STUDENTS' INABILITY TO IDENTIFY SENTENCE TYPES AND SENTENTIAL COMPONENTS: What Should We Do with It?

Abstract

The students of English Department of FKIP Universitas Bung Hatta need to have sufficient grammatical and communicative competence in the English language. It is sure that the ideal expectation should be collectively supported with any resources and programs. Based on a small preliminary research conducted at the English Department in Grammar IV class, it was found that many students were not able to identify sentence types and sentential components when they were asked to do such grammatical tasks. There were many 'unexpected' answers given by ttre students when they were asked to identify sentence types and sentential components. The condition academically reflects the unsuccessful instructions at the English Department. This paper discusses the students' inability issues based on two principle questions, namely (i) why are the students unable lo identify sentence types and sentential components granmatically? and (ii) what should be academically done to improve their ability to identify sentence types and sentential components as an efective way to shape better model for grammar instruction? The data presented in this paper are those collected based on a small preliminary research at the English Department of FKIP Universitas Bung Hatta in 2014. The population was the third year students of the department which comprised 104 students. The sample was selected by using cluster random sampling technique and it consisted of 35 students. The analysis and discussion are based on theories on fundamental English grammar and basic principles of learning a foreign language grammar.