Background of the Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

English has a very important role. Indeed, it said that mastering English is a prime requirement for individual success especially for Indonesian in facing the globalization era. All students in Indonesia have been learning English since they were at fourth grade, and studying English as a curriculum is also an obligatory from the government especially in Educational Ministry. Learning English as foreign language is not easy and only few succeed in mastering it. According to Mackey, that the learner has had experiences with another language. A person who has been using certain language since early childhood already had experience with his language and when he started to learn a new language, he would face with the problem of different sound, words, and sentences, with different grouping of things, person, and actions, and with different of time, space and manner. These may conflict with the structure of his native language. 1 In mastering English, all the languages skill must be applied and integrated in teaching English, especially writing. Ann Brown in his book stated that writing is important in our lives and as a communicative act 1 William Francis Mackey, Language Teaching Analysis, London :Indiana University Press, 1967, p.107 that transmits in formation and links people together. 2 Students are expected to convey their ideas, feeling, and knowledge in written language and they have to apply their other language abilities such as grammar and vocabularies. Nancy mentioned that: “when writing, the students must keep in mind their purpose, and think about the facts they will need to select which are relevant to that purpose, and think about how to organize those facts in a coherent fashion”. 3 However, writing is not an easy thing to do even it is the hardest language skill to master. Wendy A. Scott and Lisbeth H. Ytreberg say that writing is not always easy. Although the writing and the oral skill are combined in the classroom and the one clearly benefits from the other, writing has certain characteristics which seem to make it difficult for the students to get the grips with, especially for young students. Writing is considered the hardest skill to master. Many students think that writing is difficult and weak in expressing their ideas written. The reason probably because writing requires good mastery of grammatical, punctuation, spelling and many more aspects. 4 As because of many aspects that students have to comprehend in learning writing skill, it seems to make only few students can master it. Students often make mistakes and errors when they write because of their 2 Ann Brown, Helping Children to Write, London: Paul Chapman Publishing Ltd, 1993, p.2 3 Nancy Arapoff, Writing Through Understanding, New York: Holt Rinchart and Winston, 1970, p. 27 4 Wendy Scott and Lisbeth H.Y, Teaching English to Children, Longman, London, New York, 1990, p. 68 lack grammar understanding. For example the correct use of to be or an auxiliary verb in a sentence is a quite difficult point in English. An incorrect using of to be or auxiliary verb will make a serious matter for students writing, because those incorrect using will make the sentence can not be understood. For example: Are Paul and Siska students? It is the wrong. Because, the use of the auxiliary verb is for Paul and Siska is incorrect. The correct one is: Are Paul and Siska students? From the reason above, the writer is motivated to know about the students’ writing in Senior High School of Harapan Jaya Cipondoh Tangerang. It is to know about the students’ mastery of English and find the kind of errors that the students do.

B. Focus of the Study