Abstract:
As one of language in the world, English is considered and applied as
international language. One of the important aspects in studying English is
grammar. Grammar is important to learn because correct grammatical
sentences should be used to communicate with other people in order to make
the meaning clear, but in fact the students’ mastery in learning grammar is
low. It is caused by several factors. One of them is there are no tenses in
Indonesia language system. In this research, the researcher used gesture to
improve students’ mastery on present continuous tense.
The objectives of this research are basically to find out the answer of
the problem statements. Considering the problem statement, the objectives of
the study are: (1) To find out students’ mastery on Present Continuous Tenses
after being taught using gesture as teaching media. (2) To find out whether
the use of gesture is effective to improve students’ mastery on Present
Continuous Tense at the seventh grade of SMP N 31 Purworejo.
The design of the study was experimental quantitative research using
pre-test treatment and post-test. The time of the study was on 2nd, April 2014
up to 14th, April 2014 and the place of study in SMP N 31 Purworejo. The
population of the study was the first grade students of SMP N 31 Purworejo
in academic of 2013/2014. The number of the population was 160 students
divided into five classes, each class was 32 students. She took two classes (64
students), A class as experimental class and E class as control group. The
researcher uses simple random sampling as a way to take the sample. The
data analysis technique includes descriptive and inferential analysis. The
formula of t-test was applied to prove the hypothesis.
The result of test showed that the mean score of pre-test for experimental
group is 62, and the mean score of post-test is 83.38. Meanwhile, the mean
score of pre-test for control group is 54, and the mean score of post-test is
76.50. The hypothesis “Teaching Present Continuous Tense using gesture at
the first grade students of SMP 31 in academic year 2013/2014 Purworejo is
effective”, is accepted. It is shown by t-test is higher than t-table (2.99 >
1.99).
Based on the research finding, it can be concluded that there is
effectiveness of using gesture as a teaching-media to improve the students’
mastery of Present Continuous Tense. The teacher should be more active in
creating teaching learning process in order to make the students more active
and interesting in studying English.
