CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL REVIEW
A. Definition of Grammar
Every language has its own grammar. It is crucial because it is needed to help in understanding the language. Grammar makes possible the production and comprehension of a potentially unlimited number of utterance, because no language can exist without grammar and none can use a language fluently without knowledge of it. Therefore, grammar plays very important role as a bridge between speaker and listener in people communication in both speaking or writing.
The word grammar has several meanings and there is no universally accepted definition. Different experts define the term grammar differently. Lado (1977: 141) defines grammar as the study of rules that are claimed, to tell the students what should and should not say in order to speak language of the social educated class and Harmer (2001: 12) defines grammar as the description of the ways in which words can change their forms and can be combined into sentences in the language. Gerot and Wignell (1994: 2) state that grammar is a theory of a language, of how language is put together and how it works. So, grammar is the study of the classes of words, their inflections and their functions and relations in the sentence of a language.
how to construct a good message based on the rules they have known and try to convey the message to the others. These rules are termed as grammar.
The mechanism of grammar cannot be seen concretely, because it is rather abstractly represented in the human mind, but it will be known because of it works. One way of describing this mechanism is by means of a set of rules which allow us to put words together in certain ways which do not allow others. The meaning of a message conveyed by language has to be converted into words put together according to grammatical rules and these words are then conveyed by sounds or in the form of writing.
B. Writing
1. Nature of Writing
Writing is one of the languange skills that cannot be separated from learning a language. Through writing, the writer can inform others, carry out transaction, persuade, infuriate, and tell what they feel. However, it is already known that writing or learning to write especially in a second language is not simply a matter of “writing things done”. It is
one of the four basic skills (listening, reading, speaking, writing) that are very complex and difficult to learn.
Writing is a language skill which is used to communicate with other people directly, and it does not need face to face interaction. Writing is an activity which is productive and expressive. Through writing activities, writers have to utilize the language structure and vocabulary because writing skills cannot be mastered without practices.
Specifically, writing is an expression of language in the form of letters, symbols, or words.
2. The Criteria of Good Writing
There are some characteristics of a good writing. According to Boardman (2008:18-25), there are three characteristics in writing a good text or paragraph, namely: a. Coherence
A paragraph has coherence when the supporting sentences are ordered according to a principle. The sentences are put in order so that the reader can understand the ideas easily. The principles for ordering depend on the types of paragraph that written by the writer. Coherence means stick together, coherence is basically a matter of having the part of a piece of writing in the right with the clear process.
b. Cohesion
Another characteristic of a good paragraph is cohesion. When a paragraph has cohesion, all the supporting sentences connect to each other in their support of the topic sentence.
c. Unity
3. The problems in Writing
The writing ability means the ability to communicate thoughts or ideas through written symbol. It means that writing as the written communication tools and it is hoped that other person understand what the writer intends to.
When the students write they often confuse what they want to write, the students are not confidence about their writing. According to Nurgiyantoro (2001: 298-299) there are some problems in writing, such as:
a. Organizing idea
Most of the problem faced by the student in learning writing is in organizing idea. They usually have difficulties in organize the idea into sentences. Besides that, they usually write the content which is not suitable with the topic. This problem probably occurs because of the students get difficulties in developing their idea and sometimes they do not know what they will write.
b. Lack of vocabulary
Most of the students often write sentences which are not communicative and they usually choose incorrect words when they write something. This problem happens because they are not mastering in vocabularies.
c. Grammatical mistake
Based on the explanation, it can be concluded that grammatical mistake still become one of big problems in student‟s writing.
C. Recount Text
1. Definition of Recount Text
The term of recount text has several meanings; many experts have proposed the definition of recount text. According to Knapp (2005:224), recount text is written out to make a report about an experience of a series of related event. A recount is written out to inform an event or to entertain people. Pardiyono (2007:63) said that recount text is a text written to retell information about past events experiences. Recount begins with telling the reader who is involved, what happen, where this event takes place and when it happens. The sequence of event as said by the expert above, then described in some sort of order, for instance in a time order.
Based on the definition stated by some experts previously, it has some viewpoints about recount text. Recount text is a text which retells past events or experiences and its purposes is either to inform or to entertain the reader.
2. Type of Recount
According to Widodo (2009:14) there are three kinds of recount, as follows: a. Personal Recount
Personal recount usually retell an event that the writer had been personally involved.
Factual recount, recording the particulars of an incident, for example: police report, news report.
c. Imaginative recount
Imaginative recount, taking on an imaginary role and giving details of events, for example: a day in the life of pirate.
From those three kinds of recount text, it is in the form of information about someone‟s past experience, relates to the specific participants involved in. Since there are
any three kinds of recount text, this research will only discuss about personal recount.
3. Generic Structure of Recount Text
Each text covered some generic structures. The generic structure of text is the text organization or the text arrangement. According to Pardiyono (2007:66) the generic structure of recount text, such as:
a. Orientation
It provides the background information needed by the reader. It introduces the participants (who), place (where), time (when) and what the experience is. b. Record of events
It describes series of events that happen in the past and it tells the events chronologically.
c. Reorientation
It shows the concluding comment on the incident. It expresses the writer‟s
Language feature are dealing with grammar, vocabulary and connector that uses in a text. The language features of recount text, such as:
a. Recount text is written in the past tense (I went, she listened, it blocked) b. It uses of the temporal sequences which link event and time (on Friday, one
day, at the beginning, in the end, first, then, next, before, later, finally,
etcetera.)
c. It uses action verb/material processes (went, slept, ran, caught, arrived, bought, looked at) e.g. He went to the museum; she was unhappy.
d. Use of personal pronouns (I, we)
e. The passive voice may be used, e.g the bottle was filled with ink.
5. Purpose of Recount Text
The purpose of recount text is to describe past experience by retelling event in the order in which they happened (chronological order) and it is either to entertain or to inform to the reader.
6. The example of Recount text
Below is the example of recount text, adapted from: English for SMK 1, SMK grade X
Me and My School
Orientation
best ever.
Series of events
Although I realized that it‟s not as big as big schools in Medan, but what made it special for me were its teachers, competitions, and friendship. They were so interesting that I would never forget it, especially my teachers. They taught me a lot of things, most importantly, the philosophy of life, and how to be self-standing students. Though I was not so smart but I was more articulate than my friends. Therefore I became so famous until they chose me be leader of OSIS.
Series of events
Then I was busy organizing many activities at school. I hardly could organize my time between studying and doing extra activities after class. Undoubtedly, there were a lot murmurs about me that I would disturb my study and disappoint my parents for getting bad marks. They were totally wrong. I made it! I said to myself, and it was nearly impossible without my teachers‟ help, especially their supports to all students to be more creative.
Series of school, such as English speech contest, soccer and clean-up campaign.
Reorientation
neighbors,” like KGRE said.
D. Error Analysis
1. Definition of Error Analysis
Error analysis is defined as the study of linguistics ignorance, the investigation of what people do not know and how they attempt to cope with their ignorance. Error analysis was first introduced by Fries (1945) and Lado (1957) who have claimed that foreign or second language learners‟ errors can be predicted on the basis of the
differences between the learners‟ native and second languages. They have also suggested
that where the aspects of the target language are similar to those of the learner‟s native language, learning will be easy; otherwise, it will be difficult and second language learners are expected to make errors.
Longman dictionary of Linguistic (1985: 96) defines errors analysis as “the study and analysis errors made by the second and foreign language”. Ellis (1985: 296) defines it as “working procedure used by researchers and language teacher to collect, identify,
explain, classify, and evaluate errors”.
Brown (2000:1) states that researchers and teacher of second languages come to realize that the mistakes a person made in this process of constructing a new system of language needed to be analyzed carefully, for the possibly held in some of the keys to the understanding of the process of second language acquisition.
describing and classifying learners‟ errors, the teacher can know how far the learners
have learned or understood the lesson and what items remain for them. Therefore, an errors analysis is needed in the process of language learning.
2. Types and causes of Error
Before going further, it is important to know about the types of error. According to Tarigan (1995:85) there are general types of error:
a. Interlanguage error. This error is caused by interference of students‟ mother tongue towards the target language being learned.
For example:
I very love Indonesia.
The sentence shows the translation from Indonesian sentence word-by-word “saya sangat cinta Indonesia”.
b. Intralingual error. These errors are caused by the difficulties in learning the target language itself. There is no interference of mother tongue to target language. There are four categories of intralingua errors; those are overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restriction, incomplete application of rules, and false concept hypothesized.
a) Overgeneralization
Overgeneralization is negative intralingua error dealing with items that are contrasted in grammar of the languages. The learners create deviant form in the target language in place of two regular structures. For examples:
He can answers the question correctly.
Thus, they over generalize that the simple present tense „s‟ ending
is required by the third person singular. Whereas, the form of English sentences are not fully the same as they expect. In addition, they may reduce their linguistic burden. To know their mistakes in constructing sentences, the writer also give the correct sentences are follows:
She will fry the chicken soon.
He can answer the question correctly.
b) Ignorance of rule restriction
This type of error means that the learners fail to observe the restriction of existing structures, that is application of rules to context where do not apply. There, error occurs when the students respond to the English grammatical item are unfamiliar. As the result, they try to create form based on their own analogies, which are unacceptable in English. For example the student makes sentences:
He gave to me some money.
We saw him play football and we admired.
From the example above, the error made by the students are “addition” and “omission” an object which is unnecessary.
In this case, they should reduce „to‟ as addition error in the
sentence “He gave to me” because it unnecessary to put “to” after verb.
He gave me some money
For the second sentence, the error made by the student is omission error. In the sentence “We saw him play football and we
admired”, the student omit the object in the second clause that should be “We saw him play football and we admired him.”
c) Incomplete application of rules
This type occurs when a student fails to apply the rules completely due to the stimulus sentences. For example, the teacher‟s
question is “what is she doing?”, then the students‟ response is “She reading a novel”. In this case, the student doesn‟t apply the complete
form of the answer which should be: “She is reading a novel”.
d) False concept hypothesized
This type of error occurs when the students incorrectly comprehend some aspects in the target language. It relates to the students‟ comprehension to the points of learning material are not
synchronous.
In English, “was” indicates as a marker of past time, for example the student make sentence: “it was occurred a year ago”. The
word “occurred” shows past time, so was is not used. Then, the correct sentence is ”it occurred a year ago”. Another example, when student
Since the Indonesian formed is different from English, it will make students feel complicated when they cannot master English grammar well. One example for the difference is Indonesian does not have tenses like English. As could be seen in the table below:
Indonesian sentence English sentence
1. Kami sedang bermain petak
umpet sekarang.
From those examples, it can be concluded that Indonesian has different pattern from English and it can be one possible cause that make student in making error.
3. Category of Error
B. Auxiliary System 2. Using adjective as verb. 3. Mis-ordering of using
adjective.
Never do you must spit like that. Why we bow to each other? We are stayed here already two weeks.
Each cushion given by our priest. She is not allowed to her parents to go.
He was arrived early.
I get up after I brush my teeth.
Linguistic Category and Types of Error Example
A. Morphology
1. Error of indefinite article
2. Error of possessive case
3. Error of third person singular verb 4. Error of simple past tense
5. Error of past participle 6. Error in comparative
adjective/adverb. B. Syntax
1. Error in noun phrase
-The bird he was gonna what that it.
I have book new.
They won‟t have no fur.
Is one bird.
The classification of the error in this research used Politzer and Ramirez‟
Linguistic Category Taxonomy as a guideline, that it is not followed strictly as it is, but rather, modification is made to adjust to the field data. So, both of those categories are used, combined with the quantitative information to show the frequency of occurrence of each error type.
4. The differences between Error and Mistakes
something they forget about that system. Error is caused by the factor of competence. It means that the students have not know the linguistic system of the languange being used. Error usually occurs consistently and systematically. As distinguished by Tarigan (1995), as follow:
From the explanation, it can be illustrated by example of sentence. If the students write “my uncle was came last night., it has been known that the correct one is ”came”
not “was came”. When the student said ”he came at 07.00 pm” in the next sentence, it can be assumed that it is a kind of mistakes. It is because the student has already known thet came means “datang” and the students revise the mistakes in the next sentence. If the student said “he is came at 07.00 p.m.” and he/she repeat it consistently, it indicates
that it is a kind of error.
5. Procedure of Error Analysis
procedure, which is commonly used by the researcher and the languange teacher, which include data colection, error identification, explanation of error in the sample, classification of errors based on the causes, and evaluation and assessment about the level of error seriousness.
There are some steps of error analysis according to Tarigan (1995:71): 1. Colecting Data
It is the data which contain the errors made by the student, for example; the result of the test, students‟ writing, or students‟ dialogue.
2. Identifying or classifying error
Knowing and choosing errors based on languange category, for example, error in spelling, word formation, word fusion and sentence arrangement. 3. Ranking the error
Arange the error based on the frequency of occurence. 4. Explaining error
Describing the place of error, the cause of error and giving example of the correct ones.
5. Predicting the area which is risk by error.
Predicting the language area wich has potency to cause error. 6. Correcting the error
