ENGLISH SENTENCE ACQUISITION BY MALE AND
FEMALE YOUNG LEARNERS
A Thesis
Submitted to the English Applied Linguistics Study Program in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Magister Humaniora
By:
YULIMA MELSIPA LINGGA Registration Number: 8126112044
ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTIC STUDY PROGRAM
POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL
STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN
MEDAN
ABSTRACT
Lingga, Yulima Melsipa. Registration Number: 8126112044. English Sentence Acquisition by Male and Female Young Learners. A Thesis. English Applied Linguistics Study Program. State University of Medan. 2017.
ABSTRAK
Lingga, Yulima Melsipa. Nomor Induk: 8126112044. English Sentence Acquisition by Male and Female Young Learners. Tesis. Linguistik Terapan Bahasa Inggris. Universitas Negeri Medan. 2017.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Praise is to the Almighty God, Jesus Christ, who gives the writer blessing, health, knowledge, power and opportunity to finish this study. The writer’s
deepest gratitude is only for Him, the Most Gracious and the Most Merciful. This research could not be completed without a great deal of help of many people. So in the process of writing this thesis, the writer would like to extend her sincere and special thanks. Her gratitude is intended for her beloved parents, My Father (Haposan H.R. Lingga, S.Sos.), and Mother (Saurlan Sinaga) for their endless love, prays, motivations, and financial support and her beloved brothers (Roy S.J. Lingga, ST. and Serda Chandra R. Lingga), her beloved sister (Yetty V. Lingga, S.Si., Apt.) who never gave up supporting her in accomplishing this thesis on time. She is nothing without all of them. Her enormous gratitude and best appreciation are expressed to Dr. I Wayan Dirgeyasa Tangkas, M.Hum. and Prof. Dr. Zainuddin, M.Hum., her brilliant advisers, who has spent precious time in giving suggestions, encouragement, guidance, advices until this thesis comes to its due time.
The Administration staff (Farid Ma’aruf), for his assistance in the administrative procedures.
She is also deeply grateful to all her sisters and her brothers and family. Furthermore, she would like to express her gratitude to her principle in TK Kristen Kalam Kudus Pematangsiantar (Ms. Margaret), all the teachers and students, and also the member of LTBI Unimed Group and friends that can not mention for sharing ideas and developing her thesis.
The writer realizes that this thesis is far from being perfect. Therefore, the writer expects some suggestions and critics for this thesis. At last, the writer hopes that this thesis will be useful for all.
Medan, 03 March 2017 The Writer,
TABLE OF CONTENT
Pages CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Background of the Study……… 1
1.2 The Problems of the Study……… 7
1.3 The Objectives of the Study……….. 7
1.4 The Scope of the Study………. 7
1.5 The Significances of the Study……….. 8
CHAPTER II REVIEW ON THE RELATED LITERATURE A. Literature Review 2.1 First Language Acquisition……….. 9
2.2 Second Language Acquisition……….. 11
2.3 Stages in Language Acquisition……… 17
2.3.1 Language Acquisition of 4-5 years old Children……… 18
2.3.2 Characteristics of 4-5 years old Children……….. 19
2.4 The Process of Language Acquisition……… 22
2.5 The Acquisition of English Sentences……….. 27
2.6 Types of English Sentences……… 30
2.7 The Characteristics of Kindergarten Young Learners….………... 38
2.8 Gender and Language……… 41
2.9 Gender Differences in Language Development………. 42
B. Relevant Previous Study………... 45
CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 Research Method……… 51
3.2 Population and Sample………... 51
3.3 Technique of Collecting Data……… 52
3.4 The Instrument of Collecting the Data………... 53
3.5 The Trustworthiness of the Study……… 53
3.6 The Technique of Data Analysis……….. 56
CHAPTER IV DATA ANALYSIS, FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 4.1 Data Analysis ……….. 57
4.1.1 The Types of English Sentences Acquired by Male and Female Young Learners ……… 58
4.1.2 The Ways Male and Female Young Learners Acquired English Sentences ………. 68
4.1.4 The Reasons Male and Female Young Learners Acquired English Sentences ……… 76
4.2 Research Findings ……… 78
4.3 Discussions ………... 80
CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 5.1 Conclusions ……….. 85
REFERENCES... 87
LIST OF FIGURE
Pages Figure 2.1 Conceptual Framework Chart ………... 50
Figure 3.1 Interactive Model of Analysis by Miles, Huberman & Saldana
(2014) ……….. 56
Figure 4.1 Graphic of Types of Sentences Acquisition by Male and
LIST OF TABLE
Pages
Table 3.1 The Total Number of Kindergarten B Students in TK Kristen Kalam Kudus Pematangsiantar ………. 52
Table 4.1 Percentage Number of Sentences Acquisition by Male and
Female Young Learners ………... 59
Table 4.2 The Ways Male and Female Young Learners Acquired
LIST OF APPENDICES
Pages
Appendix 1 The Types of English Sentences by Male Young Learners…. 92
Appendix 2 The Types of English Sentences by Female Young Learners… 94
Appendix 3 The Data during the Observation ………. 96
Appendix 4 The Ways Male and Female Young Learners Acquired
1
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Background of the Study
All children acquire language from birth. Second language acquisition begins to occur after a child has learned his or her first language. Children learn language at a stage when they themselves are developing rapidly. Chomsky (1965) defines children in a normal life from two until six years will acquire language with structure and vocabulary. This is possible because since the birth, they have been equipped with such a device, called Language Acquisition Device (LAD). Generally, they acquire one language then they will master another language that is influenced by their environment in different ways.
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of life. In other words, the CPH states that age of acquisition is an important predictor of ultimate proficiency: the older one starts to learn a language, the smaller the odds of reaching native-like proficiency.
Do children learn languages better than adults do? Most linguists believe this is the case: ‘Childhood is the golden age for creating simultaneous bilingual children due to the plasticity and virginity of the child’s brain to make for superior ability specifically in acquiring the early sets or units of language’ (Lightbown and Spada 1999: 29). Kindergarten children are still in their golden age to acquire language. This neurological flexibility remarks the privilege accomplished by children over adults when learning a language (Lightbown and Spada 1999). It has also been suggested that the muscular plasticity a child may use in the articulation of his/her speech helps producing a native-like accent, vocabularies, complex grammatical constructions, and phonological systems of a language. It will become increasingly skillful in how they use language in a range of setting (David, 1999: 409).
Ingram (1989: 2) notes that the process of acquiring a language can be seen traditionally through some following developments:
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2. Single word utterances – from around 1 year to 1,5 years of age; 3. The two-word stage – from around 1,5 years to 2 years of age; 4. Simple and complex sentences – the third year of life.
Child’s language is a unique phenomenon because they acquire the language from the environment and sometimes what they say is not what they mean. Roger Brown of Harvard has named that language telegraphic speech (Clark, 1981: 90). Early telegraphic speech is characterized by short, simple sentences made up primarily of content words: words that are rich in semantic content, usually nouns and verbs. The speech is called telegraphic because the sentences lack function words: tense endings on verbs and plural endings on nouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles, and so on.
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-To inform someone of something -To get information from someone -To get someone to do something
-To express one's attitude about something.
And each of these communicative functions has the following patterns John is leaving. 2004). Between the ages of 3 and 5 years, children develop their gender identity and begin to understand what it means to be male or female. Almost immediately after becoming gender aware, children begin developing stereotypes, which they apply to themselves and others, in an attempt to give meaning to and gain understanding about their own identity.
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than boys, researchers often attribute their superior early reading skills in part to this biological factor (Halpern, 2006). The ability to learn and use language contains a female advantage from as early as during the first two years of life.
There is a popular believe that girls are more advanced in language development than boys. There have been a number of reviews of the literature on sex differences in language developmental like:
Jespersen (1922) (in: Macaulay, 1978, 353-363) observe that little girl on the average learn to talk earlier and more quickly that boys; they outstrip them in talking correctly; their pronunciation is not spoilt by many bad habits and awkwardness so often found in boys.
McCarthy (1954) (in: ibid) “one of the most consistent finding to emerge from the mass of the data accumulated on language development in favor of girls in nearly all aspects of language than have been studied.
Garai and Scheinfeld in a smaller number of studies came to the same conclusion: “studies of verbal ability have shown that girls and woman surpass boys and men in verbal fluency, correct language usage, sentence complexity, grammatical structure, spelling and articulation, while males tend to excel in verbal reasoning and comprehension (Garai and Scheinfeld, 1968, 198-200).
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Here is a transcript containing a fragment of a conversation in the classroom of kindergarten B that the researcher observed in the morning, on Tuesday, October 17th, 2016:
Teacher : “Do you still remember our bible story children?”
Children : “Yes, ms.”
Melodie : “about Zaccheus”
Teacher : “Ok. What happened to Zaccheus?”
Brigita : “He is short and he climb the tree to see Jesus.”
Charly : “He has no friend.”
Teacher : “Then what Jesus said to Zaccheus?”
Bezaleel : “Come down.”
Melodie : “Zaccheus come down. I want to stay in your house. Then they go to Zaccheus house.”
Based on the phenomenon above, we can see that whether boys and girls in kindergarten have capability in acquiring different kinds of sentences of English language. We can see also that girls (Melodie and Brigita) used a good verbal fluency in explaining something while boys (Charly and Bezaleel) tend to simplify and comprehend their understanding.
This research wants to find out the types of English sentences acquiring by kindergarten students. This research also wants to find out the dominant types of sentences that boys and girls used in their interactions; will girls tend to produce more utterances than boys according to the theories above.
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1.2 The Problems of the Study
Based on the background above, the problems are formulated as the following:
1. What types of English sentences are acquired by young learners based on gender perspective?
2. How do male and female learners acquire those types of English sentences? 3. Why do males and females of young learners acquire the English sentences
in the way they do?
1.3 The Objectives of the Study
In line with the problems, the objectives of the study are:
1. to find out the types of English sentences acquired by the kindergarten students based on gender perspective,
2. to investigate how male and female learners acquired those types of English sentences, and
3. to reason for male and female English sentence acquisition in the way they do.
1.4 The Scope of the Study
The study of children language acquisition is a broad are to be studied
because so many aspects to be discovered. In this study, the writer only focuses on
the English sentences acquisition by the kindergarten learners based on gender
perspective. The types of English sentences analyzed are limited on declarative,
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1.5 The Significances of the Study
The valuable input can enrich the study on the development of language analysis especially in English language acquisition. The findings of the study are expected to contribute significantly to different parts theoretically and practically.
Theoretically, these finding will be helpful for;
1. To add teacher’s knowledge in the process of English language acquisition as guidelines for them in the process of introducing English to the students.
2. To enrich knowledge and notice toward children’s language development. Practically, these findings will be helpful for;
1. To enable the teachers to improve students’ capability in acquiring English language based on their gender.
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CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
5.1 Conclusions
Based on the data and the findings presented in the previous chapter, the
researcher has formulated the conclusions as the following:
1. Male and female young learners in Kindergarten-2 of TK Kristen Kalam
Kudus Pematangsiantar have acquired declarative, interrogative,
imperative and exclamatory sentences form. They are able to produce
declarative questions, yes-no questions, and wh-questions.
2. The way of male and female young learners in acquiring English sentences
are from experience and interaction with their environment. They also
acquired it naturally from their habitual at home and school, by imitating
from their teachers and friends, and by playing and working with their
peers. The more active the children, the richer their language ability. The
background of the family could be an important aspect in their language
development, because the more they get input from their parents, the better
they are in using their English language.
3. The reasons why male and female young learners in Kindergarten-2 of TK
Kristen Kalam Kudus Pematangsiantar related to their environment, and
because vocalization is part of his repertoire of behavior. They become
accustomed to speak in English, understand instruction in English or ask
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environment also used English. Not only when learning, when individual
work time also, they are introduced with the material mostly in English,
reading and work book, story time, video and others are in English. Since
then, they acquire their English and begin to use it in daily conversation.
The other reason they acquired English sentences in the way they do is due
to the role of their parents in caring for the children, and the amount of
inputs they got from their environment. Those kids whose parents could
speak English at home and communicate English at home will have better
capability in using English to communicate daily.
5.2 Suggestions
After concluding the research, the suggestions are stated as follows:
1. To improve the English language acquisition since the early age, the
kindergarten’s teachers and parents are suggested to consider about its
supporting factors.
2. For those who are interested in children language acquisition at early age,
suggested to use this study as one of the references.
3. Other researchers can develop further study about English acquisition
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