The Development of Grammatical Morpheme and Syntactic Construction in Writing of an Indonesian Child in Jakarta

dra. rahmiati,m.psi.; dr. santi c. djonhar, ma; ujang suparman, ma, ph.d;

The objectives of this study were to analyze the development of grammatical morpheme (the regular plural marker-s, and the regular past tense marker-ed) in written and to analyze the development of syntactic construction (conjoined-clause and) in written of an Indonesian child who learnt English as Foreign Language in Sekolah Highschope Indonesia - Alfa Indah Unit, Jakarta. This research was qualitative research and it was a longitudinal study whereas the data was collected from the child's portfolio (the collection of the child's written work) in 3 years (July 2005 - June 2008) when the subject was 5 until 8 years old. The finding of the study indicated that the process of acquisition of the subject closely followed the universal principles of language acquisition: the order of the acquisition of some grammatical morpheme (the regular plural marker -s, and the regular past tense marker -ed) was similar of that of English children and the development of syntactic construction (conjoined-clause and) even it was not totally the same with English children, it was somehow followed the universal principal of language acquisition. By exposures and practices given, the acquisition of English as Foreign Language could be the same or almost the same as second language or even first language.