Background of Problem INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the introduction which includes background of problem, identification of problem, limitation of problem, formulation of problem, significance of the study, the organization of the writing.

A. Background of Problem

English is one of the international languages. It functions as a means of communication in the world. Some countries use English as their first language and second language and some use it as a foreign language. Indonesia, as a part of the world, uses English as the foreign language which must be taught in the school. The student in learning English doesn’t only master four basic skills which consist of listening, speaking, reading and writing. But student also learn it’s components in order to speak and to write English correctly. The components of language such as grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary are taught to support the development of those skills. The students who study English need to learn grammar, so that they can use English well. Grammar may be roughly defined as the way a language manipulates and combines words or bits of words in order to form longer units of meaning. For example, in English the present form of the verb be in the third person has two distinct forms, one is being used with a singular subject and the other are with a plural; and if the plural are is combined with a singular subject, the result is usually unacceptable or ungrammatical. And be am being used with the first singular subject. 1 According to paragraph above, it means that in simple present tense uses be am for the first singular subject, is for the third singular subject, and are for the second singular subject and the first and third plural subject. Today, language teaching is not easily categorized into methods and trends. Instead, each teacher is called on to develop a sound overall approach to various language classrooms. This approach is a based principle for the teacher chooses particular design and techniques for teaching a foreign language in a particular context. There are no instant recipes. No quick and easy method guaranteed to provide success. Every learner is unique. Every teacher is unique. Every learner-teacher relationship is 1 Penny Ur, Grammar Practice Activities: A Practical guide for teachers, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 4. unique, and every context is unique. The task as a teacher is to understand the properties of those relationships. 2 In English language teaching, there are many kinds of method that can be used by the teacher. One of the methods used in English teaching is the communicative approach. Richards and Rodgers 1986 describe Communicative Language Teaching CLT as an approach rather than method, since it is defined in rather broad terms and represents a philosophy of teaching that is based on communicative language use. CLT has developed from the writings of British applied linguists such as Wilkins, Widdowson, Brumfit, Candlin, and others, as well as American educators such as Savignon 1983, all of whom emphasizes notional-function concepts and communicative competence, rather than grammatical structures, as a central to language teaching. 3 In learning English, the students sometimes have a problems especially with grammar, some students think that it is boring subject and when they learn English they try to avoid the grammar because it is such confusing rules and hard when they have to study grammar especially with tenses, the example tense is the simple present tense, they find some difficulties when they learn the rules of this tense. Based on the reason above, the writer chooses the simple present tense taught in the seventh year students because the simple present tense is one of the rules in English. And the simple present tense is the most simple tenses in English. So, the students will easy to understand this rules. And the writer’s hope that the students will not think that grammar is a boring subject and confusing rules, especially with tenses. In this research, the writer choose two class, the first as experiment class taught using Communicative Approach and the second as control class taught using Audio-lingual method. The goal of this research to prove: Is Communicative Approach effective in teaching the simple present tense at the seventh year students of SMP Islam Al-Fajar Kedaung- Pamulang?

B. Limitation of Problem