The Correlation between Students’ Mastery of Subject-Verb Agreement and Their Writing Ability of Recount Text
Abstract
Most of EFL learners consider that writing skill is difficult to master. This is because they have to pay attention to grammar and the coherence of the paragraph when writing a text. To write a recount text, EFL learners must understand the grammar rules to make a good writing. There are many materials that are taught and learned in grammar, such as tenses, subject-verb agreement, etc. Subject-verb agreement is a basic grammar that EFL learners should understand because conducting sentences, paragraphs, or essays require proper subject-verb agreement. However, in several studies, subject-verb agreement is found to be one of the most common errors in writing.
This study is aimed to discover whether there is a correlation between students’ mastery of subject-verb agreement and their writing ability in recount text. The sample of the study was 34 students of X MIPA 4 which was randomly selected from the tenth-grade students of SMAN 1 Manyar. This research used a quantitative correlational research design. There were two tests used in collecting the data for the research. The first test was subject-verb agreement mastery test that consisted of 30 items divided into 20 multiple choice and 10 fill in the blank. The second test was recount text writing test about historical event happened in the past. The results of the tests were analyzed using SPSS.
The finding of the research revealed that the correlation coefficient was 0.370, and Sig. value (2-tailed) was 0.031. The correlation coefficient 0.370 showed a positive result and indicated that relationship between students’ subject-verb agreement mastery and writing ability in recount text was weak. In addition, the significance value 0.031 was lower than level of significance 0.05 which can be inferred that there is a correlation in a weak level between students’ mastery of subject-verb agreement and their writing ability in recount text. It revealed that subject-verb agreement had less influence in students’ recount text writing ability. The result also showed that the level of most of students’ mastery of subject-verb agreement was insufficient. It was showed by the mean score of 47.03, and the percentage of most of the students who had insufficient level is 64.71% while the percentage of the students who had satisfactory level is 20.59%. The students who had above average level and below average level, each had a percentage of 5.88%, and 2.94% of the students had outstanding level.
Based on the findings, it is suggested to English teachers to apply any teaching method that is suitable to teach grammar and writing, since many of the students have errors in using subject-verb agreement in the form of past tense and deepen the students’ knowledge about grammar to create better writing. Moreover, the future researchers can conduct the same research using different text genres or using different types of recount text. The future researchers can conduct the research with larger samples and ensure that the instruments used is in accordance with the material being taught, so the result of the test will be more relevant and reliable.
Keywords: Correlation, Subject-Verb Agreement Mastery, Writing Ability, Recount Text