AN ANALYSIS OF THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS’ PROBLEMS AT SMPN 1 PARIAMAN TO UNDERSTAND ARTICLES AND PREPOSITIONS IN SIMPLE SENTENCE

Abstrak

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to know the problems of the second year students to understand articles and prepositions of SMPN 1 Pariaman. The design of this research was descriptive research. The population of this research was the second year students of SMPN 1 Pariaman. The number of the population member was 148 students. Thirty of them were taken as sample of this study by using simple cluster random sampling. The instrument used to collect the data in this research was grammar test in the form of completion test. From the result of research, the researcher found that the problems of the second year students of SMPN 1 Pariaman to understand articles and prepositions in simple sentence as follows; there were three problems faced by the students  to understand articles. They were article ‘a’ ( 22.7%), article ‘an’ (27.8%), and article ‘the’ (50.7%). There were three problems faced by the students  to understand  time prepositions. They were time preposition ‘in’ (20%), time preposition ‘on’ (20%), time preposition ‘at’ (60%). And there were three problems faced by the students  to understand place prepositions. They were place prepositions ‘in’ (41.3%), place prepositions ‘on’ (33.3%), and place prepositions ‘at’ (45.3%). Based on the results above, it is suggested that the teacher should give more exercises, especially about articles and prepositions to the students. And it is suggested to the students  that they should pay more attention to understand articles and prepositions in simple sentence.

Key Words: Problem, Structure, Articles and Prepositions