Rekayasa Ide (Idea Engineering) English Grammar [PDF]

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PREFACE First of all, thanks to God because of the help of God, writer finished writing the paper entitled “IMPROVING STUDENTS GRAMMAR COMPREHENSION IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT FOR MEASURING ENGLISH WRITING AND GRAMMAR SKILL WITH NON-ENGLISH STUDENTS IN STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN ” The purpose in writing this paper is to fulfill the assignment that given by Sir Drs. Willem Saragih, M.Pd. as lecturer in English Grammar major. in arranging this paper, the writer trully get lots challenges and obstructions but with help of many indiviuals, those obstructions could passed. writer also realized there are still many mistakes in process of writing this paper.



Medan, October 2019 Writer



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TABLE OF CONTENT Preface………………………………………………………………………………….…1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1. Background of Study…………………………………………………………….….3 1.2. Objectives of the research………………………………………………………..…4 1.3. Limitation of the study…………………………………………………………...…4. 1.4. Significance of the study……………………………………………………………4. CHAPTER II PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 2.1. General problem in Grammar in descriptive text……………….………………5 2.2 Identification of the problem……….……………………………………………5 CHAPTER III SOLUTION AND DISCUSSION 3.1. Solution and discussion of grammar problem …………………………………7 3.2. Solution and discussion of descriptive text…………...…………………………..…7 CHAPTER IV RESULT OF RESEARCH AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Result of Research………………………………………………………………….10 A.    The Data Description of Pre-Test………………………………………………….10 B.     The Data Description of Post-test…………………………………………………11 C.     Interview Section………………………………………………………………….13 4.2 Conclusion of the research…………………………………………………………13 4.3 Suggestion of the research………………………………………………………….14 References……………………………………………………….………………………15



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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of Study Language is very important for someone to communicate with others. Communities need to communicate to understand each other. Therefore, languages essential for life. Without language, it is impossible to communicate within society. On the other hand, language as a system of communication enables humans to cooperate. At the same time language is a part of the culture of a community. Humans use language as a way of signaling identity with one cultural group and difference from others. As the foreign language, English is an important language in the world. English has become a tool for international communication in transportation, commerce, banking, tourism, process of technology, diplomacy, and scientific research (Nunan in Cahyono, 2010: 91). It is formally thought students of elementary school, junior and senior high school, and even to university. English is just learnt in the school with limit of time. So, an English teacher has to know about strategies in order to get better result in learning. Besides, she or he has to know about strategy or model which must be used to guide the students. The teacher who has important role must guide the students to have creativity in classroom. If strategy is not suitable with situation of the class, the teaching and learning will not be successful. In University, students still learn English even though they don’t take English as their major. 8 from 10 students said that their main problem in speaking English is the grammatical mistakes. . In this case, they have to think about the grammar before they speak or write something . Unfortunately, many students are not good enough at grammar skills . The students consider that understanding grammar is one of the most difficult skill because they are demanded to express their ideas in good-structure English appropriately. It means that in teaching students, teachers/lecturer need to be creative in correlating the main topic to the real situation and students can learn the linguistic features automatically. To be albe to communicate with other people, we should master grammar because grammar shows us how the word works, how we can arrange words so that the listener can understand what we mean. The aim of we learn English is we can speak English well with all of its aspect/form such us how we use the tense, preposition, content word, phrase and so on.



1.4 Objectives of the Research Based on the formulation above, the objectives of this research are describing the efforts of using text to improve grammar skill of the non-English students in state university of 3



Medan and to investigate whether the students’ grammar skill improves significantly through making a simple text. 1.5 Limitation of the study To simplify this study, the writer gives limitation as follows: a)The study is focused on the use of text as media to improve and measure students’ proficiency in grammar comprehension. b)The study will be done only with non-English students in State University of Medan.



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The Significance of Study



The researcher hopes this research will give some significance for: a) English Teacher This technique can help the teacher to understand the way to handle the students in teaching grammar using text , and it will give contribution to successful teaching learning English. b) Students This technique is able to make the students enjoy when they are writing and they do not feel bored, and of course they will use the right grammar. So the students can have creativity to write. c) Researcher The researcher will improve her knowledge in teaching method and have experience in conducting people action research.



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CHAPTER II PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 2.1 The Definition of Grammar grammar (noun): the structure and system of a language, or of languages in general, usually considered to consist of syntax and morphology Grammar is the system of a language. People sometimes describe grammar as the "rules" of a language; but in fact no language has rules. If we use the word "rules", we suggest that somebody created the rules first and then spoke the language, like a new game. But languages did not start like that. Languages started by people making sounds which evolved into words, phrases and sentences. No commonly-spoken language is fixed. All languages change over time. What we call "grammar" is simply a reflection of a language at a particular time. 2.2 The Problem of using Grammar In Descriptive text Almost all students in many countries especially non-English speaker feel difficult and have problem with their English skills specifically in Grammar skills. Some of the students think that grammar is difficult because there are so many rules in making words, phrase, clause and sentences. They also feel difficult because grammar makes people think twice to speak to avoid the errors when they are speaking as well as writing something. 2.2 identification of the Problem According to the research that the writer has done, it can be concluded several reasons why students think that English grammar is difficult. 1. They are actually confused because English has a very complicated structure. Students fell difficult to memorize it because there are so many things we should know. It can be preposition, conjunction, tenses, phrase, clause so it can make the students confused which one they will use. 2. The students feel difficult because English has a variety words which built by the same base words. For example, close, closed, closer, to close, closing, closest, where all this words have different meaning. 3. They think its difficult because in speaking, they are afraid if the make some grammatical errors because it fill effect the conversation. As we know in tenses, the time of the context being discussed is always different, it can be now, past, even future, so the use of the structure is always different. 4. There are so many words have the same form but some particular word, it is nor relevant. Example : pianist, guitarist, vocalist, but we can not say drummist, but drummer. Not only that, they also often can’t differ some of the content word, and how to use it. Example, act, action, active, actively. 5. Next is, the pronunciation. There are so many kinds of words in English which have a different meaning, different spelling, but has a similar pronunciation. Example, see, sea. Or they can’t differ some kind of words, example, she, see, sea, thing, think, by, bye, etc. 5



6. They also feel difficult to make a good descriptive text because some reason. a. They are lack of vocabulary to build a good sentence. b. They don’t really understand how to write a good paragraph. A good paragraph should have a topic sentence, supporting sentence and concluding sentence. They also need some transition word to connect one sentence to another. c. They also feel difficult to compose a good sentence to be a paragraph which has a coherence to another. Or to use the conjunction in sentences. d. They don’t really understand about the steps. Which are: The generic features of description are: 1. Verb in the present tense 2. Adjective to describe the features of the subject 3. Topic sentences to begin paragraphs and organize the various aspects of the description. 4. The factual description scaffold 1. A general opening statement in the first paragraph a) This statement introduces the subject of the description to the audience. b) It can give the audience brief details about the when, where, who, or what of the subject. 2. A series of paragraphs about the subject a) Each paragraph usually begins with a topic sentence. b) The topic sentence previews the details that will be contained in the remainder of the paragraph. c) Each paragraph should describe one feature of the subject d) These paragraphs build the description of the subject 3. A concluding paragraph (optional) a) The concluding paragraph signals the end of the text.



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CHAPTER III DISCUSSION AND SOLUTION



3.1 DISCUSSION Having known some problems that the students feel in learning English specifically in writing a descriptive text with a good grammar, the writer realize that almost all the students in Indonesia especially in State University of Medan, Specifically non English students still have a low comprehension about English especially grammar. According to the Mini Research, there are still many students who can’t write a text with a good grammar, or they still have a little understanding about the grammar. It is proved by the result of their test ( pre-test and post-test) is still low and still under 50%). Many people feel reluctant to learn grammar because it feels grammar difficult to understand. Even there are also people who argue that to be fluent English grammar is not required. For those who are important is learning the conversation. Therefore, they argue that the best way to be able to master a foreign language or English is to go abroad or practice talking to strangers. In addition to the above opinion, the education experts also have various opinions about the grammar role in English language instruction. In traditional education, grammar is important and is a key element to learn. In 1977, a Natural approach approach argued that the mastery of foreign languages was not much different from the way a child learns a native language. Therefore, grammar does not need to be taught explicitly because the language mastery depends on the comprehensible It is no wonder that later methods of communicative teaching that align with the Natural Approach become very popular. In the long run, people are easier to become proficient. However, in the book "The Context of Language Teaching" (1985), Jack C. Richards says that there has been no empirical evidence suggesting that communicative teaching results in better students than traditional teaching. In contrast, communicative teaching results in the use of unstandardized language (Broken English) and Phospsilized Incorret patterns, i.e. incorrect and difficult to change sentence patterns. What is the importance of Grammar in mastering English? The opinion against the Natural Approach was also stated by Michael Long (1987). He said that Comprehensible Input alone does not quite make a proficient Speak English. Grammar teaching needs to be given as it will make it easier for students to 7



master and understand English. From his observation of the students who learn grammar and students who learn language naturally, Michael Long concluded that in the early stages those who learn grammar more make mistakes, which is not done by those who Learn naturally; Like "He haves lunch" which is supposed to be "He has lunch". But in the long run, people who learn grammar will be easier to become proficient than people who learn naturally. Learning languages naturally will be more useful for the English language that is used daily for simple communication. But for those who want to master English for a higher level, for example for further study abroad or for the sake of work, then they will not want to learn grammar. It is also important for some standard test such as TOEFL,IELTS and other kind of test as well as in the job interview. 3.2 SOLUTION Where there is a problem, there is a solution. The writer thinks that there are many solution that the students can use to improve their skills especially in writing descriptive text with a good grammar skill: 1. The main things that the students have to learn first is tenses. Tenses is the change of the verb effected by the time. Almost all students say that using tenses is very complicated because there are so many rules. But actually, there is an easy way to learn this.



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2. Every student must have a rich vocabulary. They need to enrich their words so they can use it in writing. I suggest to memorize at least 10 words per day to remember. It will really give a good impact for their skills. 3. Learn about the set of the rules in grammar. It can be from book. There are so many books that can help the students to understand the material of grammar. 4. Nowadays, the learning process is not only about the meeting in class. Student is the center of learning, so we are trained to get as many knowledge as possible by our own creativity. The writer suggest to use some of media that can be used to support the improvement. For example, in grammar, students can use one of the best app, Grammarly, which can be downloaded in Playstore and Appstore freely. This app can help the learner to arrange the structure of sentence. Not only that, we can use edictionary in smartphone to make sure we always connect with English. By the app id u-dictionary, we can know the words, the usage, and even the pronunciation od the words. 5. Practicing in writing and speaking is also very important for learner. Because without practicing himself, the knowledge will be stuck on the brain, so we can be more competence in using grammar in life.



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CHAPTER IV CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION 5.1 CONCLUSION Having known some problems that the students feel in learning English specifically in writing a descriptive text with a good grammar, the writer realize that almost all the students in Indonesia especially in State University of Medan, Specifically non English students still have a low comprehension about English especially grammar. According to the Mini Research, there are still many students who can’t write a text with a good grammar, or they still have a little understanding about the grammar. It is proved by the result of their test ( pre-test and post-test) is still low and still under 50%). Therefore, they argue that the best way to be able to master a foreign language or English is to go abroad or practice talking to strangers. In addition to the above opinion, the education experts also have various opinions about the grammar role in English language instruction. In traditional education, grammar is important and is a key element to learn. But there are several solutions that can help the learner to improve their skills especially in text with a good granmar.



4.2 SUGGESTION For the suggestion, the researcher can conclude through the students’ reaction in interview section. For example the student said “The difficult one in this test is just to arrange the sentences and translate it to English”. We can provide the suggestion to the student so that be easier, you may increase your vocabulary and grammar mastery. So, how to realize it? For the tips, you can learn in how to use suffixes and prefixes to convert English vocabulary in different types. Example Word “Different” as “adjective”, you can put suffixes like “Difference” being “a noun”, Differently being “an adverb” and reducting the suffix be “Differ” as “a verb”. I supposed, this is a great way for increasing students’ vocabulary mastery.



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REFERENCES Genius Educasi. 10 Juli 2015. Apa Pentingnya Grammar dalam Menguasai Bahasa Inggris?. http://www.geniusedukasi.com/apa-pentingnya-grammar-menguasai-bahasa-inggr/ . Diakses 16 Oktober 2019 Grammargeek.15 Mei 2018.Verb Tenses: English Tenses Chart with useful Rules & Examples. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/682084306049615776/?nic=1. Diakses 18 Oktober 2019



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