DRAFT OF THESIS

Name : Apriady Ramadanu

Reg. Number : 20401107025

Title : “Improving Grammar Mastery by Using Concept

Attainment Model at the third Year Students of SMA
Negeri 1 Sungguminasa Kabupaten Gowa”.
A. Background

The process of teaching learning aims at transmission of knowledge imparting skills and

formulation of attitudes, values and behaviour. Teaching is a complex activity, which is a cluster

of different roles and responsibilities. A teacher has to master multiple roles in order to become

more professional. The professional competence can be expanded in two ways: first by

increasing the range of teaching strategies that are needed to be employed; second by becoming

increasingly skillful in the case of these strategies (Joyce and Weil, 1972). The purpose of

teaching is to maximize learning. (Gagne, 1963)

Bruner (1972) emphasized four major features of theory of instruction in effective

teaching :

1. Predisposition towards learning

2. Structural body of knowledge

3. Sequences of material to be learnt

4. The nature and paring of reward and punishment.

It means that a theory of instruction in teaching is concerned with how what one wishes

to teach can best be learnt, with improving rather than describing teaching. It is true that teaching
is a process by which teacher and students create a shared environment including sets of values

and beliefs, which in turn colour their view of reality.

Language is the gateway of knowledge. In order to equip ourselves with knowledge, we

have to learn a language first. A person, who has command over many languages, is really more

educated and wiser than the rest of his fellowmen.

Language teaching aims at improving the communication skills of pupil. Language is

now recognized as something alive, changing and evolving along with culture. So the language

we teach must be well suited for communication – oral and written. When the language is

learned, the branches of knowledge lie open before the pupil. Thus the effectiveness of today’s

education depends on the efficiency of the pupil to use the language. One of the important thing

in language is grammar. In communication, especially in written communication, people should

aware of grammar. Without grammar, people is difficult to express language in written way.

Nowadays, students who study about English tend to difficult to master and comprehend

English grammar. It may be caused by the process of teaching grammar which is not suitable for

students. Teaching Grammar is often confusing. Instead of focusing attention on the basic

grammatical forms of language, the enterprise gets drowned in pedantic "metalanguage". Often

grammar teaching makes matters worse. Grammar must be presented in larger areas than is usual

and be supported by creative open ended material which is still grammar focused.(Online)

Models of Teaching have an important place in language teaching. Joyce and Weil (1972)

developed more than 20 models for achieving specific instructional goals and classified them

into 4 families of which information processing strategies provide an effective means of

knowledge in the schools. One of the important strategies in this family is Concept Attainment

Model, which is designed to teach concepts in an effective way. It emphasizes on the

development of both process skills and knowledge of the concept, which serve as the means to

the development of the intellectual skills in students.

Concept attainment, is largely based on the works of the cognitive psychologist Jerome

Bruner. Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin (1967) defined concept attainment (or concept learning) as

"the search for and listing of attributes that can be used to distinguish exemplars from non

exemplars of various categories." More simply put, concepts are the mental categories that help

us classify objects, events, or ideas and each object, event, or idea has a set of common relevant

features. Thus, concept learning is a strategy which requires a learner to compare and contrast

groups or categories that contain concept-relevant features with groups or categories that do not

contain concept-relevant features.

Concept Attainment is an indirect instructional strategy that uses a structured inquiry

process. In concept attainment, students figure out the attributes of a group or category that has

already been formed by the teacher. To do so, students compare and contrast examples that

contain the attributes of the concept with examples that do not contain those attributes. They then

separate them into two groups. Concept attainment, then, is the search for and identification of

attributes that can be used to distinguish examples of a given group or category from non-

examples.

Concept attainment also refers to a learning task in which a human or machine learner is

trained to classify objects by being shown a set of example objects along with their class labels.

The learner will simplify what has been observed in an example. This simplified version of what

has been learned will then be applied to future examples. Concept learning ranges in simplicity

and complexity because learning takes place over many areas. When a concept is more difficult,

it will be less likely that the learner will be able to simplify, and therefore they will be less likely
to learn. Colloquially, this task is known as learning from examples. Most theories of concept

learning are based on the storage of exemplars and avoid summarization or overt abstraction of

any kind.

After understanding and learning more about the some researchers’ views as the writer

assumes that Concept Attainment Model can be applied in teaching grammar. Because grammar

material contains concept that will be taught to the student. Besides grammar also contains the

rules and the examples about the rules which will be understood easily if they are taught by using

concept model. So, grammar material needs a good and comfortable way of teaching. So, to

solve the problems is the teacher should get time to understand their students and give the

suitable strategy/method in teaching grammar.

B. Problem Statements

Related to the background previous, the researcher formulates research questions as

follows:

1. How is the students’ mastery in grammar before using Concept Attainment Model?

2. How is the students’ mastery in grammar after using Concept Attainment Model?

3. How effective is Concept Attainment model in improving the students’ mastery in

grammar?

C. Objective of the Research

Based on the research questions above, there are any objectives which are hoped to be

achieved as follow:

1. To find out the students’ mastery in grammar before using Concept Attainment

Model.
 2. To find out the students’ mastery in grammar after using Concept Attainment

Model.

3. To find out the effectiveness of Concept Attainment Model when it is applied in

teaching grammar

. D. Significance of the Research

The research is restricted to the application of Concept Attainment Model in order to

improve students’ mastery in grammar to the third year students of SMA Negeri 1 Sungguminasa

Kabupaten Gowa.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bruner, Jerome; Goodnow, Jacqualine; and Austine, George (1967). The study of thinking. N.J.:
Science edition, Inc. Pdf

Joyce, Bruce and Weil, Marsha (1997). Models of teaching. New Delhi: prentice- hall of India.

Sprinthall, Norman A; and Richard C.Sprinthall.1990.Educational Psychology. New York:

McGRAW-Hill International Editions.

Wikipedia Retrieved on October 16th, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_learning

What is Concept Attainment Retrieved on October 16th, 2010, from

http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/de/pd/instr/strats/cattain/index.html