ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS DIFFICULTIES IN USING PASSIVE VOICE OF SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE AT ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF STKIP PGRI SUMATERA BARAT IN 2016/2017 ACADEMIC YEAR Dewi Sartika 1, Suharni 2, Hevriani Sevrika 2 1 Mahasiswa Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat 2 Dosen Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat msdewisartika@gmail.com ABSTRAK Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian deskriptif dengan pendekatan kualitatif untuk menganalisa kesulitan siswa dalam menggunakan passive voice bentuk simple present tense oleh mahasiswa semester dua terdaftar pada tahun 2016/2017 jurusan pendidikan bahasa inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat. Peneliti menggunkan pendekatan purposive sampling untuk menjawab pertanyaan penelitian. Untuk mengumpulkan data, peneliti melakukan uji coba terhadap 30 siswa, dan melakukan tes terhadap 50 siswa untuk melihat kesulitan siswa terhadap passive voice dalam bentuk simple present tense. Didalam penelitian ini terdapat 29 siswa yang mendapat nilai 65 dari 50 siswa yang mengikuti tes dan dilakukan analisa terhadap hasil tes 29 siswa tersebut untuk melihat kesulitan dalam penggunaan passive voice dalam simple present tense. Dari 29 siswa tersebut ditemukan ada beberapa kesulitan diantaranya: kesulitan dalam menentukan subject, kesulitan dalam menggunakan auxiliary verb be, dan kesulitan dalam penggunakan kata kerja bentuk ketiga di passive voice. Kata Kunci: Kesulitan Siswa, Passive Voice, Simple Present Tense. INTRODUCTION Grammar becomes an important component in language that should be learnt in the process of acquiring a language including English.Learning grammar alsomeans learn how to combine units of a sentence, such as words, phrases of asentence.college of Teacher Training andeducation(stkip) PGRI West Sumatera is one of the college s has English department. In English department there are some subjects which are studied, one of them is grammar. Grammar is taught for four semesters, they are Grammar I, Grammar II, Grammar III, and Advanced Grammar. Each of them contains three credit hours each semester. Especially in grammar II, students are taught the way how to use passive voice. Passive voice is the verb form, where the subject receive the action. According to Gelderen (2010:111), passive constructions are made from active ones by switching the subject and the object. In the passive, the object of an active becomes the subject of the passive verb. 1
Based on researcher s preliminary research at STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat to some students of English department, it is found that they got wrong when the contruct passive voice itself. It could be proved based on students exercise that often made some mistakes. It seems that students still get difficulty to differentiate between verb word, present form and past participle and also the use of to be in passive voice. As the result, students wrote incorrect when contructing passive voice. Grammar is a very importantin teaching and learning English. Ur (2009:75) defines grammar as the way words are put together to make the correct sentences. It canbe stated that in order to construct the words into correct sentences, grammar isreally needed. Grammar is used to know the words, how to use the words in a good way and how to place them in appropriate places. Furthermore, grammar is necessary in constructing grammaticalsentences effectively. Generally, the form of sentences can be divided into two forms, active andpassive forms. Berry (2012:38), passive voice is formed from active sentence by making the objectinto the subject, transforming the verb, and expressing the originalsubject (if needed) in a prepositional phrase beginning with by. The object of the active voice becomes subject in passive voice, and followed by to be that appropriate tense and changing the verb into past participle. Passive sentences may contain a by-phrase in which the compliment of by the same as the subject in active sentences. Passive voice are made with different tenses of to be, followed by a past participle. Azar (2002:208) gives example bellow: Active: Tom opens the door Passive: The door is opened by Tom From the example above, it can be concluded the form of passive voice is : S + Tobe + Past participle + by agent. The noun that follows by is called agent, Tom is the agent. It can be said that, the object of the active voice becomes subject in passive voice, and the subject of the active becomes object in the passive voice. And followed by to be that appropriate tense and changing the verb into pastparticiple. Changing active into passive voice is the object from the sentence move to the begining of the sentence. Then, the object is followed by to be and past participle. Every tenses have quite different rule in passive voice. For example, if the active voice in the simple present tense, used 2
is/am/are as to be and followed by the past participle of the verb. Simple present tense can change into passive voice form. Simple present tense is one of several forms of present tense in English. It is used to describe habits, unchanging situations, and general truths or facts. The simple present tense is simple to form, just use the base form of the verb a. According to Kirn and Jack (2002:11), simple present tense is describe everyday activities and habits, to make general statement of fact, and to express opinions. With some verbs, the simple present shows an existing condition (something that is happend now). In learning passive voice, students get some difficulties in using the form of passive voice. Parrot (2000:336) states that there are some difficulties for students in using passive voice. First, students think that the subject of a sentence is the agent when it isn t. Second, students may leave out auxiliary verb before the past participle. Third, students may fail to use a past participle form of the main verb. It can be concluded that there are several factors that cause the students difficulties in using passive voice. First, students get difficulties in determining subject in passive voice, difficulties in choosing the correct auxilliary verb (to be), and difficulties in using past participle form. RESEARCH METHOD The design of this research was descriptive research, qualitative approach. According to Gay, Mills and Airasian (2012:16), qualitative research focuses on to provide an understanding of a social setting or activity as viewed from perspective of the research participants. It means that qualitative research included clear and detailed descriptions of the study. Gay (2000:275) explains that descriptive research deals with collecting data in order to answer questions, determining, and reporting the way things were. The goal of this research was to describe the students difficulties in using passive voice of simple present tense based on their experience by using test at the second semester students registered in 2016/2017 at English department of STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat. The researcher chose the second semester students registered in 2016/2017 at English Department of STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat. They consisted of three classes, they were class A, class B, and class C. The total populations were 80 students. To get the data in this research, the reseacher used test as the instrument. 3
The researcher analyzed the test based on the mistakes to find the difficulty. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION The finding of the research would like to answer the research questions that are: What are the students difficulties in using passive voice of simple present tense at the second semester students registered in 2016/2017 at English department of STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat?Are students difficult in determining subject? Yes, from 29 students 28 students had difficulty in determining subject. Student can not change the object of an active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence.are students difficult in in using past participle form? Yes, from 29 students 29 students had difficulty in determining subject. Stundent wrote wrong to be before verb. Students did not understand about subject singular and plural, thus students got difficulty in determine correct auxiliary. And some of students did not wrote the auxiliary before the subject.are students difficult in in using past participle form? Yes, from 29 students 29 students had difficulty in determining subject. Student can not transform the verb into past participle, students did not understand about regular and irregular verb. Research finding supported by research conducted by Elmadwi (2015) where he said that most of secondary school students at Al-amal, in aljmeil, encounter difficulties and comitte errors in using passive voice in written English. While research conducted by Martinaj (2016) stated that the students error in the category of Active form used instead of passive form, Incorrect use of Present Continuous, Incorrect use of Simple Future in Passive Voice and Malformation of active form. However, in this research, the researcher analyzed the students difficulties in using passive voice of simple present tense there are difficulty in determining subject in passive voice, difficulty in choosing correct auxiliary verb, and difficulty in using past participle form. CONCLUSION Based on the result of the test, the researcher can give conclusion that the students difficulties in using passive voice of simple present tense consist of three variables that are difficulty in determining subject in passive voice, difficulty in choosing correct auxiliary verb, and difficulty in using past participle form. 4
REFERENCES Ary, Donald et al. 2010. Introducting to Research in Education. 8th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Azar, B.S. 2000.Understanding and using english grammar. New York: Pearson Education. Berry, R. 2012. ENGLISH GRAMMAR a resource book for students. New York: Routledge. Gay, L.R., Peter Airasian. 2000. Educational Research: Competencies foe Analysis and Education. 6th ed. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc. Gelderen, E.v. 2010. An Introduction to the Grammar of English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Parrot, Martin. 2000. Grammar for English Language Teacher. New York: Cambriedge University Press. Ur, P. 2009. Grammar Practice Activities: A Practical guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 5