Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Language is a very important means of communication. Trough languages, we can express whatever in our mind and share all kind of informations with other people. To communicate with other people we should use the suitable and acceptable languages; because, it can keeps us away from misunderstanding when we describe and explain our ideas. One of the important languages which is used by most people in the world is English. It becomes an international language which is used to communicate in many fields of life such as in trade, diplomacy, tourism, business, music, information, technology, and education. As Morton W. Bloomfield 1969 stated “By about 1800 English was fully ready to assume the international responses and by 1850 it was a world language. Consequently, English has to be used in international communication both oral and written communication, for general as well as specific needs” 1 As international language, English gains much popularity in non-English spoken countries like Indonesia. In Indonesia, English is not used as a daily communication language among people, but it is taught at schools. For instance, it becomes a compulsory subject for indonesian students from primary school to universities. As we can see in Indonesian government stipulation NO.192005 on National standard of education …”that every student is 1 Morton W. Bloomfield, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,New York: American Heritage Publishing and Houghton Mifflin company, 1969 p. xviii required to reach the same standards of English competency upon completing herhis secondary school study”. 2 For Indonesian students, learning English is not easy. As a foreign language, English is certainly different from Bahasa Indonesia as a native language which becomes their mother tongue; since they have their own definitions and rules. Richards 1992 in his book, Longman dictionary of Language Teaching and Apply Linguistics,” stated …” in British usage a foreign language is a language which is taught as a school subject but which is not used as a medium of instruction in schools nor as a language of communication within country…”. 3 In addition, the native language, so called first language, is gained from human beeing birth. The native language refers to “…the language a human being learns from birth…”. 4 Native language and foreign language are known by L1 and L2. For Indonesian, Bahasa Indonesia as a national language L1 and English as a foreign language L2 are different in s tructure, morphology, phonology as well as syntaxes . That is why, Indonesian students are often confused in learning English. Furthemore, they are frequently influenced by Bahasa Indonesia structure when they learn English. They tend to transfer the forms and the meanings from their native language to construct their foreign language. This reason leads Indonesian students to encounter many problems or difficulties in mastering English. Such as, the problems in structure, spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, word formation and so on. Because of t hese problems, Indonesian students often make error and mistake when they try to produce the new language like in their English writing and speaking. The discussion of error in learning foreign language L2 has been done since behaviorist introduced Contrastive Analysis theory CA. 5 In behaviorist view ..”the errors are unwanted. Since the errors were result of non-learning 2 TEFFLIN: Journal, A Publication on the Teaching and Learning of English, Surabaya: TEFLIN, 2005, p. 210 3 Jack Richards, et al., Longman dictionary of Language Teaching and Apply Linguistics, Longman, Essex, 1992,p.143 4 http:en.wikipedia.orgwikiNative_Language it is accessed on tuesday, April 25, 2010 5 http:leo.meikai.ac.jptonoanalysis.htm it is accessed on Mei 13, 2010 than wrong learning, there was a denger of errors becoming habits if they were tolerated, so like sin, errors should be avoided.” 6 Learner errors here are considered something wrong and undesirable. And, when learners do an error it means they do a very fatal mistake in their language learning. Meanwhile, Douglas Brown 2000 stated an other perspective about error. He said “Human learning is fundamentally a process that involves the making of mistakes”. 7 He believes that error and mistake are something normal in language learning process. Error should not be viewed as something undesirable or something to be avoided. Because, by this error, a language researcher and a language teacher will get a feedback. It is a key to correct students error when they construct a sentence in their new language system. To know why error happened, we should recognize a process on how students acquired and learn language. Borrowed from Tarigan’s term that the language which is acquired by students directly from their mother is called first language acquisition L1 and the second language they learn is called second language acquisition L2. 8 Tarigan explains that the first language acquisition process is running informal and unstructured plan. Students directly learn it from their family, friends, and environment. This learning process is going beyond their consciousness and they do not recognize what motivation forces them to learn it. On the contrarily, the process of the second language acquisition L2 is running formally and it is tutored based on syllabus or school program. And also, the students are conscious and recognized what motivation do they have to learn it. On the other term, The first process is named by language acquisition and the second process is called by language learning. The language problems happened when the language learners have already known their language L1 ”…a child that is in the process of 6 Fahriettin sannal’s article. Error analysis Based Second Language Teaching Strategies….p.597 7 H. Douglas Brown, Principle of Language Learning and Teaching, 4 th ed, Longman, New York, 2000, p.216 8 Henrri Guntur Tarigan, Pengajaran Analysis Kesalahan Berbahasa, Angkasa, Bandung, 1988, p.4 acquiring a second language will subscounsciously invents structures influenced by knowledge he already possesses…”. 9 And, they was used to be in their old language system habit. Then, he learned new language or foreign language L2 system and tried to produce it in both oral and written language. Certainly, the old habit will interfere the new one. As what Jeremy Harmer 2001 explained in his book Practice of English Language Teaching that “students who learn English as a second language already have a deep knowledge of at least one other language, and where L1 and English come into contact with each other there are often confusions which provoke errors in a learner’s use of English”. 10 As mentioned above that first language L1 and foreign language L2 will contact each other. It means that L1 will transfer its rules to L2. This transference will influence students’ new language. This is what we call language interference from bahasa into English. According to Richard 1992, “interference is the use of a language pattern or rule which leads to an error or inappropriate form in the target language”. 11 There are two kinds of laguage interferences. First, positive trnasfer. It is “when first language habits are helful to acquiring second language habits”. Second, negative transfer. It is the differences between the two languages. 12 Language interference occurs as the result of the first language’s influence to the target language or it may occur from L2 to L1. This influence can be named by positive transfer when the language system used by the speaker in L1 is the same pattern with the language system in L2. And it can be named by negative transfer if the language system used from both of them is different. The Negative transfer is also known as interference. Language interference is not only make students in difficulties in understanding English but also can cause them in error when 9 Maria Karra, Second Language Acquisition: Learner’s Error Correction in Language Teaching this article is published on 03292006 and acceessed on Mei 31, 2009 from http:www.proz.comdoc633 10 Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, 3 rd ed,Essex: Pearson Education Limited 2001, p.99 11 Jack Richard, et.al, Longman Dictionary…, p. 205 12 William Littlewood, foreign and Second language Learning, New York: Cambridge University Press, p.17 they produce English as their foreign language. So, we can say that student English error is resulted by interference. We can see that the difficulty of English learning process comes from Indonesian language interference. The status of Bahasa Indonesia L1 has contributed some errors and mistakes to the Indoneisan students when they learn English as their foreign language. Bahasa Indonesia as a language indeed has its own rules and structures. Its rule certainly is different from other language such English with its own structure and grammar. For example; 1 Dia memukulku. He strikes me 2 Ini bukuku. This book my. incorrect sentence This is my book. Correct sentence In Indonesian language the pronoun -ku can function as object in memukulku 1, and as possessive in bukuku 2. That it is the correct one. The word -ku does not change its form and position as object and possessive pronoun in word order. Meanwhile, in English object and possessive pronoun -ku comes with different form and position, that is me and my. This change of form and position of pronoun sometimes is not realized by students in Indonesia. Therefore, the writer often finds some errors in using pronouns. Such as in the sentence 3 Can you take me bag? incorrect sentence This sentence is taken from the student utterance for the correct English sentence can you take my bag? This error is caused by the interference, is the use of a native language pattern or rule which leads to an error or in appropriate form in the target language, 13 of Indonesian pronoun –ku that does not distinguish between object and possessive pronoun. Therefore, it could be 13 Jack Richard , et.al, Longman Dictionary,… p. 140 understood that the differences of both Indonesian and English grammar make some difficulties and errors for the learners. Based on the description above, the writer has an intention to find out what kinds of pronoun that students mostly make error and how far they can apply the rules in their English. Therefore, the writer takes An Error Analysis on Students’ Difficulties in Learning English Pronoun as the title of this “skripsi”. B. Limitation and statement of the study To make the study easy to understand, the writer tries to limit the problem as follow: 1. The discussion is on the error made by students in learning English pronouns. 2. The pronouns that will be discussed are limited. Those are personal pronoun subject and object pronoun, possessive pronoun, reflexive pronoun, demonstrative pronoun, and interrogative pronoun. 3. The subject of the research is second year students of MTs Jam’iyyatul Khair, Kampung Utan, Ciputat. The statement of problem in this “skripsi” is what kind of errors do the students make in learning English Pronoun mostly.

C. Method of the study