SUBJECT VERB AGREEMENT USED IN DESCRIPTIVE TEXT WRITTEN BY THE SECOND GRADE STUDENTS AT SMAN 1 POCO RANAKA IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2017/2018
MARIA FATIMA JEMA
NPM: 14.31.2071 English Study Program of STKIP St.Paul Ruteng
ABSTRACT
Maria Fatima Jema. 2018. Subject Verb Agreement Used in Descriptive Text Written by the Second Grade Students at SMAN 1 Poco Ranaka in the Academic Year 2017/2018. Thesis Writing. Under Graduate Program of Education STKIP. Santu Paulus, Advisor I: Stanislaus Guna, M. Pd. Advisor II:Fransiskus Jemadi, M.Pd.
This research was aimed at investigating and analyzing subject verb agreement used in descriptive text written by the second grade students at SMAN 1 Poco Ranaka in the academic year 2017/2018. The eleven basic principles of subject verb agreement proposed by Shaw were used in analyzing the use of subject verb agreement from the students’ sentences.
This research used descriptive qualitative research. The researcher did some steps in collecting the data. They were; the first, the researcher provided two different pictures of famous persons. Next, the students chose one of the pictures then wrote a description about the picture they had chosen. The researcher then selected and identified the data she needed for her writing, dealing with subject verb agreement. The total data the researcher analyzed were 157 data.
From these 157 data, there were 94 data used subject verb agreement appropriately and 63 data used subject verb agreement inappropriately. The researcher only found seven basic principles of subject verb agreement from students’ sentences, they were; first, number of subject was agreed by verb followed it. Second, words or phrases that came between subject and verb were ignored their presence in term of agreement. Third, the presence of predicate noun was not agreed by verb. Fourth, there and here were not subjects. Fifth, singular pronoun used singular verb. Sixth, subjects that were plural in form and indicated quantity or number, when the subject was regarded as a unit used singular verb. Seventh, two or more subjects that were connected by and used plural verb. Other basic principles, such as, first, collective noun could used singular and plural verb, depending on the subject’s meaning. Second, nouns that were plural in form but singular in meaning used singular verb. Third, singular verb was used for singular subject that was connected by either/or, neither/nor and or/nor but if the subject that was joined by either/or, neither/nor and or/nor differed in number, verb agreed with the nearer subject. Fourth, singular or plural verb could be used in relative pronoun, depending on the antecedent of pronoun were not used because the researcher did not find any data to be analyzed by these basic principles. The researcher then concluded that some students used subject verb agreement appropriately and some students used subject verb agreement inappropriately.
Key Words: Subject verb agreement, Descriptive text.