USING PARAGRAPH ANALYSIS IN TEACHING GRAMMAR

This experimental study assessed the effectiveness of using paragraph analysis in teaching grammar, especially in improving students’ knowledge and comprehension. In implementing this strategy students were asked to analyze every sentences in a paragraph where in every paragraph has misused of tenses and verb. During the process, the class activity mostly was in form of discussion. First activity was reading the text. Then, the students were asked to identify the tense of every sentences in the paragraph and analyzed whether or not there was a mistake in every sentences. The next step was students discuss in a group and reconstructed the inappropriate sentences. Before giving treatment to the students, they were given initial test. Then, at the end of the research the students were given final test. Both of the result of the tests were calculated by using t-test. Level of significant applied is 95% or 0.005. The calculation result was 0.004 which means there was a significant difference before implementing paragraph analysis and after the treatment.


INTRODUCTION
Learning English requires students to learn grammar.Students must master the grammar to have a better skill in this language.The importance of having ability in grammar due to the central role of grammar in learning a language, especially for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students.Furthermore, in learning English the students are required to have ability in Reading, Speaking, Listening and Writing.These skills will be better acquired if they have good knowledge on grammar.
Grammar plays an important role in a language.Through grammar mastery students can learn other skills better (Debata, 2013).Besides, grammar can ensure the accuracy of using a language.For the purpose of communication, grammar is not only playing an important part of constructing a sentence, but it also helping people to understand the meaning of sentences being uttered (Alhaysony & Alhaisoni, 2017).This explanation implies explicitly that without a correct use of grammar in communication may result in misunderstanding between the two speakers.
Furthermore, although knowledge of words may help in communication, without knowledge of grammar will be difficult for someone to arrange a sentence and set up the message to be delivered (Wang, 2010).This statement identifies how central the role of grammar in communication.However, the good knowledge of grammar does not guarantee that someone will have good skill in communication.Many people can still have ability in speaking without having perfect knowledge of grammar but the communication will be smoothly run with a perfect knowledge of grammar (Alhaysony & Alhaisoni, 2017).
In conclusion, learning a language skills cannot be separated from learning grammar of the language.Although communication can run fluently without having knowledge of grammar, the communication will be much more effective and smooth if people have conscious knowledge of grammar.For students, communication is not only in form of oral communication.They also need to be able to communicate in written form.Both of these ways of communication must use appropriate and correct grammar to avoid misunderstanding.That is why teaching grammar is a must in language classes.
Although it has been discussed the importance of grammar in communication, students still assume grammar is not important and not interesting.Grammar has been judged by most of students as a subject that is not interesting to study while the teachers of grammar are assumed to just identify the misuse of grammar whether in the students' writing or speaking (Al-Mekhlafi & Nagaratnam, 2011).This perception might be caused by ways of teachers in teaching grammar where mostly presented in form of lecturing and quizzing.Even more, some teachers think that teaching grammar is already left behind or old fashioned (Wang, 2010).Furthermore, students also think that learning grammar is boring although it is important and necessary to study (Jean & Simard, 2011).Since teaching grammar mostly conducted through pattern formula and doing exercise, students will easily get bored to study it.The communication process in the class also mostly one way communication where teacher explain the pattern and formula of the grammar while students listen carefully and take a note.
The situation is getting worse when the students get difficulties in practice the grammar especially in rule and implementation of the rules in communication (Al-Mekhlafi & Nagaratnam, 2011).
The perception above has triggered researchers to search for a better way of teaching grammar.Recent research have been conducted related to the current methods of teaching grammar, namely deductive and inductive method (Nur, 2020;Sik, 2015;Alzu'bi, 2015), Corrective feedback (Shintani & Aubrey, 2016), interactive method (Matkasimova & Makhmudov, 2020) and many other research.The aim of these research is to search for an effective and interesting way of teaching grammar.This research is also aimed at finding an effective and interesting ways of teaching grammar.In this research, the method that will be used is paragraph analysis in learning grammar.Paragraph consists of several related sentences that discuss one topic (Oshima and Hogue, 2006;McWhorter, 2014).This definition may lead to emphasis that in one paragraph consists more than one sentence that are related to each other.It means that every sentences must be correctly written, in other words sentences in one paragraph must be grammatically correct especially the core part of the sentence.
It is very important to understand the core part of every sentence in a paragraph to get a thorough understanding of the paragraph.The core part of a sentence consists of Subject and Predicate which is very important in one sentence because it conveys a complete thought (McWhorter, 1998).Subject consists of noun or pronoun while predicate consists of verb, auxiliary, and to be.It is assumed that students who understand well the core part of a sentence will be eased to understand the sentence and the paragraph as a whole.
Furthermore, since a paragraph also has context that will guide readers to understand it, using paragraph analysis in teaching grammar is expected to be challenging and interesting and at the same time will increase the students' awareness of any mistakes in every sentences.This strategy is assumed to be able to increase students' understanding of using appropriate present and past tense.
The learning process will be mostly conducted through group discussion.It is believed that the interaction among students in group discussion will motivate the students in learning and give positive impact to the result of the study (Schellens & Valcke, 2005).The phases that the students will follow are Reading, Analyzing, Discussing and Constructing (RADC).
This research aims at providing teacher alternative of the strategy of teaching grammar to students.In addition, through this research students are expected to be more aware of any misuse of verb form and tenses in their writing of sentences.

METHOD
The design of this research was experimental research that was conducted at English Department of UMMY Solok.The population was the second year students consisted of 14 students.Therefore the sample used was total sampling.Before the experiment conducted, the student was given pretest to know the initial understanding of the students about present and past tense.After getting students' score on both present and past tense, the paragraph analysis was implemented.There were 6 meetings of paragraph analysis implementation.Three meetings were for present tense and the other 3 meetings for past tense.The phases of paragraph analysis is Reading, Analyzing, Discussing and Constructing (RADC).
At the beginning of the class students were encouraged to read the several paragraphs.
After reading each paragraphs they were asked to underline each sentences that was in form of present and past tense.In every paragraphs, there were some sentences that were not in appropriate form of tense and not correctly used the verb.Students should know the tenses of every sentences in a paragraph and identify the misuse of the verb.The next step was students discussed the result of their analysis in group.They checked and rechecked their friends' work.The last phase was students constructed sentences.They wrote the present and past tense sentences and had peer checked and recheck.Lecturer as facilitator check and corrected the students' sentences.
After implementing the paragraph analysis, at the seventh meeting students were given posttest.The test was multiple choice test where the items of present tense and past tense randomly placed.The result of the test was calculated to see the normality and hypothesis testing.In analyzing the data, the researcher used SPSS 10.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
After giving pretest and posttest to the students, the result of the tests were calculated to measure the normality of the data.The calculation was done by using SPSS and the result is as follows: The confidence interval percentage used in this test was 95%.It means that the significance score reference was 0.005.The data will be assumed to be distributed normally if the significance score is bigger than 0.005 vice versa.Based on the data calculated on the table above, it can be seen that the normality score for pretest is 0.200 and posttest is 0.097.
Both of these scores are bigger than 0,005 which means that both the data were distributed normally.
To know whether or not the use of paragraph analysis in teaching grammar result better achievement on students' ability, then the t-test was administered.The result of t-test calculation is as follows: Data on the table above shows that significance 2-tailed score is 0.004.This result indicates that H1 is accepted and H0 is rejected because the significance score is less than 0.005.Therefore, it can be concluded that there was a different result achieved by the students after being taught through the implementation of paragraph analysis.
It has been explained previously that in the teaching process students were encouraged to analyze every sentences in a paragraph.The students should know the tenses used in the paragraph and find out whether or not the use of tenses were already correct.The focus of the analysis was on the use of verb form, verb in present or past tense.
Analysis of verb form is needed because most of the students' problem in constructing sentences is on the use of verb.Novita (2014) finds that frequent errors made by students in learning English are the use of verb and tense.Maharani (2017) also finds that the biggest problem of the students in learning grammar is on the providing correct verb forms.Ting et.al (2010) has also found in their study that students' error in grammatical commonly in form of misused present and past tense and also mix used of present and past tense.
This study has shown that the implementation of paragraph analysis may increase the students' capability in the use of verb forms.The students were aware with inappropriate use of verb forms and it helps them in constructing correct sentences.
Furthermore, this research also encourage students to learn grammar actively through discussion.The students have to discuss with their friends to answer the questions about what the tense of every sentences they read.By doing so, the students get better understanding and get more confident in deciding the tense of the sentence they read.This process then help students to construct sentences in form of present and past tense better.
From the finding we can see that this strategy of teaching grammar has given impact to the students' achievement.In general, the test result shows that there is improvement of the test result done by students.This means that this research has answered the first question about whether or not there is differences on students' achievement of in understanding present and past tense through the implementation of paragraph analysis.
Related to the question about how significant the paragraph analysis can affect the students' achievement, finding has shown that it improves the achievement significantly.The finding shows that the score for calculated t-test is 0.004 that is less than the standard score 0.005.
During the process of teaching, the implementation of paragraph analysis also affects the students' way of learning.This strategy of teaching grammar may encourage students to study more actively.Starting from the beginning of the activity, the students have been triggered to read and analyze sentences in a paragraph.After that they have to discuss with their friend to compare their result.They also discuss in a group to construct the correct form of sentences in the paragraph they analyze.This activity really help students to aware of any misuse of grammar in a sentence.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
The study examined improvement of students' mastery of present and past tense through the implementation of paragraph analysis.The strategy was started by distributing paragraphs to students where in each paragraph consisted of some grammatical error in form of tenses and misused of verb.
In this study, students were encourage to be aware of any incorrect use of tenses and verb.They have to be able to identify the inappropriate grammatical use in a paragraph and finally reconstruct the sentences.The data from the finding shows that this study is effective in improving the students' knowledge about present and past tense.Most of the students were able to identify and correct the incorrect use of present and past tense in a paragraph.
Nevertheless, as this study focused only to the use of present and past tense, it cannot figure out more about the other aspects of grammar.That is why further research about how to improve students ability in other aspects of grammar would be able to help students in improving their mastery of grammar better.