CHAPTER II

THEORITICAL ORIENTATION

2.1 Aspects of English Language

Language is absolutely central for students learning because students

cannot make a sense or communicate their understanding of a subject without it.

Students need to understand some general skills of language for a complete

communication. According to Akram and Malik (2010), there are four skills in

English, they are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. These skills are

sometimes called the macro skills. Then, beside understanding four general skills

of language above, students also need to comprehend another aspects of language.

The aspects are grammar, pronunciation, spelling, and vocabulary. These

elements are sometimes called the micro skills (Aydogan, 2014). It means there is

the difference between macro skill and micro skill.

Furthermore, Arifa (2010) defined that English language has four

grammatical aspects, namely simple, perfect, progressive, and perfect-progressive

aspects. The first grammatical aspect is the simple aspect. It allows speakers to

express habitual actions or states. The second grammatical aspect is perfect

aspect. It is a grammatical aspect of English that allows speakers to express and

emphasize the consequences of previous actions or states. The third is

progressive in grammatical aspect. Progresive aspect is an aspect which allows

speakers to express incomplete or ongoing actions or states. Lastly, progressive-

perfect aspect allows the speakers to express and emphasize the consequences of a

previous ongoing or incomplete actions or state.

 Next, pronunciation is the second point in the micro skill. Pronunciation

is the result of producing the sounds of speech, including articulation, stress, and

intonation (Gebhard, 2010). Furthermore, spelling is a particular difficulty to

non-native speaker students (Gebhardt, 2010). This is due to the fact of English

spelling has been influenced by several languages. They are Greek, Latin,

Italian and much more. Spelling discussion also engages about homonyms,

homophones, and homographs. In this research, pronunciation and spelling

aspects are merely described in general.

Finally, another aspect of language is vocabulary. Vocabulary comprises

sets of word in English. Vocabulary links up receptive and productive skills.

Receptive vocabulary knowledge means a vocabulary catches from listening and

reading skill while productive vocabulary is from speaking and writing (Zhou,

2010).

From all definitions above, the writer can summarized that each of micro

skill has the meanings and characteristics respectively in learning a language.

In addition, it is very important to study about the micro skills of language which

are grammar, pronunciation, spelling, and vocabulary to increase students

skills in English. From all of the language aspects, grammar will be the focus of

this research

2.2 Grammar

There are many statements of noun. Firstly, according to Coghill and

Magendanz (2003, p. 15) defined The grammar of a language is the set of rules

that govern its structure. Grammar determines how word are arranged to form
meaningful units. Meanwhile, according to Swan (2005, p. 18), grammar is

The rules that show how words are combined, arranged or changed to show

certain kinds of meaning. It means grammar shows where words are in

sentence. In other word, Hornby (2000, p. 586) stated Grammar is the rules in

language for changing the form of word and joining them into sentences.

Grammar also used for the contents of the book, when compare grammars for

their coverage and accuracy, it is referring to the contents of the book.

Based on the definitions above, the writer concluded that grammar is

part of language both speaking and written form that is influence how sentence

works. Grammar is also which gives the clear meaning when speaking and

writing.