A STUDY ABOUT THE USE OF DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH IN STUDENTS’ WRITING: A CASE STUDY AT MA PUTRI NURUL HAKIM KEDIRI IN ACADEMIC YEAR 2008/2009

A STUDY ABOUT THE USE OF DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH IN STUDENTS’ WRITING: A CASE STUDY AT MA PUTRI NURUL HAKIM KEDIRI IN ACADEMIC YEAR 2008/2009

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A.    Background of The Study

Education is an inseparable need from the human’s life. It can be acquired formally from the elementary school to tertiary level. It has important rule in human’s life. the quality of human’s depends on the level of the education. With regards to language education, English is one important subject that has to be taught to the students.

English is one of international language, which is used as communication. Thus, all of the people in the world have used English either in formal or informal situation.

In some countries like America, Australia, England, New Zealand people speak English as their mother tongue and in some countries like Singapore, India, and Philippine people speak English as their foreign language.

English as a foreign language in Indonesian attempts to increase the students’ ability in English in order that they can use it better. As an evidence of this statement, almost all curriculums insert as a main object.

Indonesian government has been aware of the important of English. It has been realized that English plays very important roles in international communication. Having good ability in English nowadays may give an opportunity to get a good job.

Talking about the existence of English among the other language in the world, no language is more widely spread than English (Quirk-et all, 1972:2-4). Thus, the role of English is so important in daily life, so that enthusiasm or interest of people in learning it drastically increases.

Previously, people conceived that language in daily life is spoken. Certainly, it is a reality that spoken dominated the communication activity in any field for a long time. it has been stated by Ann Galloway (1993:2) that the students need to learn how to communicate using appropriate social language, gestures or expressions in order to have real communication in the classroom and also they get an opportunity to communicate freely.

In the other hand, not all of the communication process is done through speaking. There are some skills in learning a language such as: reading skill, listening skill and writing skill. The language users need to write their ideas on a paper. One common example, he two lovers need to write letters to his/ her partner to inform that he/she is having longing or to tell the girls that he wants to spend his weekend at her country for several days. This activity ca not be done unless they do not understand to write and read the message conveyed.

In our modern world today written communication plays more important roles. For one example, it is quite easy for us today to get newspaper, magazines, or book and other printed materials that we can read. Similarly, we need to communicate through letters, for example simply our experiences in our diaries. This truly indicates that writing skill is an important aspect to be developed if we want to gain more advantage from written language.

The important of writing is used by educated man to record to make notes, to convince other people, to tell some worthwhile information or influence other people to believe what the writer himself believes. This communication process cannot be done successfully unless people know how to arrange their opinions, thoughts, and then express them clearly in a good organization and sentence structure (Morsey in Tarigan 1986: 4).

The main function of writing is as a means of indirect communication.

Writing is important for language learners because it can train them to think critically and creatively. The process of writing in this sense will help the students to learn more about their own feeling and about their personal reaction to the life around them. Through their writing experiences, the students’ creative expressions can be enriched and grammar can be reinforced (Byrne, 1979:7). Through writing the students can enrich their vocabulary, and understand structure as well, it can develop their knowledge of English.

In this case, the students are not only able to understand the structure or grammar in a context but should be able to interpret the meaning of the context and also to express the idea through oral communication and written media.

According to the 1994 curriculum, Curriculum Based Competency, and School Based Curriculum, there is general objective of teaching writing. The students should be able to communicate their mind and feeling through writing skill. to acquire proficiency in writing, the students should be able to understand both grammar and structure of the language. Considering the importance of English structure especially the direct and indirect speech, the writer intends to investigate “a structure about the use of direct and indirect speech in the students’ writing”.

B.     Statement of The Problem

As any other investigation the problem of the study absolutely needs to be answered. The problems dealing with this study are stated as follows:

1.      Are the second year students of MA Putri Nurul Hakim Kediri able to use direct and indirect speech in past form?

2.      Do the students of MA Putri Nurul Hakim Kediri find any problems in using direct and indirect speech in past form?

C.    Assumption Of The Study

Based on the statement of the problem above the researcher has some assumption, those are:

1.      The second year students of MA Putri Nurul Hakim Kediri are able to use direct and indirect speech in past form.

2.      The second year students of MA Putri Nurul hakim Kediri find problems in using direct and indirect speech in past form.

D.    Purpose Of The Study

The general purpose of this study is to know the students ability in using direct and indirect speech in writing. Beside the general purpose, the writer also states the specific purpose those are:

1.      To find out the students ability in using direct and indirect speech in writing of the second year students of Ma Putri Nurul Hakim Kediri in academic year 2008/2009

2.      To find out the students problems in using direct and indirect speech in writing

E.     Scope Of The Study

This particular investigation is conducted under scopes that are formulated as followed:

This research will only discuss the ability of the second year students of MA Putri Nurul Hakim Kediri in using direct and indirect speech in writing.

The object of investigation is limited to the second year students of MA Putri Nurul Hakim Kediri in academic year 2008/2009.

F.     Significance Of The Study

In this study, the writer asks the students to use direct and indirect speech in their writing at the second year students of MA Putri Nurul Hakim Kediri. This study has not only theoretical but also practical as well, the theoretical is resulting of this study in intended to one consideration for English teacher about the students’ personal ability I using direct and indirect speech in writing.

Finally, this study hopefully would be the basic of English teacher to determine what material of structure that they have to teach, especially to make the students understand and able to use direct and indirect speech in writing.

G.    Definition Of Key Terms

a.       Direct Speech is a speaker actual word or the use of these in writing (Hornby, 1998:326).

b.      Indirect Speech is (grammar) a report of what somebody has said which does not reproduce their exact word (Hornby, 1998: 606).

c.       Writing is a complex process that allows the writers to explore thoughts and ideas, and make them visible and concrete. Writing encourages thinking and learning for it reflection. When thought is written down, available be examined, considered, added to rearranged, and changed. (Ghaith: 2005)

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

A.    Concept of Writing

Communication competence can be called as language competence because in communication we use language as a basic component. Therefore communicative competence can be divided into four skills based on the level of language competence, and writing competence.

Those four skills have closed relationship to support a good communicative competence. Therefore as a consequence of mastering those four skills we can master the communicative competence better. Those skills we learn through chronological process. It means that we start to learn listening competence when we were childhood and followed by writing competence.

The last language skill, which is encountered by a child in her or his language development, is writing. it is closely related to reading skill and it is used for indirect communication. like the other language skill, writing is seen as developmental process. this statement means that the requires amount of experiences, and items (tarigan, 1986:3)

Written language is different from oral language. A written language is basically a representation of spoken. Thus, language exists in two forms. the diffusion is merely based on two forms both in spoken and in written form (Harris, 1984:9)

In speech the speakers can rephrase what they are saying and they can speed up or slow down. This will often get feedback from the listener who will show through gestures, expression and interruptions that they do not understand. Whereas in writing, the writer cannot get immediate feedback from the reader and sometimes getting no feedback at all. The reader has to understand what has been written without asking for clarification of relying on the writers tone of voice or expression (harmer: 53)

on the other hand, not all of interaction process is done through speaking. the language users need to write their idea on a piece of paper.  For examples,

a.       the importance of writing for the students

b.      definition of the study

direct speech is direct words which said by speakers. direct sentence consists of two parts, they are reporting verb and reported words.

example:

jhon says,” I go to school everyday”.

at the sentence example above, becoming reported verb is “says”, and becoming words are “I go to school every day”.

these are some matters which must be gave attention to speech forms:

1.      in general direct sentence between reporting verb with reported words dissociated by comma (,).

2.      reported words in direct sentence written in quotation marks.

3.      reporting verb can be referred as also reporting sentence, while reported words can be referred by reported speech or reported sentence.

4.      the reporting verb situations do not have to reside in early sentence, but earning also final reporting verb sentence.

example:

he said, “I am happy”.

if in subject active sentence represent personal pronoun for example he, she, it, etc, hence when dietician behind, the subject of dietician after reported words (first of sentence example) without experiencing of formation and form.

if in active sentence the subject represent is proper noun for example billy, George, tracy, etc, hence when dietician behind, the subject located in final of sentence (second of sentence example) without experiencing of transformation.

indirect speech is sentence said to submit statement of someone to other.

example:

jhon says,”we are late again”.

jhon says that they are late again

there are some matters which must be paid attention in this indirect sentence:

1.      in indirect sentence between reporting verb and reporting words its connective by conjunction.

2.      in quotation mark indirect speech do not be utilized.

the pursuant to reported sentence type, direct and indirect sentence can be divided into three types:

1.      statement

in general reporting verb uses: say, tell and ask

a.       if reprting verb in simple present tense, the reported speech do not have a tense change in indirect speech but its pronoun.

Direct speech	Indirect speech
I You  We  They My  Our  your	He, she You They They His, her Their My

example:

direct: jane says,”my brother studies English on monday”.

indirect: jane says that her brother studies English on Monday”.

b.      if reporting verb in simple past tense (said, told, asked) the reported speech in indirect speech will change in tenses, adverbs, and adverbial phrase as following:

Direct speech	Indirect speech
Simple present Present continuous Present perfect Simple future Present perfect continuous Past perfect	Simple past tense Past continuous Past perfect Past future Past perfect continuous Past perfect

adverb and adverbial speech

Direct speech	Indirect speech
Today Yesterday Tomorrow The day before yesterday The day after tomorrow Next week Next year Last week A week ago Now Tonight Here	That day The day before The next day/ the following day Two days before In two days time The following week The following year The previous week A week before Then That night There

example:

direct: john said,”I buy this dictionary at gramedia”.

indirect: jhon said that he bought that dictionary at gramedia.

direct: linda said,”my father will leave for america”.

indirect: linda said that her father would leave for America.

direct: jack said,”I have finished repairing your car”.

indirect: jack said that he had finished  repairing my car.

direct: dhita said,”I am typing a letter”.

indirect: dhita said that she was typing a letter.

c.       the tense of reported speech in simple present tense will not change if talking about general truth.

example:

direct: jhon said,”the earth revolves around the sun”.

indirect: jhon said that the earth revolves around the sun.

2.      question

a.       if a direct question is changed into reported speech, the quotation mark must be omitted. interrogative indirect speech which change to e affirmative, he quotation mark is not used. if reporting verb uses “say” it will change to be “ask”, inquire, wonder, or want to in indirect speech.

example:

direct: he asked me,”do you buy the book at a bookshop?”.

indirect: he wanted to know if/whether I bought the book at a bookshop.

b.      tenses in direct speech will change in indirect speech as following:

Direct speech	Indirect speech
Simple present Present continuous Present perfect Simple future Present perfect Past perfect	Simple past tense Past continuous Past perfect Past future Past perfect Past perfect

example:

direct: he said,”are you ready?”.

indirect: he asked (me) if/whether I was ready.

direct: he said,”is the man your friend?”.

indirect: he wanted to know if the man is mw friend.

direct: jhon said,”are you hungry?”.

indirect: jhon asked (me) if/whether I was hungry.

3.      command

a.       if direct command is changed into direct speech, it usually used words tell, order, command, ask, beg, remind, advise as reporting verb which is followed by infinitive and its object.

example:

direct: he said,”please say nothing about the case”.

indirect: he asked me to say nothing about the case.

direct: he said,”please give me another chance”.

indirect: he begged me to give him another chance.

b.      the use “let’s” in indirect speech

“let’s” is usually used to give suggestion in indirect speech, “let’s” will be changed by “suggest”

example:

direct: he said,”let’s leave this place”

indirect: he suggested leaving that place.

c.       reporting imperative

changing an imperative into indirect speech, it usually use verbs: ask, warn, tell, advise, remind, etc and followed by to infinitive.

example:

direct: he said,”remember to mail the letter”.

indirect: he reminded me to post the letter.

d.      if an imperative in negative form, not or never is used before to infinitive.

example:

direct: he said,”don’t leave me alone”.

indirect: he asked me not to leave him alone.

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A.    Method Of The Research

One of the ways to find out the truth is through the investigation or research. I research there are so many things that the researcher must do to make his research easy to conduct.

Therefore, the method should be practical and suitable with the facilities, finance, time allotment, and also the researcher competence in handling the investigation to maximum finding.

After determining the problems, purpose, and hypothesis of investigation, it is continued by observing and collecting data for the accomplishment of the study.

         The method of this research is descriptive. it means that the researcher will describe the     case that occurs in the present moment of time.

B.     Population And The Sample Of Research

1.      Population

The population in this study is the second year students of MA Putri Nurul Hakim Kediri in academic year 2008/2009, which consists of 125 students.

Population in this case can be defined as any groups of individuals that have one or more characteristics. to similar extend, population is a member or a set of people that have at least some characteristics. (Surisno Hadi, 1984: 220)

2.      The Sample Of The Research

Sampling is a way to take an object of research that we are going to investigate and it consists of a certain number of individuals that represent the large number (Netra, 1974:23). In relation to the number of the sample, there are two possibilities or tendencies, which are commonly applied by a researcher. First, it may investigate, only a part, of the population in order to make easy and help the researcher in conducting a research (Arikunto, 1986:107)

The number of population in this study is more than a hundred; it is suggested take 10%-15%, or 20%-25% (Arikunto, 1986:107). This number is representative enough for the research. In this case, the writer could take 25% of the population of the study; it means that from 125 students the writer takes 30 students as a sample of the study.

C.    The Method Of Collecting Data

To obtain the data needed in this research, the researcher tries to investigate the object by applying “testing mode”. it means that the researcher deliver a test “using direct and indirect speech in writing”. it is aimed to collect the real data resources about the students in second  year students of MA Putri Nurul Hakim Kediri in using direct and indirect speech in writing. in this case, the students are demanded to write at least a hundred words by putting some kinds of direct and indirect speech in sentences. The students can write the paragraph based on the topics:

v  Telling about your friend to your sister or brother

v  Give the students other narrative story and the students have to identify direct and indirect speech from the story.

D.    The Method Of Analyzing Data

In problem of this research is about the students ability in using direct and indirect speech I writing. To know the difficulties the researcher can describe the data analytically. Relate to this research there are some procedures was suggested by Brown (1980: 167) as follows:

1.      Identifying the students’ ability in using direct and indirect speech in writing.

2.      Finding out the students’ problems. the analysis on the students ability can follow the following steps:

a.       giving score to the students answer

·         The students are demanded to use direct and indirect speech at least 10 direct and indirect speech in writing.

·         Each students correct use will be given score one(1)

b.      counting the students score

c.       counting the students score quantitatively. In the same explanation was suggested by Arikunto (1986: 134) said that after the data was collected the writer ma analyze it through quantitative and qualitative. to analyze  the data qualitatively can be done by describing words and sentences in paragraph. and to analyze the data quantitatively can be conducted by using scale (seven intervals) as standard values and also use the basic statistic formula, to find the mean score in using this following formula:

M=

Where:

M= the mean score of the students

ex= the total number of the students score

N= the total number of the students

           the scale (seven interval) used in this research is to classify the students score in each level, there are seven scales (intervals) as follows:

a.       9.6-10 is classified as excellent

b.      8.9-9.5 is classified as very good

c.       7.6-8.5 is classified as good

d.      6.6-7.5 is classified as fairly good

e.       5.6-6.5 is classified as fair

f.       3.6-5.5 is classified as poor

g.      0.0-3.5 is classified as very poor

 

CHAPTER IV

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

this chapter deals with the data analysis about the ability of the second year students of ma putrid nurul hakim Kediri in using direct and indirect speech in writing.

in analyzing the data, the researcher uses two techniques, namely; descriptive analysis and data analysis.

a.      Data Analysis

in conducting this research, the researcher uses two kinds of tests, there are objective test and writing test.

the objective test is meant to identify the direct and indirect speech in the short story. direct and indirect speech have been available 10 items in the test, and the students are asked to identify them properly.

writing test is intended to asked the students to write paragraph at least fifty words based on the topic given. the students are required to use direct and indirect speech properly. to score the students’ writing, the researcher uses the seven intervals as values standard. meanwhile the individual students’ score can be seen in appendix 1 and 2, the number and the percentage of the students can be seen in the tables. the following are seven intervals as the standard value of the students’ score, they are:

a.       9.6-10 is classified as excellent

b.      8.9-9.5 is classified as very good

c.       7.6-8.5 is classified as good

d.      6.6-7.5 is classified as fairly good

e.       5.6-6.5 is classified as fair

f.       3.6-5.5 is classified as poor

g.      0.0-3.5 is classified as very poor. (arikunto, 1986:120)

a.       data analysis on the students’ score in objective test

the first test consist of 10 items. to determine the score of each items, the writer firstly determined the score “ten” as the highest value. thus, “ten” score is got from the total numbers of item ten. so the score of ach item is one. the real score of the students was calculated by multiplying the score of each item (1) with the number of the students’ mean score,  then the researcher divides the students’ totel score with the total number of the students.

 the following table (table 1) present the students’ number and the students’ percentages in the first test.

The table 1 shows that 7 students got excellent, 3 students are very good, and 13 students got good, 5 students got fairly good and 2 students got poor score.

to obtain the students’ mean score, the writer can apply the formula as follows:

M=

the basic calculation above shows that the students’ mean score in the first test is 8.13 so the writer can classify that the second yaera students of ma putri nurul hakim Kediri in academic year 2008/2009.

the level of the students’ score into good. so the students are able to identify direct and indirect speech in short story.

b.      data analysis on the students’ score in writing test

writing test is consisting of 5 items, so the writer have determined the score of each items was 2 if the students could use direct and indirect speech in good structure and to obtain each students’ score similar with the calculation above. but the difference is the students should write or describe their own paragraph by applying direct and indirect speech.

to identify the students’ number and percentage of the students, he writer can present the table as follows:

         The basic calculation above shows that the means the students’ writing test 5.26 so it can be classified into the “poor” level. in both objective and writing test, writer can conclude that the second year students of ma putrid nurul hakim in academic year 2008/2009 are not able o use direct and indirect speech in writing because they found problem.

they could not construct he words into good sentence consisting of direct and indirect speech.

h.      Descriptive Analysis

this research is aimed to show whether the second year students of ma putrid nurul hakim kediri are able or not in  applying the direct and indirect speech in writing.

based on the data collected in which the writer collected two students’ mean score in items of the correct use of direct and indirect speech in writing. the first test is objective test; it is identify the direct and indirect speech in short story . in this case, the mean score in the first test is 8.13, the second test was to write paragraphs, the students were asked to write or describe at least 50 words by using direct and indirect speech. in this case, the data was collected 5.26 as the students’ mean score in writing paragraph in English.

to identify the two mean score of the students, the researcher uses the seven scales or seven intervals. and the students’ first mean score is within “third interval” (7.6-8.5) in the first test.

from the description above the researcher identifies that the second year students of ma putrid nurul hakim Kediri are not able to use direct and indirect speech in writing.

based on the data collected, the students’ mean score in the first test in which the students were asked to identify the direct speech and indirect speech in short story, and he second test they were asked to write paragraph by using direct and indirect speech properly. it was found there are far distance in term of mean score between the test.

therefore, related to the data collected, researcher can identify and make interpretation that the second year students of ma putrid nurul hakim Kediri in academic year 2008/2009 found a problem in using direct and indirect speech in writing. the students were difficult to arrange the words to make good sentences by using direct and indirect speech in writing paragraph.

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

A.    Conclusion

as stated in the previous chapter, te writer uses two kinds of test. the students were asked to identify the direct and indirect speech in short story and write the paragraph in English based on the topic given. the purpose of this assignment is to know whether the second year students of ma putrid nurul hakim Kediri in using direct and indirect speech in writing are able or not and to know whether they found a problem or not.

the most general conclusion can be drawn from the collected data is that the students scoe is two kinds of test are quite different.

in the first test, the mean score of the students in identifying direct and indirect speech in short story was 8.13 meanwhile, the second test shows that the students ‘ mean score in writing paragraph by using direct and indirect speech was 5.26. it means that the second year students of ma putrid nurul hakim Kediri are not able to use diret and indirect speech in writing. from the data collected the writer can identify that the students found a problem in using direct and indirect speech in writin.

their problem is they could not know or still get difficulty to arrange the words to make good sentences in paragraph.

based on the data collected,

B.     Suggestion

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Appendixes

Appendix1. The student’s individual raw score in identifying direct and indirect speech in short story.

Appendix2. The students individual score in writing paragraph

Appendix3.

·         Find out and write the direct and indirect speech in short story ( timun emas)

·         Tell your sister or brother about your friend’s experience at leats 5 direct and indirect speech.

Appendix4. The students answer sheet.