CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This chapter includes background of the study explaining about why this
study is conducted, research problem, research question, hipothesis, objective of
the study, significant of the study and definition of key words used.

1.1. Background of the Study

Mastering vocabulary and grammar in any foreign language is
fundamental in conducting conversation. It can be imagined how normal people
can speak if they have no vocabulary, how a teacher can teach his/ her student if
she or he does not have supported vocabulary. Even there is non-verbal language
like sign language and gesture, but it is not accurate for people and teacher to use
in teaching and interacting with the students.
Skills to master vocabulary and grammar of foreign language are an
essential part of the second language learning and teaching. Especially in
Indonesia, people are realizing the necessity of English competence at the very
beginning of school level untill the university since the country is starting to take
more roles in international community added with the ASEAN free market.
Indonesian students have been struggling to acquire foreign language competence
especially vocabulary and grammar of English that becomes fundamental in
speaking due to several reasons such as limited exposure to the language, lack of
the opportunities to practice, the native language interferences, lack of confidence,
including English pronunciation of the Indonesian teachers.
One of the main rationales offered in the literature for using
communicative task or collaborative dialogue in language teaching is that second
language mastery enhanced through the negotiation of meaning (Swain, 2005:
104). Language learning is assisted through the social interaction of learners and
their interlocutors, particularly when they negotiate toward mutual comprehension
of each other's message meaning. This is very often neglected by the teachers of
foreign language to support their students in social interaction. Teachers who
teach English seems to focus on grammatical by formal and traditional teaching
and it makes students passive added by the language use of the teachers in
teaching English is mostly Sasak and Indonesian language. Due to that the writer
is conducting this research in where the lexical and gramatical are regarded not
only can be thought and obtained by students by applying formal and tradidional
method of teaching but also by interaction (collaborative dialogue) among the
students.
The importance of collaborative dialogue has long been emphasized and
recognized as it is one method that can establish a comfortable and low-threat
learning environment in the foreign language classroom. It is widely believed that
the less anxious and more relaxed the learner is, the better his language
acquisition proceeds. Moreover, many scholars have supported the effectiveness
of the method in terms of learning achievement and learner satisfaction. Allowing
students to do dialogue and interaction is to maximize their own and other. Thus

1
when engaged in collaborative dialogue, the learners guide and support each other
through discussion and interaction.
Collaborative dialogue is based on the idea that learning is a naturally
social act in which the participants talk among themselves. It is through the talk
and dialogue that learning occurs without any special or formal teaching activity.
Oxford, (1997: 443) stated that collaborative learning is a re acculturative process
which supports learners to become members of the knowledge communities
whose common property is different from the common property of knowledge
communities they already belong to, students put into groups are only students
grouped and are not collaborators, unless a task that demands consensual learning
unifies the group activity thus teachers should foster positive attitudes in group
members that will result in interactive and productive group learning and at last
language acquisition become succeed.
Studies of Donate (1994:33-34), LaPierre (1994: 46, Swain, 1997: 64-68),
Swain and Lapkin (1998:320-337) suggested that the talk which surfaces when
students collaborate in solving linguistic problems encountered communicative
task performance represents second language learning in progress. In these
studies, later language use has been traced back to dialogue occurring as the
students work collaboratively to express their intended meaning and carry out the
task at hand. In these dialogic exchanges related to their ongoing language use,
noticing, hypothesis formulation, and hypothesis testing have been observed to
have taken place. These studies have relied on pedagogical tasks to serve as the
stimulus to collaborative dialogue (Swain, 1997:66).
Nevertheless, despite the fact that many studies have indicated benefits
and success in using this method of teaching foreign language, studies focusing on
the use of the method in an English classroom seem to be marginalized. And
despite this theoretical and practical propositions by the expert, debate still exist
regarding the effectiveness of using collaborative dialogue in foreign language
context. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effects of using collaborative
dialogue in lexical and grammatical mastery both cognitive and affective aspects
at under graduate student at University Brunei Darussalam at English education
department.
The writer is interested in discovering whether, through output (the
activities of talking and intercation), learners notice gaps in their foreign language
knowledge, mainly in lexical and gramatical mastery, triggering an analysis of
input or of existing internal resources to fill those gaps and whether learners'
output serves as a hypothesis of how to convey their intended meaning, and
whether learners use language to reflect on their own or their interlocutors'
language use. But beside this theoretical explaination, there are still many things
which can be done to improve language competance of the students.

1.2. Identification of Research Problems

The key point of mastery foreign language based on the writer idea is lexical and
grammar, the more vocabulary the students have and grammar mastery, the more
able they are in speaking, writing, and understanding the language. Importance of
the lexical and grammatical mastery of English has reached new heights in the
present context of the globalized world. But the question is: how far are the

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students at University Brunei Darussalam at English education department?.
Research Questions
From the research problem above, it appears question: Is there any effect of using
collaborative dialogue building method and individual dialogue building work in
teaching English on lexical and grammatical mastery of students at University
Brunei Darussalam at English department.
1.4. Research Hypothesis
Hypothesis attempts to explain, predict, and explore the phenomenon of
interest. A hypothesis must make a prediction (usually about the relationship
between two or more variables). Generally there are two hypothesis: null
hypothesis and the alternate hyphothesis. The null hypothesis predicts that there
will be no relationship between the variables being studied. By contrast, the
alternate hypothesis always predicts that there will be a difference between the
groups being studied (or a relationship between the variables being studied),
Marczyk, et al (2005: 37-38. Based on the aforementioned research question,
there will be two formulated hypothesis in this study to be tested out:
1. The null hypothesis (Ho) : There is no significant difference between using
collaborative dialogue dialogue method and individual work on lexical and
grammatical mastery of University Brunei Darussalam English department
students.
2. The alternate hypothesis (Ha): There is significant difference between using
collaborative dialogue building method and individual work on lexical and
grammatical mastery of University Brunei Darussalam at English
department students
1.5. Objectives of the Study
This study will investigate the effect of collaborative dialogue on lexical
and grammatical mastery of students. Pursuant to this goal, the objective of the
study is:
1. To find out any possibilities of the effect of collaborative dialogue
building on the students’ lexical and grammatical mastery of University
Brunei Darussalam at English department students.
1.6. Significance of the Study
This study hopefully will give contribution both theoritically and practically:
1.6.1. Theoritically
The result of this study is expected to be usefull theoriticaly in
understanding lexical and grammatical of foreign language, increasing
the literature for further study related with the issues, and giving the
effect of applying colaborative dialogue building in learning foreign
language.
1.6.2. Practically
1. The writer can improve understanding of teaching methods in
teaching EFL, in this case collaborative dialogue strategy
2. After looking at the result of this study namely the effects of
collaborative dialogue building method, teachers at high school level
of education institution can regard this study as reference to improve
and help students’ lexical and grammatical of English by designing
interesting material or topic to be demonstrated and disscussed by
the students

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 3. For the other readers, researchers, and principals this study can be
basic reference for further research related to second language
mastery in lexical and grammatical item and give information about
model and method that is suitable to be applied at any school level.

1.7. Research Scope

This study will involve 42 second-year students from University Brunei
Darussalam students. It is clear that with the title of this study the writer limits the
discussion by focusing on lexical mastery in term of lexical category of verb, and
grammatical mastery in term of syntac (sentence structure) that deals with tenses,
involving present proggressive tense, past tense, present perfect tense, simple
future tense, etc. It does not include reading, pronounciation, and writing mastery
even though those are entailed implicitly when the collaborative dialogue is
running.

1.8. Definition of Key Terms

To avoid misunderstanding, the technical terms used in this study are
defined as follows:
1. Collaborative dialogue.
Collaborative dialogue is dialogue in which speakers are engaged in
problem-solving and knowledge-building – in this case, solving
linguistic problems and building knowledge about language (Swain,
2014:97) .In this study the definition of collaborative dialogue is
spesified into dialogue among students.
2. Lexical
The word lexical used in number of different ways. Since a lexicon is a
a dictionary (list of all the words in a language and their idiosyncratic
linguistic property), the lexical item mean “word”, the term “lexical
property” means property associated with some individual word and
term “lexical learning” means learning words and their idiosycratic
properties. However, the word “lexical” is also used in second sense,
in which it is contrasted with fuctional (and hence means
nonfunctional). In this second sense, lexical category is a category
whose member are contetives, hence categories such as noun, verb,
adjective or preposition are lexical category in this sense. So for
example, the term lexical verb means “nonauxiliary verb” such as
verbs like, go, find, hate, want, etc. Radford (2003, 514).
3. Grammatical
The term grammar refers to the dicipline that focus on morphology
(word structure) and syntac (sentence structure), Evan and Green
(2006:484). An expression is called grammatical if it contains no
morphological or syntactic error. Grammatical features are for example
person, number, gender, case, etc, features which play a role in
grammatical operation (e.g. in the checking of agreement relation),
Radford (2003:510).
4. Lexical and Grammatical Mastery
Lexical and Grammatical mastery are language competence that can be
obtained on the process of interaction, dialogue, interview, etc.

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Indirectly both two parties will affects the lexical and grammatical
each other so that language competence happen unconsciously.
Krashen (2009:103) stated that Conscious knowledge of rules is
therefore not responsible for our fluency, it does not initiate utterances.

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 CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This chapter is related with some related literatures taken from various
resources such as the theory of colaborative dialogue, the nature of lexical and
grammatical. Mastery of second and foreign language through aquisition viewed
from Second Language aquisition by Troike, Ellis, and Krashen, and the
instruction of English as foreign language (EFL).

2.1. Collaborative Dialogue

Generally speaking collaborative dialogue has widely been used as method
of teaching foreign language in many countries. Involving students in dialogue not
only make them be able to increase their confident but also implicitly they can
increase their language competence, like fluency in speaking, mastering much
more vocabularies, structure, etc. Collaborative dialogue leads to various kinds of
teaching method in where students work together, can be in pair or group of
students to assist each other in learning language and other discipline.
Collaborative dialogue is the joint construction of language –or knowledge
about language– by two or more individuals, it is what allows performance to
outstrip competence, and it’s where language use and language learning can co-
occur. The importance of collaborative dialogue has long been emphasized and
recognized as it is one method that can establish a comfortable and low-threat
learning environment in the second language classroom. It is widely believed that
the less anxious and more relaxed the learner is, the better his language
acquisition proceeds. Moreover, many scholars have supported the effectiveness
of the method in terms of learning achievement and learners‟ satisfaction.
Collaborative dialogue could be regarded as collaborative learning and this
concept derived from Vygotsky’s social constructivism (1978: 12), in Back and
Kosnik (2006:1-5). According to Smith and Macgregor (1992: 1), it is an umbrella
term for a variety of approaches in education involving joint intellectual effort by
students or students and teachers. It involves a sense of the social nature of
learning and the emphasis on a social approach to the development of learning
skills, work skills and life skills, it is an educational approach to teaching and
learning that involves groups of learners working together to solve a problem,
complete a task, or create a product. Allowing students to work together to
maximize their own and others‟ learning is its goal.
Collaborative dialogue has advantageous to develop the relation among
students from different ethnic background, and degree of intelligence. The main
premise of socio-cultural theory is that learning is socially situated and a semiotic
mediated process, happening first on the interpersonal (social) level and then on
the intrapersonal (individual) level (Vygotsky, 1978: 175) To broaden her original
comprehensible output hypothesis, (Swain, 2000: 97) used ‘‘collaborative
dialogue”, viewing output within the socio cultural perspective of learning.
Through collaborative dialogue, learners mutually scaffold each other to find how
best to express their intended meaning by giving and receiving assistance as they
interact with each other. In working towards the common task goal, learners
become contributing members by pooling their knowledge and resources for joint
decision making and problem solving. This joint effort of mutual knowledge

6
construction will access each other’s ZPD, thereby leading to assisted
performance (Ohta, 2000:51-78). Thus, collaborative dialogue is both a cognitive
tool and a social tool that mediate language learning (Swain, 2000: 98).
To a considerable extent, contemporary thinking and research about
interaction has emphasized its role as a “provider of input” to learners. This focus
has its origins in Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis –the hypothesis that
the cause of second language acquisition is input that is understood by the learner.
Input, it has been argued, can be made comprehensible in a number of ways.
Long, in the early 80th century (e.g. 1983:26, 259), proposed that one way input is
made comprehensible through “interactional modification”, that is through
modifications to learners’ input as a consequence of their having signaled a lack
of comprehension. As Pica (1994: 44) stated that this “modification and
restructuring of interaction that occurs when learners and their interlocutors
anticipate, perceive, or experience difficulties in message comprehensibility”, has
been referred to as negotiation. Through negotiation, comprehensibility is
achieved as interlocutors repeat and rephrase for their conversational partners.
Collaborative dialogue has been generally operationalized by language-
related episodes (LREs) (Lapkin et al., 2002:485). An LRE is defined as any part
of a dialogue where students talk about the language they are producing, question
their language use, or other- or self-correct their language production, (Swain,
2001: 287). Research has shown that LREs represent language learning in
progress and therefore are the site of language learning (e.g. Swain, 1998:235,
Swain and Lapkin, 1998:320, 2002:285). Collaborative dialogue can be prompted
by collaborative tasks, which require learners to work in pairs, produce a final
product, and communicate both language form and content. These tasks
encourage learners to reflect on language form while still being oriented to
meaning making, (Swain, 2000: 112). They should engage learners in meaningful
activities in pursuit of a goal and facilitate effective collaboration. Through these
collaborative tasks, learners will develop a shared responsibility over final
production of the text and a sense of co-ownership, thereby encouraging their
active contribution to the co-constructed resolutions.

2.2. Lexical and Grammatical

1.2.1. The lexicon
Part of knowing one’s language is possesing a vocabulary or list of
word. This list of word is called a lexicon and consists of a set of lexical
entries, one for each word. According to Cowper (1992:57) lexical entries
must contain phonological information, form (regular/irregular),
morphological information, semantic information, syntactic category the
word belong to and the last is syntactic information. The lexical item mean
“word”, the term “lexical property” means property associated with some
individual word and term “lexical learning” means learning words and their
idiosycratic properties. However, the word “lexical” is also used in second
sense, in which it is contrasted with fuctional (and hence means
nonfunctional). In this second sense, lexical category is a category whose
member are contetives, hence categories such as noun, verb, adjective or
preposition are lexical category in this sense. So for example, the term lexical

7
verb means “nonauxiliary verb” such as verbs like, go, find, hate, want, etc.
Radford (2003, 514).
If vocabulary is the bricks and grammar the mortar, we can build a
wall or a garage, a house or a castle. Just as a house without bricks would
collapse, so too would it collapse without mortar. The mortar provides
the disconnected bricks with meaning and purpose, a different purpose in
each case, but the same mortar. As stated by Pachler and Redondo,
(2007:77), vvocabulary without grammar has shape and meaning, but
with grammar it has a unique purpose and definition. Take for example,
the vocabulary items car, hit, the, bus. In this raw form, meaning is
certainly conveyed. As soon as grammar is applied, the meaning can be
changed for our own purposes. Thus, “the car was hit by the bus”, has
significantly changed the meaning without adding any new vocabulary, it
is the grammar which has achieved this.
Perhaps the first step to understand vocabulary learning is to
specify what it means to know a word. The average person would
probably assume that if learners know a word’s meaning and
spelling/pronunciation, they know that word. In fact, learners may be
able to use a word to a large extent with just such knowledge. However,
According to Cummins & Davison (2007:829) in order to have full
mastery of a word and to be able to employ it in any situation that the
learner desires, then much more knowledge is necessary, such as
language acquisition in this case vocabulary acquisitionhal
830.vocabulary acquisition is not only incremental but also incremental
in a variety of ways. First, lexical knowledge is made up of different
kinds of word knowledge, and not all can be learned simultaneously.
Second, each word knowledge type may develop along a cline, which
means that not only is word learning incremental in general; learning of
the individual word knowledge aspects is as well and when developing
any vocabulary program, ddifferent learners will obviously need
emphasis on different types of words, whether high-frequency or
specialized vocabulary, (Cummins & Davison, 2007:830). That is why
in this study the selected or target words are taken from word power that
recommand for high school students, but nearly all students can benefit
from a judicious blend of intentional and incidental learning. Even
advanced learners with large vocabularies can continue to fill out their
lexical knowledge, as many (or most) of the words in their mental
lexicons will only be partially mastered. After all, even native speakers
continue to learn new words throughout their lifetimes.
1.2.2. Grammar
A grammar of particular language will take familiar for of set of
rules which tell how to speak and understand the langugae. Grammar will
comprise a set of rules or principle which spesify how to form,
pronounce, and interpret phrase and sentences in the language concern.
Based on that, Radford (Radford, 1988: 2 ) the word grammar has a
much broader sense than that familiar from school textbooks since it is
cover not only morpholohy (the internal structure of word) and
syntac(how words are combined together to form phrase and sentences)

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 but also Phonology and some aspects of semantic as well. When we have
compiled detailed grammar of numbers of diferent languages, the second
step in our quest for a theory of language structure is to abstrack from
particular grammars common, universal properties that they all share:
this is the study of universal grammar (UG).
Nowdays learning English grammar as foreign language is seem
very difficult for students, even native speakers and students of the
language seems are getting hard to mastery it. There are somes approach
in learning grammar for non native speaker, one of them is Grammar-
based approaches (Norland & Pruett said, 2006:20) to language learning
that have been used since ancient times. The most well known of
historical grammar-based approaches is the grammar-translation method
in which students are presented a text and are asked to translate the text
word for word. While translating, students’ attention is brought to the
appropriate grammar points to be taught. Although the grammar-
translation method has fallen out of favor mainly because of its inability
to foster communicative ability, other types of gram mar-based
approaches are still in common use.
What most contemporary uses of grammar based teaching have in
common is the use of grammatical structures to guide the syllabus or
lesson. Unlike earlier grammar-based approaches, more contemporary
approaches, while presenting and using grammar points as a guiding
force, enlarge on the grammar point to make the syllabus or lesson more
communicative and authentic.
Another approach in teaching grammar and have been found by
educators is that cooperative learning groups, it fosters language
acquisition in ways that whole-class instruction cannot. So
what is it about these groups that make them such a rich opportunity
for English Language Learners? First, ELLs working in small groups
have many more opportunities to speak than they have during whole-
class instruction. Small groups “create opportunities for sustained
dialogue and substantive language use” as students use language to
accomplish the task at hand (Zehler, 1994: 7). In fact, cooperative
learning groups “demand speech” because each member must carry out
her role if the group as a whole is to succeed (Alanis, 2004: 222). Group
members must also “negotiate meaning” as they speak, meaning that they
must adjust their language so that it is comprehensible to other members,
Hill, & Flynn, (2006:71).

2.3. Second Language Acquisition and the younger Learner

Research on second language acquisition (SLA) by children and adults is
characterized by many different subfields and perspectives, both cognitive and
social orientation. Although young feature as participants in this study, it is
relatively rare to find reviews or overviews of SLA that deal specifically with
young SLA. In early childhood, for example, children are learning to think
symbolically and are using language to represent objects, but they still do not
think logically or understand the viewpoints of others. It is what Piaget originally
characterized this period as involving preoperational thought. Looking more

9
closely at middle childhood, it becomes clear how distinct it is from early
childhood. Children and young learners become more logical in their thinking and
are able to categorize and organize objects, but are not yet abstract in thinking.
As far as SLA is concerned, it is relevant to note that in middle childhood,
children already possess a highly developed first language, and their language is
increasing in vocabulary size and grammatical complexity. They are acquiring
greater meta linguistic awareness, which is reflected in their language play,
including a delight in riddles and puns, and later, pedantic play contrasting literal
versus illocutionary meanings. Their oral and written literacy is still developing,
but they are exposed to a greater range of text types as they move through
schooling. In addition, the experiences of context learning and socializing in
middle childhood are different to those of their younger peers. For example, they
typically spend longer in institutionalized settings, particularly in multiparty
settings where there is a high ratio of peers to adults such as at school.
Similarly, like what stated by Berman (2007, 1988: 45, 72) that early
adolescence is distinct in character from middle childhood: cognitively,
linguistically, and socially, many L2 learners at this age have a greater capacity
for abstract thought, including language analysis, and can draw logical inferences
which continue to develop in later adolescence, together with greater
metalinguistic awareness across all domains such as phonology, morph syntax, the
lexicon, and pragmatics. In adolescence there is an increasing reliance on peers;
adolescents spend more time with peers than with any other social partners and
greater social networks and independence affect their contexts of interaction and
L2 development. This is matched by consolidation of socio-cognitive abilities.
In children age development, the ability to accept input from various
source are different. Children and adult for example have different capacity.The
better age for having language acquisition is before the people pass the critical
period or as early age as posible, especialy in sub field of pronounciation. When
the children try to imitate any kind of word in the age of five or nine, it will
influence their pronounciation when they get adult or young. So based on the
writer idea that age influence to the foreign and second language acquisition.
Maturational approaches to language acquisition Birdsong (2005: 109) for
an overview assumes that the observed age effects in second language acquisition
are temporally aligned with maturation and therefore most likely due to biological
changes affecting the human language acquisition capacity. The idea that there is
such a critical period for language acquisition goes back to Penfield and Roberts
(1959). Advocates of this view, Long (1990) assumed that there is a biological
‘window of opportunity’ for attaining native-like levels of competence in a
(second) language that closes during or after (brain) maturation, leading to a sharp
decline in success around the end of the critical period and making native-like
attainment thereafter impossible. The exact temporal boundaries of the critical
period are very much under discussion, the neurobiological processes causing the
decrement in language learning potential, for example the loss of cerebral
plasticity affecting language processing circuits (Penfields & Roberts 1959: 78),
the lateralization of language functions (Lenneberg 1967:135), or a process called
myelination (Pulvermüller & Schumann 1994: 681).
A common version of the hypothesis pairs the assumption that age effects
in foreign language learning are determined by neurobiological maturation with a

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modular view on grammar and grammar acquisition. According to the generative
view, the human language faculty is not comparable to any other kind of cognitive
achievement. Grammar is seen as a system of abstract rules, underdetermined in
the input and therefore not learnable from it, the consequence being that
successful language acquisition is impossible without innate knowledge about
basic structural principles of human language (UG). The relevant variant of the
Critical Period Hypothesis rests on the idea that it is innate language specific
knowledge that makes early language acquisition uniformly successful and that
maturation somehow goes hand in hand with a loss of (full) access to this helpful
knowledge. Adult learners therefore have to approach the task by relying on
domain general problem solving strategies that are less well suited to language
acquisition (compare the “Fundamental Difference Hypothesis”, Bley-Vroman
1989: 41). The predictions of this assumption relate not only to the end of second
language acquisition but also to the shape of intermediate learner grammars.
Claims supporting maturational accounts are mostly based on group
comparisons. It has been possible, however, to identify individual adult learners
whose ultimate attainment in one or many domains falls into the native speaker
range (e.g., Bongaerts, 1999:133, Marinova-Todd 2003: 89). Although some
researchers maintain that native like proficiency is never attested across the board
(Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson, 2003: 539), every target language property
investigated to date has been found to be learnable by at least some adult learners,
which has led Birdsong to propose the Universal Learnability Hypothesis, stating
that “there is no task which all sampled subjects fail to perform at native levels”
(Birdsong, 2005: 182).
In addition or as an alternative to maturational constraints, the following
learner properties have been claimed to be responsible for the observed
differences in ultimate attainment: age-related types of motivation, general
cognitive development, and the amount of prior language knowledge and use (L1
entrenchment). The idea of L1 entrenchment continuously increasing with age has
played a particularly important role in work concerning the acquisition of
phonology (Flege, 1995: 23, 327,52) and does so also in usage based approaches
to the acquisition of morpho-syntactic properties of language (Tomasello, 2003;
Ellis, 2008) which will be addressed in the following literature.
One of the theories that also draw on the idea which is more obviously
social is that Gile’s accommodation theory. It explains how a learner’s social
group influences the course of L2 acquisition. For Giles the key idea is that of
social accommodation. He suggest that when people interact with each other they
either try to make their speech similar to that of their addressee in other to
emphasize social cohesiveness (a process of convergence) or to make it different
in order to emphasize their social distinctiveness (a process of divergence). It has
been suggested that L2 acquisition involves long term convergence. That is when
the social condition are such that learners are motivated to converge on native-
speaker norms, for example speak like native speaker high level of proficiency
ensue, but when the condition encourage learners to maintain their own social in
group less learning takes place. According to Giles’s then the social factors
influences interlanguage development via the impact they have on the attitude that
determine the kinds of language use learners engage in. accommodation theory
suggests that social factors, mediated through the interactions that learners take

11
part in, influence both how quickly they learn and the actual route that they
follow. This letter claim is controversial, however, as it suggests that sequences of
acquisition are not as fixed as many researchers have.
2.4. Lexical and Grammatical Mastery
Many linguists and language teachers believe that pedagogic grammar is
an important aspect of language acquisition especially in Second Language
Acquisition (SLA); however, others believe that a foreign grammar cannot be
taught explicitly.
SLA also owes a considerable debt to another branch of linguistics that
associated closely with Noam Chomsky’s theory. During the 1980's, Noam
Chomsky introduced a theory of Universal Grammar (UG) that has been
discuused before, which stateddd that the knowledge of grammar was dependent
on two components: principles that provide parameters which are given particular
settings in different language for example a general principle of language is that it
permits co-reference by means of some form of reflexive, thus, in the English
sentence(the subject actress is co-referencetial with the reflexive, herself, in the
sense that both word refer to the same person, properties shared by all languages,
and the parameters, the way in which these properties vary.
Controversies abound with the UG model, but it does explain how all natural
languages are similar in some respects and how humans are able to learn their first
language as well as other languages. UG simplifies the ideas about learning a
second language by claiming that "learning the grammar of a second language is
not so much learning completely new structures, rules, etc as discovering how to
set the parameters for the new language. Although UG has left untouched a
number of areas which are central to our understanding of the second language
learning process," it has also explained and established "some of the facts about
second language acquisition. This model has greatly contributed to our
understanding of the stages that language learners experience for the first and
second language development.
Grammar is traditionaly sub devided into two different but inter-related
areas of study: morphology and snytax. Morphology is the study of how words are
formed out of smaller unit and syntax is concerd with the ways in which words
can be combined together to form phrase and senteces, (Radford, 2003:1) but a
major aspect of SLA theory is the Natural Order Hypothesis that stated “the
acquisition of grammatical structures proceeds in a predictable order.
Observations of children learning English as a first or second language indicated
that certain grammatical morphemes were acquired before others. Furthermore,
distinctions or differences among native language did not seem to interfere with
this order of grammatical acquisition (e.g. native speakers of Chinese and German
learned English morphemes in relatively the same order).
This list proposed by Dulay and Burt (1974: 37) as a natural order of
difficulty, other researchers such as Krashen and Larsen-Freeman refer to this list
as an order of acquisition of morphemes, i.e. The order in which they are actually
learned. Yet researchers agree that it is not necessarily true those things that are
easy to use are learnt first and vice versa and that an order of acquisition cannot be
based solely on an order of difficulty.

12
 Larsen (2009: 522), in Long and Doughty (Eds) stated that order of
grammatical morpheme acquisition for learners of English in a structured
classroom setting is as follows:
1. Copula
2. Auxiliary
3. Second person singular
4. –ing
5. Regular past
6. Irregular past
7. Article
8. Long plural
9. Short plural
10. Possessive
Meanwhile based on the order of acquisition of English morphemes
according to Lightbown and Spada (1999: 22) are:
1. present progressive -ing (Mommy running)
2. plural -s (two books)
3. irregular past forms (Baby went)
4. possessive ‘s (daddy’s hat)
5. copula (Annie is a nice girl)
6. articles ‘the’ and ‘a’
7. regular past -ed (She walked)
8. second person singular simple present -s (She runs)
9. auxiliary ‘be’ (He is coming)
Though in this study, the writer used this in lexical acquisition data.
Another hypothesis of SLA is Krashen’s Acquisition-Learning Distinction.
According to Krashen, acquisition is more related to the development of first
language abilities while learning describes the development of second language
abilities. Acquisition is a subconscious process of implicit or natural learning.
This term is applied to the way in which humans learn their native language
without the use of formal rules or instruction. On the other hand, learning
describes the conscious study and knowledge of grammatical rules that are most
often associated with foreign language education. As seen by the discrepancies
between Larsen-Freeman's two orders of acquisition, there is indeed a difference
between these two manners of obtaining the grammar of a language. Although by
analysis of these data, the difference does not seem extreme.
We have seen that direct instruction can help in a number of ways. It can
lead to enhanced accuracy, it can help learners progress through deelmental stages
more rapidly and it can destabilize interlanguage grammars that have fosilized.
How ever direct instruction is not always succesfull nor are its effects always
durable. Constraining factors are the nature of the target structure and the learner’s
stage of development. Less is currently known about what type of direct
instruction works best. Input –based instruction may prove as effective as
production-based instruction and perhaps, even more so. Input-flooding may help
students learn features in the input but does not destabilize interlanguage
grammars, for this, explicit instruction and negative feedback may be needed. It is
also very likely that the effectiveness of different types of instruction will depend
on the abilities and predisposition of individual learners. An alternative to direct

13
instruction is strategy training. However, uncertainty exists regarding the content,
methodology, and otcomes of such training.
Although English has been the most studied language with respect to
acquisition of grammatical morphemes, research on grammar acquisition has also
been done on other languages such as Russian and Spanish that confirm the
validity of the Natural Order Hypothesis. The orders presented by Larsen-
Freeman can only be applied to those students learning English, but a basic
understanding of a natural order can be applied to other languages as well. This
order may not be the same, however, because of the differences in grammatical
features of the diverse human languages. Further research needs to be done so that
these natural orders can be discovered and utilized in the teaching of foreign
languages. Originally, my research was to include these other natural orders, but I
was unable to find any research pertaining to the languages I was studying. So I
decided to focus instead on the way grammar and vocabulary is taught in general
in classrooms and how it is presented in textbooks.

2.5. English Foreign Language Instruction and Second Language acquisition

We have thereby established the argument that maturational constraints
and native language influence are the major determinants of the general lack of
success in adult L2 learning, but that the degree of such lack of success may vary
from individual to individual due to the functioning of other variables. In this
discussion, the writer will delve into one such variable, foreign language
instruction and SLA, and explore its relationship to fossilization. The reader may,
understandably, query whether or not such an attempt makes any sense, since, in
the conviction of many; one capability of instruction is precisely that it can
prevent fossilization. Ellis (1988:203), for example, has advanced two claims in
favor of formal instruction: Learners will fail to acquire the more difficult rules
(e.g., inversion and verb-end) once they have achieved communicative adequacy.
Learners may need form-focused instruction to make them aware of grammatical
features that have little communicative importance and yet constitute target
language norms. In other words, formal instruction serves to prevent fossilization.
Unlike many other issues like Universal Grammar that have been subject
to a long-term debate in the SLA research, the role of instruction in adult SLA as
a whole has gone largely undisputed. Regardless of their theoretical orientations,
researchers seem to concur, overtly or tacitly, that instruction does matter in adult
SLA. This may in part be due to the reality that the second and foreign language
teaching industry has survived all kinds of economic pressures (Bley-Vroman,
1989: 44, 68). But, of course, there is yet a more plausible explanation; that is,
that the foreign and second language acquisition research comparing classroom
learners with the so-called ‘street learners’ has provided compelling evidence that
instruction does aid acquisition (Krashen & Seliger, 1975: 83, Long, 1983: 126).
Indeed, few have questioned, or rather would ever question, that
instruction is a defining characteristic of adult SLA (Bley-Vroman, 1989: 68).
Such a general endorsement of instruction, however, is not bereft of the awareness
that instruction is not always successful. To what extent, then, does instruction
facilitate acquisition? Long (1983: 359), after reviewing 13 early studies of
instructional effects in terms of (1) the relative utility of instruction as well as (2)
the absolute effect of instruction, concludes that ‘there is considerable (albeit not

14
overwhelming) evidence that instruction is beneficial for children as well as
adults, for beginning, intermediate, and advanced students, on integrative as well
as discrete-point tests, and in acquisition-rich as well as acquisition- poor
environments’. Moreover, the benefits of instruction appear to be the strongest at
beginning levels and in acquisition-poor environments.
However, Long’s review provides little insight into how instruction has
aided mastery, for it gives no description of the types of instruction (e.g., explicit
or implicit) for each of the studies reviewed (for more critique, see Pienemann,
1985: 23, Van Patten, 1988: 60). This gap is notably filled by a later study.
Eighteen years later, in a much larger-scale synthesis and meta analysis – this time
of 49 experimental and quasi-experimental studies of the effectiveness of L2 types
of instruction. Norris and Ortega, (2000:50) not only confirmed Long’s (1983:
126) finding, for example instruction does make a positive difference for
classroom L2 acquisition– but also made significant headway in terms of
identifying differential effectiveness vis-à-vis different types of instruction.
Ortega ideas are:
a) Focused L2 instruction results in large target-oriented gains;
b) Explicit types of instruction are more effective than implicit types;
c) Focus on Form and Focus on Forms4 interventions result in equivalent and
large effects;5 and
d) The effectiveness of L2 instruction is durable.
After a general research area has been identified and the existing literature
reviewed, the writer restatedd the null and alternate hypothesis that there is no
significance improvment on the students’ lexical and grammatical (null
hypothesis) and there is significance improvment on the student lexical and
grammatical (alternate hypotheis) by applying collaborative dialogue building
method. Even based on previous studies founding that focusing on English
Foreign Language mastery, it was proved that there is improvment on the students
foreign language competance, it means that collaborative dialogue is efective way
to teach foreign language. But in this study the writer still assumes that
collaborative dialogue is not efective way to apply at SMKN 1 Kotaraja, hence
there is no improvment on the students foreign language competence. So due to
that the writer will explore deeper about this and try to apply it and test the
hypothesis out.

15
 CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHOD

This chapter discussed about the research design used by the resercher
whether it qualitative or descriptive research, number of population and sampling
used to take the population, instrumet to collect the data, methode to analyze and
presenting the data.

3.1. Research Design

The quantitative design was used in this study and there were pre and post
test. Quantitative research is explaining phenomena by collecting numerical data
that are analyzed mathematically based methods (in
particular statistics (Muijs, 2004:1).The table bellow shows an experimental
design in educational research.

Group Pre test Treatment Post test

Experiment 01 X1 02
Control 03 X2 04

01 and 03 are the result from pre test before treatment. X1 and X2 are the
treatments. 02 and 04 are result of post test after the treatment (Cohen, at al
2005: 213-214).
3.2. Research Variable
Research variable is the principle things that is observed and it usually has
been described in the operational definition and framework, (Hanafi, N &
Gunartha, 2012:11). In general there are two types of variable such as independent
variable and dependent variable. Independent variable can stand alone and has
fuction to influence the dependent variable. Based on the explanation, there are
three variables in this study: collaborative dialogue building acts as independent
variable because it was assumed could influence the dependent variable (lexical
and grramatical ) mastery.

3.3. Population
A number of 42 students, male and female aged between 20-22 studying at
University Brunei Darussalam, English department on the fifth semester will be
selected to take part in this study. The participants will be evenly and randomly
put into two groups: an experimental and a control group. In experimental group
there will be 21 students, and there were five sub groups and each contains four or
five students in each sub group. In a control group there will be 21 students work
individually. After the two groups receving the treatment and procced the post
test, it can be seen the different score in mastery the lexical and grammatical, in
where the colabborative group has the higher score than the control.

3.4. Sampling

16
 The sampling technique used in this study is random sampling where all
students in the second-year students have chance to be taken as research sample.
The writer only take two classes as sample. Each class consists of 21 students.

3.5. Data Collection

The writer used Pre and post test method to get valid and reliable data. Pre
test was given to students before the treatment and post test was given after the
treatment. It can be known by this test if there is any improvement or not of the
students lexical and gramatical mastery by counting the result of pre and post test.
For that goal the the vocabulary test was taken from vocabulary test and exercise
book by L, A Hill (1985) and grammar test was taken from Oxford Placement
Test (OPT) added with questions taken from “inti sari bahasa inggris untuk SMA”
(2006). The tests comprised the target words and tenses that have been learnt.
Vocabulary test were 25 and the grammar test were 25, so the total question are 50
and in the form of multiple choice.

3.6. Procedure for Collaborative and Individual Group Treatment

The treatment will consist of 10, one and half -hour sessions (totally 13
hours), two times a week held in a time span of one month with the amount of
target word 80 words. In the first session, the participants will take the pre-tests to
measure the mastery of lexical and grammatical. One day latter, the treatment will
start for 8 sessions in three weeks. In the 10th session, the post test will be given to
the participants. In the collaborative group participants will be put into small
groups of four or five participants and guided to do the tasks and encourage them
in conducting collaborative dialogue building with the group members. As stated
in the previous chapter that collaborative dialogue can be prompted by tasks. For
the individual, the same tasks will be given with the teacher’s minimum
interference.
The target words will be given to the participants in every meeting and
introduce them how to do it. The next step will be dictionary search, in which the
students were given wordlist of 10 of the target words for each treatment. Then
will instruct them to find the meaning or an L1 equivalent as well as a synonym,
and antonym. In the collaborative group, the dictionary search will be done as a
group work (collaborative work), while in the individual group, each individual
student will work individually. Then the students will be asked to make sentences
by using the completed word grammatically based on the English tenses. The
sentences could be interrogative with the answer or positive as well as negative.
As the last activity, the students will be asked to look back and review over the
words and sentences that they have encountered.

3.7. Data Analysis procedure

All of the participants will be asked to take the pre and post test before
and after the treatment. Then, the scores from pre-test will be used to
indicate if the participants in the study have higher scores in their post-test at a
significant level. The scores from the pre and post test will be counted by using
scoring rubric, Martika (2015: 31) such as shown:
Description Score
Answer is correct 1

17
 No answer or wrong answer 0

Total score = ∑correct answer x 2

Quantitative data obtained from tests result both in collaborative group and
individual. In analyzing the data, the writer will use t-test. After colecting all
scores from pre and post test, then the writer will count the deviation score by
applying the formula:
X = x 2−x 1
Y = y 2− y 1
in which:
X = Deviation score of experimantal group
Y = Deviation score of control group
x 2 = Post test
x 1 = Pre test
y 2 = Post test
y 1 = Pre test
and then the mean score of experimental group was counted by using the
formula:
∑X
MX =
N

MX = the mean deviation score experimental group

∑ = the sum of......
X = The deviation score of pre/post test
N = Number of sample.
To find the square mean deviation score of experimental group
∑X 2
∑ x 2=∑ X 2−
2
( )
N
∑ X = The square deviation score of experimental group
X = Deviation score of pre and post test
N = Number of sample
∑ = The sum of.....
The formula that was applied for the control group as follow:
The mean score of control group will be counted by using formula:
∑Y
MY =
N
M Y = The mean deviation score of control group
Y = The deviation score of pre and post test
N = Number of sample
∑ = The sum of
And to find the square deviation score of control group, the writer applied
formula:
∑Y 2
∑ y 2=∑Y 2 − ( )
N

∑ y 2= The square deviation score of control group

Y2 = Deviation score of pre and post test

18
N = Number of sample
∑ = The sum of.....
After getting the mean score of experimental and control group in pre and
post test, then the writer used t-test formula from Arikunto (2014 :354-
356) as follow:
M X −M Y
t-test = ∑ x 2 +∑ y 2

in where:
√( N X + N Y −2 )( 1
+
1
N X NY )
M = The mean score of experimental group
N = Number of sample
X = The square mean deviation score of experimental group
Y = The square mean deviation score of control group
At last it was counted the degree of freedom by using:
Df = ( N X + N Y - 2)
In where
Df = Degree of freedom
NX = Number sample of experimental group
NY = Number sample of control group
After obtaining the t-test score, then the writer interpreted the significance
and the effect by using:
1. If the t-test ˂ than t-table at the confidence level of .05 (95%) and.01
(99%) it means that Ho :colaborative dialogue building is efective to be
used in improving students’ lexical and grammatical is rejected
2. If the t-test ¿ than t-table at the confidence level .05 (95%) and .01
(99%), it means that Ha : collaborative dialogue building is efective to
be used in increasing the students’ lexical and grammatical is accepted.
According to Cohen (1988: 140), the values of the effect-size are used
for the interpretation in terms of the correlation between the effect of
collaborative dialogue and the dependent variable. Different people offer
different advice regarding how to interpret the resultant effect-size, but the
most accepted opinion is that of Cohen’s where 0.2, 0.5, 0.8 are indicative
of a small, a medium and a large effect respectively.

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