BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

1

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Dealing with learning English, learners cannot avoid learning four basic skills and three components. The four basic skills are speaking, reading, listening and writing, while the three components are pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. There are close relationships among them; they function together to build a complete mastery of English. Among the three components, grammar is one which is essential to enable students to produce correct sentences because it provides rules applied in every English sentence from the simple sentences until the most complicated ones. English sentences are composed of many kinds of constructions. Those constructions are usually formed by many classes of words or parts of speech. One word class that can be considered the most frequently used is the preposition. Prepositions are simple words. Although they are so, they are usually difficult to learn. Pittman 1966 comments on the prepositions: “Among those who teach or learn the English language, prepositions have earned a reputation for difficulty if not a downright unpredictability”. Reading some English grammar books on the prepositions, the writer found that there are not many definite rules about the English prepositions. Some prepositions have similar functions, e.g. preposition at, in and on all can indicate time in the morning, on Monday, at night. On the other hand, preposition at, in and on all can indicate place too at the gate, in the door, on the door. It is also important to consider that language transfer might happen while learning the second or foreign language. Learners usually translate their first language into the target language. Prepositions of place at, in and on in Indonesian are respectively translated as dipada, di dalam and didi ataspada. For Indonesian learners learning those prepositions of place is difficult since they have almost the same meanings and their counterparts in the first language and target language do not always use them differently. The learners possibly find difficulty when they try to translate or apply di, di atas, di dalam or pada into English. They might be confused in choosing the correct preposition to form a good and correct sentence since in Indonesian their meanings are almost the same. In English, preposition of place at, in and on cannot be used randomly. There are definite rules for the preposition to use in phrases or in sentences. The function of each preposition in a phrase or in a sentence would not be the same. Based on the writer’s experience, a lot of students in this case, the first year student of the English Language Education Study Program still have difficulties to apply the preposition especially preposition of place at, in and on in their utterances. Their knowledge of preposition might be poor since they did not get enough explanation when they were studying in Senior High School. For example, when the students are asked to make a sentence, they might say: I saw a lizard walking in the wall instead of I saw a lizard walking on the wall. Another example of the false concept of using preposition of place in their utterances is caused by the transfer from their first language. Students may think that the rules of using Indonesian preposition of place is more less the same as the English preposition of place since their meaning are almost the same. Thus, they just transfer and bring the rule and meaning from Indonesian into English. For example, when a learner translates an Indonesian language sentence “Doni tinggal di Yogyakarta ” into English, he may translate “Doni lives at Yogyakarta”. He may think that at also means di instead of pada. In fact, his translation is incorrect; it should be “Doni lives in Yogyakarta”. Based on the difficulties faced by the students of English Language Education Study Program, this study is focused on measuring their proficiency of preposition of place at, in and on.

B. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION