Adult learners`s developmental pattern of the Acquisition of the grammatical aspects in English

ADULT LEARNERS’ DEVELOPMENTAL PATTERN OF THE ACQUISITION OF THE GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS IN ENGLISH

A THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of Requirements to Obtain the Magister Humaniora (M. Hum. ) Degree

in English Language Studies

by

Ayu Nuriyanawati 116332010

The Graduate Program of English Language Studies Sanata Dharma University

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

All praises be to Allah the almighty, the Greatest Creator ever, Who has led me so far so I am able to accomplish my thesis. I am so grateful to have a chance to express my gratitude for all components existing in this universe for the never-ending supports addressed for me up to this point.

Initially, I would like to express my greatest gratitude to Dr. B. B. Dwijatmoko, M. A., for the inspiring ideas and for allocating his time for me to consult my thesis consistent support and reminder to finish this thesis. My ultimate gratitude for the lecturers of the English language studies Dra. Novita Dewi, M. S., M. A. (Hons), Ph. D., Drs. F. X. Mukarto, Ph. D., P. Sarwoto, S.S., M.A., Ph.D. every meeting with them has inspired me to be better. Thank you for the opportunities given to me so that I am able to be what I am now. Additionally, I would like to thank to my thesis reviewers Dr. J. Bismoko and Drs. F. X. Mukarto, Ph.D. for the enlightening feedbacks to make my thesis more eligible. Subsequently, I also thanks the vice Rector I Drs. Tarsisius Sarkim, M.Ed., Ph.D. for the final chance given for me to complete this thesis.

For my super great and inspiring parents, the always-stay-young Ibu Muryani and Babe Mujino and, thanks a lot! No word can express how lucky I am to be born as your daughter. For my beloved life partner, the mischievous yet loving Andenk, I love you to the moon and back! Glad to have your supports and to have you. For my sisters, my super-mom sister Ajeng, and my little yet big and charming sister Arum, you rock! Thanks for every support and encouragement, and always believe me that I am able to finish it. For my supporting system, the EMJI’s, stay prosperous and generous!

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For my thesis partners so called as “the fantastic-four-student of 2011” (the most-up-to-dated Nita, the always-falling-in-love Ina, and the religious Deasy) thanks a bunch for the constant support and reminder so that I was able to survive the elimination stage and be a thesis survivor. “God enables us to do anything even the one we think is the most possible one, our knowledge is limited but God’s is infinite.” In addition, I was so fortunate to receive assistance from the Graduate Program staff, Sanata Dharma Library staff. Thank you for being so informative, helpful and patient with me.

viii DEDICATION PAGE

This thesis is dedicated to my beloved Ibu, Babe, and my Andenk.

“Allah will exalt in degree of those of you who have been granted knowledge. And Allah is Well-Acquainted with all you do. (58:11)”

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE ... i

APPROVAL PAGE ... ii

DEFENSE APPROVAL PAGE ... iii

STATEMENT OF WORK ORIGINALITY ... iv

PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI ... v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ... vi

DEDICATION PAGE ... viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS ... ix

LIST OF TABLES ... xi

LIST OF FIGURES ... xii

LIST OF ABBREVATIONS ... xiii

LIST OF APPENDICES ... xiv

ABSTRACT ... xv

ABSTRAK ... xvi

CHAPTER I : INTRODUCTION ... 1

A. BACKGROUND OF STUDY ... 1

B. PROBLEM LIMITATIONS ... 8

C. PROBLEM FORMULATIONS ... 9

D. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES ... 9

E. BENEFITS OF THE STUDY ... 10

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW ... 12

A. THEORETICAL REVIEW ... 12

1. Second Language Acquisition ... 12

2. Developmental Pattern ... 26

3. Grammatical Aspects ... 32

4. EFL Learning in Indonesia ... 38

5. Review of Related Studies ... 41

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CHAPTER III : RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ... 45

A. RESEARCH DESIGN ... 45

B. NATURE OF DATA ... 47

C. RESEARCH POPULATION AND SAMPLE ... 48

D. DATA GATHERING TECHNIQUES AND INSTRUMENTS ... 49

E. DATA ANALYSIS TECHNIQUE ... 50

CHAPTER IV : RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS ... 53

A. RESEARCH FINDINGS ... 53

1. The Developmental Pattern of Grammatical Aspect Acquisition ... 54

2. Significant Difference ... 60

3. The Problematic grammatical aspects for the EFL learners ... 66

B. DISCUSSIONS ... 68

1. The Developmental Pattern of Grammatical Aspect Acquisition ... 68

2. Significant Difference ... 70

3. Problematic Grammatical Aspects for the EFL learners ... 72

CHAPTER V ... 75

A. CONCLUSIONS ... 75

B. IMPLICATIONS ... 77

C. RECOMMENDATIONS ... 78

BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 80

xi LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 The Stages of second language acquisition _____________________ 22 Table 2.2 Comparison between first and second language development ______ 23 Table 4.1 Mean Ranks of Grammatical Aspects Acquisitions ______________ 55 Table 4.2 Descriptive Statistics of Aspects Usage and Aspects Knowledge ___ 57 Table 4.3 Statistical Results of the Pearson Product Moment ______________ 59 Table 4.4 Test of Normality ________________________________________ 61 Table 4.5 Test of Homogeneity ______________________________________ 62 Table 4.6 Kruskal-Wallis H test _____________________________________ 63 Table 4.7 Descriptive Statistic - comparison of each grammatical aspects ____ 67 Table 4.8 Descriptive analysis of perfect-progressive aspect _______________ 73

xii LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2. 1 The three concentric circles of World Englishes by Kachru ______ 13 Figure 2.2 Order of Acquisitions ____________________________________ 17 Figure 2. 3 Acquisition and learning in second language production _________ 18 Figure 2. 4 Operation of the “affective filter” __________________________ 19 Figure 2. 5 Diagram of the grammatical aspects in English ________________ 34 Figure 2. 6 Grammatical aspects in English and time references ___________ 35 Figure 4.1 Developmental Pattern ____________________________________ 56 Figure 4. 2 Developmental Pattern - the grammatical aspects knowledge _____ 58 Figure 4. 3 Developmental Pattern - the grammatical aspects usage _________ 58 Figure 4. 4 Hypotheses Summary ____________________________________ 64 Figure 4. 5 Development of the 2nd and the 4th semesters ________________ 65 Figure 4. 6 Development of the 2nd and the 6th Semesters _________________ 65 Figure 4. 7 Development of the 4th and the 6th Semesters _________________ 66

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LIST OF ABBREVATIONS

EFL : English as a foreign language ESL : English as a second language ID : individual differences

L1 : first language L2 : second language

LAD : language acquisition device SLA : second language acquisition

SPSS : statistical packages for the social sciences TL : target language

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LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix 1 : Test Items ___________________________________________ 84 Appendix 2 : Constructs of Test Items ________________________________ 88 Appendix 3 : Scoring system ___________________________________ 90 Appendix 4 : Test Scores __________________________________________ 91 Appendix 5 : Statistical Analyses Results ______________________________ 95

xv ABSTRACT

Nuriyanawati, Ayu. 2017. Adult Learners’ Developmental Pattern of the Acquisition of the Grammatical Aspects in English. Yogyakarta: The Graduate Program in English Language Studies, Sanata Dharma University.

The absence of grammatical aspects in the Indonesian language triggers issues for Indonesian EFL learners in understanding a concept of the temporality of grammatical aspects in the English language. This study aimed at investigating the developmental pattern occurring in the adult learners’ grammatical aspects acquisition. To be specific, this study intended to investigate whether there are any significant differences in the development of the acquisition of the grammatical aspects in English of three groups of learners, the second semester, the fourth semester and the sixth semester students of the English letters department of Sanata Dharma University. Subsequently, there was an investigation on how the developmental pattern of the grammatical aspect acquisition looks like. In addition, this study also tried to observe which grammatical aspect considered as problematic by the students.

This study was a cross-sectional study. Data of this study were interval data that were obtained from a written test. A test was given to 90 students of English Letters Department of Sanata Dharma University. To analyze the obtained data, this study employed IBM SPSS software. Kruskal-Wallis H statistical operation was utilized to analyze the obtained data to develop statistical results that later could be interpreted to answer the research questions.

The interpretation of the statistical analysis results leads to the answers to the research questions. According to the analysis result, it can be interpreted that the developmental pattern of grammatical aspects acquisitions are like inverted V-shaped line. The obtained p-value of the Kruskal-Wallis test of the grammatical aspects acquisition was 0.001, and when the significance level is less than 0.05 the development of the grammatical aspects acquisitions is considered as significant.

In addition, a further investigation showed that the problematic grammatical aspect encountered by learners is the perfect-progressive aspect. The statistical data analysis result shows that the lowest score that were obtained by the students from the second, fourth, and sixth semester group were the scores of the test items related to this perfect-progressive grammatical aspect.

The observed developmental pattern of the grammatical aspect acquisitions in this study was in the form of inverted V-shaped lines. The development between the 2nd and the 4th as well as the 2nd and the 6th are significant but the development between the 4th and 6th is not significant. There is an additional finding that the development of the grammatical aspects acquisition from the second to the fourth semester students was increasing and reached its highest point in the fourth semester students group then on the sixth semester students the development of the grammatical aspects acquisition was slightly decreasing.

xvi ABSTRAK

Nuriyanawati, Ayu. 2017 Adult Learners’ Developmental Pattern of The Acquisition of The Grammatical Aspects in English. Yogyakarta: Program Pasca-Sarjana Kajian Bahasa Inggris, Universitas Sanata Dharma

Tidak adanya aspek tata bahasa di dalam bahasa Indonesia memicu masalah bagi pembelajar Bahasa Inggris Sebagai Bahasa Asing di Indonesia dalam memahami suatu konsep temporalitas dari aspek tata bahasa dalam bahasa Inggris.

Studi ini bertujuan untuk menginvestigasi pola perkembangan akuisisi aspek-aspek tata bahasa yang terjadi pada pembelajar dewasa. Secara lebih khusus, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menyelidiki apakah ada perbedaan yang signifikan dalam perkembangan akuisisi aspek tata bahasa dalam Bahasa Inggris dari tiga kelompok peserta didik yaitu mahasiswa semester dua, empat dan enam dari Jurusan Sastra Inggris Universitas Sanata Dharma. Selanjutnya, ada penyelidikan tentang bagaimana bentuk pola perkembangan akuisisi aspek tata bahasa itu terlihat. Selain itu, penelitian ini juga mencoba untuk mengamati manakah aspek tata bahasa yang dianggap sulit oleh mahasiswa.

Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian cross-sectional. Data yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah data interval yang diperoleh dari sebuah tes tertulis. Sebuah tes diberikan kepada 90 mahasiwa Jurusan Sastra Inggris Universitas Sanata Dharma. Untuk menganalisa data yang telah doperoleh, penelitian ini menggunakan perangkat lunak IBM SPSS. Operasi statistik Kruskal-Wallis H digunakan untuk menganalisis data yang telah diperoleh sehingga dapat memperoleh hasil statistik yang kemudian akan diinterptetasikan untuk menjawab pertanyaan penelitian.

Interpretasi hasil analisis statistik mengarah pada jawaban pertanyaan penelitian. Menurut haisl analisis, dapat diinterpretasikan bahwa pola perkembangan akuisisi aspek tata bahasa berbentuk garis V terbalik. Nilai p yang diperoleh dari uji Kruskal-Wallis H pada akuisisi aspek tata bahasa adalah 0.001, ketika tingkat signifikansi kurang dari 0,05 maka perkembangan akuisisi aspek tata bahasa dianggap signifikan.

Selain itu, penyelidikan lebih lanjut menunjukkan bahwa aspek tata bahasa yang sulit yang dihadapi oleh peserta didik adalah aspek “perfect-progressive”.

Hasil dari analisis data statistik menunjukkan bahwa nilai terendah yang diperoleh oleh mahasiswa dari kelompok mahasiswa semester dua, empat, dan enam adalah nilai dari item tes yang berhubungan dengan aspek tata bahasa “ perfect-progressive”.

Pola perkembangan yang diamati dari akuisisi aspek tata bahasa dalam penelitian ini adalah dalam bentuk garis V terbalik dengan perbedaan yang signifikan. Perkembangan antara semester dua dan empat serta dua dan enam signifikan sementara perkembangan antara semester empat dan enam tidak

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signifikan. Ada sebuah temuan tambahan bahwa terdapat peningkatan pada perkembangan akuisisi aspek tata bahasa dari mahasiswa semester dua ke dan perkembangannya mencapai titik tertinggi pada tingkat mahasiswa semester empat dan kemudian sedikit menurun pada mahasiswa semester enam.

1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This study aimed at investigating the developmental pattern of aspects acquisition by English adult learners, particularly the English language learners of the English Letters Department of Sanata Dharma University. This study investigated the developmental pattern of grammatical aspect that is not present in learners' first language, the Indonesian language.

This chapter discusses information related to this study; the background of the study that tells about the underlying idea of this study as well as the problem limitation and problem formulation section that discusses the main problem of this study as well as the limitation to make the study more focus on a certain issue. Furthermore, there are also research objectives to point out the main goal of this study. The last part of this section is the benefit of the study that explains the advantage of this study for the researcher and also for the readers.

A. BACKGROUND OF STUDY

As an international language, the English language is acknowledged in almost all parts of this world. Whenever we go in this world we can find the English-speaking people. Therefore, knowing and mastering the English language can make one able to communicate with more people and get more benefits from it. When establishing communication with other people, it will be easier when the people use the English language as international language especially if the communication involves people from different countries with different languages.

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Moreover, the English language can be functioned as a communication bridge to make people from different language background able to exchange their ideas and communicate with each other.

Nowadays the use of the English language has reached a wider scope, it is not only used as a medium of communication in countries that use it as the first language but also in countries that use the English language as their second as well as foreign language. The geographical spread of English has made English becomes more important day by day (Fishman, 1977). The importance of the English language is not merely determined by a large number of its speakers but also its high frequency in the world communication and any other aspects such as business, e-commerce, and education as well as in other life aspects.

According to Kachru (1985), as cited in Rajadurai (2005), the English speaking countries are divided into three concentric circles: the inner circle, the outer circle, and the expanding circle. Countries that belong to inner circle are those Native-English speaking countries that use the English language as their first languages such as United States of America, Canada, New Zeeland and the United Kingdom. The outer circle countries are for the countries that were colonized by British so that the English language becomes their second language. It is also as a part of the English invasion of non-native countries. Countries that belong to this circle are Philippines, India, Kenya, Singapore, Malaysia and other English colonies. Expanding circle countries are the countries in which the English language is as a foreign language. In these countries, the English language is not used in daily conversation and it is only taught in school.

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Based on Kachru's theory, Indonesia is categorized as a part of expanding circle countries for English position as a foreign language. Even though the English language has become a foreign language in Indonesia but there is also a rising of awareness in using English as lingua franca. However, there are not so many English-speaking people in Indonesia compared to other ASEAN neighboring countries such as Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, or Singapore. Being a foreign language in Indonesia, the English language does not play a major role in the community and it is primarily learned in classroom. Moreover, according to Satono (1997) as cited in Musthafa (2009) there is also political agenda regarding official status of English in Indonesia that "English is not and will never be a social language nor the second official language in Indonesia". That political agenda is one of the reasons why in Indonesia there are not so many people use English as their means of communication in their daily life. Commonly, English is only used at certain places such as in offices or in classrooms.

The development of language acquisition of language learners deals with regularities occurs in the process of language learning experienced by the language learners. As stated by Ellis (2008) the term developmental pattern of language acquisition, particularly the second language, refers to general regularities that noticeably occurring in language acquisition. It means that developmental pattern is obtained by collecting evidence to find out observable regularities that occur during acquisition process of a new language. By obtaining the pattern then it is possible to see the stages taken by the language learners during their TL acquisition. According to Ellis, the order of mastery of different stages structures as well as the sequence of stages passes by the learners to master

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a single TL structure can be used to observe the developmental pattern of language learners.

In order to investigate the developmental pattern, it is necessary to employ correct and appropriate methods to get the most accurate investigation result. Therefore, there are methods in investigating developmental pattern that can be carried out to obtain stages of acquisition. Ellis (2008) proposes several methods to investigate the developmental pattern; they are obligatory occasion analysis, target-like use analysis, frequency analysis, and implicational scaling.

Language is unique and its uniqueness can be seen from its grammar. Palmer (1984) mentions three characteristics of language that are important for understanding the nature of grammar: its complex, productive and arbitrary characteristics. Language is complex given the fact that when translating a language to another language requires complexity in understanding the grammar of each language; even if the translation tool is utilized the translation result is not completely satisfying. Language is productive as there is a possibility of creating new sentences with new words each time that is not merely imitated and it is agreed by Palmer that we have something like sentence-producing mechanism. Language is arbitrary; there is no one-to-one relation between sound and meaning. This is evidence that languages differ and it occurs in most of all in the language grammatical structure.

Language is unique therefore each language has different grammatical form and formula. According to Quirk et al. (1972), grammar is a complex set of rules specifying the combination of sound or spelling which combine sound or spelling into larger units. In other words, grammar provides rules to be used to

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produce a large unit as the combination of sound and spelling. In addition to that, Greenbaum and Nelson (2002) proposes an idea about grammar, according to them grammar is a set of rules that allowing us to combine words in our language into larger units. As the center of language, it mediates between the system of sound or of written symbols, as well as the system of meaning.

Even though most languages have a grammatical system but Palmer (1984) argues that some languages have grammar, others do not. Palmer took an example of English and Chinese languages; he said that the Chinese language has no grammar because in the Chinese language all words keep the same shape. It is different with the English language; there are a few different forms of words in the English language. In the English grammatical system, there is a phenomenon what so called as a tense. In which the words' shape changes according to the tenses. Compared to English, there is no grammatical marking in the Indonesian language. According to Dahl (1985), there are no perfective and imperfective grammatical aspects in the Indonesian language. Other than that, Dahl also adds that the Indonesian language also does not have past tense, inflectional future, as well as perfect form. Therefore, the concept of tenses and particularly grammatical aspect become a new idea for the Indonesian EFL learners.

A tense is used to indicate the time when an action or event takes place or when a state or process holds. A tense refers to the moment of speaking. According to Palmer (1984), morphologically, there are only two tenses in the English language, past and present. Whereas the future is not considered as a tense because in order to refer to the future time the verb requires another word such as "will" or "be going to". In general, the tenses indicate whether the action

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is taking a place in the past, in the present or in the future time. The different indication is created by modifying the verbs by adding or altering the verbs with additional morpheme such as -ed (Hamm and Bott, 2014).

In addition to English tenses, there is also another feature in the English language that is not present in the Indonesian language i.e. the grammatical aspect that different from tenses. According to Quirk (1972), grammatical aspect refers to a manner in which the verb action is regarded or experienced. It means that the grammatical aspects show how the action verb indicates the occurring experience. Palmer (1984) argues that in many languages there is an aspect instead of a tense, a tense refers to time while aspects refer to completion, duration, and similar concept. The choice of an aspect is a comment on or a particular view of the action. Grammatical aspects indicate the temporal state of an action. In brief, the grammatical aspect describes the duration of an action takes place in with a particular tense. A grammatical aspect gives a feeling about a verb, about the action of a verb whether the action is happening at the moment of speaking, still happening, connecting with the past time or in brief it tells us whether the action is continuing or finished. Moreover, according to Comrie (1976), a grammatical aspect provides a way in interpreting temporal constituency of a situation. Dahl (1985) categories the grammatical aspects into perfective: imperfective, progressive and habitual activities.

Language acquisition has a slightly different meaning with language learning. According to Krashen (1981), the language acquisition and language learning are different in the consciousness of the learners. In language learning, the learners consciously learn about language, the rules, and the systems then

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learn on how to use them correctly. In contrast, in language acquisition, the language acquirers unconsciously acquire the language. They do not notice about language rules and systems; they are usually exposed by the language and get the unconscious result of the exposure.

There are numbers of studies on the acquisition of the English language aspects. Rahman and Ali (2015) conducted a study on problems faced by Bangladesh EFL learners in acquiring the English language tense and aspects. The study reveals the problem faced by Bangladesh EFL learners in mastering English tense and aspects is due to the interference of their L1 rule. The different grammatical system of EFL learners' first language and the English language influence the students' understanding on the concept of aspects in the English language system. Rahayu (2015) conducted a study on the English progressive aspects focused on the construction of be+V+ing. The study shows that students' problems lie in the understanding the meaning of English progressive while the understanding on simple aspects is not problematic for the students. To understand the grammatical aspects means to understand a temporal state of an action, a study by Zhao and Juan (2011) on the influences of L1 and lexical aspects in the temporal acquisition of the Chinese and Japanese EFL learners shows that L1 influence becomes an active factor in the Japanese learners' progressive marking performance. On the other hand, the L1 influence was not an active factor in Chinese learners. It shows that understanding temporal states or aspects can be problematic because of the interference of L1. As showed by Bardovi-Harlig (2000); Gabriele (2009); Montrul & Slabakova (2002) in Yoshimura, et al. (2014), there are other studies in second language acquisition

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showing that L2 learners facing difficulties in acquiring English tense and aspects properties due to morphosemantic inconsistency between their first language and second language. Learners who have already been exposed with L1 will tend to use their L1 rule over the L2 rule.

B. PROBLEM LIMITATIONS

In investigating the adult learners' developmental pattern of the grammatical aspects in the English language, the cross-sectional study is employed. According to Cohen et al. (2000), a cross-sectional study collects data that deals with a time-related process from the different group at a point in time while longitudinal studies collect data from the same group at different points in time. Numerous studies conducted to find the developmental pattern on a certain issue in language acquisition that uses longitudinal data collection method. It aimed at obtaining intensive data of a group of study objects in a certain period of time. This kind of study has disadvantages; one of them is time-consuming. In contrast with a longitudinal study, cross-sectional study is not time-consuming as it is conducted at a single point of a time.

Given the fact that the population of this study consists of the students of the English Letters Department who need at least four years or eight semesters to complete the program then it will take a long time to observe the developmental pattern with the longitudinal study. Consequently, this study used a cross-sectional method to obtain data in a more efficient time. Instead of using a sample group, this cross-sectional study using three sample groups from three different language levels.

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As mentioned before, the focus of this study is on the acquisition of grammatical aspects in the English language by the Indonesian EFL learners particularly students of the English Letters Department of Sanata Dharma University. The grammatical aspects were selected as there are previous studies showing that many language learners meet difficulties in understanding the concept of temporal state in the English language grammatical aspects. Therefore, a more comprehensive study on grammatical aspects acquisition of EFL learners is necessary to be carried out in order to provide an additional source of information about this topic.

C. PROBLEM FORMULATIONS

Given the background of study as well as the problem limitation, this study was carried out to provide answers to these following research questions:

1. What is the developmental pattern of the acquisition of the grammatical aspects in English of the second, fourth and sixth semester students of the English Letters Department?

2. Is there any significant difference in the development of the acquisition of grammatical aspects of those three groups of students?

3. What grammatical aspects in English are problematic to them?

D. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

This study aimed at providing answers and elaborated discussions on the adult EFL learners' developmental pattern on the grammatical aspect acquisition. As mentioned in the background of study that the grammatical aspects in the English language can be problematic for some L2 learners especially for those

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whose first language has a completely different grammatical system in which the grammatical aspects is not present. For Indonesian adult EFL learners, the absence of the grammatical aspects in the Indonesian language system could be problematic. Since most of the previous researches were about EFL learners but there is not any comprehensive research on grammatical aspects acquisition of Indonesian EFL learners then there is a gap of study to be completed.

Therefore, referring to the research questions presented in the previous section, the first objective of this study is to obtain detailed information about the Indonesian adult learners' developmental pattern of the acquisition of the grammatical aspects in the English Language. Next, the second objective is to find out whether there is any significant difference in the mastery of grammatical aspects among the adult EFL learners, particularly the students of the English Letters department from the second, fourth and sixth semesters. Finally, the third objective is to find out which grammatical aspects in English are problematic for each group of those adult learners. Supplementary, it investigated whether each group has a similar problem in certain grammatical aspects or, alternatively, each group has its own problematic grammatical aspects.

E. BENEFITS OF THE STUDY

The main purpose of conducting this study is to add a contribution to the study of the developmental pattern of EFL learners in acquiring the grammatical aspect in the field of second language acquisition. Second language acquisition deals with an acquisition of languages other than the learners' native language. In this study, the second language refers to the English language for the Indonesian learners. Therefore, this study is trying to show particular information of how

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Indonesian EFL learners understand the word structures that indicate different aspects in the sentence. This study is expected to provide theoretical and practical benefits for the readers, writers and other parties who read and use this research for their future studies, especially for those who are interested in the study of the acquisition of the grammatical aspects of the English language by the Indonesian EFL learners.

Theoretically, the study is expected to provide more information and to construct a better understanding on the developmental pattern of the English language aspects acquisition. Subsequently, this study focused on providing comprehensive information about the order of acquisition in the developmental pattern of the grammatical aspects in the English language. Practically, by knowing the developmental pattern of the English language aspects acquisition by EFL learners could help either the teachers or students of EFL learners to reflect and improve their performances in understanding the concept of the grammatical aspects in the English language. Hence, by comprehending the problematic grammatical aspect in the English language the language learners become more aware and able to overcome any difficulties in understanding and using the correct grammatical aspects either in their spoken or written language.

12 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

There are two main sections in this chapter. The first section, the theoretical review, provides information about theories as the scaffolding of this study. Hence, this chapter aimed at elaborating the constructs in this study, namely second language acquisition, developmental pattern, grammatical aspects in the English language, as well EFL learning in Indonesia. The second section is the theoretical framework of the study as the theoretical background or rationale to elaborate the relationships among variables of this study.

A. THEORETICAL REVIEW

This section presents interrelates constructs adapted to provide information about the topic of this study. Hence, this theoretical review also gives in depth analysis of each construct to provide a comprehensive knowledge. Subsequently, review of the related studies aimed at contextualizing this study with current existing studies.

1. Second Language Acquisition

To get a robust understanding of second language acquisition there are three sub-sections elaborating three main ideas on second language acquisitions the concept, stages and the influencing factors in second language acquisitions.

a. Concept of Second Language Acquisition

Discussing the language acquisition, there are two major concepts that need to be elaborated first language acquisition and second language acquisition.

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The first language acquisition refers to the acquisition of a native language in language learners at the early age while the second language acquisition refers to the language acquisition other than learners’ native language that occurs in adult learners. Since this study focuses on acquisition by adult Indonesian EFL learners, then this sub-section only focuses on the acquisition of second language experienced by adult learners

The term second language does not always refer to second language learned by language learners. The terms second language may also refer to third or fourth language other than learners’ native language. As seen in figure 2 about Kachru’s concentric circle (1985) Indonesia belongs to expanding circle country group, in which English is as a foreign language. Even though according to that concentric circle English is not as a second language in Indonesia, in this study employs theories on second language acquisition because this study concerns Figure 2. 1 The three concentric circles of World Englishes by Kachru (1985)

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about the acquisition of language other than the learners’ native language. Gass and Selinker (1994) argue that an important aspect of second language learning is that the second language learning refers to the learning of a language after learning of the native language. They also add that the acquisition of a second language may take place in classroom as well as in more natural situation. In other words, the second language acquisition is possible to happen in guided or unguided situations.

Second language acquisition studies are not only can be applied to individual language learners but the studies can also be applied to groups as claimed by Saville and Troike (2006) that “SLA refers both studies of individuals and groups who are learning a language subsequent to learning their first one as young children and to process of learning that language”. Further, Saville and Troike also add that the context of second language acquisition includes learning process in both formal and informal situations. According to Klein (1986), “a second language can be acquired in a variety of ways, at any age for different purposes, and to varying degrees”. It implies that it supports the idea of second language learning that may be occurring in formal and informal situations with various learners age as well as various learning purposes. That statement also indicates that Klein agrees about the idea of guided and spontaneous language acquisition in SLA. The guided language acquisition emphasizes the idea of SLA in a classroom with a teacher to guide the language learners in acquiring the second language. While the spontaneous language acquisition accentuates the concept of SLA experienced by language learners with second language exposure

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that makes them acquire the second language in a spontaneous way without any exposure on the rules about the language.

In contrast to the concepts of second language acquisition presented above, Krashen (1981) makes a distinction between a language acquisition and language learning. The language acquisition refers to an unconscious process, which involves a meaningful interaction in the target language in a natural communication. It means that the language learners do not concern about the grammatical rules of the target language. The learners only focus on conveying the meaning and there is no error correction as well as explicit teaching (Brown and Hanlon, 1970; Brown, Cazden, and Bellugi, 1973 as cited in Krashen 1981). This subconscious language acquisition produces the learners who are not aware of the language rules. On the other hand, the term conscious language learning means that the learners consciously learn about the grammatical structures of the target language. The teachers provide error correction and presentation of explicit rules. In addition, language learning commonly occurs in a more formal situation such as in the classroom. The result of this language learning is that the language learners become conscious and aware of the rules of the target language.

In addition to the concept about second language acquisition mentioned before, Krashen (1982) proposes five main hypotheses 1) the acquisition-learning distinction, 2) the natural order hypothesis, 3) the monitor hypothesis 4) the input hypothesis and 5) the affective filter hypothesis. The first hypothesis is the acquisition-learning distinction. The points highlighted in this hypothesis are the relationships between language acquisition and language learning. This hypothesis proposes that adult learners have two different ways in developing

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competencies in a second language. Therefore, in this first hypothesis, Krashen points out the differences of the terms learning and acquisition. Language learning refers to the way of learners developing competencies of the second language in a formal condition. It gives chances to the learners to become conscious and aware of the rules or grammars of the second language. In a learning process, the language grammars are explicitly learned and as a result, it makes the learners understand the second language.

In contrast to language learning, language acquisition refers to the way of learners developing competencies of the second language in informal ways. Language acquirers are not explicitly exposed to rules and grammars of the second language; consequently, the acquisition process is a subconscious process. In a language acquisition, the acquirers are aware of the second language grammatical form instead of the use of the second language for communication. When language acquirers have developed the competencies of second language, they will have a “feel” off correctness that will help them to sense whether the sentences they make are correct or not.

The second hypothesis is the natural order hypothesis. In formulating this hypothesis, Krashen refers to several prior research findings. Krashen states, “Grammatical morphemes seem to be acquired in a natural order. Some structures are acquired earlier and some later”. In other words, the acquisition of the rules of a language happens in predictable order.

According to this second hypothesis, the natural order occurs in both language acquisitions by children and adult in similar order. The following figure

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shows the average order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes for English as a second language, from both children and adult learners by Krashen (1977).

The third hypothesis is the monitor hypothesis. This hypothesis agrees that both acquisition and learning occur in adult language learners’ second language competence development. This hypothesis argues that acquisitions occur before learning process and it is responsible for learners’ fluency either in written or spoken form whereas a learning process is functioned as monitor that responsible for correcting the misuse of grammatical rules. Language learning plays its role as a monitor because acquisition has taken place before the learning occurs. The monitoring role can be performed by other learners or by the learners oneself (self-correction). Krashen differentiates language learners according to learners’ individual variation into three types of learners 1) over-users, occurs when language learners use the ‘monitor’ function all the time, 2) under-users, happens to the learners who have not learned about language rules or those who prefer not

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to use their “monitor” function and 3) optimal users, it is when learners use their “monitor” function appropriately. Briefly, there are three specific conditions in this hypothesis: time, focus on form and know the rule. There are some constraints to successfully be a “monitor”, first the language acquirer has to know the rule; second, it is necessary for the acquirer to think about the correctness or focus on the form. In addition, an acquirer must have time to monitor their spoken language. The following figure depicts the acquisition and learning process in second language production that employs “monitor” function according to Krashen (1982).

The fourth hypothesis is the input hypothesis. This hypothesis explains an idea of second language acquisition, on how it takes place instead of the language learning process. The significant condition for language acquisition to take place is that when the acquirer comprehends the input language that contains structures “a bit beyond” acquirer’s current level of competence. For example, when an acquirer’s level of competence is at level “i” then the acquisition takes place when the acquirer is exposed to comprehensible input that is considered at level “i+1”. Krashen also emphasizes that acquirer who has been exposed to a comprehensible input later will progress and improve their language competence along with the natural order.

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The fifth hypothesis is the affective filter hypothesis this hypothesis was proposed by Dulay and Burt (1977), as cited in Krashen (1982), this hypothesis counts the affective factors’ role in second language acquisition. Krashen mentions three types of affective variables influencing the success in second language acquisition they are motivation, self-confidence, and anxiety. A highly motivated language performer generally does better in second language acquisition. A high self-confidence and a good self-image tend to make a performer acquire a better result. A low level of anxiety that appears in language learners indicates that there is no mental block influencing the success in second language acquisition. The following figure depicts the operation of “affective filter”.

b. Stages of Second Language Acquisition

In both first and second language acquisitions, there are many processes experienced by the language learners before they are able to use the language as a means of communications. Haynes (2007) beliefs that “all new learners of the English language developing through the same stages to acquire a language. However, the length of time of each student spends at particular stages may vary greatly”. That is why the success of second language acquisition is more various compared to the first language acquisition.

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There are many models of the processes in second language acquisition; one of them is a natural approach. It is one of the simple models based on the teaching approach. In this approach, Krashen and Terrell (1983) propose five basic stages of second language acquisition. 1) pre-production, 2) early production, 3) speech emergence 4) intermediate fluency and 5) advanced fluency.

The first stage is the pre-production stage that is also said to be a silent period where the learners have limited comprehension. Their level of vocabulary is around 500 words. Most of the learners will use keyword and similar phrases as well as present-tense verbs. Another characteristic of learners in this stage is that they have limited comprehension and they tend to produce one or two-word responses. It occurs due to their limited vocabulary as well as grammatical knowledge because their most commonly used verb is present-tense verbs. Therefore, in this stage, the learners seem to be silent learners due to their lack of productive skills. Therefore, the teachers’ prompt in this stage is only in a form of simple instruction such as ‘show me…, point the ….” Hence, to respond the teachers’ prompt, the students only need to use small amount of their productive skill.

The second stage is early production stage in which the learners gradually increase their vocabulary level into around 1000 words and they begin to be able to create short language forms although it is not yet correct. The learners start to be able to use their productive skill although it is only in small amount. In this stage teachers can use the yes/no question, either/or questions or show the students graph or tables and ask them to respond to the teachers’ prompt.

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The third stage is called as speech emergence. Learners in this stage have already had at least 3000 words in their vocabulary and they start to produce short sentences and simple phrases. Their productive skills are developing as their ability to produce longer and more complete sentences increase. When these language learners start to produce sentences, they also start to make grammars and pronunciations errors. In addition, they also begin to be able to initiate conversations and make inquiries or small questions. Their receptive skills are also developing; they begin to understand short stories with help from images or pictures related to the stories. As the time goes, their understanding is getting better although they sometimes still misunderstand some information. Teacher can use a more complex instructions or questions for the students at this level. The question words that can be used as the teachers’ prompt such as why and how.

The fourth stage is called as intermediate fluency in which the learners are progressing and get a much better comprehension. Their productive skills are also getting better and they make less grammatical errors compared to those in the speech emergence stage. Learners’ vocabulary level reaches around 6000 words and it helps the learners to be more productive, they can produce more sentences. The last stage is the advanced fluency in which the learners have acquired a near-native level of speech. They have excellent productive skills as well as receptive skills.

The following table shows the stages of second language acquisition by Krashen and Terrell (1983) as cited in Hill and Flynn (2006). There are stages, characteristics, approximate time frame as well as the teachers’ prompt that suitable with the characteristic of learners in each stage.

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Table 2.1 The Stages of Second Language Acquisitions by Krashen and Terrell (1983) as cited in Hill and Flynn (2006)

Stage Characteristics Approximate

time frame

Teacher Prompts

Preproduction The student •Has minimal

comprehension •Does not verbalize •Nod “Yes” and “No” •Draws and points

0 – 6 months •Show me … •Circle the

…

•Where is? •Who has?

…

Early Production

The student

•Has limited comprehension •Produces one- or two-word •Participates using

keywords and familiar phrases

•Use present-verbs

6 months – 1 year •Yes/No questions •Either/or questions •Lists •Labels Speech Emergence The student

•Has good comprehension •Cam produce simple

sentences

•Makes grammar and pronunciation errors •Frequently misunderstands

jokes

1 – 3 years •Why? •How? •Explain … •Phrase or

short-sentence answers Intermediate Fluency The student •Has excellent

comprehension

•Makes few grammatical errors

3 – 5 years •What would happen if? •What do

you think? …

Advanced Fluency

The student has near-native level of speech

5 – 7 years •Decide if … •Retell …

In addition to the five stages of second language acquisition as proposed by Krashen and Terrel, Saville and Troike (2006) propose three stages occurring in both first and second language learning. They state that in general there are three phases in language learning, it occurs in both L1 and L2 learning. The phases are the initial state, intermediate state, and final state. Saville and Troike agree that there are differences occur in L1 and L2 learning phases. There are

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differences in first and second language learning that makes it important to dig out more information on how the second language is acquired. This table compares three states occurring in L1 and L2 development.

Table 2.2 Comparison between first and second language development (Troike - Saville, 2006)

L1 L2

INITIAL STATE

Innate capacity Innate capacity?

L1 knowledge World knowledge Interaction skills INTERMEDIATE

STATES

Child grammar Learners Language

Basic processes

Maturation Transfer

Necessary conditions Input Reciprocal interaction Input Facilitating conditions Feedback Aptitude Motivation Instruction …………. FINAL STATE

Native competence Multilingual competence

From the table above it can be elaborated that in L1 learners language is innate, as stated by Chomsky (1957) that language can only be accounted for by an innate, biological language acquisition device (LAD) or system. It is also believed by Chomsky that infants universally possess an innate “grammar template”, or universal grammar. With this innate ability, the infants will be able to pick out the grammatical rules of the language they hear spoken around them as they gradually construct the grammar of their mother tongue. For the second language acquisition, the innateness is still questionable as there are many factors

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influencing the acquisition such as L1 knowledge, word knowledge as well as interaction skills.

The next stage proposed by Saville and Troike is intermediate states in which the learners need to pass before they arrive at the final state. In this stage, the learners experiencing process in a direction to acquire either L1 or L2. Troike and Saville mention that there is a similarity in the L1 and L2 acquisition. The basic process of child grammar is by means of maturation. Their acquisition is getting better since they become more mature. Its development is spontaneous and it involves an unconscious process. Children do not need to learn about grammatical rule explicitly because when they are exposed to the language they will unconsciously learn how to use the language. In this kind of acquisition, a cognitive maturity plays a significant role. In second language acquisition, most of the learners are already mature and the cognitive maturity is no longer as significant aspect in the success of the L2 acquisition. Interlanguage development involving several processes one of them is ‘transfer’, which divided into two types: 1) positive transfer and 2) negative transfer. The transfers involve the use of their first language rules. Positive transfers occur when there are similarity of rules or structures in L1 and L2 then when it the L1 rules is implemented by the learners in L2 the use is appropriate or acceptable. In contrast, negative transfers occur when the L1 structures are not acceptable to be implemented in L2 and they are considered as an error.

After experiencing the intermediate states, both L1 and L2 learners come to the final state. Goals to achieve in this final state are different between L1 and

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L2 learners. For L1 learners, the goal of this state is to achieve a native linguistic competence while for L2 learners the goal to achieve a multilingual competence.

c. Influencing factors in Second Language Acquisition

Language learners are unique and their distinctiveness has resulting different success in language skill achievement. It is agreed by Shoebottom (n.d.) that some of the language learners might learn faster and easier to achieve the language competence than the other, and some of them might need longer time to achieve it. This commonly occurs in the first language as well as the second language learning. Some of the language learners who have high motivation to learn will probably achieve the language competencies faster with a better result. In contrast, a language learner with lower motivation will not perform as good as other language learners with higher motivation and determination.

Particularly in second language acquisition, these varieties occur as a result of several influencing factors. Ellis (1985) mentions several influencing factors in second language learning such as age, aptitude, intelligence, cognitive style, attitudes, motivation, and personality. In addition, Dornyei (2005) comes up with an idea about Individual Differences (ID) which including the influencing factors in the second language acquisition. According to Dornyei, ID “concerns on anything that marks a person as a distinct and unique human being”. To be more specific, the ID refers to “dimensions of enduring personal characteristics that are assumed to apply to everybody and on which people differ by degree”. In a case of second language learning, Dornyei highlights several important IDs such as personality, temperament, mood, language aptitude, motivation, self-motivation, learning styles, cognitive styles, language learning strategies and

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student self-regulation. Other that those IDs, Dornyei also adds anxiety, creativity, willingness to communicate, self-esteem and learners beliefs as influencing factors in the success of second language acquisition.

In addition to Dornyei’s idea about IDs as influencing factors in language acquisitions, Cann (1992) beliefs that “ the most important factors in English as the second language are age, intelligence, the amount of English spoken at home, pupil perception of parental support and first language acquisition.” Comparatively, both Cann and Ellis mention age and intelligence as influencing factors in second language acquisitions. They both agree that those two factors are playing significant role in the learners’ second language acquisitions processes. 2. Developmental Pattern

a. Concept of Developmental Pattern

The noun phrase “developmental pattern” consists of two words, developmental and pattern. The word developmental can be broken down into

development-al. According to Oxford American Dictionary and thesaurus (2009), the word “development” refers to “the act or an instance of developing; the process of being developed; a stage of growth and advancement.” Added with suffix –al then it becomes developmental which based on Oxford American dictionary and thesaurus it means “incidental to growth”. Furthermore, the Oxford American dictionary and thesaurus describes the word “pattern” as “a regular or a logical form, order or arrangement of parts”. Therefore, the phrase developmental pattern can be literally described as an order of arrangement of a stage of growth and advancement. In addition, the developmental pattern of the acquisition of grammatical aspects of English can be interpreted as an order of arrangement of a

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stage of growth and advancement in acquiring the grammatical aspects in the English language.

According to the results of previous researches of the learners’ language on second language acquisition, Ellis (2008) claims “L2 acquisition proceeds in a regular, systematic fashion. Moreover, Ellis also states that the terms developmental pattern of language acquisition refer to “general regularities evident in language acquisition”. It means that developmental pattern is obtained by collecting the evidence to find out observable regularities that occur during an acquisition process of a new language. By obtaining the observable pattern then it is possible to see the stages taken by the language learners during their second language acquisition process.

The terms developmental pattern in second language acquisition include two concepts of an order and a sequence. According to Ellis (2008), to the order of acquisition is important to identify whether the learners’ acquire some target language features before others. In contrast to the order of acquisitions, the sequence of acquisitions related to how learners acquire particular linguistic features in a target language. A study on Spanish and Chinese children on ‘natural’ spoken data by means of bilingual syntax measure by Dulay and Burt (1973) as cited in Ellis (2008) revealed the acquisition order for a group of English morphemes remained the same irrespectively of the learners’ L1 or of the scoring method. There are also several studies showing that there is a standard ‘acquisition order’ that is quite similar ignoring some factors such as learners’ L1, age and the medium of language (Ellis, 2008).

28 b. Stages in Developmental Pattern

There are some perspectives in viewing the developmental pattern of second language acquisition. Smith & Truscott (2005) as cited in Ellis (2008), distinguish the perspectives into two: the developmental perspectives and the linguistic perspectives. The first perspective views acquisition as gradual processes with overlapping stages while the second perspective views acquisition as a movement of a rule system from one to another rule system. In this section, the stages in developmental pattern of second language acquisition are viewed from developmental perspectives.

In a developmental perspective, a developmental pattern of language acquisition is divided into early stages, the acquisition of grammar and morpheme, the acquisition of vocabulary and the acquisition of phonology. According to Ellis, there are three main aspects of the early L2 acquisition: silent period, formulaic sequence, and also structural and semantic simplification. Silent period is obligatory in L1 acquisition but in L2 acquisition it is not obligatory since the learners already familiar with the language and they have acquired one language other than the target language. Nevertheless, there were several researchers such as Itoh and Hatch (1978), Hakuta (1978), Saville-Troike (1988) and Hanania and Gradman’s (1977) as cited in Ellis (2008) find some subjects of their L2 studies experiencing silent period. According to the naturalistic setting, the next aspect of an L2 acquisition is a formulaic sequence that happens very common in L2 acquisition in early stages. Lyons (1968) as cited in Ellis (2008) describes formulaic sequences as “expressions which are learned as unanalysable wholes and employed on special occasions”. The last aspect in the early stage is

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the structural and semantic simplification in which the L2 learners tend to omit the grammatical function words such as auxiliary verbs.

The following stages of language acquisition in developmental perspectives are the acquisitions of grammatical morphemes particularly on the orders and sequences of language acquisitions. The main attentions of these stages are the morpheme studies, the acquisition of tenses and aspects as well as the acquisition of syntactic structures. The focus of morpheme studies is only on the order of acquisitions of grammatical functors, it does not focus on the sequences. Most of the morpheme studies employ cross-sectional data gathering method although there are also a few numbers of studies employ longitudinal data gathering method. Another study as a focus of the grammatical morpheme acquisition stage is the study of tenses and aspects. One of the studies was by Bardovi-Harlig (1999 and 2000) as well as Zielonka (2005) as cited in Ellis (2008) focus on how the language learners with different levels of acquisition in expressing the temporality. In which later Bardovi-Harlig (2000) find out that the acquisition of expressing the temporality occurs in a slow and gradual process.

In addition, Conroy (n.d.) proposes five stages in language development and these stages apply to all languages 1) pre-production (silent periods), 2) early production, 3) emergent stage, 4) intermediate fluency stage and 5) stabilization stage. The language learners in the pre-production stage have minimal comprehension and they do not produce verbal production, they start to have the receptive skills but not yet the productive skills. Therefore, this stage is also named as a silent period for the lack or the absence of productive skills in language learners. In an early production stage, the language learners start to

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produce a few responses. Their comprehension level is low and it makes the learners make random error.

The following stage is an emergent stage in which the learners’ comprehension level is improving. In this stage the learners start to produce simple sentences yet they still make errors and unable to correct it. In intermediate fluency stage, the comprehension level is improving and the sentences made by the learners becoming more complex with complex errors. Learners at this stage are able to correct their errors if it is pointed out.

The last stage of language development is stabilization stage. The learners have a fluent language skill and they do not meet any problem in comprehension. In addition, they are also able to point out their errors and able to correct it. The language fossilizations occur in this stage and the learned language is embedded permanently. From these stages thus it can be concluded that skill of language learners is getting better and it is equivalent to their length of study, the longer time they get exposed to a certain language the more proficient they are.

c. Method in Identifying Developmental Pattern

In investigating developmental pattern, previous researchers utilized several methods. Ellis (2008) summarizes four different approaches employed by previous researchers to identify the developmental pattern. The first method is the obligatory occasion analysis. Brown (1973) as cited in Ellis (2008) elaborates three basic procedures of this method 1) obtain and collect samples of learners language that naturally occurs, 2) when the samples are collected then the obligatory occasions of the use of specific target language features are identified 3) calculate the percentage of accurate use of the specific language features. There

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is an assumption that a specific language feature is acquired when the learners are able to achieve 80-90 per cent. One weakness of this method is that this method takes no justification of when the learners misuse the feature in a context that is not obligatory in the target language.

The second method in identifying the developmental pattern is the target-like use analysis. It was proposed by Pica (1984) as cited in Ellis (2008), Pica claims that the use of obligatory occasion or target-like use analysis can determine the value of learners’ abilities. Similar to obligatory occasion analysis this target-like use analysis compares the learners’ language and the target language. Therefore, these methods do not count the unique rule system created by the learners. The third method to show learners’ developmental pattern is the frequency analysis or interlanguage analysis, it focuses more on the vertical variations of the learners, and it is believed that it provides the best way to measure the developmental sequences. This method mostly uses the longitudinal data collection methods. Given the fact that a longitudinal data collection method is time-consuming and it usually involves a study in a long period of time, therefore, there is fourth method to identify the developmental pattern i.e. the implicational scaling method that employs a more time-efficient method i.e. the cross-sectional data collection method. A cross-sectional study requires the data collection to be conducted at a single point in time. According to Cohen et al. (2000), the cross-sectional study “produces a ‘snapshot’ of a population at a particular point in time”. In a cross-sectional study, the respondents are taken from different levels of expertise or in the case of language acquisition the respondents are from different language proficiency levels.

32 3. Grammatical Aspects

In the present time, grammar is defined as a study of languages; it studies on how to put the words together to create meaning. In addition, grammar also means as a set of standards that must be followed by language learners in order to speak and write better (Woods and Friedman, 2010). Moreover, Greenbaum and Nelson (2002) refer the word ‘grammar’ as a set of rules that allows the language users to combine words into larger units, a sentence. The English sentences have many elements that make it a sentence. The most basic element in an English sentence is a verb (Yule, 1996). Studying grammar is important for language learners. As stated by Greenbaum and Nelson, an application of grammatical study is beneficial for language learners, i.e. 1) learners who recognize a grammatical structure can obtain important knowledge to understand about punctuations, 2) understanding native grammars of certain languages is useful if the language learners learn a new language, 3) in interpreting texts, grammar knowledge is helpful as the analysis of grammar becomes the main aspect, and 4) study of the English grammar can also give a benefit for the learners when they have to write, it provides help to determine and choose the best available options. Tenses are used to indicate the time when an action or event takes place or when a state or process holds. Tenses refer to the moment of speaking. According to Palmer (1984), morphologically, there are only two tenses in the English language, past and present. The “future” is not considered as a tense because it requires auxiliary verbs to form verbs that indicate future time. It is different with present and past tenses that do not need any auxiliary verbs to indicate the present and past time. To indicate the present and past time one can

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simply change the verb forms, as demonstrated by speak(s) and spoke. In general, a tense indicates whether an action is taking a place in the past, in the present or in the future time. Hamm and Bott (2014) adds that a different indication in tenses is created by modifying the verbs by adding or altering the verbs with additional morpheme such as -ed.

In a sentence, a tense comes together with a grammatical aspect. As one of the grammatical categories, the grammatical aspects provide information about a state of an action indicated by the verbs in a sentence. The concern of this grammatical aspect is on the state of temporality expressed by the verb. Palmer (1984) adds, “The term ‘aspect’ is often used to refer both to the progressive and to the perfect, though the term ‘phase’ has been suggested for the later”. Comrie (1976) argues, “Aspects are different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation.” This idea supports the notion of state of temporality as proposed by Palmer. Comrie also adds that the aspects and tenses are concerned with time; therefore, the way they are connected is in a different way.

In addition, Comrie also differentiates grammatical aspects in English into two major parts: perfective and imperfective. Each of part carries different meaning related to the temporal states. The differentiation of the perceptive form and the imperfective from does not lie on the duration of an action. It is possible to have an action with a long duration to have an imperfective aspect and other way around that an action with a short duration has a perfective aspect.

The perfective aspect refers to a “completed” action while imperfective aspects refer to a not “complete’ action. The imperfective aspect is broken down into two types: habitual and continuous. The habitual aspect refers to an action

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that regularly takes place, while the continuous aspect refers to an action that is still taking a place at the moment of speaking. The continuous aspect is divided into two: non-progressive and progressive. Non-progressive aspect deals with action that has no duration, in contrast, the progressive aspect concerns with actions emphasizing the duration.

Figure 2. 5 Diagram of grammatical aspects in English (Comrie, 1976)

In addition to Comrie’s idea about grammatical aspects, Murcia and Freeman (1999) mention four categories of grammatical aspects in English: simple aspect, perfect aspect, progressive aspect and the combination of the perfect and the progressive aspects. In contrast to Palmer (1984) who agrees that there are only two tenses in the English, Murcia and Freeman believes that there are three time references or tenses in English; they are the present, the past, and the future times.

Therefore, Murcia and Freeman agrees that the combination of the tenses and aspects constructs the 12 traditional tenses. The following chart provides a summary of combinations between the four grammatical aspects and the three

35 Grammatical Aspects Simple Aspects Past Present Future Progressive Aspects past Present Future Perfect Aspects Past Present Future Perfect-Progressive Aspects Past Present Future

time references or tenses. This chart of the four grammatical aspects (the simple, the perfect, the progressive and the perfect-progressive) is adapted from Murcia and Freeman (1999).

a. Simple aspect

According to Murcia and Freeman, a simple aspect “refers to events that are conceptualized as complete wholes”. In other words, it can be elaborated that simple aspects depict an action that is completed at a specific point in time. For instance, a simple aspect in a past time indicates that an action was completed in a specific point of time in the past time. Combined with tenses, a simple aspect is divided into three: present simple, past simple and future simple. To indicate a simple aspect in present time the verbs being used are simple verbs such as bare infinitive or verb (V1)+s or +es, verb in the past form (V2) is used to indicate

Figure 2.6 Combination of Grammatical aspects in English and three time references, adapted from Murcia and Freeman (1999)

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simple aspect in the past time, whereas verb ‘(V1) +will or +be going to’ is used in simple aspect with a future time reference. The choice of verbs used in the simple aspect in present time whether the sentence uses bare infinitive or verb with +s or +es is based on the subject of the sentences.

b. Perfect Aspect

Perfect aspect deals with ‘prior’ action that relates an action to another action at some point in time. Combined with tenses as the time references, a perfect aspect is also divided into three: present perfect, past perfect and future perfect. In a perfect aspect the sentence structure uses past participle to indicate an action that is done in the present, past or will be done in the future time. Sentences structure of perfect aspect in present time is: subject + has/have + V3 (past participle). A difference between the uses of has or has lies on the subject. For a sentence with third person singular as its subject, auxiliary verb ‘has’ is used. For the sentences with the first person (singular and plural), second person or third person plural as their subject, the auxiliary verb ‘have’ is used. A sentence structure for perfect aspect in past time is: subject + had + V3 (past participle). This past perfect aspect use had for all subject types, whether the subject is third person singular, second person, plural or any subject. A sentence structure for future aspect is: will + have + V3. The words ‘willhave’ remain the same for any subjects the sentence has in future perfect.

c. Progressive Aspect

Murcia & Freeman (1999) adds that the basic meaning of progressive aspect is imperfective. An action depicted with this aspect is an event that is possible to be incomplete or somehow limited. Divided into three: the present

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progressive, past progressive and future progressive, each combination of aspect and tense has different core meaning. For example like in present progressive that can be used to tell about activity in progress that occurs at the same moment of speaking while past progressive is used to express an event that in a progress at a specific point of time in the past. A sentence structure to form a sentence with the progressive aspect is: subject + to be + V+ing. The difference of progressive

aspect in future, past and present time lies in the use of to be. For progressive aspect in future time, the ‘to be’ is added with ‘will’. Progressive aspects in present time use ‘is, am and are’ as the ‘to be’ and its uses depending on the subjects of a sentence (is: for third person singular, am: for first person singular and are: for first person plural, second person plural and singular). The ‘to be’ for progressive aspects in past tenses are ‘was’ (for the first person and third person singular) and ‘were’ (for first person plural, second person singular and plural, third person plural).

d. Perfect-progressive Aspect

The last category of aspect is the perfect-progressive aspect. From its name, it can be seen that it is a combination of the previous two aspects: perfect and progressive. Therefore, it is a combination a sense of ‘prior’ from perfect aspect and the incomplete or limited action in progressive aspect. Sentence structure for this aspect is : subject +have/has/had + been + V+ing. For perfect

progressive aspect in present tense, the auxiliary verbs ‘has’ or ‘have’ is used and the use of those auxiliary verbs depends on the subject of a sentence. Progressive aspects in past tense use auxiliary verb ‘had’ for any subjects of the sentence. A sentence structure for perfect-progressive aspects in future tenses is a bit different

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because it needs an additional auxiliary verb ‘will’. Therefore, the sentence structure is: subject + will + have + been + V+ing.

4. EFL Learning in Indonesia

The position of the English language in Indonesia is as a foreign language, this statement is supported by Kachru (1985) who proposes three concentric circles that divide countries into three major groups: inner circle, outer circle and expanding circle. According to that circle, Indonesia belongs to the expanding circle countries in which English is as a foreign language. Moreover, Sadtono (1997) as cited in Musthafa (2009) adds that according to history, the official status of the English language in Indonesia has been ‘the first foreign language’ and this implies a strong political statement that ‘English is not and will never be a social language nor the second official language in Indonesia’. Being a foreign language in Indonesia, English is rarely used by the Indonesian people. Even though as the first foreign language but English is not commonly used in the daily conversation like in the countries in which is English as first or second language. One of the differences between EFL and ESL learners is that ESL learners get more English exposure compared to EFL learners. In ESL countries, English is not as their native language but they use the English language in their medium of education or the governmental environment. In EFL countries where their native language is also not English, English is not used in their education or governmental environments English is only taught at schools.

The Indonesian education systems are regulated under Act of the Republic of Indonesia number 20, the year 2003 on National Education System. On chapter VI part one article number 14, Indonesian formal education system is

39

divided into three major levels consists of basic education, secondary education, and higher education. The basic education functions as the foundation of secondary education and it is divided into two: the primary school that needs six years to complete and junior secondary school that requires three years to complete. The next level is secondary education and it takes three years to complete i.e. senior high school, madrasah aliyah, and senior vocational high school. Higher education level refers to education after secondary education; it consists of diploma, bachelor, master, and doctorate programs.

The policy regarding curriculum in Indonesian education system frequently changes according to the government. When the ministry of education in charge is replaced then it possibly happens to have a different policy concerning to the curriculum. It influences the position of the English language education in Indonesian education system. Despite the changing policy on the education system, English has never been taught as a primary subject on most of early and elementary education level. It possibly happens for its position in Indonesia as a foreign language. Being a foreign language, English only taught in elementary schools students as supplementary subject whilst on junior and senior high schools it becomes a required subject.

In higher education level, the English language teaching is different from those in basic education and secondary education levels. English is generally viewed as an important subject since the English proficiency levels of the students could determine their academic success because there are many academic references are in English. Moreover, when the students are graduated then their English proficiency can be beneficial for their future in the working world.

92

Appendix 4 Test Score

Learners # Semester Total Score (max:72) Grammatical aspects Usage (max 36) Grammatical aspects Knowledge (max 36) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 20 10 50 14 7 16 30 35 40 29 28 26 22 35 20 25 21 21 35 9 20 25 20 33 54 27 19 26 20 33 7 7 26 5 5 5 10 15 18 7 9 9 12 13 7 9 8 5 13 4 5 8 4 11 25 6 3 7 7 14 13 3 24 9 2 11 20 20 22 22 19 17 10 22 13 16 13 16 22 5 15 17 16 22 29 21 16 19 13 19 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 33 46 23 29 30 33 44 15 26 8 14 15 15 20 18 20 15 15 15 18 24

93 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 34 47 28 34 12 31 35 33 28 34 50 34 30 29 52 34 59 42 30 31 36 52 35 15 21 9 17 3 11 15 14 11 15 23 14 15 13 25 12 29 18 10 11 17 24 12 19 26 19 17 9 20 20 19 17 19 27 20 15 16 27 22 30 24 20 20 19 28 23 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 48 29 21 25 31 23 36 29 30 20 36 36 40 33 38 26 31 42 35 31 24 20 8 5 10 14 4 15 12 13 8 15 14 19 15 14 9 10 17 16 13 11 28 21 16 15 17 19 21 17 17 12 21 22 21 18 24 17 21 25 19 18 13

94 82

83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6

40 19 39 25 20 22 22 43 46

17 7 13

9 4 10

7 18 20

23 12 26 16 16 12 15 25 26

95

Appendix 5. Statistical Analysis Result

Tests of Normality

Kolmogorov-Smirnova Shapiro-Wilk Statistic df Sig. Statistic df Sig. Aspects

acquisition

.099 90 .028 .984 90 .325

Aspect.usage .108 90 .012 .959 90 .006

Aspect.knowledge .094 90 .049 .975 90 .077

a. Lilliefors Significance Correction

Test of Homogeneity of Variances Aspects acquisitions

Levene

Statistic df1 df2 Sig.

.465 2 86 .630

Descriptives

Statistic Std. Error Aspects

acquisition

Mean 30.87 1.095

95% Confidence Interval for Mean

Lower Bound 28.69 Upper Bound 33.04

5% Trimmed Mean 30.75

Median 30.50

Variance 107.915

Std. Deviation 10.388

Minimum 7

Maximum 59

Range 52

Interquartile Range 13

Skewness .277 .254

Kurtosis .151 .503

Aspect.usage Mean 12.42 .617

95% Confidence Interval for Mean

Lower Bound 11.20 Upper Bound 13.65

5% Trimmed Mean 12.14

Median 12.00

Variance 34.314

96

Minimum 3

Maximum 29

Range 26

Interquartile Range 7

Skewness .620 .254

Kurtosis .083 .503

Aspect.knowledge Mean 18.44 .566

95% Confidence Interval for Mean

Lower Bound 17.32 Upper Bound 19.57

5% Trimmed Mean 18.62

Median 19.00

Variance 28.789

Std. Deviation 5.366

Minimum 2

Maximum 30

Range 28

Interquartile Range 6

Skewness -.476 .254

Kurtosis .882 .503

Ranks

Groups N Mean Rank

Aspects acquisition

2 30 31.62

4 30 57.40

6 30 47.48

Total 90

Aspect.usage 2 30 30.13

4 30 59.78

6 30 46.58

Total 90

Aspect.knowledge 2 30 36.83

4 30 52.15

6 30 47.52

97

Test Statisticsa,b

Aspects

acquisition Aspect.usage

Aspect.knowl edge

Chi-Square 14.901 19.490 5.452

df 2 2 2

Asymp. Sig. .001 .000 .065

a. Kruskal Wallis Test

b. Grouping Variable: Groups

Correlations

Aspect usage

Aspect knowledge

Aspect usage Pearson Correlation 1 .713**

Sig. (2-tailed) .000

Sum of Squares and Cross-products

3053.956 1994.111

Covariance 34.314 22.406

N 90 90

Aspect knowledge

Pearson Correlation .713** 1

Sig. (2-tailed) .000

Sum of Squares and Cross-products

1994.111 2562.222

Covariance 22.406 28.789

N 90 90