A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN USING PUNCTUATIONS AND CAPITALIZATION IN THE RECOUNT TEXT AT SMPN 1 PAKUSARI IN THE 2014/2015 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abstract

A Descriptive Study of the Eighth Grade Students’ Ability in Using Punctuation and Capitalization in the Recount Text at SMPN 1 Pakusari in the 2014/2015 Academic Year; Primahapsari Amalia Rahmanti; 2009: 30 pages: English Education Program, Language and Arts Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education. Jember University.

Writing is a means of communication whereby writers transmit their ideas and their knowledge to the readers. The function may be to amuse, to inform, to persuade, to guide and to enlighten its readers. Using punctuation and capitalization is very important in written form because it will make the readers understand the writers mean. From the result of the interview with the English teacher of SMPN 1 Pakusari, it was known that most students are still confused in using of capitalization and punctuations marks in the sentences, especially full stop, commas, and quotation marks to compose a good paragraph. It is also supported by the English teacher’s statement that there are no special exercises for these language aspects in the English text book. However, the punctuations and capitalization are taught implicitly through writing activities. The kinds of punctuations that are commonly used in the recount writing are full stop ( . ), comma ( , ) and quotation marks (“…”). For capitalization, they are usually asked to change the letter of sentence that is needed to be capitalized. The research area was conducted in SMPN 1 Pakusari. The respondents in this reserach were taken from the eighth grade students of SMPN 1 Pakusari. Cluster random sampling is defined to choose the research respondents. In the students’ test, there was one text which had different numbers of capitalization and punctuations. The text consisted of (54 capitalization), (27 full stop), (17 commas), (2 quotation marks). So, the total items of the whole text was 100. The score of the correct answer was 1 point. Thus, the total score of the test was 100 points. The test was done in 75 minutes. The collected data from the students’ writing test were analyzed by using Ali’s formula. From the data of the students’ punctuations and capitalization test, it showed that the students who were in the category of poor was 8.57% respondents, in the category of good was 28.57% respondents, in the category of excellent was 8.57% and in the category of fair was 54.28% respondents. Therefore, the students still experienced difficulties in using punctuations and capitalization in sentence writing. According to the teacher, the students mostly had problems in using punctuations and capitalization. In writing, they did not to use punctuation and capitalization properly when they wrote sentences or a paragraph or while they were reading the English text. Actually, the students need to be encouraged all the time to use the punctuations and capitalization properly.