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.
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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
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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.