THE CENTRALITY OF LEXICAL CATEGORIES SUBJECT AND COMPLEMENT IN THE PROCESSING OF SIMPLE SENTENCES: A STUDY OF AUTOMATICITY AMONG JUNIORS OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, JEMBER UNIVERSITY

Abstract

„Automaticity‟ is a phenomenon that usually happens and it is mostly considered as a common thing. Some people believe that the automaticity of L2 learners represents a good competence (expert user) in L2 production. Although, sometimes L2 learners can make mistake or error in L2 production. On the other hand, some people have the automaticity that is completed with a good competence toward the L2. The way how they learn the L2 becomes one of the factors that establishes the automaticity level and their competence. Here, the researcher conceives that „automaticity‟ is a complex combination of thought especially in language learning process and it is observed through language production in written test. The goal of this study is to find out (i) the participants who succeed in using Be and Inf verb in simple sentence (ii) how the lexical categories affect the participants to decide the appropriate predicate (iii) how the learning process affects the predicate decision. This study uses quantitative and qualitative methods that show several charts and tables as the tabulation, and interpretation from the questionnaire. Here, the researcher organizes two instruments to collect the data ; cloze test and open-ended questionnaires. The researcher uses random sampling method because this research tries to observe the common probability of the participants‟ automaticity and competence in L2 production. In addition, the researcher also tries to find the relation betwen the participants‟ learning tendency (monotonous or various learning) and the participants‟ automaticity. The conclusion of this research shows that the participants tend to use Be rather than Inf verb. On the other hand, in the centrality factor, the data show that the dominant choice is „Both/Meaning‟. The data indicate that the participants choose „Both/Meaning‟ as the option because they do not understand the referential relation between subject and complement in the predicate decision. All of the participants answer the test automatically and it proves that automaticity is not only based on certain type of learning method but also it is based on various learning methods. The differences between those methods explicitly reveal that multi-learning in which the participants use various media and learning activities affects the participant in using various words. Meanwhile, the „drilling‟ or monotonous learning affects the participants to use Be as the consistent mapping. The participants‟ automaticity tends to move toward the over reliance of Be to connect „Subject‟ and „Complement‟ in simple sentence. Besides being relevant with its logical meaning of the output, this seems not to allow creativity to flourish.