1 Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This chapter describes background of the study, reasons for choosing the topic, statements of the problem, objectives of the study, significance of the study, and outline of the study.

1. 1 Background of the Study

English as an international language plays a major role of world’s communication. It is reasonable that English is a compulsory subject taught to students from elementary school to university level. Because of the importance of english, it has a strong emphasis on the curriculum of Indonesian education. To be good english users, students have to be able to listen, speak, read, and write in english well. English has a unit that we call conditional sentence. Conditional sentence is a part of english sentence. Many linguists have definitions about it. Frank defines the term of conditional sentence as follows: In statements with the true conditions, the main clause gives the result of a condition. If there are some possibilities that such a result may be accomplished, the form for real condition is used. If the result is impossible or uncertain of realization, the form of unread condition is used. In most statement with real condition, there are only two results stated in the main clause will take place, if the condition is not realized then the result will not take place 1972:255 2 Sumarto and Suhardjito 1994:104 say that a conditional clause is a dependent clause, which is preceded by the conjunction “if”. It is also called an if clause because it is preceded by the conjunction”if”. It comes after or before the main clause independent clause. Conditional sentence has three types that are commonly used. They are type 1, type 2, and type 3. Type 1 sentence has 80 possibility to happen. For instance, if you study hard, you will pass the exam. Type 2 has no possibility to happen. For instance, if he won the match, he would be the champion. Type 3 also has no possibility to happen. For instance, if they had arrived earlier, the bus would have been here. Based on the definitions above, conditional has certain characteristic distinguished with other sentences. The examples above are conditional sentences which uses present tense type 1, past tense type 2, and past perfect tense type 3 in the “if clause” and conditional form; future tense type 1, past future tense type 2, perfect future tense type 3 in the main one. The “if clause” expresses contrary to fact condition. The problem is that English acquisition is different from Indonesia. Ramelan 1992:5 says that the students’ difficulties are caused by the different elements found between the two languages. For Indonesian, conditional sentences are difficult for them because of grammatical differences. 3 In Indonesia conditional sentences are expressed: 1 “jika dia bekerja keras, dia akan sukses” type 1 2 “jika tadi malam dia berlatih sepak bola, dia akan berhadapan dengan tim itu” type 2 3 “jika dia telah belajar keras, pasti dia telah lulus ujian” type 3 But the problem is that Indonesia doesn’t have distinguishing grammar. The distinction is only from the time signals. Moreover in speaking use, Indonesian will have difficulties to use conditional sentences. That is why I think that conditional sentences are important to discuss.

1. 2 Reasons for Choosing Topic