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STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN USING PLURAL NOUNS AT SMP MUHAMMADIYAH 6 PADANG
Annisa Fitri1, Dona Alicia2, Dian Mega Putri2
1English department student, college of teaching training and education (PGRI) Sumatera Barat
2English department lectures, college of teaching training and education (PGRI) Sumatera Barat annisapipid@gmail.com
ABSTRAK
Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan tentang bagaimana kemampuan siswa dalam menggunakan plural nouns dalam kalimat di kelas VIII SMP Muhammadiyah 6 Padang . Penelitian ini merupakan jenis penelitian kualitatif deskriptif. Data dikumpulkan dengan menggunakan 20 item soal tes tentang plural nouns. Hasil penelitian menunjukan ada 5 kategori kemampuan siswa yaitu Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor dan Fail. Ada 11 siswa yang mendapatkan nilai 80-100 ini dikategorikan Excellent (A), Ada 11 siswa yang mendapatkan nilai 66-79 ini dikategorikan Good (B), Ada 17 siswa yang mendapatkan nilai 56-65 ini dikategorikan Fair (C), Ada 36 siswa yang mendapatkan nilai 40-55 ini dikategorikan Poor (D), dan tidak ada siswa yang mendapatkan nilai 30-39 ini dikategorikan Fail (E). Dari hasil data dapat disimpulkan bahwa kemampuan siswa dalam menggunakan kata benda jamak di SMP Muhammadiyah 6 Padang adalah Poor (D).
Kata kunci: Kemampuan , Nouns , Plural Nouns INTRODUCTION
Plural nouns in english is more complicated. Thereare a lot of rules in plural nouns. The examples are book in the singular become books in the plural, marble in the singular become marbles in the plural, and room in the singular become rooms in the plural. while many rules haveto be noticed by the students in plural nouns like in man in the singular become men in the plural, lady in the singular become ladies in the plural, ox in the singular become oxen in the plural, and child in the singular become children in the plural. In addition, the words fish, deer, or
sheep have the same form either singular or plural. Scissors and spectacles are always plural in form.The sentence surrounding influences the changing of nouns. Determiner as the marker of nouns would determine whether singular or plural nouns that is appropriate to follow for example a book, those books, one deer, several deer, shoe, a pair of shoes, some coffee, much sugar and something alike.
Unfortunately, there areproblems that are faced by the students in plural nouns. The students still wrong write
2 sentences in plural nouns and also the students do not know how to change from singular to plural. Based on the researcher’s pre-observation at SMP Muhammadiyah 6 Padang students face difficulties when they are pointed out with plural nouns. The difficulties that occur were in plural inflectional form and in determining whether plural nouns suitable with the determiner.
Students think that plural noun same with singular noun. So, They did not change it.
And also they thught plural noun is only adding –s or es, so they only put –s or -es in that word.From the phenomena of language above, the research question are formulated in the following questions:
1. How is the seventh grade students ability of SMP Muhammadiyah 6 Padang in using plural nouns from the side of rules of plural nouns?
2. How is the seventh grade students ability of SMP Muhammadiyah 6 Padang in using plural nouns from the side of function of plural nouns?
3. How is the seventh grade students ability of SMP Muhammadiyah 6 Padang in using plural nouns from the side of types of plural nouns?
Dealing with the research question above, the purpose of this research are:
1. To know how is the ability seventh
grade students of SMP Muhammadiyah 6 Padang in using plural nouns from the side of rules of plural nouns.
2. To know how is the ability seventh grade students of SMP Muhammadiyah 6 Padang in using plural nouns from the side of function of plural nouns.
3. To know how is the ability seventh grade students of SMP Muhammadiyah 6 Padang in using plural nouns from the side of types of plural nouns.
Grammar
According to Brown (2000:361) grammar is the system of rules governing the conventional arrangement and relationship of words in a sentence. This statement considers that we can better understand how to use the word in sentence formation. Then, Harmer (2001:12) explains that grammar of a language is the description of the ways in which words can change their forms and can be combined into sentences in that language. Furthermore, Disterheft (2004:3) explains that grammar is the system of rules that every speakers
3 formulates through the process of first language acquisition.
Therefore, grammar has a big influence in learning language skills, such as: listening, speaking, reading and writing. The researcher concludes that grammar is a structure of the language or a basic component of each subject in English and a set of rule how the formation and incorporation of words combine into a sentence this is meaningful.
Nature of Noun Definition of Noun
According to Knapp & Watkins (2005:57) nouns are words that neme people, places, things, and ideas. Furthermore Disterheft (2004:338) says that noun is a word like a person, a place, an idea, or a thing. It is supported by Werner (2007:228) who proposes that noun can name a person, a place, an object, an activity an idea or emotion, or a quantity. Based on the explanation, the researcher concludes that Nouns are very important in sentences because they are always the subject or doer of the action. Noun is part of speech . Noun is a word to use to identfy any of a class of people, places, or things.
Functions of Noun
Azar and Hagen (2006:158) say noun has two functions, they are as a subject of a
sentence and as an object of a sentence.
In addition, according to Dondayan in (2012:1) there are five functions of nouns in sentences. They are as a subject, direct object, indirect object, object of a preposition and predicate noun.
Furthermore, Chutavo (2012:1) states that there are eight functions of noun, they are: Noun as Subjects, Noun as Subject Complements, Noun as Direct Objects, Noun as Object Complements, Noun as Indirect Objects, noun as Prepositional Complements, Noun as Adjective Phrase Complements, and Noun as Appositives.
Based on the explanation above, the researcher concludes that noun has some functions in English grammar, they are: noun as a subject, noun as direct object, noun as indirect object, noun as object of preposition, noun as predicate, noun as subject complement, noun as object complement, noun as prepositional complement, noun as adjective phrase complement, and noun as appositive noun.
Types of Noun
According to Michigan (2002:23), classes of nouns are common noun and proper noun. In addition, Byrd and
4 Benson (2001:214), types of nouns are Proper and common nouns, common nouns consists of countable and uncountable nouns, countable nouns consists of singular and plural nouns. Furthermore, according to Disterheft (2004:338), there are some types of noun such as proper noun, common noun, concrete noun, abstract noun, countable noun and uncountable noun. Then, Werner and Nelson (2007:68) state that there are two kinds of nouns in English, countable nouns and uncountable nouns.
Nature of Plural Nouns Definition of Plural Nouns
According to Oxford learner’s pocket dictionary (2008:338), plural is (form of word) used for referring to more than one.
Danesi (2006:31) adds that nouns typically inflect for number (singular or plural) and case (plain or genitive). Singular is referring to one person, thing and so on. Plural is referring to more than one. From the definitions about plural above, it can be concluded that plural do not described as a single thing or plural has more than one of the person, place, or thing in the real world.
Rules of Plural Nouns
According to Bolton & Goodey (2013:187) There are several ways How plurals are formed:
1. Most nouns have a plural ending in – s
2. This final –s is pronounced in two different ways: /s/ after the consonants c, p, t, k and th: T-shirts, socks. /z/ after all other consonants and after vowels (a,o, etc): boys, sweaters, videos
3. A few common words have irregular plural forms. Examples: Man become men, Foot become feet, and person become people.
4. These are sometimes part of other words: businessman become businessmen, grandchild become grandchildren.
5. In compound nouns the more important word takes the plural form.
Police officer become police officers Some nouns (usually numbers) do not change in the plural. A dozen>two dozen, a hundred become two hundred . But when these words are used to talk about an indefinite number, they have the plural –s . dozens of cars, hundreds of headphones.
5 RESEARCH METHOD
According to Gay and Airasian (2000:275), Descriptive research determines and describes the way things are. It shows that descriptive research tell more explanation about a problem or issue that is invesgated. It means that descriptive research is a study to identify of phenomena or issue.
In finishing this research, the researcher needed participant of the research. According to Gay and Airasian (2000:281), the selected research participants must be able to provide the desire information and willing to provide it to researcher. The participant of this research was the eight grade students at SMP Muhammadiyah 6 Padang.
Based on the instrumentation above in collecting the data, the researcher do some step. First, As already discussed previously, the data were collected by using grammar test in the form of fill in the blank test. The students did the test in 30 minutes and choose the correct answer. After that, the researcher collected the answer sheet. Than, collected the test as documentand researchers conduct in form by grouping the data that students problem in using plural nouns.
In this research the researcher used two instruments to collect the data. They are test and document. The test is grammar test in the form fill in the blank test. The aspect that the
researcher wanted to know from the test are students’ ability in using plural nouns in sentences. The test consist of 30 items for trying out test and 20 items for real test. The researcher gave 30 minutes for students to do the test.
The researcher analyzed the data that have obtained from document and interview. According to Gay & Airasian (2000:239) steps in analyzing qualitative research data are:
1. Reading/Memoing
The first step in analysis is reading/memoing; reading the field notes, transcripts, memos, and observer comments to get a sense of the data. In this research, the researcher read the data that have collected from test. The test was consist of 20 item.
2. Describing
The next step was describing. The aim is to examining the data in depth to provide detailed descriptions of the setting, participants, and activitied. In this problem, the researcher described students’ ability in using plural nouns at SMP Muhammadiyah 6 Padang.
3. Classifying
Categorizing and coding pieces of data and physically grouping them into themes. A category is a classification of
6 ideas or concepts. In this research, the researcher classified the data by collected the test that researcher had given. Then, researchers analyzed students’ ability at SMP Muhammadiyah 6 Padang.
4. Interpreting
Interpreting and synthesizing organized the data into general understanding. In this stage, the researcher would interprethow thestudents’ ability in using plural nouns in seventh grade students at SMP Muhammadiyah 6 Padang by using interpretation scale from Arikunto (2013:281).
Table 1 Range Scale Range
100 Character Interpretation 80-
100
A Excellent
66-79 B Good
56-65 C Fair
40-55 D Poor
30-39 E Fail
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Based on the data analysis, the finding showed that, the highest score of the students’ achievement was 92, 5 and lowest score was 40. From the total of 75 students, there were2students that got the score 92,5, 2
students that got the socre 90,2 student got that score 87,5, 4 students got the score 85 and a student got that score 82, 5. These students were categorized into the level “Excellent” (A). The students that got the score 75 was a student, 2 students got the score 77,5, 2 students got that score 72,5, 3 students got the score 70, a student got that score 67,5, a student got that score 66, 25, and these students were in level “Good” (B), the student that got the score 65 was 1 student, 2 students got the score 62,5, a student got that score 61,25, 2 students got that score 62,5, 3 students got the score 60, 7 students got the score 57,5 and this student was in level “Fair” (C), the students that got the score 55 were a student, 5 students got that score 52,5, 2 students got the score 50, a student got that score 43,75, 9 students got the score 47,5, 5 students got the score 45, a student got that score 43,75, 4 students got that score 42,5, 3 students got the score 40 and these students were in level
“Poor” (D), and 0 student got“Fail”
(E). Then, the total of students that got
“Excellent” (A) level were 11 students, 11 students were in the level “Good”
(B), 17 students were in the level “Fair”
(C), 36 students were in the level “Poor”
7 (D), and there is not students were in level
“Fail” (E).
CONCLUSIONS
Based on the data analysis and finding in chapter IV, the researcher found the ability of students in using plural nouns at SMP Muhammadiyah 6 Padang, from 75 students.
There were 11 students got the score 80-100 that were categorized “Excellent” (A), 11 students got the score 66-79 that were categorized “Good” (B), 17 students got the score 56-65 that were categorized “Fair”
(C), 36students got the score 40-55 that were categorized “Poor” (D), and there is not students got the score 30-39 that was categorized “Fail” (E). It could be concluded that students’ ability in using plural nouns at SMP Muhammadiyah 6 Padang were categorized “Poor” (D).
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