5. Mastery
Hagboldt 1935: 2 as cited by Suharyono 1997: 8 states that “if someone has a mastery over a certain language, then he or she has to have spontaneous
comprehension by ear, effortless and affluent reading, and habitual and skillful use of words, idioms, and sentences in both speech and writing.” Since this
research works on students’ mastery over basic clause patterns in compositions, therefore, the mastery is viewed as students’ comprehension and skill to use the
basic clause patterns in the compositions.
6. Errors and Mistakes
Corder 1967 quoted in Richards 1973: 23-24 states that “errors are differentiated into two kinds, those are error competence and error performance.”
Error competence means a kind of error which deals with students’ competence and it is characterized to be systematic and serious. This kind of error is said to be
systematic and serious because when someone learns a language, he or she uses a definite system of such language in every progression he or she makes to master
it. Meanwhile error performance deals with someone’s language
performance. This kind of error is said to be unsystematic and not serious since whenever someone make this kind of error, they can correct themselves. The error
performance occurs because of some factors such as, emotional states, carelessness, memory lapse, fatigue, ignorance. Furthermore, error performance is
termed as mistake. In this research, the errors and mistakes are seen to be the ones which students make and which are revealed through their compositions.
7. Written Descriptive Texts
“A description is a form of writing or talking functions to create pictures, sounds, smells, taste, and touch sensations in the imagination of the reader or
listener” Kammer and Diebold, 1949:119. In this research, the definition of written descriptive text is referred to a kind of text which students write with the
purpose to describe particular person, place, or things.
B. Theoretical Framework
In accordance to the first research question, firstly this research is going to find out the distributions of the basic clause patterns and the patterns which are
commonly used within the distributions. There are theories which are used to know the distribution of the basic clause patterns and the common patterns used.
The first theory is the theory of types of sentences based on the relation between clauses. The theory of types of sentences based on the relation between clauses
aims to determine whether or not the sentence is simple, compound, complex, or compound complex.
The second theory which is used is the theory of clauses which provides information to determine the dependent and independent clause. The
determination of the sentence aims to break down the clauses within the sentence since there are sentences which can still be broken down into clauses such as,
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