EFL Learning in Indonesia

42 Yoshimura, et al. 2014, there are other studies in second language acquisition showing that L2 learners meeting difficulties in acquiring the English tenses and aspects properties due to morphosemantic inconsistency between their first language and second language. Learners who are already exposed with L1 will tend to use their L1 rules over the L2 rules. Upor 2009 in his research on the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology among Tanzanian EFL learners finds that there is a strong relationship between lexical aspects and morphological marking of verbs. Another study by Muños and Gilabert 2011 on the acquisition of the English progressive aspects by Catalan- Spanish instructed-learners reveals that learners’ L1 influences their acquisition of progressive forms of the target language. Related to the developmental pattern on English language acquisitions there are some previous studies conducted by Indonesian researchers. Anita 2016 in her study on the developmental pattern of the acquisition of English noun phrases in 157 students of the English Language Education Department finds that there is no significant development of the acquisition of the noun phrases of three groups of students. She also states that the acquisition process of noun phrase with the noun modification takes a very slow process. According to her, the developmental pattern of noun phrase acquisitions is a shape of a gradually increasing line that indicates “the acquisition of noun phrase by three groups of students is increased as proficiency group increased”. Another study on the developmental pattern by Wulandari 2016 shows that the developmental pattern of word stress acquisition by three groups of students of English Letters Department is like an inverted V. It indicates that the 43 development is increasing on the second semester to the fourth semester students and from the fourth semester students to the sixth semester students the development is slightly increasing. Referring to previous studies mentioned on the previous paragraph, it is noticeable that previous studies on grammatical aspect only focused on the influence of L1 in the acquisition of L2 without any further analysis on more detailed grammatical aspects. Although there was a study focusing a grammatical aspect that focused on the Indonesian EFL learners but the aspect being investigated was only the progressive aspect and there was no further investigation on the other three aspects. Given that fact, there is a gap of study to be filled. There should be as study focusing on the developmental pattern of those four aspects: the simple, perfect, continuous, and perfect continuous aspect in the context of Indonesian EFL learners. Hence, this study is significant to be carried out to provide beneficial information related to grammatical aspects acquisition, particularly for the Indonesian EFL learners.

B. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

This section provides relationships among variables presented in the theoretical review, how they are connected to support this research study. Moreover, this section provides the theoretical answer to the research questions. The research questions as stated in the previous chapter are: 1 What is the developmental pattern of the acquisition of the grammatical aspects in English of the second semester, the fourth semester and the sixth semester students of the English Letters Department? 2 Is there any significant difference in the 44 development of the acquisitions of grammatical aspects of those three groups of students? 3 What grammatical aspects in English are problematic to them? In order to be able to provide answers to those questions, this study generates four constructs including second language acquisition, developmental pattern, grammatical aspects in English and the last construct is EFL learning in Indonesia. Second language acquisition is concerning about how a target language other than native language is acquired by language learners. In the study of second language acquisition, there is an elaboration about stages taken by second language learners in order to acquire a second language. In addition, by understanding the stages in SLA the writer could determine the characteristics of this study’s subject and then determine in what stage a subject belongs to. The next construct of this study is the developmental pattern, this construct gives information on the natural pattern that might occur in a learners’ language development. In this study, knowledge about developmental pattern helps the writer to determine the best method to be implemented in investigating adult learners’ developmental pattern of grammatical aspects acquisition in English. Subsequently, the comprehension of developmental pattern and grammatical aspects in English leads to a more specific finding of the order of acquisition in this grammatical aspects acquisition of Indonesian EFL learners. 45

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter will provide complete information about research methodology. There will be five major points described in this chapter, namely: research design, nature of data, research respondents, data gathering techniques, and data analysis techniques.

A. RESEARCH DESIGN

Selecting a suitable research method is not a simple thing. There are considerations in making a decision to select a most suitable research design for a study. Cohen et al., 2000 highlights that “methods refer to techniques and procedures used in the process of data gathering.” It means that in selecting a method for their studies researchers have to consider about research questions they have in their studies because the research questions will determine what kind of data they are going to obtain for their research as well as the techniques and procedures to obtain the required data. Mentioning the research questions of this study, this study aimed at collecting information to describe and explain the developmental pattern of grammatical aspects acquisitions in English by Indonesian EFL learners, identifying whether there is a significant development on the grammatical aspects acquisitions as well as investigating the most problematic grammatical aspects for the EFL learners. In conducting a research, it is necessary to select an appropriate research design in order to achieve satisfying answers for the research questions.