This chapter covers background of
the study, problems of the study, objectives of the study, significance of the
study, scope and limitation of the study and definition of the key terms.
1.1Background of the
Study English is one of the languages with non-shallow orthography. It means
that there is no close to one-to-one correspondence between the letters and
sounds in the writing system. English, basically, has 26 letters in its
orthography, but those letters are pronounced through many ways or more than 26
ways as the letters exist. In English, one letter may be represented in various
sounds and one sound may come from different letter(s). For example, the words
go and do. They have the same letter o, but people should pronounce it (the
letter o) differently.
The word go should be pronounced as
/g /, while the
word do is pronounced as /du:/. Other examples are the words five and give.
Both have the same three letter sequences: ive, but those two words are
pronounced in different ways; the word five will be pronounced as /faıv/ and
the word give will be pronounced as /giv/.
Those examples describe that, in
English, there are some words with the same letters, but those words are
pronounced differently.
Thus, some English words are also
represented in different letter sequence, but they are similar in the way of
pronunciation, such as the words then and gone which result the same end sound
n although the letter of the first word is n and theletter of
the second word is ne. In addition, the words knee and need are different in
their beginning letters, but they are same in the pronunciation: the word need
is pronounced as /ni:d/ and the word knee is pronounced as /ni:/. It means that
the sound n comes from the letter n of the word need and from the letters kn of
the word knee. That is why English is called as an inconsistence language and
there is no close to one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds in
English orthography.
Spelling, then, becomes an important
component of language. Although there is no direct and automatic connection,
people’s spelling skill reflects their pronunciation accuracy, writing
competence, reading skill and also capability of expressing idea into written
form. Halliday (1985: 37) states that spelling is undeniably important. It can
(though rarely do) make the difference between an intelligible and
unintelligible message.
Further evidence from Atkins and
Tierney’s (2004) research shows that people’ ability in spelling is reflected
in their reading skill. They found that individual with reading difficulties
have difficulty in recalling sequence of letters and numbers when represented
in an auditory-verbal format. It means that reading difficulties relate to
spelling difficulties, recalling sequences of letters and numbers.
However, the important reason for
correct spelling is to have clear communication. When we write, we attempt to
set out ideas accurately for someone to read. Although the reader may detect
the idea, he or she can be disconcerted by misspelled words and the result is
that the idea cannot beexpressed perfectly and the reader may
not catch the idea correctly. Smedley (1983: 16) views that accurate spelling
may be one manifestation of a general proficiency in language.Moreover,
Waldhorn and Zeiger emphazised the impotance of spelling by stating that weak
spellers lose prestige socially and professionally. They may be intelligent and
even educated, but their errors in spelling cause others (often erroneously) to
consider them a trifle backward (1981: 99) .
But, actually, in producing
language, some people cannot produce the language components correctly and
perfectly including producing correct spelling.
Some people may be able to spell
words correctly, but others may face some difficulties in spelling.
English spelling, however, is not a
simple case, because English has many words, which all cannot be guided by the
English spelling rules. And, learning English, especially English as a foreign
language, is not an easy task. Report of the OECD-CERI Learning Science and
Brain Research project (online, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/54/39/35562310.pdf)
has revealed statistical data which point out that English children show the
lowest percentage of correct word reading on a scale in comparison to other
European countries, with only 30%— 40% correct words compared to German, Greek
and Fannish, with close to 100%.
That report indicates implicitly
that English with its inconsistence spelling system instead of having spelling
rule are not easy to be learned.
Whereas, when someone misspells
certain words, he or she may not pronounce the word correctly in speaking and
also may face difficulties in writingbecause of taking an
inappropriate letters to form a word. It means that, he or she—as stated
above—will lack an important component and will reflect several skills and
language competences, that is spelling.
Further, if people show words with
their correct spelling, especially in written form, content of the message will
be delivered completely correct by the readers. The readers do not need to make
some possible meanings of written words. As Smedley (1983: 7) illustrated: “It
is true that, if I write ‘practice’ instead of ‘practise’, you may not even
notice the error, let alone find your reading impeded. And if I write ‘eny
diparcher truen the kurekt werdz’, you make out my meaning easily enough, but
very likely you had to pause and puzzle out my intention.” The researcher,
however, thinks that spelling research is not only an interesting case but also
it is important to be discussed, because the research findings will be hoped
useful to overcome the misspelling happened. Therefore, for people whose
misspelling will have manifestation of a general proficiency in language,
spelling.
In this study, the researcher takes
the seventh grade students as the subject of the research. Specifically, the
researcher focuses on the seventh grade students of SMPN 13 of because the researcher has found some
misspelled words made by the students in her preliminary observation. The
students have written those misspelled words when they had been writing task
entitled Profession. The students apparently misspell common English words,
such as family becomes familli, system becomes sistem, usually becomes
ussually, get up becomes get apand the others. Further, the
researcher is challenged to investigate deeper the misspelled English words and
to look for the causes of misspelling in order to be able to overcome and
decrease the misspelling happened. Then, the students can have a good spelling.
Misspelling, basically, can be
analyzed from some aspects and perspectives. It can be analyzed by
morphological, phonological, psycholinguistic and discourse aspects and
perspectives.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar