Background of the Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

English is learnt by many Indonesian learners because it is a compulsory subject in many schools. Based on 2006 Curriculum, the general goal of English study of second year of Junior High School is to develop communicative competence in English both oral and written forms. 1 Communicative competence involves the mastery of English language skills. They are listening, speaking, reading and writing. Learning English for Indonesian learners is important for the development of knowledge, science, culture, and relationship among countries. It becomes an obligation because it has many goals stated in government regulations. They are to develop communicative competence to achieve functional literacy and to develop understanding about the relationship between language and culture in global society. 2 Furthermore, English is the most significant subject that people learn in the world nowadays and it becomes the most effective tool to communicate and interact among nations. Therefore, here are the reasons of why English is must be taught from the first grade of the Elementary school to most of all Indonesian learners. Receptive and productive skills are develop in learning a language. Understanding of listening and reading is included in receptive skills. The language is received and decoded by the readers and the listeners to understand the meaning and enable them to communicate with other people. Moreover, productive skills are speaking and writing. The speakers use the language they acquired and produce a message through speech or written text that they want others to understand. 1 Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan BSNP, Standar Isi, Standar Kompetensi dan Kompetensi Dasar SMPMTs, Jakarta, 2006, p. 124. 2 Ibid. Learning those skills is included in learning English. Those skills are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In addition to mastering its skills, it is necessary to master its components. They are vocabulary, pronunciation, spelling, and grammar. According to Scott Thornbury, grammar is also a study of how to form appropriate structure which deals with analysis in a language. In other words, grammar is the description of language rules that help a writer or speaker make appropriate use of language.” 3 It is concluded that grammar is simply the word for the rules that people follow when they use the language. Those rules are vital to make the people communicate effectively in oral or written communication. Learning grammar is important because according to Guth’s statement, it can be concluded that grammar is useful in constructing accurate sentences to convey ideas and information comprehensively by avoiding the ambiguity and misunderstanding. 4 Grammar consists of forms and rules, as Dianne Larsen – Freeman states that grammar is about form and one way to teach form is to give students rules. However, grammar is about much more than form and its teaching will be served if students are simply given rules. 5 It can be inferred from the statements above that grammar has an important role in learning English. Therefore, it is very important for students to master grammatical rules. The knowledge of grammar is one of the necessary factors which students need. It happens because grammar is important even in spoken language. This statement coheres with Richards and Renandya said in their book that people now agreed that grammar is vital and that without having adequate knowledge 3 Scott Thornbury, How to Teach Grammar, London: Pearson Education Limited, 1999, p. 1. 4 Hans P. Guth, Concise English Handbook, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc., 1969, p. 1. 5 Dianne Larsen-Freeman, Teaching Grammar in Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, USA: Heinle Heinle, 2001, third edition, p. 251. of grammar, learners’ language development will be severely out of order. 6 It means that the students must comprehend the structure of English grammar in learning English. They have to understand how and when to use it both in spoken and written language. However, Indonesian learners find some difficulties in learning grammar. The writer observed the researched school and asked the students what the difficulties they faced in learning grammar. They consider that they feel discomfort because they are worried about the mistakes they made. If their mistakes were pointed out of others, they will feel worried. As the writer observed, their English teacher always formulate the grammar rules by himself and do not let them in formulating the grammar rules. They are just given the rules without letting them analyze the grammar rules by themselves. Besides, they said that when they had done the grammar exams, it was difficult to apply the proper rules. Moreover, when learning English, they tend to avoid grammar because they have to memorize the irregular grammar rules. Students may know the rules but they are incapable of applying them in their own use language. Based on the interviews, the writer found that they also cannot compare something or someone. In other words, they cannot compare the quality of noun, whether it is describes about someone or something. Here, the writer concluded that they find difficulties about degrees of comparison. It studies comparison of one adjective to other adjective. They consider degrees of comparison is difficult to learn because they have many forms and they also find many exceptions that will be explained later. However, grammar is one of the main tools to communicate in spoken and written language. After the writer did the observation and the interview, the writer is interested in teaching degrees of comparison by one of teaching techniques, 6 Jack C. Richards and Willy A. Renandya, Methodology in Language Teaching: An Anthology of Current Practice, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 145. inductive technique. This technique is usually used in direct method found by Gouin. In this method, grammar is taught inductively. The writer take inductive technique as the solution in learning grammar because it can motivate the students to participate in formulating grammatical rules. The writer wants to make a quasi-experimental study which is related to teaching degrees of comparison by using inductive technique. Therefore, the title of her skripsi is “The Effectiveness of Using Inductive Technique in Teaching Degrees of Comparison A Quasi Experimental Study at the Eighth Grade Students of SMP IT Cordova South Tangerang”.

B. Identification of the Problem