THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USING GESTURE TO IMPROVE THE STUDENTS’ MASTERY OF PRESENT CONTINUOUS TENSE AT THE SEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS IN SMP N 31 PURWOREJO IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2013/2014

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.