the present participle. The same form will also create errors if it is not properly understood. This idea is supported by Damianus in his thesis “The Ability of the 2007 Year Students of English Literature Department, University of Sumatera Utara to Distinguish Present Participle from Gerund” who states that less Universitas Sumatera Utara understanding about them can make serious problem especially in the case of the use of English grammatical structure correctly. Lack of understanding of the verb + ing form that can be used either as gerund or as present participle may cause errors in its use. It will lead to a different understanding of the meaning between the speaker and listener in a communication. This means that the use of language and its message delivery is not achieved well. Sapir 1949:7 says that language is purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desire by means of system of voluntarily produced symbols. There are some results of previous studies on the use of gerund to students stating that the rate of student errors in using gerund is still high. The research conducted by Damianus to the students of English Department of USU in 2007 states that they made error about 37.98 and the error analysis on the use of gerund research conducted by Arjati to the students of English literature of UNNES in 2007 also found that many students make errors in the use of gerund. The error rate in each type of gerund ranged 16 to 69. The results of the researchs above show that there are still many students who do not understand the use of the gerund so that they still make many errors. In addition, to determine whether there are still many learners who do not understand the use of gerund, the writer had conducted a preliminary research on January 26 th , 2013 to the fourth semester students of English Department in the academic year of 20122013. The writer chose them as objects of research since they had learned gerund in semester 3 three and besides, they are obliged to use English on almost of all subjects. In the Universitas Sumatera Utara preliminary research, the writer took twenty students as sample and data were obtained by giving them test. The test is completion test consisting of 60 questions, 39 questions of gerund and 21 questions of other English structures, so that the students must complete the blank in the sentence by changing verb in bracket into the correct gerund form. The completion test is arranged randomly. In the preliminary research, the writer found that many learners still made errors in the use of gerund. The writer checked their answer and the result showed that 50 students get correct answer under 60 poor-enough and 50 students get above 60 good-very good. It means that many of the students do not understand how to use gerund. For example, many learners make error in answering these two following questions in the preliminary test. 1. Avoid ..................... make silly mistakes. → Avoid making silly mistakes. 2. I am looking forward to ............... get a salary arise next month. → I am looking forward to getting a salary arise next month. There are 70 of 20 students made errors or in other words, as many as 14 learners make errors in completing them. The first question is a gerund functioning as a direct object and the second is gerund after preposition. There are many types of errors made by the learners such as the addition of affixes s, ed, the use of to or modal will. Based on the previous studies and the results of the preliminary research mentioned above, the wri ter’s assumption is true that many learners make errors in the use of the gerund, therefore the writer is interested in Universitas Sumatera Utara continuing research on the use of the gerund of the fourth semester students of English Department in the academic year of 20122013. Errors made by the learners in the process of learning English because English is the second language in Indonesia. As a second language, learners have to study hard to understand the sentence structures that are very different from those Indonesian sentence structures. Second Language Acquisition may refer to any language that is learned by learners after they have mastered their mother tongue first language. Our mother tongue is Indonesian language while other language that we want to learn is called Second Language. Ellis 1985:5 says that Second Language Acquisition is the study of how learners learn an additional language after they have acquired their mother tongue. There are generally found errors when learners learn the second language, for every language has its rule that is different to other languages. It has been proved in the preliminary test resulted that many of the learners made errors. There are several definitions of errors according to experts. Ellis defines that errors reflect the gaps in a learner’s knowledge. They occur because the learner does not know what is correct. It is caused the learners do not have the capability of understanding the structure of a language. This understanding is almost the same with the definition of error proposed by Corder in Richard, 1974:1. S he observes that learner’s errors are indicative both of the s tate of the learner’s knowledge and of the ways in which a second language is learned. While errors, according to behaviorists’ theory, are the result of non-learning, rather than wrong learning in Ellis 1995:22. Universitas Sumatera Utara The behaviorists defines that errors occur as the learners get the wrong teaching method so that they cannot use the language correctly. The occurrence of errors in learning or using a second language is normal. Learners are still soldered on the use of first language, so they do not know which ones are correct to use. The occurrence of errors in the process of learning is a process of mastering second language because of the presence of the errors, learners can analyze and correct them. Strevens 1969 in Richards 1974:4 hypothesized that errors should not be viewed as problems to be overcome, but rather as normal and inevitable indicating the strategies that learners use. He conjectured that if a regular pattern of errors could be observed in the performance of all learners in a given solution and if a learner were seen to progress through this pattern, his errors could be taken as evidence not of failure but success and achievement in learning. In second language acquisition is found the term of error analysis that has a meaning of investigating the errors in second language learning by collecting and describing samples made by language learners. In other words, this is a procedure to analyze the errors in the language learning process to be known and corrected by using several ways of analyzing. Ellis 1985:296 states that errors analysis is a procedure used by both researcher and teacher. It involves collecting samples of learner’s language, identifying the error in sample, describing these errors, classifying them according to their hypothesized causes, and evaluating their seriousness. Susan and Selinker 2008:517 say that error analysis is a procedure for analyzing second language data that begins with the errors learners make and then attempts to explain them. Universitas Sumatera Utara There is a close relationship between an error analysis on the use of gerund and second language acquisition, that is gerund is one of English structure features and English is the first foreign language second language in Indonesia that must be learned by Indonesian students. In the process of learning gerund, many learners make errors and it is a normal case because it is the process for the learners to acquire the second language. To find out why the learners could make errors, a research about the error must be done. There are several types of errors that were dictated by experts. According to Ellis 1997:15, there are four kinds of errors: 1 Omission is the error of leaving item that is required for an utterance to be considered grammatical, 2 misinformation is the error of using one grammatical form in place of another grammatical form, 3 misordering is the error of putting the words in an utterance in the wrong order, and 4 overgeneralization is the error of using over grammatical form in an utterance.

1.2. Problem of the Study