INTRODUCTION
1.1
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
As Buckingham said,
11
Students of English face a variety 1
of say
problems related to the use of preposition
11
it is clear
,
that most of the problems appeared in Prepositional
to
Phrases
might be cauged by the prepositions. In stated
the 1984 English GBPP for Senior High School, it
that
Prepositional Phrases is one of the
is
sub-topics
of
English that the second year students should master. Noticing writer's
the
experience
errors' made by the
students
dealing with SMA students on
during
her
the
teaching
practice at SMAK ST. LOUIS II, she observed that so many students still made various errors in constructing Prepositional Some
Phrases.
English teachers, the writer contacted with, approved
these errors also happened in the previous years. teachers'
duty
difficult
for
problem
to
overcome
these
errors.
It becomes the
However,
the SMA teachers to concentrate on
because there is no data showing what
that
it
solving
the
is this
troublesome
element of Prepositional Phrases is. The writer observed some reasons of the students' errors, one of whic h is that not all of the English prepositions,
are transferable to Indonesian is
most
of
English
prepos itions
should
making
prepositions
the other reason be
memorized
======~============
1
Thomas Buckingham, University of Illionis at Urbana-Champaign, 11 HELPING STUDENTS USE PREWSITIQNS 11 , English Teaching Forum Volume X. November-December 1 972 . Number 6, p.19 1
'
2
as
English prepositions are patterns/ and compared to
prepositions/
English
prepositions
has more kinds of prepositions.
are
Indones ia Engl i sh L"'
too various/
These reasons may cause the stu-
dents' difficulties in learning Prepositional Phrases. Sometimes/ students apply some prepositions together in a wrong way/ use t he ipcorrect preposition/ or sitions
to
the English prepositions,or at other time
prepositions altogether. analyse
a
simply transfer the Indonesian
prepo -
omit
the
These problems encourage the writer to
the Prepositional Phrases even morel thus she
conducted
research under the topic :"AN ERROR ANALYSIS ON PREPOSITION OF
PLACE
AND DIRECTION IN PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES MADE BY THE
SECOND
YEAR STUDENTS OF SMAK ST. LOUIS I SURABAYA".
1.2
STATEMENT OF THE,PROBLEMS In
line
with its'background , the general
problem
this study is formulated as follows: "what kind of errors do
of the
students make in constructing the Prepositional Phrases?" To
answer the general problem above/ the writer
speci-
fied the problem into: II
Are errors made by the students in construc ting
Preposit i o nal
phrases mostly in misapplying the preposition?" In
order
to make this specified problem more
opera-
tional/ the writer divided it into three sub-problems/ name l y: a. Are e rrors made by the stude nts in
construct ing
Pre posi -
tional Phrases mostly in omitting the prepositon? b . Are e rrors made by the students in
constructing
Pre p o si-
tional Phrases mostly in adding the preposition?
, · _·..
c. Are ·errors made by the students in
construct ing
Preposi-
tional Phrases mostly in substituting the preposition? 1.3
OBJECTIVE OF THE S TWY
This
study
objective, students This
i.e. make
attempts to
find
to
out what
in constructing
objective
is
achieve
the
specified into
to the problem: to find out
kinds
the
f ollowing
of, errors
t he
Prepositiona l
Phrases.
sub-object ive
according
whether
made
e~rors
by
the
students in constructing the Prepositional Phrases are mos t l y in misapplying the preposition. Furthermore,
this
sub-objective is divided
into
more'
detailed objectives, they are: to
1.
find
out whether errors made
by
the
students
in
constructing the Prepositional Phrases are mostly in omitting the preposition to
2.
find
constructing
out whether errors made
by
t he
students
the Prepositional Phrases are mostly in
in
adding
the preposition to
3.
find
constructing
out whether errors made the
Prepositional
by
the
students
in
Phrases
are
most l y
in
substituting the preposition. 1.4
SIGNIFICANCE OF TilE S TWY
The lish
teachers'
learning about
result of the study is expected to arouse the awareness toward the students'
Prepositional
Phrases.
It
difficulties
provides .. the
the errors made by the students, which then,
Engin
inf ormation the
Eng lish
4 '.
teachers tion,
can use to improve their ways of teaching the
especially preposition of place in Prepositional
The writer hopes,
by doing so,
preposiPhrases.
the English teachers will be
able
to help their students minimize their making errors in constructing
the Prepositional Phrases.
As Wagiman says in his article, " "better information on the errors a student makes will
that
help the teacher in making the decisions on the types of ance
assist-
? given"~.
At Significance
the of
other Learners'
time, Corder in Errors 11 says:
his
article,
"Errors provide to the
researcher evidence of how language is learned or
acquired, what discov~
strategies or procedures the learner is employing in his ery
of
the
....
languageN"".
Based
on
"The
this
statement,
the
writer hopes that the result of this study will help the teachers in the field of teaching learning.
1.5
THE SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
The Prepositional
writer
in
Phrases
her which
thesis deal
is with
going
to
talk
about
of
place
preposition
and direction only. There are many'kinds of phrases,
Phrases,
infinitive
phrases,
such as Prepositional
participial phrases,
and
so
on.
================~===
D.Wagiman A•• The Acquisiti on of Past Tense by Indonesian Students: ah Error ter Scientiae, no.12/3 Edisi 1987, p.14
English Simpple Analysis, Magis-
3
Jack C. Limited,
S.P. Corder. 11 The Significance of learners' Errors", in Richards, ed., Error Analysis, London, Longman Group 1974, p.19
,·
4
However, the most commonly used phrase is Prepositional Phrases. Prepositional Phrase can function as an adjective, an adverb or a complement. Warriner
To (1958)
clarify says,
this,
Prepositional
is a group of words
Phrases,
beginning
as
with
a
5
preposition and ending with a noun or a pronoun . The going
to
writer\ is
talk about, are all kinds of prepositions of place and
direction even
preposition.of place and direction, the
whether they consist of one word only, two, three,
four words, such as : at, around, among,
beyond,
or
between, 6
near, out of, in front of, on the other side of, and so on . In
line with the objective of the study
limited to the discussion of in the Prepositional Phrases. t a ke n
from
the
second
this study
preposition of place and
direction
The analysis is based on the
year s tude nt s
of
SMAK
ST.
is
data
LOUIS
I,
Su rabaya. 1. 6
ASSUMPTIONS
In
accordance with t he stateme nt of t he
wr ite r .s t a t es the f o llo wing ass umptio n s . 1.
probl e m,
It i s assume d tha t:
The s tude nt s h a v e mas t e r e d con s truc ting a sent e n ce
thi s
case ,
sent e n ces
in
all
kinds
the
of
t e n ses ,
b ase ,
in
b ecau se
prepos ition a l phrases a l ways appear in sentence s .
-----------------------4 Ma ry Le wi c k - Wa ll ace , Gr a mma r and Sent e n ce Struc ture , Roch ester Ins ti t u te of Techn o l ogy , McGraw- h ill , I n c ., 1 983 , p.82 5
John E. Warr i ne r, Ma ry E. Whitten, Engli s h Grarmnar and Composi t i on , Harcourt, Inc . , 1 958 , p.60
Fran c i s Gr i ff i t h, Brace and Wor l d ,
6
Knud Schibsbye , A Modern Eng lish Grammar , London , Oxford Unive r s ity Press, 1 9 70 , p .302- 38 1 -,
2.
The students have got
preposition
of
all kinds of prepositions,
especially
place and direction. As scheduled in
the
GBPP,
second year students of SMA will study this subject. 3.
The
test administered to the students is
valid
because
it
covers the materials which have been given to the students.
1. 7 . DEFINITION OF KEY TERMS
As
ambiguity
of the terms used in
this
paper
might
happen, the writer needs to define the following concepts: 1.7.1.
ERROR: According to Oxford Advanced Learner's
of Current English by Hornby.
Dictionary
'ERROR' means something done wrong.
Error must be distinguished from mistake.
Mistake refers to per-
formance errors, as Brown says, " ... it is either a random guess or
a 'slip',
in that it is a failure to utilize a
known
system
While errors themselves refer to competence
errors
7
correctly" caused
by
rules;
they
reveal
a portion of the learner's competence in the target
lan-
guage.
Error
from
the
lack of knowledge of the
in this study refers to the
language
noticeable
deviation
a selected norm of a language performance and reflects
interlanguage
competence
of the learner because
the
the
learner's
knowledge is developing. 1. 7.2.
ANALYSIS :
as
Hornby
states, "analysis
is
separation
8
into parts possibly with comment and judgement" .
In this study,
7
F!, Douglas Brown, "Principles of and Teaching", Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey Inc.1980,p.165
Lall.Q"UaQ"e Prentice
LearninQ" hall,
8
AS Hornby , "Oxford Advanced Learner's Diet ionary Qf Current EnQ"lish", Oxford University Press, 1987, p.29
7
analysis refers to observation, investigation and of something into parts and finally ERROR
1. 7.3.
ANALYSIS
It is
classification
comments. the process
of
studying
the
errors in constructing Prepositional Phrases made by the students by
identifying, analysing, and classifying them. PREPOSITION : word or group of words [eg:
1.7.4.
in,
from,
to,
out, of, on behalf of, etc] often placed before a noun or pronoun to indicate
place, direction, source, method,etc.
PHRASE
1.7.5.
group of words [often without
a
finite
verb]
forming part of a sentence. PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE : Is a group of words
1. 7.6.
which
begins
9
with a preposition and ends with a noun or pronoun , examples
of
prepositional phrase are : preposition
1.8
noun or pronoun
at
the backyard
among
the house
in front of
the building
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
This
part gives an overview of the theories used as
backbone of the study. These theories are going to be later in Chapter two. They are as follows: 1.
Contrastive Analysis
2.
Error Analysis
3.
Interlanguage
4. Prepositional Phrases
------------------------9 Warriner, Whitten and Griffith, op.cit., p.82
the
elaborated
.
8
\
1.8.1. CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS to Dulay et al.
According takes with
the
( 1982)
position that a learner's
~
Contrastive
first
his or her acquisition of second
language
language. 10
Analysis interferes
Contrastive
Analysis
treatment of errors was based on a comparison
learner's
native
between
language
and
language.
errors. 11
Consequently,
behaviorist learning theory,
it
is
believed
L1
when attempting to produce the second language". 12 learners'
of as
L2
the
that "most second language learners'
result from their automatic use of
would
the
Differences
the two were thought to account for the mayority
learners'
errors
target
of
structures
In short,
errors are mostly caused by the interferences of
L2
their
native language. Considering deals
with,
those
the High School students
the
can not be categorized as neither the beginners
pre-intermediatic learners, might
be
mostly
native
language.
strong
to
level.
A6 Dulay et.
the
The
writer nor
the writer expected that their errors
caused
by
first
interference
language
second language
al says,
the
learners
interference at
of is
their still
post-intermediate
that learning is basically a
proc-
ess of forming automatic habits and that errors should therefore
-----
---~
======================== 10 Heidi Dulay, Marina Burt, Stephen Krashen, Language Two, Oxford, Osford University Press, 1982,p.97 11
Dulay et al., 12 I bid.,
p. 118
op.cit.
,p.140
\
9
result from first language habits
interfering with the learner's 13 attempts to learn new linguistic behaviors The elementary students make errors rely on transferring, whereas
the
intermediate students rely to a greater
As Taylor
overgeneralization of target language rules. says,
quoted
by
Rod Ellis ( 1986) in
his
extent
book
on
(1975)
"Understanding
Second Language Acquisition", there are quantitative
differences 14 in errors produced by elementary'and intermediate students
While
Marton's (1980) opinion on the same book says that
inter-
ference of the first language will always be present in classroom or foreign language learning.
1.8.2.
ERROR ANALYSIS Erro r s
no t
l earn 15 error s
a r e the unsep a r a ble pa rt o f l earning . People
l a ng uage Errors
Th erefo r e ,
become
s y s t e ma ti cally
an importan t
aspect
second l a n guage have
to
committing
of
l earning . the
importance of anal ys i ng the errors that t h e s.tudent s make i n
the
is
of
fir s t
reali ze
process
teachers
without
can
of acquiring the t a r get l a ng u ag e . Erro r s, in thi s
the p r ocess of second l angu age acqu i s ition.
As Dulay e t
case , al .
say tha t the ma j o rity of e rro r s made by second l a nguage l earne r s
------------------------------------------------13 Du lay et al. , op.cit., p.140 14 Rod
El l i s ,
Un der standing
Second
lang uag e
tion, Oxf o rd , Oxf o rd Unive r s ity Rress , 1 986 , p. 24
15
Dul ay e t al.,op.cit., p .138
Acauisi -
10 16
are developmental, and not interlingual Error Analysis serves on two major purposes. Firstly, is
providing data from which inferences about the nature of
language
learning
indicating
process
can
be made.
to
the teachers which part of 17 students face the most difficult There propotion
are
three sort of studies
studies,
quasi-propotion
Secondly,
the
in
target
analysing
studies,
and
it
it the is
language
errors, occurance
studies. In propotion studies, errors in the whole body of speech or
writing are
classified /and
counted,
which enables
researcher to state in quantitative terms the relative of
each
error type.
analyzed
and
estimates, of
counted,
the'
occurance
of
errors
permit
but not quantitative statements about
interlingual and developmental errors.
studies,
propotion
In quasi-propotion studies,
classified but not
are
qualitative
the
propotion
in
occurance
While,
particular
the
developmental
interlingual errors is reported, with no attempt made to
or
address'
propotion.
writer then
To achieve the objective of this study (section 1 . 3)
the
classified,
put
them
in 18
analyzed ,counted the students'
errors
and
order. This
prefers
to
Propotion Studies
------------------------'16 Ibid.
p. 173
I
17 Ibid., p.l38 18
Ibid.
I
p.174
study,
therefore,
11
1.8.3. INTERLANGUAGE
The
concept
Richards (1972) learning
of
Interlanguage,
according
is proposed for the analy sis of
to
Jack
seco nd
C.
lang uag e
and illustration is drawn from the processes
a f fe ct i n g
language learning such as immigrant language learning , indigenous minority varieties of English , pidgin and creole s et tings, 19 varieties of English, and English as a foreign lang u a ge
Jwhile processes
Selinker
suggests
that
there
are
local
fiv e central
to second language learning which exist in the
laten t
psychological structure, and establish the knowledge which under-
lies Interlanguage behavior. They are language trans fe r , transfer of
training, strategies of second language learning ,
strategies ,
of second language communication and overgeneralizat i o n of targ et 20
l a n g u age ling ui st i c mat eri a l.
Eac h process forces
fossi li zabl e
o r e rro r ma t e ri a l upon s urface . In the Inte r l a n g u a g e Ana lys i s , as quo t e d by Cr oft Sridha r n o rms the y
say s
II
the l earne r s ' d e via tio n s
from
tar get
s hould n o t be r egarde d as undes ira ble e rro r s or are
ine vit a ble
and 21
a
n ecessa r y
p art
?f
t he
( 1980), langu age mis t a kes; lear n i ng
int e rl a nguage process .
----------------------------------------------19 J ack C. Ri c h a rd , "Soci a l Fac t o r s, Int e rlanguage,and Error Analysis, Language Lear n i ng " , in Jack c . Ri c h ard, ed . , London , L~ngman Group Li mited, 1 974, p.6 4 20 '!>arry
Se linke r, "Inte rl a n g u age " , in J ack c . Ri c h ard, e d ., Erro r Ana lys i s, Londo n , Longman Gr oup Limited, 1974 , p. 35 21 Kenne th Cr o ft , Reading in Eng li s h as ~ Second La.n.sruue f o r Teaching and Teach e r Tra inees, Bo sto n-Toron o t o Littl e, Br own a nd Compa n y (Inc . ) , 1 9 8 o , p. 85
12
In this study, the writer will take Selinker's five
centcal
students'
processes to second language learning to
errors
strategies,
·th~ory
such
which
were caused
as omission errors,
by
their
addition
see
wrong
of the
learning
errors,
misuse
errors, and misordering errors.
1.8 .4 PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES Prepositional Phrases can ndt stand alone as a sentence.
A
Prepositional Phrase does not have a subject and a
verb,
and
also does not express a complete thought. For example: Prepositional Phrases
among the tress under the table du r ing the day
~he
n oun
bas i c word orde r of prepositional ph r a ses i s : Pre p os iti o n+ a or
pron o un, a nd a pplie d t o a ll kinds of
t e n ses
a nd
v e rb
grou p s.
1. 9
Orga niz a ti o n o f the Thesi s Thi s t hesis cons i s t s of f i ve c hapters.
the
background of t he stu dy , the s tatemen t of the proble ms ,
obj ect ive the
Ch apt e r I present s
of the s tudy , the scop e a nd limit a ti o n o f
assumpti on s ,
the d e finiti o n o f ke y t e rms ,
the
the
s tudy ,
theor e ti cal
fra me wo rk
and the o rga niz a tio n o f the thes i s .
Ch a p te r I!
wi t h
revi ew , ofrelated literatu re whi c h
con s i st s
t he
t he
deal s of
t he
t heory of Con tras tive Analys i s , t h e t h eor y of Error Ana l ys i s , the theory of I n ter l a ng uage , and t he t h eor y of Prepos iti ona l Ph r a ses.
13
Methodology covers
research will be discussed in Chapter III
the· nature of the study, the population and
instruments and
of
sample,
of the research, procedures of collecting the
procedures of analyzing the data. Chapter IV
which the data,
discusses
the
data analysis and the interpretation of the findings.
Chapter
is
study
the conclusion which presents the summary of this
some suggestions concerning the study.
-----oooOooo-----
V
and
