Students’ Mastery Error Collocation

7 especially about teaching and learning second language acquisition including translation and collocation. The terms that the writer considered to be defined are stated as follows:

1. Students’ Mastery

According to Fries 1945, mastery of a language meant the ability to use or even to understand all the words in a language. Students’ mastery meant to analyze not only the mastery of students in learning a language but also the errors that the students make in learning it since none of students was said to have mastered their own native language. According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, mastery is great knowledge about or understanding of particular thing 2000: 822. In other words, students’ mastery is how far the students know and understand about something. In this thesis, the students should understand the use of verb plus verbal noun collocation. According to Newmark 1981, the translator has to cling to words, collocations, structures in translation. Therefore, to be able to translate well, the students’ need to master the use of collocation especially verb plus verbal noun collocation. In this study, the students’ mastery means how far the students know and are able to use English collocation in translating Indonesian words or phrases.

2. Error

Brown 2000: 217 affirms that “an error is a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker that reflects the competence of the learner. An error also reveals a portion of the learner’s competence in the target language.” 8 “An error cannot be self-corrected” James, 1998: 83 as cited by Brown, 2000: 217. Brown 2000: 218 also states that errors arise from several possible general sources. In this study, the errors are a part of the students’ ability in translating verb plus verbal noun collocation which cannot be analyzed by the students’ themselves.

3. Collocation

According to Cruse 1997: 40, collocation is sequences of lexical items which habitually co-occur. In other words, collocation is a combination which always appears in the same sequences of lexical items. Besides, Newmark 1981 affirms a collocation is the element of system in all the words of a language when they are arranged syntagmatically. “Syntagmatically means the words associate with other words that can typically precede or follow it” Coady and Huckin, 1997: 250. Therefore, in this study, collocation is the combination of words that habitually occur and the words associate with the other words that precede or follow it.

4. Verb plus Verbal Noun Collocation