An Analysis of Students’ Ability in Identifying Independent and Dependent Clauses in the Sentences.

This research elaborates the students’ ability in identifying independent and dependent clauses in the sentences at the fourth semester of English Department students of Fakultas Tarbiyah dan Keguruan Universitas Islam Negeri Ar-Raniry Banda Aceh. The purpose of this research was to measure the students’ ability in identifying independent and dependent clauses in the sentences and their difficulties in identifying them. The participants for this research were students of unit 7 of fourth semester of English Department. The research method used in this research was mixed method and the data were collected through test and interview. The result of this research showed that 13 or 52% of students got poor scores (0-49), 8 or 32% of students got fair scores (50-59), 3 or 12% of students got good scores (60-71) and, 1 or 4% of students got very good score (72-85). In other words, more than half of the numbers of the students have poor ability in identifying independent and dependent clauses in the sentences. The result of interview showed that some students found difficulties in identifying independent clause and dependent clause, such as in determining the types of clauses, and identifying mistakes of coordinate conjunction and subordinate conjunction in the clauses.