85 lecturer in Short Essay writing class gave him correction when he made error in
using preposition on in the sentence: I looked myself on the mirror. When the researcher asked the interviewees if they thought the courses they
had taken in this study program had accommodated their understanding about English preposition, especially prepositions at, in, and on, most of them answered
that they did not think so. Student A said that she never studied about English prepositions in a number of courses in the English Language Education Study
Program. Students B and D said prepositions at, in, and on had ever been taught to them by several lecturers, but the lecturers only explained these prepositions as an
additional information when they were teaching the students. Student C said that English prepositions had ever been taught in Structure II class, but it was not
specifically discussed since the learning material was focused on prepositional verbs. Therefore, these students felt that it was important to have an explicit
learning material, which specifically discussed about English prepositions because the uses of English prepositions were still confusing for them.
2. Discussion
In this research, the possible factors which caused the students’ errors in using prepositions at, in, and on was divided into two categories. Those two
categories were internal factors, which came from the students’ themselves, and external factors, which referred to the factors outside the students. After finding
the possible factors that caused the errors, the researcher would like to discuss each factor further. The first factor of the internal factors was the students’
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86 perception of prepositions at, in, and on indicating time and place. Based on the
data presentation which was obtained from the questionnaire and the interview results, it could be seen that most of the respondents of this research had the
perception that prepositions at, in, and on were important for them to learn, but they still assumed that these prepositions were complicated to learn since they
were still confuse about the uses of these prepositions. The second factor of the internal factors was the students’ motivation to
learn prepositions at, in, and on. Most of the students who became the respondents of this research were interested to learn more about prepositions at, in, and on.
Although most of them were interested to learn more about these prepositions, in fact, they did not make any effort to find other sources to increase their
understanding about these prepositions. As a result, there were many of the students produced errors in the test. The third factor of the internal factors dealt
with the students’ actions when they found difficulty in using prepositions at, in, and on. From the results of questionnaire and interview, it could be seen that most
of the students who became the respondents of this research would consulted dictionary, grammar books, and their friends rather than asked their lecturers
when they found difficulty in using prepositions at, in, and on. Some of the respondents of the interview even said that they did nothing when they faced
difficulty in using these prepositions. Since most of the students did not obtain adequate and detailed information or explanation from their lecturers related to
English prepositions at, in, and on, they made many errors in doing the test. The last factor of the internal factors was the students’ considerations underlying their
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87 choice of using prepositions at, in, and on. It could be seen from the results of
questionnaire and interview that most of the students would used their intuition or feeling rather than used the grammar knowledge that they obtained from their
teachers’ lecturers’ explanations or grammar books as their consideration underlying their choice of using prepositions at, in, and on. Since most of the
respondents depended only on their intuition in doing the test, there were many of them who produced errors in the test.
Besides analyzing the internal factors, the researcher also tried to analyze the external factors that caused the students’ errors in using prepositions at, in,
and on. The first factor of the external factors dealt with the influence of Indonesian as the mother tongue. Most of the respondents of this research
admitted that when they used a certain English preposition among those three prepositions, firstly, they would find the appropriate meaning of the preposition in
Indonesian. This system was also applied by them when they did the test. They did not aware that to do the test well, they had to have good understanding of
these prepositions. Most of the respondents said that the meanings of prepositions at, in, and on were not similar in Indonesian. Therefore, it was wrong to choose
those prepositions randomly in making sentences. Although they knew that the meanings and the uses of those prepositions were different in Indonesian, they
admitted that they did not know about the uses of those three prepositions well. The second factor of the external factors was the feedback on the students’
performance in using prepositions at, in, and on. Most of the respondents of this research admitted that they obtained feedback or correction to their errors when
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88 using prepositions at, in, and on more often from their lecturers than their friends.
In fact, although their friends did not give correction or satisfactory feedback to their errors in using prepositions at, in, and on, they preferred asking their friends
to asking their lecturers when they found difficulty in using these prepositions. This could happen because most of the respondents did not want to be considered
as stupid students in front of the lecturers. As a result of lacking feedback from the lecturers related to their performance in using prepositions at, in, and on, there
were many respondents of this research produced errors in the test. The last factor of the external factors dealt with the availability of an
explicit learning material which specifically discussed about English prepositions. Most of the respondents of this research stated that as far as they took Structure
classes, there was no explicit learning material about English prepositions being discussed. They also stated that learning material about English prepositions,
especially prepositions at, in, and on, had not been accommodated enough in a number of courses in English Language Education Study Program.
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89
CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
This chapter consists of two major parts of discussions. The first part deals with the conclusions drawn from the data analysis and research results. In the
second part of this chapter, the researcher portrays several suggestions related to the students’ mastery of prepositions at, in, and on to the lecturers of the English
Language Education Study Program, the students of the English Language Education Study Program, and the future researchers.
A. Conclusions
The research was intended to answer two research questions, namely 1 how well have the fifth semester students of the English Language Education
Study Program of Sanata Dharma University mastered prepositions at, in, and on? 2 What are the possible factors which cause the students’ errors in using
prepositions at, in, and on? In order to answer the first research question, the researcher employed a test as the research instrument. Meanwhile, the
questionnaire and the interview were employed by the researcher as the research instruments to answer the second research question of this study. Based on the
data gathered, the researcher would like to draw conclusions about the fifth semester students’ mastery of prepositions at, in, and on and the possible factors
which caused the students’ errors in using prepositions at, in, and on.
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