Conclusions CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

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CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

This chapter presents the conclusions of this research and the suggestions related to this research. In the first part, the writer presents the conclusions of this research. Then, in the second part, the writer provides suggestions for English teachers, students, and future researchers who are interested to follow up this research.

A. Conclusions

This research was conducted to answer two research questions: a the prepositional verb errors in the students’ Academic Essay Writing class assignments, and b the efforts should be done to minimize the students’ prepositional verbs errors. To answer the first research question, the writer conducted document analysis. The documents used in this research were the writing assignments of Academic Essay Writing students of academic year 20072008 submitted as the first final project. Afterwards, the writer collected prepositional verb errors in the assignments. Based on the gathered data, the writer found 150 prepositional verb errors. Those errors are included in three types of error based on surface structure taxonomy: addition 68,5, misinformation 29,5, and omission 2. The research results show that the mostly produced errors belong to addition error. Then, the second mostly produced errors belong to misinformation error, and the third is omission error. To answer the second research question, the writer carried out an interview. To support the data, the writer conducted library research, in which she used supporting references. The participants of the interview were three ELESP lecturers who taught Academic Essay Writing class in 20092010 academic year. The efforts in minimizing prepositional verb errors were given based on their experiences. The suggested efforts were addressed to both English teachers and learners. The efforts are needed by ELESP students because they are prepared to be English teachers, but they are still struggling as ELESP students. To minimize students’ prepositional verb errors, first of all, English teachers need to prepare and enrich themselves with prepositional verbs because they would be role models and facilitators for their students. First, they should not be ignorant about the students’ errors. If the errors become fossilized, it would be more difficult to correct them. Second, they need to be careful about using prepositional verbs in teaching. This would prevent the students from imitating the teachers’ prepositional verb errors. Third, they need to practice and re-memorize prepositional verbs they have acquired before. This would make them used to the correct prepositional verbs. Fourth, they need to read a lot of English texts to find the examples of prepositional verbs. This would enrich their prepositional verb mastery. Afterwards, they need to take several actions dealing with minimizing their students’ prepositional verb errors. First, they need to give spoken and written feedback concerning prepositional verb errors to their students. Second, they also need to keep reminding the students about the errors. Third, they could assemble group discussions to conduct peer corrections. Fourth, they need to ask students to consult dictionaries when they are writing their assignments. Fifth, they could provide prepositional verb practices for students. The practices could vary in the form of matching exercises, filling in the blank exercises, contrasting prepositional verbs which share the same verbs but different prepositions exercises, and discussion practices. The practices could be given gradually, depending on the students’ prepositional verbs mastery level. Sixth, they also need to provide authentic reading texts for their students. Through the reading activity, the students would learn to be acquainted with many examples of prepositional verbs. Meanwhile, for students, minimizing prepositional verb errors could be carried out by consulting dictionaries and grammar books, memorizing the prepositional verbs, and practicing them in every English class. Particularly, prepositional verbs in ELESP need to be introduced since early semesters, either in the first or second semester. The introduction could be given in structure or vocabulary classes. However, in general, prepositional verbs should be taught integratedly in every English class. As a result, students would be familiar with prepositional verbs because they could recognize and produce them in written and spoken forms.

B. Suggestions