INTRODUCTION 1 Background of the Study

1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the Study For every human, language is very important things to communicate to each other. Without language, we can’t communicate with others people. There are many languages in the world. One of them is English as international language where all countries should be learning it. English is as an International language because most people in the world know English as a second language after their mother language. In Indonesia, English is taught as a compulsory subject to high schools and college students. At some elementary schools, English has even been introduced as a subject to be learned. The objective of teaching English especially for Indonesian students are able to communicate in English both speaking and writing. Learning English is not easy. There are many words in English which have the same word but different in meaning. Besides English also has a complicated structure and grammar. Grammar is one of the language components that the students should master. English have rules to make communication better in usage. Pyle and Ellen 2002:39 say, “A rule in grammar is a generalization. It is a formula that one makes to account for how a given grammatical construction usually behaves. A rule is not necessarily true in every instance. It is generally true. Universitas Sumatera Utara There are so many parts of grammar to be learned. One of them is gerund. Gerund is verb + ing which functional as a noun. Gerund also finds in written. For example : letter, poem, magazine, etc. Tempo Magazine is one of the English magazines in Indonesia which is published every week. Tempo Magazine contains of many topics that every topics have various articles, such as economy, international, opinion, science and technology, law, national, arts, profile, lifestyle, and prelude. The writer uses eight topic that have gerund to be analyzed. For examples: 1. Sitting at the head of the table, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono spoke enthusiastically about a fried rice recipe handed down by his family. 2. All of this must happen for the sake of stabilizing green-house gas concentration in the atmosphere. 3. I have been involved with the media since 1996, writing for publications in Papua. 4. Aburizal denied approving the maneuvering of some of this cadres. 5. Politically, Indonesia has aspired achieving this by reducing emissions. From the examples above, gerund as subject is “sitting” that located in front of sentence as in sentence 1, “stabilizing” and “reducing” are gerund as preposition because there are prepositions “of” and “by “ so verb after preposition is using gerund like in sentences 2 and 5. In sentence 3, “writing” is gerund as appositive because it explains about the information in the gerund sentence. In Universitas Sumatera Utara sentence 4, “approving” is gerund after some verbs because there are some verbs always following with gerund such as admit, deny, avoid, etc. Based on the previous explanation, the writer is interested in analyzing the gerund use in the articles of Tempo Magazine. The writer took six articles in the Tempo Magazine that is published on March 2013 as the data source in this paper. This paper analyses what the definitions, forms, and functions of gerund in the Tempo Magazine.

1.2 Problem of the Study

The problems of study are: 1. What are the forms and functions of gerund used in the Tempo Magazine? 2. How are the rules of gerund used in the articles of Tempo Magazine? 3. Which functions of gerund are the most dominant in the Tempo Magazine?

1.3 Scope of the Study

This study describes a part of grammar that called gerund. The writer wants to limit this study in the definitions and functions of gerund in the Tempo Magazine.

1.4 Purpose of the Study

The purposes of the study are: 1. To find out and classify the functions of gerund used in the articles of the Tempo Magazine Universitas Sumatera Utara 2. To describe the uses of gerund. 3. To find out the most dominant functions of gerund used in the articles of Tempo Magazine

1.5 Significance of the Study

There are some significances of the study, they are theoretically to enrich knowledge about gerunds and practically to be used as references for the readers or students who are interested in analysing of gerunds. Universitas Sumatera Utara 2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 2.1