The Analysis of Students’ Difficulties in using English Affixation (A Study on English Literature Students Batch 2017 of University of Sumatera Utara)

Abstract

This research was conducted to find out the difficulties of English Literature students batch 2017 of University of Sumatera Utara in using English affixation and the most difficult kinds of affixes from the students‟ perspective. It was a qualitative descriptive research with 16 samples of students. This research aimed: 1) to know what the difficulties found by English Literature students batch 2017 of University of Sumatera Utara in using English affixation, 2) to explain what kinds of affix were considered difficult. The questionnaire aimed to know whether students could use affixation correctly or still had difficulty using it while the interview aimed to analyze the difficulties that students found and also to know deeper about kinds of affixes considered difficult to use. The result of research showed that students had difficulties in using English affixation so they used inappropriate affixes as the answer of exercise. The difficulties faced by students were; 1) Students were difficult to determine the kinds of prefixes and suffixes should be attached to the words and 2) The students had lack of vocabulary. After analyzing the difficulties, the most difficult kinds of affixes wre obtained such as following: 1) Negation prefixes such as dis- & un-, 2) quantity and locational prefixes such as multi- & inter-, and 3) prefixes pro- & anti-. These results were obtained from the percentage of exercise result and interview result of the students.