A STUDY OF ENGINEERING STUDENT’S ABILITY IN UNDERSTANDING PARTS OF SPEECH AT STTIND PADANG

ABSTRACT


INTRODUCTION
In English there are four skills that should be mastered by student, they are Speaking, listening, reading and writing. The other English skill that also important is Grammar. So, to mastering English, we should study grammatical structure. According to Harris (1969), grammar is one of the very important elements that helps learner to learn more about the given language. Studying grammar is not the aim of teaching English. Grammar subject is just one of the language elements in English that need to be mastered to reach out the object, namely English acquisition and function of communication. Hall (1993) explain that words have traditionally been classified into parts of speech. Then, Brooks (1963) said that after making a sense about the basic patterns, it is necessary to classify word to the role play in the stream of speech. He makes for classes; things, action, quality and function words. So that Hall (1993) mention mentioned nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs as the largest groups of speech. In addition, Vivian (1991) said that Grammar is concerned with labelling sentences with part of speech. Part of speech is traditional term to describe the different word that are used to form sentences, such as noun, verb, adjective, pronoun, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection (Richard 1992). So, it is necessary for students in learning English to understand the function of word in sentences. Dealing with that statement, the writer assumes that grammar and part of speech cannot be separated in teaching and learning English. A qualitative study investigating the part of speech in TED-Talk video was undertaken by Ulfah and Hidayat (2020). Some highlighted points were revealed. First, the modal verb used by the speakers during the talk made them closer emotionally to the audience. Another study was done by Mardhatillah (2020). She analyzed the students' writing ability toward parts of speech that were used in writing a descriptive text. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs were investigated in this research. The results display that the use of adverbs was the most difficult parts of speech in which no student used it correctly in their writing. Additionally, students' difficulty in understanding and using appropriate part of speech has been explored by Lestari (2020). The objective of this study was to analyze Thai students' understanding of parts of speech. Besides, the possible factors that caused the students' difficulty were also examined. From the finding, it was found that preposition was the hardest one to master. Some factors were found to be contributed to students' difficulty. The factors were lack of vocabulary and the use of several languages simultaneously. Based on the previous research, it is formulated by the students' ability in understanding Part of Speech on the written test. After explaining the material and taking the test, the researcher takes the result of their ability namely based on the value of them is poor. It means that after teaching them about Part of Speech, they still have the difficulties in analyzing it. So, based on the phenomena above, the researcher tries to analyze their ability by testing them. Based on the description above, the researcher tries to conduct research entitled "A Study of Engineering Student's Ability in Understanding Parts of Speech at STTIND Padang".

RESEARCH AND METHOD
This qualitative research aimed to examine Engineering students' understanding of part of speech. 40 Engineering students that consist of four majors: mining engineering, industry engineering, information system and environmental engineering students were the subject of this research. The researcher took 10 students for each major. The participants have been informed beforehand and agreed to take part. Moreover, the instruments used in this research were the specific English test about the use of parts of speech. The test was used to investigate closely on how students' understanding of parts of speech could ease them in constructing a sentence. There were 8 parts of speech investigated; noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection. The test consisted of two parts; identify the part of speech of the italic word in the sentence and classifying the word to appropriate categories of part of speech.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Research finding 1: identify the part of speech of the italic word in the sentence 1. He went to the market but did not buy new books. _________ 2. She eats apples in the morning every day. _________ 3. A rich lady bought a beautiful necklace. __________ 4. The cat is sitting under the chair. ___________ 5. Horray!! I have passed the examination. ___________ 6. Tom went to the market to buy books. _____________ 7. When he was sitting on the grass, a snake bit him. ____________ 8. The body of the cage is made of iron. __________ 9. He frequently goes to the beach. ___________ 10. The flower smell sweets. ___________ These are the ten sentences that given to the participants to identify part of speech. Based on the sentences, the results obtained can bee seen in the diagram below.
Based on the diagram above, the students' understanding in classifying words into the correct parts of speech can be described. The researcher listed the explanation from the bottom to the top: 1) First, in identifying adverb, there were only 40% (16 participants) of words that could be classified as adverbs by the participants correctly. It took first position of the eight parts categorized incorrectly most. It was assumed that the students still do not really know all types of adverbs yet. 2) Second, in Identifying conjunction and preposition, there were same percentage; 50% (20 participants). Conjunction and preposition were a part of speech that the students mostly categorized them inappropriately. It might happen because the students are still not familiar with all kind s of preposition and conjunction.
3) The third position that more half of the participants answer correctly was Noun. There are 60 % (24 participants) of them identified accurately. The students' understanding in classifying nouns better than their understanding of adverb, conjunction and preposition. It was presumed that the students have been familiar with types of nouns. 4) Next category part of speech is Pronoun. There were 70 % (28 participants) identify correctly. This finding resembled with the finding of the students' understanding in classifying correct pronouns. Although, it was regarded that the students might have been good enough in identifying any nouns, there were some students that still had difficulties to categorize them.
Series 1 0 50 100 Parts of speech 5) Then, adjectives and verb classification. Based on the chart, it was assumed that adjectives and verbs were a part of speech easily identified by the students. There were 80% (32 participants) of adjectives and verb that the students could classify appropriately. It means that most of the students have already been able to categorize words functioned as adjectives and verbs. 6) Last, the winner was Interjection. Almost all student identified this item correctly. 90% (36 participants) answer the test correctly. It means interjection easy to understand by them. Classifying above was the second test. Based on the result of the test here, almost all participants get the perfect score. There are two words "brushed" and "thankful" that failed to identify by some participants. It can be concluded that, this classifying test is easy to understand than identify the italic word in a sentence.

CONCLUSION
After collecting the data with one instrument and two kinds of test, it can be concluded that the students' understanding on parts of speech really influences and contribute them in classifying a word in to the table and also identifying the word in a sentence. The research findings will be beneficial especially for Engineering students and lecturers. The findings can inform and remind the students the essential role of parts of speech for their English competence. The results of the research are also helpful for English lecturers to find the appropriate approaches, strategies and media to teach parts of speech at their classes. It is a good idea for the next researchers to investigate the crucial problems that still become obstacles for the students in understanding parts of speech.