A comparison on the children aged three's and five performances in doing a sentence repetition test

, Noviani (2001) A comparison on the children aged three's and five performances in doing a sentence repetition test. Bachelor thesis, Petra Christian University.

Abstract

This study is a comparative study on children aged three?s and five`s performances in doing a sentence repetition test. The research focuses on children aged three and five, because by the age of three the child has been able to express something not only in the form of simple sentences but also in the form of complex and compound sentences, and at the age of five the child has acquired simple, complex, and compound sentences. The test in this study is used to see the children?s competence in repeating sentences, of which the patterns they have already known and used in their utterances. This research wants to find out the kind of repetition the child would say in applying the model sentences and the kinds of changes that the children make in their repetition of the model sentence. Then, the differences and similarities between the two children in repeating sentences in the sentence repetition test are identified. The theories and study that are used in this study are the theory of first language acquisition from Lightbown (1993), Yule?s theory on the developmental stage of children syntactic acquisition (1996), Brown?s theory on language testing (1994), a sample of a sentence repetition test from Weir`s theory (1993), theory on standard Indonesian grammar, and Dardjowidjojo?s study on Indonesian children language acquisition (2000). The research uses a sentence repetition test, which is made in Indonesian by the writer based on Indonesian structure considering the children?s structure system and vocabulary, as the instrument for collecting data from two subjects, a three-year-old child and a five-year-old child. In the test, the children are required to repeat twenty-four sentences, which consist of various types: declarative, imperative, interrogative, and negative sentences, also of various lengths and complexity: simple, complex, and compound sentences. They have to repeat each sentence exactly as it is heard once, and it is recorded once on a tape. The result of the data analysis shows that both of them repeat the simple sentences well and make changes to some complex and compound sentences. Besides making changes of addition, deletion, substitution, and re-arrangement, they also make pattern changes to some sentences and change the meaning of the sentence in which they make changes. Their differences are particularly on the lexical items that are changed. Finally, it is concluded that the performances in repeating sentences of a three-year-old child and a five-year-old child in this study is more or less the same, as there are only insignificant differences between the children in repeating sentences on the sentence repetition test.

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