11 Those two factors are important because they are the basic elements of public
speaking. Confidence and concentration help the speakers of public speaking to maintain
their language and their speech‘s content.
2. Grammar Rules and Use
Grammar theory is important for the English learner because having a correct grammar understanding will help the learners of English understand the language.
Besides understanding the language, it helps the learner to use the language and increase their language awareness. However, having low a grammar
understanding might lead the learners to confusion. Formal grammar is defined as a systematic way of accounting for and
predicting an ideal speaker‘s or hearer‘s knowledge of the language. This is done by a set of rules or principles that can be used to generate all well-formed or
grammatical utterances in the language Purpura, 2004. The rules of grammar are:
a. Minimum grammar requirement
In grammar, spoken or written, the minimum requirements are the same. Every sentence needs at least one finite, independent clause. If either of those two parts,
subject or predicate, were missing, the sentence would not be complete Close, 1975. Therefore a sentence may not have object, but it should have at least a
subject and a predicate. e.g.: she sleeps. 1
Subject-verb agreement When the subjects are
―he, she, and it‖, the verbs should be added with –s or – es
, but when the subjects are ―I, you, we and they‖, the verbs remain the same,
12 without
–s or –es. This condition is called as subject-verbs agreement, the subject affects the verbs. This condition only appears in present tense.
b. Tenses
Tenses are used to express events, in the past, present or future. English has three tenses; past tense, present tense and future tense. Using tenses properly is
important since the use of tenses affects the meaning of what the speakers want to inform.
1 Present tense
Present tense expresses events or situations that exist always, usually, habitually; they exist now, have existed in the past, and probably will exist in the
future Azar, 1993 2
Past tense Past tense indicates the activities or situations begin and end at particular time
in the past Azar, 1993. The formula for this tense changes the verbs into the simple past form.
c. English Verbs
1 English regular verbs English regular verbs are
the verbs which simple past‘s and past participle‘s forms are added with
–ed. The verb forms do not change, but they are added with –ed. e.g.: play played to indicate that the actions are already done in the past.
2 English irregular verbs E
nglish irregular verbs are the verbs which simple past‘s form and past participle‘s forms are different. This kind of verbs may have two or three forms.
13 The example of verbs that has two forms is
‗sell’. The simple past‘s and past participle‘s form of ―sell‖ is ―sold‖. The example of verbs that has three forms is
―ring‖. The simple past of ring is ‗rang’, and the past participle‘s form is ―rung‖. d.
Plural and Singular 1
Singular The verbs after singular nouns should be added with suffixes -s or
–es for present tense. Moreover, the linking verbs
―be‖ should be changed into ―is‖ for present tense and ―was‖ for past tense. e.g.: My friend lives lived in Boston; this
is was my bag. 2
Plural The verbs after plural nouns should not be added with suffixes -s or
–es for present tense.
The linking verbs ―be‖ should also be changed into ―are‖ for present tense and ―were‖ for past tense. e.g.: My friends live lived in Boston;
these are were my books. Moreover, the nouns themselves should be added with suffixes -s or
–es. However, in some cases the plural nouns have special forms, such as ―mouse‖ which has plural form ―mice‖ and not ―mouses‖
3. Contrastive analysis hypothesis
