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AN ANALYSIS OF RUN-ON SENTENCES FOUND IN STUDENTS’ WRITING PARAGRAPH OF FIRST YEAR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT STKIP
PGRI WEST SUMATERA IN 2014/2015 ACADEMIC YEAR
Oleh
Elsa Zulfa Dwi Putri *)
**) Siska, M.Pd dan **) Hevriani Sevrika, M.Pd Staf Pengajar Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat, [email protected]
ABSTRAK
Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menemukan kalimat Run On dalam paragraf yang dibuat mahasiswa tahun pertama 2014/2015 bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian deskriptif.
Sumber datanya adalah hasil tulisan anak tahun pertama 2014/2015 Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat dalam bentuk paragraf. Dalam penelitian ini, peneliti menggunakan hasil tulisan siswa sebagai sumber datanya.
Setelah semua hasil tulisan siswa terkumpul, peneliti menganalisa kalimat Run On yang terdapat dalam tulisan siswa tersebut. Dari analisa data didapatkan bahwa terdapat kalimat Run On dalam hasil tulisan anak tahun pertama 2014/2015 Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat. Penulis menemukan tipe kalimat Run On yang ditemukan adalah Fused Sentence dan Comma Splice. Dimana tipe kalimat Run On yang paling sering ditemukan adalah Fused Sentence. Siswa yang melakukan Fused Sentence ada 17 orang, sedangkan Comma splice ada 3 orang.
Key Words: Run On Sentences, Writing Descriptive Paragraph.
*) Penulis
**) Pembimbing INTRODUCTION
Writing is one of the skills in learning a language. Writing is a productive skill that requires students’ ability in producing a language to communicate. By writing, the students can express the ideas, experience, and deliver the information to the reader. The information that is delivered is commonly arranged into a paragraph. To make a good paragraph the writer writes and arranges the ideas into good sentences in order to make the readers understand about what the writer means.
Furthermore, when writer begins to write paragraph, the writer must have one topic to be developed. It is important to make the idea of writer focus on to one topic that will be developed. Then, the writer should be able to arrange, and organize the ideas to have a meaning in a paragraph. The ideas should be connected well from a word, and word to be a sentence. In short, the organization ideas, word, and sentence should be arranged correctly to write a good paragraph.
In order to enable students to write a scientific writing, the English Department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera are proposed writing course which is divided into Writing I, II, and III. In
writing I, they learn the basic principles of writing, how to write a paragraph and the process of paragraph development. In writing II, they learn about what is essay, organization of essay and how to write an essay. Then in writing III, they learn about how to write a research proposal. Thus, before students write an essay they must know and learn how to write and also arrange a paragraph into a good essay. In arrange a paragraph; students must be connected well sentence to another sentence.
In fact, the students often have a mistake and problem when they write. There are some problems that are faced by the students in writing a paragraph. The researcher found that students who study at STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in writing I have problems in writing paragraph. The problem is students still confused about how to arrange a sentence to be a good paragraph and connect sentence to another sentence, then how to put coordinating conjunction; for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. Beside that, forgot to put punctuation like comma, colon, dash, semicolon, etc. If the punctuation and conjunction are missing, the reader can confuse about the meaning of the sentence.
These problems can be called run on sentences.
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Run on sentence are sentence written one after another without coordinating conjucntion and punctuation. Run on sentence makes student misunderstanding about sentence they read. Then, students got hard in guessing the meaning of the sentence when there is run on in a sentence.Finally, students are lazy to read the sentence.
Referring with the explanation above, researcher is interested to do research about run on sentence found in students’ writing paragraph of English Department STKIP PGRI West Sumatera.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE WRITING
Writing is one of skills that should be mastered in learning English. Beside, writing is instrument for people to use, to express their thoughts, feelings, and judgements about what they have read, seen, and experienced. Frydenberg (2002:11) state that writing is continuous process of thinking and organizing, rethinking and reorganizing. In writing, there are processes which call as thinking and organizing. To express their idea, the students’ should think what will she/he write then organize it. In other word, organize the idea is to arrange idea in order make sure the idea about. Then, the students need to rethink and reorganize about the ideas to make sure their ideas.
In writing sentence there are some aspects that must be considered. For instance noun, verb, pronoun, etc.According to Vachula (2008), there are eight categories of words defined in terms of their purpose, place, meaning, and use within sentences.
The categories are: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.
First is noun. Noun is the name of person, places, things, ideas, or qualities. The example of noun are basketball, proposal, pride, and teacher.
Second is pronouns. Pronoun is word that replace a noun that has already been mentioned. The example of pronoun are I, you, him, her, me, they, which, she, and he. Third is verbs. Verbs is word that convey action, a state of being, or existence. The example of verb are walk, go, sing, are, seem, and sleep. Fourth is adjective. Adjectives is words that describe nouns and pronouns. The example of adjectives are beautiful, green, angry, necessary, and etc. Fifth is adverbs. Adverbs is words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. The example of adverbs are gracefully, very, too, loudly, and finally. Sixth is preposition. Preposition is words that link nouns or pronouns to other words
within a sentence. The example of preposition are on, in, over, under, within, and etc. Seventh is conjunctions. Conjunctions is words that link other word, phrases, or clauses in a sentence. Conjunctions consists of coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions. Coordinating conjunctions is words that link independent clauses, for example; for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so.
Subordinating conjunctions ia words that link dependent clauses with independent clauses, for example; although, because, whether, while, and etc. The last is interjections. Interjections is words that are used as exclamations or to express feeling.
The example of interjections are Hey!, Oh!, Darn!, Wow!.
In conclusion, the part of speech is important to consider in the sentence. The students must know about part of speech because there are some part of speech that always exist in the sentence and others rarely use in sentence. Thus, students must attention to them.
Besides, Punctuation is marks used in write a sentence or paragraph. Punctuation also uses to clarify the meaning from a sentence or paragraph.
According to Straus (2008:52), punctuation is the system of signs or symbols given to a reader to show how a sentence is constructed and how it should be read. Straus (2008:53) mentions that there are several basic signs of punctuation such as; comma, semi- colon, colons, quotation mark, full stop, exclamation mark, question mark, apostrophe, hypen, brackets and slash.
DESCRIPTIVE PARAGRAPH
Descriptive paragraph is a paragraph that describes a person, place or things. There are several experts who state about definition of descriptive paragraph. According to Rinehard and Winston (2000:307), descriptive paragraph is a paragraph used to describe a scene or an object. It means that, descriptive paragraph is describe what will we want to describe about something, a peron, an object in detail.
RUN-ON SENTENCE
Helling (2000:32) states that run on sentences join independent clauses without giving the reader a break to absorb the meaning of one idea before going on to the next. It means, the reader can confuse about the sentence, or overwhelm the reader and so are highly unprofessional. Thus, writer must write the sentence well and make the reader understand about the meaning of the sentence.
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Talk about type of Run On sentences, there are several expert tell about type of run on sentences.According to Helling (2000:33), there are two types of Run On sentences are comma splice and fused sentence. The first type is comma splice, that are two or more sentences join only by a comma. It means that the sentences only join a comma but without no conjunction in order to make clear the meaning of the sentences.
For example; It was raining, Naomi could not find her umbrella. (comma splice) It was raining, and Naomi could not find her umbrella. (correct sentence)
The second type is fused sentence, the fused sentence are contains no internal punctuation such as comma or semicolon. In other word fused sentence occurs when the sentences done but no punctuation to make it focus about what the sentences about. Then, it makes the reader ambigue about the sentences it self.
For example; Ajoy and Charlie just left the office they may not be at the airport yet. (fused sentence)
Ajoy and Charlie just left the office, so they may not be at the airport yet. (correct)
Shewan (2000:21) mentions that run on sentences be corrected in the following way;
a. If the sentences contain separate and distinct ideas, create two separate sentences using a period and capital letter.
For example;
Run on sentence: It was raining Naomi could not find her umbrella.
Correct sentence: It was raining. Naomi could not find her
S+V capital letter
umbrella.
b. If the ideas in the sentences are closely and equally important, use a coma and coordinating conjunction to properly form the sentence.
For example;
Run on sentence: It was raining Naomi could not find her umbrella.
Correct sentence: It was raining, and Naomi could not find her
S+V+Comma+
coordinating conjunction umbrella.
c. If the ideas in the sentences are closely related and equally important, you may also use a semicolon.
For example;
Run on sentence: It was raining Naomi could not find her umbrella.
Correct sentence: It was raining; Naomi could not find her
S+V+semicolon+S+V
umbrella.
d. Finally, if the ideas in the sentences are closely related but are not equally important, you may choose to subordinating the less important sentence; that is, to make the less important sentence into a dependent or subordinating clause.
For example;
Run on sentence:
The cost of education is rising, many students must work part-time.
I still miss my country very much, I am enjoying the United States.
Correct sentence:
Because he cost of education is rising, many students must work part-time.
I still miss my country very much even though I am enjoying the United States.
RESEARCH METHOD
In this research, the researcher used descriptive research design. The researcher chose descriptive research design to conduct the research, for descriptive research was a research study conducted to investigate condition of a particular subject. According to Gay and Airasian (2000:275), descriptive research determines, and describes the way things are. It means, the descriptive research identified the problem by giving opinion based on the problem about.. Source of data in this research is first grade students of English Department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in 2014/2015 academic year that learn writing I there are 20 students that become source of data in this research.
The instrument that would be used to collect the data is writing sheet of students in writing I in 2014/2015 academic year. After all writing sheet of students are collected, the researcher can analyze run on sentence of students in writing paragraph. This research used document to collect the data. the
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researcher would use the data analysis from Gay and Airasian (2000:239) who claim that data analysis of descriptive research data required four interative steps are reading/memoing, describing, classifying and interpreting.RESEARCH FINDINGS
Dealing with data description and analysis, the researcher found that students had run on sentences. The researcher had answered the research questions. The research question is “what types of run on sentences are found in student’s writing descriptive paragraph of first year students of English Department STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in 2014/2015 academic year?” There are two types of run on sentences that are fused sentence and comma splice.
Related the data analysis above, the students’ did fused sentence and also comma splice.
Then, the researcher found that a lot of students did fused sentence than comma splice in their writing paragraph. Here are the example of fused sentence did by of student:
a. In there we saw beautiful sea and we felt so happy. (3rdline)
b. We went after we got exercise from the lecturer, and again in there we saw beautiful sea and so many islands. (5th line)
Then, the right ones are:
a. In there, we saw beautiful sea, and we felt so happy
b. We went after we got exercise from the lecturer. In there we saw beautiful sea and so many islands
In line a, student had to put comma before coordinating conjunction. Then, in line b, student had to separate the sentence because the sentence is distinc ideas.
Here are the example of comma splice did by of student:
Hobby someone can same or different, hobby is skill from someone.
(1st line)
In this sentence, researcher found that student did not put a conjunction after comma. Then, the right one is:
Hobby someone can same or different, and hobby is skill from someone.
In this sentence, student had to put conjunction after comma.
Based on the writing paragraph that had been created by the students, the researcher found students had done run on sentences in their writing sheet. The run on sentences done by students are fused sentence and comma splice. Then, a lot of students did fused sentence in their writing sheet.
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
Based on the result of the analysis, the students of English Department STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in 2014/21015 academic year had run on sentences in their writing descriptive paragraph. Run on sentences found in students of English Department was fused sentence and comma splice. However, researcher found a lot of students did fused sentence than comma splice.
As stated previously, the researcher found that the students of English Department did run on sentences that are fused sentence and comma splice.
The researcher suggests that students should know about how to put punctuation and conjunction exactly. Then, students must pay attention about punctuation and conjunction their write in writing paragraph. Thus, students must be aware about run on sentences they write in writing paragraph.
REFERENCES
Gay, L. R and Airasian, P. 2000. Educational Reserach. 6th Edition. United States:
Prentice Hall
Helling, Pam. 2000. Grammar and Proofreading Course. New York: American Management Asosiation
Rinehart and Winston. 2000. Learning About Paragraph. New York: Christian Liberty Press
Shewan, Edward J. 2006. How to Study: A Practical Guide From a Christian Perspective. New York: Christian Liberty Press
Straus, Jane. 2008. The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation. 10th Edition. New York: PB Printing
Vachula, Emily. 2008. Parts of Speech. New Jersey.
Prentice Hall
