INTERLANGUAGE OF SEMARANG MULTINATIONAL SCHOOL’S

STUDENTS IN SPEAKING ENGLISH

A Final Project

In a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for an Undergraduate Degree of

Sarjana Sastra in English

Revica P. Baktian

14.03.52.0025

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF STIKUBANK SEMARANG

2017

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 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1. Background

Family is the first place for children to acquire a language. They acquire

their first language or their native language by imitating what adults say or by

using it. Such a condition may in the long run help them to produce words,

phrases, or utterances similar to the language that their parents or the members of

the family speak. Linguists name words, phrases, or utterances (language)

mastered and produced by children after a long process of acquisition as a first

language or native language (Ellis, 1978). It is also described that language

acquisition usually refers to the first-language acquisition, which studies infants'

acquisition of their native language (Friederic, 2010). Every child acquires

different native language depending on his family or his origin. For example,

when a child is from America, of course, he will acquire English as his mother

tongue because his parents give English for his language input. On the other hand,

some Indonesian children may acquire English as their native language or first

language because their parents give English for their input. A first language or

mother tongue is a language that a person has been exposed to from birth or

within the critical period (Bloomfield, 1935).

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 In a language acquisition, it is explained that a critical period is a period

for children to potentially and optimally employ their Language Acquisition

Device (LAD) in order to be able to master a language (Chomsky, 1923).

Chomsky further states that a child could not possibly learn a language through

imitation only because the language spoken around them is highly irregular –

adult’s speech is often broken up and even sometimes ungrammatical. LAD is

also known as Universal Grammar (UG) as proposed as part of an innate

biologically endowed language faculty (Chomsky 1965, 1981b; Pinker 1984,

1994), which permits the first language (L1) acquirer to arrive at a grammar on

the basis of linguistic experience (exposure to input). UG includes invariant

principles that are generally true across languages, as well as parameters which

allow for variation from language to language (White, 2003). The language

capacity itself is species specific, ability to acquire language is independent of

intelligence, the pattern of acquisition is relatively uniform across different

children, different languages and different cultures. Language is acquired with

relative ease and rapidity and without the benefit of instruction, children show

creativity which goes beyond the input that they are exposed to. Again, LAD is

termed innateness that is human’s ability to use language is essential and many

believe it to be the sole ability that separated us from all other mammals

(Chomsky, 2006; Crystal, 1997; Hocket, 1960).

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 Home is not the only place for children to master their language but also

school. A school, therefore, has an important role for the children during the

mastery of their language or a different language. It facilitates children with

subjects, including language (English) to learn. Nowadays, the development of

technology evokes some transformations such as culture exchange, language, and

etc. One of which is the existence of international school that creates the children

to improve their English. People know that English is an international language, it

seems good for people to be able to speak more than one language. In

consequence, it is not surprising if there are parents who give English for

language input to their children or let them join English learning/English course to

improve their English even though they are Indonesian children.

The children who can speak English innately doesn’t mean that they

mastered their English, let alone if the children are originally Indonesians and the

language that they use for daily activity is Indonesian. Perhaps, they may speak in

English at school but, they speak Bahasa Indonesia when they are at home

because they are Indonesians. However, when children speak English, it is

possible if the sentences that they produce are non-standard or not in order. People

cannot call such non-standard expressions as a mistakes or errors. These non-

standard expressions occur because they are in the process of mastering the target

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language (English) and as the following time their target language will

approximate to standard.

The logical analogy of its experience is look like a somebody who lives in

the island A and he wants to go the island B, for that he will build a bridge to get

there. At first, the bridge is available for motorcycle to pass, but as he develops

the bridge, one day it might be strong enough for cars, buses, and trucks to pass.

In here the island A is the native language, island B is the target language, and the

bridge to pass for as the process to approximate the target language and its process

is called as interlanguage (IL).

The term “interlanguage” thus refers to a language intermediate between

the native and the target language (Weinreich, 1953: 7). It is a dynamic system

moving in the direction of the target language, non-standard sentences will be

relatively stable over a period of time, and the IL will be mutually intelligible

among similar types of learners. IL is the linguistic system evidenced when an

adult second language learner attempts to express meanings in the language being

learned (Selinker, 1972). The IL is viewed as a separate linguistic system, clearly

different from both the learner’s ‘native language’ (NL) and the ‘target language’

(TL) being learned, but linked to both NL and TL by interlingual identifications in

the perception of the learner. A central characteristic of any IL is that it fossilizes

– that is, it ceases to develop at some point short of full identity with the target

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language. Thus, the adult second-language learner never achieves a level of

facility in the use of the target comparable to that achievable by any child

acquiring the target as a native language. From these explanations, it can be

concluded that the way the children speak in English linked to both NL and TL

depends on the perception of the learners.

Thus, observing children’s English IL may help them encourage the fast

movement of their IL to their standard English. The researcher chose Semarang

Multinational School, because the school uses English as the main language of

instruction and because the students come from different nationalities and mother

tongues. In order to identify the IL, the researcher recorded the conversations

between Semarang Multinational School’s students and teachers.

2. Statement of the Problem

Based on what has been explained in the previous section the research

problems could be formulated as follows:

a. What is the interlanguage of Semarang Multinational School’s students like?

b. What factors may influence their English interlanguage?

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3. Objective of the Study

Based on the statements of the problem presented before, the

objectives of the study, therefore, can be formulated as follows:

a. To describe the interlanguage of Semarang Multinational School’s students.

b. To describe the factors that influence their English interlanguage.

4. Scope of the Study

This study focuses on interlanguage, thus the linguistic elements or

grammatical elements represented in the conversations between Semarang

Multinational School’s students and their teacher became the focus of the

research.

5. Significance of the Study

The results of the study are expected to extend researcher’s knowledge

pertaining to English interlanguage. They are also expected to extend the

readers’ knowledge on English interlanguage. The researcher also expects that

this research paper could be useful as a reference about interlanguage for the

university the researcher has been studying at. The results of the study may

also be useful for further researchers who may plan to conduct similar

research.

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6. Research Paper Organization

This research paper is entitled Interlanguage of Semarang

Multinational School’s Students in Speaking English and is broken down into

five chapters. The systemic organization of this research paper is as follows:

Chapter I, Introduction, contains background of the study, statements of the

problem, objectives of the study, scope of the study, significance of the study

and research paper organization.

Chapter II, Review of Related Literature, covers the theoretical framework

needed to support and direct the writer in analyzing the data and construing

the results of the research. These are the theories used: education, types of

education, language acquisition, children language, English language learning,

interlanguage, error and language interference.

Chapter III, Research Method, consists of research design, unit of analysis,

source of data, technique of data gathering and technique of data analysis.

Chapter IV, Findings and discussions, discusses the findings.

Chapter V, Conclusions and Recommendations, tells about conclusion of the

research findings and recommendations for further research.

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 CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

1. Education

All this time we often hear about education, educating, educated

person, and etc. The term ‘education’ is a very common and a popular word

that is uttered by many of us but understood by a very few in its right

perspective. The term of education has been presented by different experts in

different concepts. Some expert say that education refers to as acquisition of

knowledge, skills, language and attitudes. Some say that education is

practicing of people’s mind in particular direction to bring about desired

changes (Gupta/Baveja, 2014:3). Education is what survives when what has

been learned has been forgotten (B. F. Skinner, 1974).

Education plays a role in reconstructing experiences in the required

direction in order to add meaning to those experiences (Dewey, 1916). This

view implies that the child already has acquired some experiences from his/her

interaction with the environment. Education is also considered as a process of

initiation, like saying, that it is an activity rather than it is a concept or idea.

Considering education as a process of initiation into what is considered as

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worthwhile for the child to learn, Peters (1959) states that education involves

essentially certain processes which intentionally transmit what is valuable in

an intelligible and voluntary manner and creates in the learner a desire to

achieve it. Education seeks to develop the innate or the inner potentialities of

humans, as the process or activity of the humans to learn what they never

know before such as knowledge, subject, and language. Learning is a process

that is not only related to the function of school or other organised educational

settings. As an activity, education may be the task performed by an individual

in a conscious or unconscious manner and as a process (Gupta/Baveja,

2014:72). It is regarded as a well thought activity that is consciously imparted

by various institutions including family, society, schools, etc. For example, a

day in a school. It will begin with morning prayer, exercises, yoga, line up to

enter the class, sing the National Anthem, and etc.

The processes of education include the socialisation of the child;

development of his/her personality, physical, social, emotional and cognitive

development, as well as harnessing the innate potential. These processes of

education are practised through several means and modes including the

different features, advantages, limitations, and inter-relation.

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1. Modes of Education

The ways in which education takes place or the processes are carried

out in educating the child are known as modes of education. These are

informal education, non-formal education, and formal education.

a. Informal Education

Informal education refers to the lifelong process, whereby every

individual acquires attitudes, first-language or mother tongue, values, skills

and knowledge from the educational influences and resources in his or her

own environment and from daily experience (family, neighbours, marketplace,

library, mass media, work, play, etc.). Every child, or for that matter every

human being or even animals, has a tendency to learn. Every one learns a lot

of things consciously or unconsciously through observation, experience or

imitation at home or in the surroundings, from parents, peers, family members

and the community. It is not organized (in terms of learning objectives,

learning time or learning support) and typically does not lead to certification.

Informal education takes place all the times and throughout the life of an

individual. It does not have any limit or boundaries. Therefore, people call it

as socialization that begins at home (Gupta/Baveja, 2014:79). It could happen

accidentally or incidentally, consciously or unconsciously. Education through

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mass media and exposure to other experiences like exhibitions, films,

newspapers, visits to different places, and etc. These are also constitute

informal education. Even though, tutoring at home or private tuitions are not

covered under this mode of education.

b. Non-formal Education

Language also develops within a social context and depends on social

development (Bates, 1976). Various theorists attribute importance to different

factors in the development of language. In this case, non-formal education has

a role to support the process of language development. Non-formal education

refers to any planned programme of personal and social education for people

designed to improve a range of skills and competencies, outside the formal

educational curriculum. It may not conform to the requirements of formal

educational mode but are equally important and are carried out with specific

aims and objectives (Gupta/Baveja, 2014:83). Non-formal education is a mix

of formal education and informal education in the sense that it takes place

informally in a formal environment. Non-formal education takes place both

within and outside educational institutions, and available to persons of all

ages, depending on the country contexts. It may cover educational

programmes to impart adult literacy, basic education for out of the school

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children or may be development of life skills, English speaking skills, work

skills, and etc. For example English learning/English course to improve

children’s English in speaking, reading, and writing.

Language learning commonly starts at a later stage, when language

performance has already become established and when many other physical

and mental processes of maturation are complete or nearing complete (Corder,

1993:107). The paper which started the ball rolling, so to speak, was Corder's

"The significance of learners' errors" (1967). He pointed out that the

development of generative linguistics and interest in psycholinguistic research

had initiated a shift of emphasis in language teaching from its preoccupation

with teaching towards the study of learning. The new interest led naturally to

comparison between first language (LI) and second language (L2) learning,

and to the question of whether the apparent differences between the two

represent two different processes of learning. Corder (1971) then went on to

hypothesize that some of the strategies employed by second language learners

are essentially the same as those used by children learning their first language.

And the result is the L2 learners' errors had new significance: the occurrence

of systematic errors could be taken as an indication of active participation by

the learners in the learning process, during which their ability to follow

hypotheses about the rule system of the target language (TL) might be

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observed. Corder (1971) states that at any point in their learning of a TL,

learners use a system that can be described in linguistic terms and from. He

sees the learner's interlanguage developing through successive stages of

acquisition during the learning process. This hypothesis can only be

adequately tested by longitudinal L2 cross-linguistic studies (Corder, 1967).

This system of transitional competence can be illustrated by the systematic

errors of the learners (as opposed to random mistakes). From this point of

view errors are not seen as indications of failure to learn the TL, but are

regarded positive1y, as evidence that learners are actually involved in testing

hypotheses about the linguistic system of the language being acquired.

c. Formal Education

Formal education refers to the structured education system that runs

from primary school to university, and includes specialised programmes for

technical and professional training. It is typically provided by an education or

training institution and leads to certification. It is organized (in terms, of

learning objectives, learning time, or learning support) and is intentional from

the learner’s perspective (Cedefop, 2001). The learner is registered with

institution for the period needed for the education and attends the institution

regularly. This type of education is usually being provided in schools across

the country. The progress of the learner is monitored through feedback and

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assignments. The learner can interact with the teacher through correspondence

by post or otherwise. During the learners have an interaction with their teacher

such as ask question, ask permission, and give a statement they need to speak

up. In here, the language will be needed. Most schools usually use the

language depending on where is the school established. For example, if the

school is established in Indonesia, the language for the education is Indonesia,

but the development of technology that raised the international school in

several regions. Semarang Multinational School is a school that use English

for their education because the students come from different nationalities and

mother tongues. So that it is possible that the utterances/expressions that they

produce are non-standard or not in order when they speak English. However,

we cannot call it as errors because they are in the process of mastering their

target language (English) and as the following time their target language will

approximate to standard. In this case, this process is called as interlanguage

(IL). It appears because they are still kid and let alone they are Indonesians.

Besides, there are several factors that interfere their interlanguage English.

2. Interlanguage

The term interlanguage was first introduced into the literature by

Selinker (1972), in an influential paper published in the International Review

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of Applied Liguistics in 1972. Since then, various terms have been used

synonymously with interlanguage, although there are some subtle differences

between them: approximative systems, Nemser (1969); idiosyncratic dialects,

Corder (1971); learner language systems, Richards and Sampson (1973). All

these descriptions have one thing in common: the fact that second language

learning is seen to be moving in the direction of the target language, with the

learner constructing successive systems of phonological, grammatical, and

semantic usage rules. Selinker (1972) believes that the evidence for

interlanguage can be found in what he calls "fossilizations", that is,

phonological, morphological and syntactic features in the speech of L2

speakers that are different from the TL rules even after years of instruction in,

and exposure to, the TL. Fossilizations are also described as those features

which, "though absent from the speech of learners under normal conditions,

tend to reappear in their performances when they are forced to deal with

difficult material, when either anxious or in an extremely re1axed state"

(Selinker 1972:215). This kind of regression is seen as systematic, and it is

considered as evidence for the psychological reality of fossilizations and

interlanguages. It seems reasonable to suggest, however, that the persistence

of fossilized forms could well indicate that the interlanguage of a speaker who

displays this kind of regression is still limited to relatively simple acts of

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communication. The development of interlanguage to facilitate the use of

more complex syntatic structures may not take place until its function is

extended to such integrative and expressive uses as affirmation of social

identity and expression of psychological need. Interlanguage theory ( Selinker,

1972) proposes that second language learners produce their own self-

contained system that falls somewhere between the L1 and the L2 systems.

3. Error and Language Interference

Error, always a central concern in language teaching, became the

central concern in audio-lingual approaches. Collections of frequently

occurring errors (for example, French 1949) already existed. Traditional

textbooks had long paid attention to what were felt to be the errors most likely

to occur and tried to guard learners from particular pitfalls in phonology,

morphology, syntax and lexis. These areas of special difficulty might derive

either from intralingual or interlingual factors. At the lexical level, for

example, intralingual difficulties were mooted where minimal formal

differences in the foreign language involved major semantic differences (for

example “peel” and “pill”). Interlingual lexical difficulties were mooted

typically when a form in the foreign language was very similar to a form in the

learner’s native language, but the meaning was different.

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 It was the British applied linguist, Pit Corder, who re-focused attention

on error from the perspective of language processing and language acquisition.

In his seminal (1967) paper “The significance of learners’ errors” he stressed

the learner’s positive cognitive contribution to learning. His view was that the

learner is engaged in a process of discovering the language. The learner forms

hypotheses based on language input and tests those hypotheses in speech

production. In this view errors are not only an inevitable but also, very

importantly, a necessary feature of learner language, without which

improvement cannot occur. Corder coined the term “transitional competence”

to indicate the essential dynamism and flux of the language learner’s evolving

system. A learner’s errors, according to Corder (1967), represent the

discrepancy between the transitional competence of that learner and the target

language. Drawing heavily on Chomsky’s (1965) view of first language

acquisition, he suggested that just as for the child acquiring its mother tongue

the language evolves in a more or less fixed pattern, so the foreign language

learner may possess an “inbuilt syllabus” which determines the order in which

the language system is acquired and which is largely independent of the order

of the external syllabus according to which the classroom learner is ostensibly

learning. Corder further suggested that studying error might supply clues to

this inbuilt order of acquisition, persistent errors indicating those elements

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acquired late. Corder, however, invoked Chomsky’s (1965) distinction

between “competence” and performance” to draw a distinction between true

errors of competence and errors of performance, which he denoted as mere

“mistakes”, the product of “chance circumstances” analogous to slips of the

tongue in the native language (Corder 1967: 166). These performance

“mistakes”, he maintained, say nothing about the underlying speaker

competence and should therefore be excluded from analysis. In a later paper

Corder (1971: 107-108) suggested that error analysis should include not only

“overt” errors but “covert” errors. Covert errors, unlike overt errors, are

formally acceptable but do not express the meaning intended by the learner.

For example, “I want to know the English” is a formally correct sentence, but

it would be a covert error if the learner wanted to express the meaning carried

by “I want to know English”. The procedure for error analysis was elaborated

by Corder (1974) as comprising five stages:

• selection of a corpus of language

• identification of errors in the corpus

• classification of the errors identified

• explanation of the psycholinguistic causes of the errors

• evaluation (error gravity ranking) of the errors

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 In fact, error analysis has turned out to be more problematic than one

might expect for various reasons. There are problems of identification.

Notwithstanding native-speaker intuitions, error is difficult to define and can

by no means always be unambiguously identified in production

(Hughes/Lascaratou, 1982). The distinction between “errors” and “mistakes”

is highly problematic since in performance correct and incorrect forms of a

single target often occur side by side. Learner transitional competence has

been found to be highly variable, influenced by various external factors such

as situation, interlocutor, speech versus writing, and certain internal factors,

especially anxiety. Furthermore, there appears to be a middle ground between

completely acceptable language and erroneous language, which may variously

be judged as infelicitous, stylistically inappropriate, non-native like, obscure

(Azevedo, 1980; Pawley/Syder, 1983).

There are problems of classification. Classification of errors depends

on error’s location to the domains of phonology/graphology, morphology,

syntax, lexis, discourse. For example “The doctor is white” for “The doctor’s

coat is white”, “Miss, Clifton bad” for “Miss, Clifton is bad”, “Holy water

spread spread” for “the holy water is spread over”, “She have more candy

inside her bag” for “She has more of candies in her bag” which are difficult to

localize to a specific item and seem to extend over the whole sentence.

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5. Factors of Interlanguage

There are several universal influences that help develop the nature,

pace, route and finish line in the path towards learning a second language or

approximate the target language. SLA has found the most important and well-

studied sources of universal influence are age, mother tongue, environment

and cognition. These universal influences mutually interact and give an impact

on the internal processor system and the language learner. It evokes whenever

learners speak, read, interact, write, negotiate and express themselves in their

target language/L2.

a. Age

The terms ‘critical period’ and ‘sensitive period’ are discussed as

essentially synonymous. This is probably because the available evidence with

regard to the acquisition of an additional language is still too preliminary for

SLA researchers to be in a position to make perfect distinctions between the

two notions (Ortega, 2009). Children acquiring their first language complete

the feat within a biological window of four to six years of age. During their

first year of life they learn to handle one-word utterances. During the second

year, two-word utterances and exponential vocabulary growth occur. The third

year of life is characterized by syntactic and morphological deployment. Some

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more pragmatically or syntactically subtle phenomena are learned by five or

six years of age. After that, many more aspects of mature language use are

tackled when children are taught how to read and write in school. Besides, if

the children went to international school for their study. They will learn the

2nd, 3rd, 4th, and . . . . language earlier. And as the result, in a seminal article,

Krashen, Long, and Scarcella (1979) put a grain of salt on these findings.

They concluded that older is better initially, but that younger is better in the

long run.

b. Cross-linguistics Influences

Cross-linguistic influences in the area of pragmatic competence offers

a good illustration of this point. Sometimes the L1 influence on L2 pragmatic

choices is obvious and rather local. Another area which illustrates how L1

influences can cut across layers of language pertains to the semantic-

functional ways of expressing thought or what first language acquisition

researcher Slobin (1996) calls thinking-for-speaking. This refers to the fact

that languages offer specific sets of resources to frame meaning, or to

schematize experience, and speakers are known to be constrained by such

language-specific ways at the time when they are putting together their

thoughts into language. Slobin (1996) suggests that thinking-for-speaking in

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an L1 will be transferred into the new language by L2 learners and,

furthermore, that they may never be able to restructure their L1-acquired ways

of thinking for speaking when using an L2.

c. Development of Learner Language

Competence refers to the nature of the mental representations

comprising the internal grammar of learners and development refers to the

processes and mechanisms by which those representations and the ability to

use them change over time (Ortega, 2009). The realization of the first tradition

in the study of learner language can be situated in the coinage of the technical

term interlanguage (IL) (Selinker, 1972), which refers to the language system

that each learner constructs at any given point in development. On the other

hand, the school of Chomskyan linguistics finally made substantive inroads

into SLA. As a result, researchers began to take seriously the possibility that

an innate Universal Grammar (UG) would constrain L2 acquisition, as it was

believed to constrain L1 acquisition. Since then, SLA researchers with training

in formal linguistics have also pursued the study of the mental representations

of grammar that learners build, with the aim to describe the universal and

innate bounds of such knowledge (White, 2003). By contrast, interlanguage

researchers believe that the same general cognitive learning mechanisms that

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help humans learn and process any other type of information help them extract

regularities and rules from the linguistic data available in the surrounding

environment.

d. The linguistic environment

Languages are almost constantly learned with and for others, and these

others provide linguistic evidence that circles learners. Knowing about a

language benefits afforded by the environment is thus important for achieving

a good understanding of how people learn 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and fifth languages. The

environment affords learners input, or linguistic data produced by other

competent users of the L2. Krashen (1970) at the University of Southern

California formally proposed a central role in L2 learning for input in his

Comprehensible Input Hypothesis (best formulated in Krashen, 1985). The

most important source of L2 learning is comprehensible input, or language

which learners process for meaning and which contains something to be

learned. When L2 learners process these messages for meaning (which they

will most likely do if the content is personally relevant, and provided they can

reasonably understand them), grammar learning will naturally occur. Such as

the children who are in the process of mastering their target language

(English), if they placed in the environment that forced them to use English

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for their daily activity and the input is comprehensive, such as at school, they

may approximate their English to standard.

e. Cognition

Cognition refers to how information is processed and learned by the

human mind (Ortega, 2009). A word is established in long-term memory when

the link between a form and its meaning is made. Vocabulary knowledge

concerns the relative ability to use a given word productively or only

recognize it passively, it depends on the learners. The size of the mental

lexicon, which refers to the total number of words known and represented in

long-term memory. Size is often related to the relative frequency with which

words come across in the input that surrounds learners, since high-frequency

words usually make it into long-term memory earlier in the learning process

than low-frequency words. For L2 learners, new vocabulary presents a

challenge. They need to learn about 3,000 new words in order to minimally

follow conversations in the L2, and about 9,000 new word families if they

want to be able to read novels, story book or newspapers in the L2 (Nation,

2006). Children who start their school in an international school may discover

new vocabularies in their activities such as when they play with their friends,

25
have a talk with their teacher, their assembly, excursion, and etc. The new

vocabularies can enrich their cognition to each experience.

f. Mother tongue or native language

The native language can be used for fluent and proficient social

speech; however it is not sufficient to mediate higher-level cognition. The

native language is essential for regulating advanced cognition because

producing language in the L2 requires significant attentional resources.

Negueruela and Lantolf (2006) also support the importance of the L1 in SLA.

The study was based on understanding two different types of past

constructions in Spanish: the past preterit, which describes something specific

that happened in the past at a specific time, and the past imperfect, which

describes things that happened repeatedly in the past. When the children

discovered a new vocabulary for each experience, they will use the vocabulary

to the same experience without think about the specific time of the experience.

They only think about how to communicate with others using those words.

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 CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHOD

In this chapter, the researcher explains the research design, unit of

analysis, source of data, technique of data gathering, and technique of data

analysis.

3.1 Research Design

In this research, the researcher describes the interlanguage of Semarang

Multinational School’s students and the kinds of factors that interfere their

English. Therefore, the descriptive qualitative method is used in this research.

3.2 Unit of Analysis

The object of this study is Semarang Multinational School’s students in

speaking English. The unit of analysis is the dialogue between the researcher and

the students, teacher and students, and a student with other students that contains

interlanguage.

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3.3 Source of the Data

The researcher decided to choose “Semarang Multinational School” that is

an international school in Semarang that uses English for their education. The

main data were the dialogue of the students. But they were gathered by recording

the dialogues, those were between the researcher and students, teacher and

students, and between students

3.4 Technique of Data Gathering

The technique of data gathering that was conducted by the researcher is

detailed in the following steps:

a. Recording the dialogues of students

The researcher recorded the dialogues of students by using audio recorder.

Then, researcher saved the file of the recording to be analyzed.

b. Listening to the recording

The researcher listened to the recording carefully and took notes for each

utterance that contains interlanguage.

c. Transcribing the recording

The researcher transcribed the recording in microsoft word application.

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d. Segmenting the data into the unit of analysis

The researcher finally segmented the data into the unit of analysis –

sentences. This means that the dialogues were segmented into sentences.

Example:

No. Speaker Utterances

1. N Ohh, I go to the Magelang too, last year.
2. T Me too. I go to the Magelang few months ago
3. T Miss, after this excursion. I am not going back to

school. I will go home. Because I am going to the

Magelang.

3.5 Technique of Data Analysis

The data were analyzed by the researcher in several steps. First, the

researcher listened to the recording of the students. Second, the researcher

identified these sentences based on the theory of interlanguage. Third, the

researcher classified the data with the interlanguage features based on the

Selinker’s theory (1972). Data taken from the interview with the teachers and

observation to the students were needed to find out the factors that may interfere

the students’ interlanguage. Conducting interview to students was not allowed

due to the school’s policy. Finally, the researcher interpreted and construed the

findings of the research.

29
Morphological Error

Types of Errors
No. Speaker Utterance
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Ohh, I go to the

1. N Magelang too, last √

year.
2. T Me too. I go to the

Magelang few √

months ago
3. T Miss, after this

excursion. I am

not going back to

school. I will go √

home. Because I

am going to the

Magelang.

Types of Errors

1. –ing form

2. Copula be

3. Articles

4. Auxiliary be

30
5. Plural –s

6. Irregular past

7. Regular past

8. Third person singular –s

9. Possessive –s

etc.

CHAPTER IV

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter contains findings and discussion of the data analysis of the

interlanguage of Semarang Multinational School’s Students in speaking English.

31
The data are 108 utterances that were taken from the dialogue recordings of

Semarang Multinational School’s students. The findings are as follows:

1. Types of Error

The data, 108 utterances, which contained interlanguage were produced by

Semarang Multinational School’s Students. They were analyzed based on the

theory of interlanguage (IL) proposed by Selinker (1972). The results were

presented in the following table

32
Table 1: Speaker In Producing Interlanguage (IL)

Frequency of Utterance
No. Speaker
Total IL
1. Al 6 6
2. Bre 3 3
3. CB 11 12
4. Cl 1 1
5. Der 8 6
6. Dom 4 3
7. Fat 4 3
8. Gw 2 2
9. Hec 12 11
10. Ia 4 5
11. Jd 13 12
12. Jov 11 10
13. Kir 1 1
14. N 11 9
15. Ra 2 1
16. Rei 3 3
17. Shi 12 14
18. Tob 3 3
19. Wil 3 5
20. YT 1 1
21. Yut 3 3
22. Z 2 2

As the table above the implication, these are the students that produced an

interlanguage (IL), they are Shi 12 produced 14 utterances of 12 total utterances,

Jd produced 12 utterances of 13 total utterances, Hec produced 11 utterances of 12

total utterances, Jov produced 10 utterances of 11 total utterances, CB produced

11 utterances of 11 total utterances, and N produced 9 utterances of 11 utterances.

Among all students, these are 6 students who speakers produced interlanguage

33
(IL) significantly because they almost made an error for every utterance but they

deserved to be appreciated because they have a courage and a good self-

confidence to speak with each other even there is a hesitation at the beginning that

experienced by students. There is Bahasa structure in several error produced by

students, it occurred because of the influence of their mother tongue (native

language). Besides, the error occurred because they are in the process for develop

their English or their English is called interlanguage English, when they have a

lots of interaction with other student, they will discover the new vocabularies, new

rules to express each phenomenon because each interlanguage learner’s contains

alternative rules for performing the same function (Dickerson, 1975; Huebner

1979), as it has been mentioned, on some occasion, one rule used, on others, a

different rule. It shows that interlanguage is variable. For example: “Miss, Jov

don’t want sharing” for “Miss, Jov doesn’t want to share” and “Stop it! You

annoying” for “Stop it! You are annoying”

The other implication, from 22 students, there are students who talk-less

and also their utterances contained interlanguage. It occurred because they have

no courage enough to speak or less self-confidence. From the observation

conducted by the researcher, this talk-less occurred because of there is a group of

students and one of the students in this group can speak well in English, so that he
explains every single material given by the teacher to his group in their given

language, not in English. It can obstruct the students during improve their English.

For example: “butterfly” for “A butterfly” and “Miss, Der grab it” for “Miss, Der

is grabbing it”

Table 2: Interlanguage Produced By Students

No. Types of Error Frequency

1. -ing form 1
2. Copula be 4
3. Articles 15
4. Plurality 5
5. Irregular past 12
6. Regular past 4
7. Third person singular 9
8. Concord 1
9. Possessive 2
10. Null subject 9
11. Null verb 10
12. Double verb 1
13. Modifier 1
14. Etc. 43
Total

As the table above, explicitly, the common types of error that produced by

the students are in use of articles, irregular past, concord, null verb, and etc. The

“etc” covered for ambiguity, diction, and others. For the articles, it caused because

they are only know the vocabulary, they have a good competence for their

vocabulary to recognize everything around them, but they don’t know if since the
thing is a count noun they should use an article at the beginning to stand the noun.

For the irregular past, they do not realize that they tell the past event but still use

the V1 (base form) for example: “I try it at my home” for “I tried it at my home”.

For the null verb, they do not put the verb to explain the condition. For example:

“Shi tired now” for “Shi is tired now”. Implicitly, the common error of their

interlanguage is in grammar rule.

1. –ing form

a. Miss, Der grab it → Miss, Der is grabing it (see appendix no. 41)

Hector reported that there is somebody who grabbed his grass while he

wants to use the grasses to feed the deers. Hector should say in present

progressive tense (is grabbing) because this event is still already

happened. By Hector’s statement, we can see the Bahasa structure that

is “Der mengambilnya” .

2. Copula be

a. You annoying → You are annoying (see appendix no. 54)

Hec’s utterance shows a lack of copula be (are). And Hec’s uttarence

reflects Indonesian structure because in Bahasa Indonesia we say

“kamu menyebakan” but in English we need copula be to stand an

adjective and verb. The lack of copula be is also occurred in other

utterances of several students

 “Miss, Der eating onde-onde” (see appendix no. 59)

“but I am not the only one. Derrick also” (see appendix no. 59)

“Miss, Jd pushing me” (see appendix no. 62)

3. Articles

a. train → a train (see appendix no. 1)

Al answered the question of Ms. Kanchan spontaneously because the

question is for reward to get a point. Since the train is a count noun,

she should say a train. But in this situation shows that Al has a good

competence for her vocabulary by recognizing the things in English.

The same case showed up in other students’ utterances. These are

“I see mermaid” → I see a mermaid (see appendix no. 8)

“butterfly”→ a butterfly (see appendix no. 17)

“good morning friends. I have the pony”→ I have a pony (see

appendix no. 19)

“bunny”→ a bunny (see appendix no. 50)

“baby giraffe”→ a baby giraffe (see appendix no. 17)

“No. momotaro”→ No. A momotaro (see appendix no. 18)

“book”→ a book (see appendix no. 18)

“good morning, friends. I have police hat” → Good morning, friends.

I have a police hat (see appendix no. 19)

 “doesn’t have poison” → doesn’t have a poison (see appendix no. 28)

“castle”→ a castle (see appendix no. 47)

b. I want jelly → I want a jelly (see appendix no. 38)

Bre asked to Ms. Marea to share the jelly for him. This is the same

case likes Al’s utterance. Since the jelly is a count noun, he should say

“I want a jelly”

c. “but thank you ya. Minion sticker. It yours”→ The minion sticker (see

appendix no. 55)

Jd thanked for the Minion sticker that he got from Jo. But the count

noun cannot be stand alone. There must an article the and then

followed by the count noun, Minion sticker.

d. “I have a banana. I have a apple”→ I have an apple (see appendix no.

64)

Jd was singing for a song at that time and the article that Jd used for

apple supposed to be “an” not “a” because the first letter of apple is a

vowel sound. So that, he should say “I have an apple”

e. “go to the Magelang”→ go to Magelang (see appendix no. 29)

Tob told his friend that he is going to Magelang. Since “Magelang” is

the name of the city, so that no need to place an article “the”

4. Plural –s

a. “three little pig roleplay”→ three little pigs roleplay (see appendix no.

4)

Since the pig is more than one, it should use the plural form “pigs”

The similar case of plural form is occurred in other utterances that

produced by several students. These are:

“three little pig is a story book”→ three little pigs is a story book (see

appendix no. 22)

b. “I see iguana and cow”→ I see iguanas and cows (see appendix no.

49)

Jo said that he sees an iguana but iguana and cow that we see in cimory

are more than one. It should use plural form “iguanas and cows”. The

other utterances that have similarity in a form of plural are:

“sheep and also rabbit, and also bird”→ sheeps, rabbits, and also

birds (see appendix no. 49)

“I want to feed the deer again”→ I want to feed the deers again (see

appendix no. 41)

5. Irregular past

a. “In Disneyland, I see mermaid”→ In Disneyland, I saw mermaid (see

appendix no. 8)
CB was tried to tell her teacher that she showed a fake mermaid when

she visited Disneyland and the event is already done. So that the word

“see” should be saw. The same irregular past is occurred for the

following utterances:

“but I see Yut in the Shi’s house”→ but I saw Yut in the Shi’s house

(see appendix no. 14)

0
Table 2

Types of Error
No. Speaker Morphological Error Syntatical Error Etc
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
1. Al 3 1 1 1
2. Bre 1 1 1
3. CB 1 1 1 2 3 3 2
4. Cl 1
5. Der 1 1 1 2 2
6. Dom 1 1 1
7. Fat 1 1 1
8. Gw 1 1
9. Hec 2 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 1
Types of Error
No. Speaker Morphological Error Syntatical Error Etc
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
10. Ia 1 1 1 2
11. Jd 1 2 1 1 1 5
12. Jov 1 3 1 3 2
13. Kir 1
14. N 1 1 1 3 3
15. Ra 1
16. Rei 1 1 1
17. Shi 1 1 2 2 1 7
18. Tob 1 1 1
 19. Wil 1 1 2
20. YT 1
Types of Error
No. Speaker Morphological Error Syntatical Error Etc
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
21. Yut 2 1
22. Z 1 1