The Background of Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. The Background of Study

In Indonesia, English is considered as the first foreign language because it is necessary to be learned in order to support the people needs in gaining a lot of information and knowledge in various fields, for example in education, science and technology, economy, and others. To achieve its goal, thus English is introduced in every level of learners. Even, it is delivered to the earlier learners; it is for the kindergarten students. Moreover, English may be obtained not only in formal education; in schools, but also in informal education. Therefore, it will be easier for learners to master English. English is one of compulsory subject which is given from the beginning of Elementary School up to the Senior High School. It is shown in curriculum by all its components; they are standard competence, based competence, indicators, and so on. The curriculum, namely the School-Level Curriculum, contains four English language skills; they are Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing, and its language components are Grammar, Vocabulary, and Pronunciation. Among the skills, writing is viewed as the most difficult skill to be learnt because it needs more knowledge in producing words, sentences, and paragraphs, and arranging them into a good sequence whether in its structure, logical thinking, and others. Furthermore, writing is complicated because it is done not in one easy step but in series of steps. People begin to select the topics, purposes, and audiences. Then they decide the organization and presentation of ideas, topic sentences, and details. They decide the language structures and vocabulary and to modify and to revise the paragraph. According to Robbert M. Gorrel and Charltun Laird, “Writing requires thinking, and thinking is always complicated and hard. Writing is complicated also because the writer needs to do everything at once. A writer needs to do everything at once, and the students of writing needs to study everything at once. A writer produces words, sentences, paragraph, and extended composition all at the same time. Words must be spelled, sentences punctuated, and paragraph unified 1 . Therefore, the students have to have extensive knowledge when they want to write anything. The extensive knowledge will support their writing in order to be nice and interested in reading. In a sense, all writing starts from simple up to the complex writing. The simple writing is the writing process which is begun by producing words and sentences. Moreover, in producing words, the writers should pay attention for their spelling, diction, word form, and others. And, in producing sentences, the writer should regard the words order, sentence pattern, punctuation, and so on. In addition, the sentence is categorized into four; they are simple sentence, compound sentence, complex sentence, and compound- complex sentence. Then, the complex writing is the writing process that involves producing paragraph and composition. According to Canavan, “Paragraph consists of sentences usually more than one, each with its own structural pattern, in a series that develop one single idea”. 2 In writing a paragraph, it is necessary to be regarded its parts of paragraph, they are topic sentence, supporting details and conclusion, and its requirements, such as unity, completeness, order, and coherence. Furthermore, in constructing paragraph, the writers should recognize the general rules of transitional words and phrases, repetition and key terms, synonym and other substitutes, pronoun, and parallelism, and others. Those are the items that usually appear when the writers construct the paragraph. Here, the writer tries to observe the students’ errors in writing by regarding the previous general rules of writing process. When the students 1 Robert M. Gorrel and Charlton Laired, Modern English Handbook, New Jersey: Englewood Cliffs NJ, 1962, p. 1. 2 Joseph P. Canavan, Paragraph and the Short Theme, New York: D. C. Heat and Company, 1969, p. 29. write, there are some errors appear, they are, for instance, the error in tenses. The error is shown as follows: “Last week Young Red Cross win as a favorite champion in SDB Sasih Darma Bakti” It should be: “Last week Young Red Cross won as a favorite champion in SDB Sasih Darma Bakti”. Observing the students’ errors is the way for the writer to achieve her research which is done at “MAN 2 Kota Bogor”. The research aims to know the types and the most errors happened at the XI year students of “MAN 2 Kota Bogor”. This research is summarized on the “skripsi” titled “The Error Analysis on Students’ Writing”.

B. The Focus of Study