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In his study, the writer prefers to discuss the scope of grammar involving morphology and syntax.
A. Morphology
Radford 1997: 1 states that morphology is the branch of grammar that studies how words are formed out of smaller units. In addition, Crystal 1997:90 gives the examples below;
Unhappiness un-happi-ness Horses
horse-s Talking
talk-ing Yes
yes Crystal explain that ‘Yes’ has no internal grammatical structure. One could analyze its
constituent sounds, j, e, s, but none of these has a meaning in isolation. By contrast, horse, talk, and happy plainly have meanings, as do the element attached to them the ‘affixes’ : un-
carries a negative meaning, -ness expresses a state or quality; -s expresses plural; and – ing helps to convey a sense of duration. The smallest meaningful elements into which words can be
analyzed are known as morphemes, and the way morphemes operate in language provides the subject matter of morphology.
From the four examples above, we can make a broad distinction between two types of morphemes. They are free and bound morpheme. Yule 1996: 75 explains that free morpheme is
morphemes, which can stand by themselves as single words, e.g. happy, horse, talk, and yes. Bound morpheme is morphemes, which cannot normally stand alone but, which are typically
attached to another form e.g. un-, -ness, -s, and –ing. It is an easy matter to analyze those example words into morphemes, because a clear sequence of elements is involved. But not all
words can be analyzed into morphemes so easily, for example, it is difficult to know how to
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analyze irregular nouns and verbs: mice is the plural of mouse, but it is not obvious vague how to identify a plural morpheme in the word, analogues to the –s ending of horse Crystal,
1997:90. Generally, there are two main fields that are recognized within morphology, namely, inflectional
and derivational morphology Crystal, 1997: 90. Inflectional morphology studies the way in which words vary or ‘inflect’ in order to express grammatical contrast in sentences, such as
singularplural or pastpresent tense. Boy and boys, for example, are two forms of the ‘same’; the choice between them, singular vs. plural is a matter of grammar, and thus the business of
inflectional morphology. Derivational morphology, however, studies the principles governing the construction of new words, without reference to the specific grammatical role a word might play
in a sentence. In the formation of drinkable from drink, or disinfect from infect, for example, one can see the formation of different words, with their own grammatical properties.
B Syntax
Crystal 1997: 94 infers that syntax is the way in which words are arranged to show relationship of meaning within and sometimes between sentences. According to him most
syntactic studies have focused on sentence structure, for this is where the most important grammatical relationships are expressed. A sentence itself is defined as the largest unit to which
syntactic rules apply. Then, he suggests three aspects of sentence syntax including clauses, phrases, and coordination vs. subordination. The following is the brief explanation of each.
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a Clauses
The various units that make up the structure given functional labels, such as Subject S, verb V, complement C, Object O, and Adverbial A. A number of clauses types can be
identified in this ways, such as: S + V
The dog is running. S + V + O
The man + saw + a cow S + V + C
The car + is + ready S + V + A
A picture + lies + on the ground S + V + O + O
I + gave + John + a book S + V + O + C
He + called + John + a fool S + V + O + A
Mary + saw + John + yesterday Several approaches to grammatical analysis make use of elements of this kind, though
there is considerable variation in definition and terminology. Languages are also very greatly in the way in which these elements are identified. In English, word order is the main factor, with
only occasional use being made of morphology e.g. he subject saw verb him object.
b Phrases
A phrase is group of related words that does not contain a predication Funk. 1991: 120. Most phrases can be seen as expansions of a central element the head, and these are often referred to
as ‘endocentric’phrases: cars
the cars the big cars
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all the big cars all the big cars in the garage
Phrases, which can not be analyzed in this way, are then called ‘exocentric’: insidethe cars. On the other hand, the internal structure of an endocentric phrase is commonly described in a three-
part manner: All the big
cars in the garage
Pre-modification Head
Post Modification
c Coordination vs. Subordination
Coordination is one of two main ways of making sentences more complex; the other is known as subordination, or ‘embedding’. The essential difference is that in the former the
clauses that are linked are of equal grammatical status, whereas in the later, one clause functions as part of another the ‘main’ clause. For example:
Coordinate clause: The boy left on Monday
and the girl left on Tuesday. Subordinate clause:
The boy left on Monday when John rang.
The phrase on Monday is part of the clause, giving the time when the action took place. Similarly, the unit when John rang is also part of the clause, for the same reason. But when John
rang is additionally a clause in its own right.
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3. The Teaching Grammar in English Language Teaching
It is helpful for the students to be aware of grammatical information about language included in it is the role of grammar. In general terms, Harmer 1997: 3 divides the role of
grammar into two concepts.
A Covert
Coverts grammar teaching is where grammatical facts are hidden from the students – even though they are learning the language. In other words, the students may be asked to do an
information gap activity or read an English text where new grammar practiced or introduced, but their attention will be drawn to the activity or to the text and not to the grammar. With covert
grammar, teachers help the students to acquire andor practice English, but they do not draw conscious attention to any of the grammatical facts of the language.
B Overt
Overt grammar teaching means that the teacher actually provides the students with grammatical rules and explanations. The information is openly presented. Some techniques for
the presentation of new language, for example where the teacher explains how present simple questions need do or does, are extremely overt.
With the overt teaching, the teacher explains explicitly and openly about the grammar of the language, but with covert teaching he simply get students to work with new language in this case
English and hope that they will more or less subconsciously absorbs grammatical information which will help them to acquire the language as a whole.
Hormer 1997: 7 adds that at the beginner level, the students do quite a lot of structure teaching and practice and less really free communicative activity. The teaching of grammar at
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this stage is likely to be fairly covert since the main aim is to get students to practice and use the language as much as possible. At the intermediate levels the students would be involved in more
communicative activities and would have less and would have less grammar teaching. The teaching of grammar of this stage would be more overt and as students get more advanced they
can actively study grammar in more overt ways. In other case, there is no doubt that knowledge –implicit or explicit- of grammatical rules
is essential for the mastery of a language: you cannot use words unless you know how they should put together Ur, 1998: 4. The learning of grammar should be seen in the long term as
one of the means of acquiring a thorough mastery of the language as a whole. As stated previously in curriculum 2006 KTSP that the objective of English language teaching is to
develop communicative competence, and for Hymes supported by Canale and Swain in Lock, 1996: 266, the grammatical competence is one of the four types of competence they should be
included in any definition of proficiency the other three being sociolinguistics competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence. A proper understanding of the concept of
communicative competence would have revealed that it gives no endorsement for the neglect of grammar Widdowson in Lock, 1996: 266.
Lock 1996: 267 explains more about the importance of grammar in English language teaching. He states in order to communicate, the teacher needs to be able to 1 represent what it is he
wants to talk about and to locate it in time, which means selecting appropriate process types, participants, circumstances, and tenses; 2 make the content interpersonally relevant and
appropriate; which means selecting appropriate moods, modalities, and polarities; and 3 make the whole message relevant to what has been said previously and to the situational context. Seen
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from this perspective, grammar is not an optional add-on in language teaching but it lies at the very heart in communication that should be taught effectively.
4. Grammar Mastery
Webster 1990:732 defines mastery as skill or knowledge that makes one master of a subject. In line with her, Quirk says that mastery is full power to control something or great
skillknowledge in a particular subject 1998:644. Thus, grammar mastery is great skill or knowledge competence that makes one master of a particular subject. Related to grammar,
Chomsky in Rod Ellis 1996:8 asserts: Competence consists of the mental representations of linguistics rules that constitute the
speaker-hearers’ internal grammar. It is evident in the intuitions which speaker-hearer has about the grammaticality of sentences 1996:8.
Sandra J Savignon 1997:40 says that person demonstrates grammatical competence not
by stating the rules, but by using rules. According to her, grammatical competence is mastery of linguistics codes, the ability to recognize the lexical, morphological, syntactic and phonological
features of a language and to manipulate these features to form words and sentences. It involves the ability to apply the grammatical rules in order to form grammatically correct sentences.
Further explanation is stated by Richard who writes: Grammatical competence was the knowledge underlying our ability to produce and
understand sentences in a language. We call upon our grammatical competence to express meaning in ways that are native-like in target language 1985:144.
Thus, grammar mastery can be defined as great skill or knowledge that makes one masters a system of language rules to produce, understand, and apply the grammatical rules in order to
form grammatically correct sentences.
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B. Error Correction Feedback 1. Meaning of Error Correction Feedback
