between the correct clauses and the intended clauses, which was only 1 or 14,28, became not significant.
The very low frequency of SVOO pattern distribution occurred because of two reasons. First, this pattern requires two objects which lead to the restriction
towards its use because it cannot accept mono object. Second, this pattern can easily be replaced by another pattern. The existence of preposition “to” alternates
SVOO pattern to be SVOA pattern. For example, the SVOO pattern: My mom gives me a new blouse
can be easily replaced by: My mom gives a new blouse to me
, which is included in SVOA pattern. These restrictions further lessened the use of SVOO pattern. As a result, students had the tendency to apply SVOA pattern.
Considering those two reasons, the low frequency of the distribution of SVOO pattern did not mean that students were not able to apply that pattern.
Besides, since the difference between the correct and the intended clause was not significant, students’ mastery over SVOO pattern could not be said to be low, but
it was regarded to be fair. The examples of the correct and intended clause of SVOO pattern can be seen in example 72 and 73.
72 Someone will give you money. 73 My uncle given me a guitar Yamaha.
3. Other Research Finding
This research also necessarily analysed the errors on the basic clauses that students made in their compositions and treated them as other research finding.
Errors were included because they become the evidence of the existence of
students’ mastery. Corder 1967 quoted in Walz 1982: 1 claims that “learning a new language requires a trial and error approach, and errors are evidence that the
learners is testing hypotheses of underlying rules, categories, and systems.” The example of the errors that a student made can be seen in sentence 74.
74 We can looks people, your idol, bands, popular singer.
As seen in example 74, students attempted to test at least two hypotheses. The first one was related to concord or agreement between modal
auxiliary and verb. The second one was related to the word choice or the diction. According to the first hypothesis which was about the concord, the verb after
modal auxiliary should not be added with s. Meanwhile, the second one was the word choice or the diction. The diction, hereby, really influenced the meaning of
the word look and see in such sentence. This student probably considered that the word look represented the meaning of the action to see something and thus they
were considered synonymous. In fact, there is a slight different meaning between the meaning of the word look and see. This student might not realize that the
meaning of the word look is to do act something towards the something after he or she knows that something. Meanwhile, the word see means to use the eyes to
know or acquaint something. These errors are the evidence that this student tried to use his or her knowledge to make the correct from although he or she
experienced the slip that he or she committed errors. However, from what he or she did, it could be seen that this student
attempted to make the correct form of the sentence by using the basic clause
pattern based on their knowledge as well as attempted to test the underlying rules of the elements in the sentence. Those rules were the rule of concord or agreement
between modal auxiliary and verb and the rule of the word choice or diction towards the meaning of the word look and see.
Apart from the finding related to errors, in order not to make the research tended to be error analysis, but to maintain it still on the focus of students’
mastery, the researcher analysed students’ errors with the aim only to show the scope of errors that students produced. In other words, the analysis of the errors
was not focusing on whether or not the error frequency was significant, but focusing on the scope of the errors.
The scopes of the errors were used to find the information about the weaknesses of the students towards the basic clause patterns, sentence elements,
and or other grammatical aspects. In addition to students’ errors, the researcher simply presented the errors which they made related to the basic clauses in order
to show the data more specifically, but not in depth. The detailed analysis of students’ errors, including the clauses, can be seen in Appendix E.
To analyse the errors, the researcher picked students composition randomly. There were eleven compositions which were chosen. After the
researcher analysed the compositions and the basic clause patterns, as a result, it was revealed that there were at least forty four kinds of errors that students
produced. The errors that students produced can be seen in Table 4.9.
Table 4.9 The Scope of Errors
No. Error Scope
Error Frequency
1 Article a, the
12 2 Plural
noun 1
3 Plural noun + plural auxiliary verb
3 4
Singular noun + singular auxiliary verb 1
5 Plural noun + V1
5 6
Singular noun + V1 + ses 8
7 Do don’t + V1
1 8
Modal + V1 6
9 Regular-irregular noun
4 10 Countable-uncountable
noun 5
11 Auxiliary verb + adjective
2 12 Preposition
24 13 Clause
contraction 1
14 Gerund 14
15 Diction 16
16 Vocabulary 2
17 Clause order
1 18
Phrase order VP, NP 9
19 Adverb of
manner 2
20 Adverb of
purpose 10
21 Adverb of place
5 22
Adverb of time 5
23 The use of pronoun it 1
24 too vs. also
3 25 Parallelism
3 26 Comparative
degree 2
27 Passive voice
6 28 Noun
phrase 5
29 Present Past perfect tense: Subject + have had + V3
1 30
Past tense: V2 9
31 Simple present tense: Subject + V1 auxiliary verb
5 32
Progressive: auxiliary verb + Ving 4
33 L1 influence
3 34 Possessive
12 35
To + infinitive V1 3
36 Noun phrase as a subject, of the sub-clause
7 37 VP
2 38
VP of the sub-clause 3
39 VP of the main-clause
1 40
VP have to + V1 1
41 VP like + to
1 42 Conditional
sentence 2
43 VP + Pronoun + To + V1
1 44 Conjunction
3
B. Discussion
The clauses which students made in their compositions reflected the use of the basic clauses. The use of the basic clauses reflected students’ mastery over
English. Therefore, the fact that students used those basic clauses reveal their mastery over English since the mastery, in this study, meant students’
comprehension and skill over English which is reflected through the use of the basic clause patterns in the compositions. Students’ mastery over the basic clause
patterns could be revealed through their distributions. Each pattern of the basic clause had its own distribution which was
different from each other. Table 4.1 showed the frequency of the distribution of basic clause pattern from the most frequent up to the least frequent. However, to
know the contribution of the basic clause patterns’ distributions towards the students’ mastery over each basic clause pattern, there were two comparisons of
SVA and SVOA pattern which gave some insights. As seen in Table 4.2, SVA pattern, of which the distribution frequency
was the highest, had the distribution frequency of 284 or 34,38 with the correct clauses’ frequency of 109 or 38,38 and 175 or 61,62 for the intended clause
frequency. Meanwhile, Table 4.3 showed that the second highest distribution frequency which was SVOA pattern with its frequency of 206 or 24,94. Out of
that frequency, its correct clauses were only 75 or 36,41, the intended clauses were 131 or 63,60, and the difference was 56 or 27,18.
From those two comparisons, it could be seen that the distribution frequency of SVA and SVOA pattern showed that they were the two highest used
