Background of Study INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of Study

English is one of universal languages; the language is understood and spoken nearly everywhere on the earth. It constitutes the channel or medium of communication among the people, since communication requires a sender, receiver, and a channel. In other words, English language is the communication means using by people over the world that known as International Language, which could be used as the instruction of expressing and conveying ideas in many aspects of life, including in education field. In addition it may help them interact and communicate for making mutual understanding and then leads to benefit each other. Moreover, in present day, English language becomes the language learnt by people in every country over the world, such as Indonesia. Teaching English language is known as teaching of a foreign language. It could be said that Indonesian language is as the mother tongue language of students; and English language is as the target language studied by the students. Consequently in this country English language must be learnt and it is one of compulsory subject in every education level, that is Sekolah Menengah Pertama SMP or Junior High School, Sekolah Menengah Atas SMA or Senior High School, and even in universities. In addition, English language includes as local content subject in education level of Sekolah Dasar SD or Elementary School in the country. The teaching process in education levels is based on the guideline of rules that stated by the government in the curriculum. The latest one named Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan KTSP or School Based Curriculum. This curriculum provides some rules about teaching English for each level of education. It states the objective of the teaching learning process that held in Draft of Badan Standarisasi Nasional Pendidikan BSNP 12 April 2006 which consists of Standar Kompetensi SK or Standard Competence and Kompetensi Dasar KD or Basic Competence for each language skills – Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. They exactly explain about minimum materials should be reached as the out comes of the teaching process. Then, based on BSNP, for Senior High School level the level in which the writer takes as the population, with its second year as the sample there are some Standard Competences completed by their Basic Competences in each aspect of the four skills. Besides the four skills, the language components or sub-skills i.e. Grammar, Vocabulary, Phonetic, etc. is included which is integrated with the language skills. Furthermore every language consists of some elements that built the language itself, including its grammatical aspect that constitutes one of language learning materials. In grammatical of one language, sentence is one of basic element followed morpheme, word, phrase, and clause. It is also an important thing in communication since it can express someone’s idea that will be understood by the listener. In linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language that is a grammatical and lexical unit consisting of one or more words, representing distinct and differentiated concepts, and combined to form a meaningful statement, question, request, command, etc. 1 This means that through sentences, people can deliver their messages -in certain way- that would be understood by others depends on their needs, for this case, by using sentence patterns had been formed which consciously or not is similar. And then leads to existence of communication among them. In fact, there is a variety of sentence in one language, concerning its purpose, it is classified into five. They are a declarative sentence or declaration , a negative sentence or negation, an interrogative sentence or question, an exclamatory sentence or exclamation, and an imperative sentence or command. And the most important type is declarative sentence that always used far more often than the other four types of sentences. A declarative 1 Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2009, Sentence linguistics. Retrieved April 9, 2009, from http:en.wikipedia.orgwikiSentence_linguistics, p. 1. sentence simply states a fact or argument, states an idea, without requiring either an answer or action from the reader, it does not give a command or request, or does it ask a question. Therefore, in English Grammar book explained that the declarative mood usually used for: giving information, expressing opinion, making promises, and emphasis. In addition, it can be used for confirming that something is true, giving an instruction in a fairly informal way. 2 Remembering its functions, it is very important for the students studying language to learn about declarative sentence of the language. In short, for learners who are learning a language, they have to study declarative sentence in their own language besides declarative sentences in the foreign language studied. In view of every language has its basic structure of sentences, both Indonesian and English. So certainly there are differences between the rules of declarative sentences in each language that can lead some difficulties faced by the students. In this case, the difficulties faced by Indonesian students who learning English as the target language. This phenomenon happened on students of Senior High School SMA Barunawati 1 Jakarta. Hence, comparing both declarative sentence patterns between the two languages will help to find out their differences and similarities, and then allow for prediction of the difficulties faced by students Indonesian native speaker in learning the target language English. To compare the both language, Indonesian and English, the writer uses Contrastive Analysis since it is a linguistic enterprise aimed at producing inverted i.e. contrastive, not comparative two-valued typologies a Contrastive Analysis always concerned with a pair of languages, and founded on the assumption that language can be compared. 3 It is the systematic comparison of two or more languages, with the aim of describing their similarities and differences. 2 Collins Cobuild, 1992, English Grammar, London: HarperCollins Publisher, pp.196- 197. 3 Carl James, 1980, Contrastive Analysis, London: Longman, p. 3. In contrastive linguistic the focus is on general or on language specific features. The term contrastive linguistics, or contrastive analysis, is especially associated with applied contrastive studies advocated as a means of predicting andor explaining difficulties of second language learners with a particular mother tongue in learning a particular target language. 4 Actually Contrastive Analysis has many different levels of comparison, such as in phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis and culture those differ between languages each other. It identifies points of differences and provided results that will be important in language teaching. Based on the description above, the writer would like to take research entitles “The Contrastive Analysis between Indonesian and English Declarative Sentences” a Case Study at Second Year Students of Senior High School I Barunawati.

B. Identification of the Problem