Syntactic Awareness of Early Childhood Aged 5-6: A Case of
Sentence Structure
Maghfira Zhafirni, Wawan Gunawan and Eri Kurniawan
Department of English Education, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia
Keywords: Syntactic Awareness, Active Sentence, Passive Sentence, Kindergarten Students, Flash Card.
Abstract: This study seeks to examine syntactic awareness in early childhood aged 5-6 by using word-order correction
task. The students were tested through two media; picture and flash card. The data used in the present study
were gathered from two kindergartens that consist of forty-five students in Bandung; Kindergarten A was
about 21 students and Kindergarten B was about 24 students. This study employs a quantitative approach and
was collected in two ways: 1) visual tasks that consist of identification and correction task, and 2) observation
during the execution by using recorders. The finding shows that syntactic awareness has emerged among
kindergarten students. However, since the task consists of active and passive sentence tasks, the finding shows
different results. In Kindergarten A, results in active sentence task are 78.9% students can identify wrong
sentences, and 78.17% students can correct the jumbled sentence. In passive sentence task, 80.9% students
can identify wrong sentences, and 55.9% students can correct the jumbled sentence. Meanwhile, in
Kindergarten B, results in active sentence task are 92,1% students can identify wrong sentences, and 57.9%
students can correct the jumbled sentence. In passive sentence task, 95.8% students can identify wrong
sentences, and 35.9% students can correct the jumbled sentence. Then, the total number of students that can
answer the test is 73.6% for Kindergarten A and 71.3% for Kindergarten B. Some of the students can identify
which sentence is wrong, but they confuse how to put the words into the right order. Those findings reveal
that: 1) Kindergarten A excels in syntactic awareness, but the score’s difference is not significant, that is only
2.3%, 2) Correction task is more difficult than identification task, and 3) Passive sentence is more difficult
than active sentence.
1 INTRODUCTION
The period in which children start to enter their first
formal school (kindergarten) is interesting to be
investigated. Kindergarten is expected to help
students develop potentials, such as language skill
(Nova, 2012). Language skill will help the children to
understand the words, sentences, and also the
relationship between spoken language and writing
(Karmila, 2012). Furthermore, language skill also
enables children to engage with other people and
learn from their surroundings and in the classroom.
By age five, children essentially master the sound
system and grammar of their language and acquire
thousands of words (Hoff, 2009). Hoff (2009) also
mentions that when children gradually master the
grammar of a language, they become able to produce
increasingly long and grammatically complete
utterances. It is because age five is a period of time
which a high-level of achievement is reached (Golden
Age).
According to Robertson (2017), the first five
years of children’s lives are the most important in
terms of Language Development. Therefore, it is
important for them to acquire reading or writing skill.
Among other areas of metalinguistic development,
syntactic awareness is relevant to the acquisition of
reading. Syntactic awareness refers to the child’s
ability to notice the internal grammatical structure of
sentences (Genc, 2013). Tunmer and Hoover (1992)
mentioned that syntactic awareness has been
facilitating reading development via a more direct
contribution to reading comprehension. However,
before children learn to read, they need to develop the
ability to speak, listen, and understand. Tasks that
measure syntactic awareness focus on the sentence
level and require the language used to reflect on and
Zhafirni, M., Gunawan, W. and Kurniawan, E.
Syntactic Awareness of Early Childhood Aged 5-6: A Case of Sentence Structure.
DOI: 10.5220/0007165102330238
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 233-238
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
233

manipulate the grammatical well-formedness and
syntactic structure of sentences (Bowey, 1986; Nagy
& Scott, 2000).
A number of studies regarding syntactic
awareness have been conducted in some fields. For
instance, in 2010, Davidson, Rasche, and Pervez
investigated 3–5 years old bilingual children. The
result shows that bilingual children aged 3 and 4 were
better at detecting grammatically incorrect sentences
than their monolingual peers. However, no significant
differences appeared in monolingual and bilingual
children’s ability to detect grammatically correct
sentences. Then, in Apel and Brimo (2015) were
examining the direct and indirect effects of syntactic
knowledge in a model of reading comprehension
among 9th and 10th-grade students. It shows that
syntactic awareness did not contribute significant
variance and they did not find an indirect effect of
syntactic awareness through syntactic knowledge on
reading comprehension.
Meanwhile, studies related to language
awareness, specifically on syntactic awareness of
Indonesian children is relatively small (Komara,
2016). In 2012, Impuni measured syntactic awareness
to children aged 5 by retelling the story. The result
shows that the children produced different complex
and compound sentences. Meanwhile, Komara
(2016) focused on assessing preschool students’
syntactic awareness through their ability to correct
and identify the sentences in the level of verbal
structures by using audiovisual. He found that even
though the children could produce or manipulate S-P-
O (SVO), some of them could not answer the same
sentence on jumbled ways.
The present study will examine the student in
active and passive sentence structure by using word
order and it will be tested through a flash card.
According to Tunmer (1987) in Nation and Snowling
(2000), syntactic awareness had been measured using
word order correction tasks in which the children get
a challenge to the scrambled sentence. Using word
order is beneficial for the student because it will train
their mental capacity and developmental abilities to
understand the logic and reasoning behind learning
the parts of the sentence (Young, 2017). Nation and
Snowling (2000) mention that for children, passive
sentences are harder than active sentences.
Meanwhile, in Indonesia, Dardjowidjojo (2005)
mentions that passive form in Bahasa Indonesia is
more dominant rather than active form so that
children are often heard passive form than active
form. Hence, Indonesian children able to produce
passive form much earlier rather than active form.
2 LITERARY REVIEW
2.1 Metalinguistic Awareness
Metalinguistic awareness has been defined as “the
ability to reflect upon and manipulate the structural
features of spoken language itself as an object of
thought.” (Tunmer & Herriman, 1984 as cited in
Hodson & Aikins, 2004). Metalinguistic awareness is
high level linguistic skills which requires three
aspects which are an ability to comprehend and
produce language in a communicative way, an ability
to separate language structure from communicative
intent, and an ability to use control processing to
perform mental operations on structural features of
language (Chaney, 1991 as cited in Genc, 2013).
Metalinguistic awareness covers morphological
awareness, syntactic awareness and phonological
awareness. Tunmer (1984) explains in detail that
metalinguistic is such a higher level of using
language. Its definition lies in language that describes
phoneme, morpheme, and syntax.
2.2 Syntactic Awareness
Syntactic awareness refers to the child’s ability to
notice internal grammatical structure of sentences
(Genc, 2013). It measures children to identify correct
and incorrect grammatical constructions (the
grammaticality judgment task). Although children are
unable to say a relevant rule structure, they may be
aware of the language systematicity. Syntactic
awareness may be the most promising candidate as an
additional measure of metalinguistic awareness and
that more research on this measure is needed
(McGuinness, 2005; Roth et al., 1996). Tunmer
(1987) adds that syntactic awareness will give the
child’s ability to reflect upon and to manipulate
aspects of the internal grammatical structure
sentences.
Syntactic awareness is a part of metalinguistic
skills. Cain (2007) mentions that because it concerns
with the ability to consider the structure rather than
the meaning sentence, it can aid students’ ability to
detect and correct word recognition errors. Moreover,
Bowey (1987) mentions that syntactic awareness may
be enhance their comprehension monitoring abilities.
According to Brimo and Apel (2017) syntactic
awareness is measured by conducting two tasks: (a) a
grammatical correction task, which required students
to correct an orally-presented sentence that contained
errors on subject-verb agreement and (b) a word-
order correction task, which required students to
rearrange words to create a grammatically correct
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
234

sentence. The parameters of syntactic awareness are
assessed through two paradigms (Davidson et al.,
2010) which are identification and correction. An
identification paradigm is used to identify a correct
grammar while a correction paradigm is used by
correcting ungrammatical sentences .
2.3 Syntactic structures in Bahasa
Indonesia
Syntax is a branch of linguistic that addresses the
internal structure of sentence (Manaf, 2009). Aprilia
(2014) also adds that syntax is also called sentence
science that describes the relationship between
elements of language to form a sentence. It focuses
on the discussion of phrases, clauses, sentences as
systemic unity. In this study, a phrase is the smallest
unit meanwhile sentence is the largest unit. Syntax
needs to be studied because it learns the sentence
form which is the smallest complete language unit.
Syntax relates to other language elements that are
related to the constituent elements, such as phoneme,
word, and so on.
English language has become a much studied by
students. However, the structure in English is
different with Bahasa Indonesia. First, the syntactic
pattern in Bahasa Indonesia generally consists of
subject (S), predicate (P), object (O), and adverb (K).
Second, Putrayasa (2015) mentions that Bahasa
Indonesia is still use a root-base language. He also
adds that it does not have any gender. As for example,
‘Dia suka membaca buku’ . The word dia doesn’t
refer to any man or woman. Meanwhile in English, it
is clear that it must be ‘he/she likes to read a book’.
Third, there are no articles in Bahasa Indonesia (a, an,
or the), however in Bahasa Indonesia the prefix se-
can act in similar manner such as sebuah or a piece.
In Bahasa Indonesia, the article can be skipped
because the role is not important. Fourth, Bahasa
Indonesia does not have a plural concept, to express
the concept of something being ‘more than one’. As
for example, in English ‘I have three apples’,
meanwhile in Bahasa Indonesia ‘saya mempunyai
tiga apel’.
2.4 Children’s Language Development
Genishi (2011) mentions that children in 12 months
developing many foundations that underpin speech
and language development. Then, in the third year
and so on children will understand more than they
say. Language development supports children’s
ability to communicate, to understand feeling, to
support thinking and problem solving. The
understanding of language is the critical step in
literacy, and it is the basis for learning to read and
write (Casanave, 1994). Language develops with
physical growth and cognitive development (Piaget,
2008). Its development is more complex to be
understood.
According to Piaget and Vygotsky, children’s
language development consists of eight stages (Piaget
& Vygotsky, as cited in Tarigan, 2011, p.41). The
first stage is babbling (prelinguistic, aged 0.0 – 0.5).
In this stage, babies have been given the feeling to
have social interaction and language. The second
stage is “nonsense word” which happens when babies
reach the age of 0.5 – 1.0. In this stage, babies start to
babble which is more language-like but is still not
clear. This stage occurs specifically in 6-9 months of
age. The third stage is one-word sentence which
specifically occurs in 18-20 months of age. In this
stage, babies can express anything without limited
words. The fourth is two-word sentence’s stage,
specifically at the age of 2-3. This stage is called
telegraphic speech where the children use
nominalism, adverb or adjective. The fifth is grammar
development stage which specifically occurs at the
age of 3-4. This stage is where the children start to
improve their grammar. The sixth stage is pre-adult
grammar, which specifically occurs at the age of 4-5.
This stage shows that children start to produce
complex sentence. The last stage is full competence
stage, which occurs specifically at the age of 5-7. In
this stage, children acquire language like adult
although it is limited in a number of vocabularies.
3 METHODOLOGY
This study employs Quantitative method. As
Cresswell (2014) mentions that quantitative method
contains numeric descriptions or opinions of
population by studying that population. This method
is to test the impact of the treatment on an outcome.
Babbie (2010) adds that quantitative method also
emphasizes objective measurement and numerical
analysis of data using computational techniques. The
data of the study is processed by using excel 2010.
The data was collected from two Kindergarten
that consists of forty-five students; kindergarten A
was about 21 students, and kindergarten B was about
24 students. They were chosen because the
requirement of the researcher to find out syntactic
awareness in early childhood. These students were
five and six years old, and most of them could read
and others could not. The data was collected using
instrument to meet the purpose of the study. In this
Syntactic Awareness of Early Childhood Aged 5-6: A Case of Sentence Structure
235

study, there were two ways of collecting the data:
syntactic awareness task and observation 3-4 hours a
day by recording the children’s performance during
the execution of task. The task of syntactic awareness
was in the form of instrument to identify and correct
jumbled sentences.
There were two stages of collecting the data. First,
the tasks were tested to know whether they work out,
had the mistakes, or need revision. After deciding the
best tasks, children were tested in the class. Second,
the execution of the tasks was recorded with Android
for observing children’s syntactic performance. The
recorded data shows all the responses and production.
In detail, children came to the class in turn and
individually. The teacher gave the writer a room for
the test, and let the writer did the test during school’s
activity and the test were lasted for about a month.
Before testing the children, the writer broke the ice by
asking what games they like, how old they were, and
then following their conversation. In the task,
children were first asked to tell what the images in the
picture were. It is the stimulus that would raise the
children’s knowledge of the characters in the pictures.
Second, the children were asked what the characters
do in the pictures. This question was used to validate
whether the children really know what the characters
were doing in the pictures. Then, the writer gave the
flashcard that consists of a jumbled sentence. After
that, the writer read the jumbled sentence and asked
whether it sounded ‘enak’ (good) or ‘gak enak’ (not
good). When the children said ‘enak’, the writer gave
the next picture and sentence. However, when the
student said ‘gak enak’ (not good), the writer asked
the student to correct the sentence through flashcards
that have been given.
4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
This section describes the findings of the assessment
test of syntactic awareness in Bahasa Indonesia. This
study consists of two section tasks, the first was
assess active sentence and the second was assess
passive sentence. Both of active and passive
sentences contain two assessments respectively;
identification and correction.
The total number of forty-five students who took
the test was 76, 9% students answered active
sentences correctly. Meanwhile, in passive sentences
the students answered 67, 8% sentences correctly.
Dardjowodjojo (2005) mentions that in Bahasa
Indonesia, passive sentence patterns are often used
instead of active sentence patterns. Hence, children
are more dominant using passive sentences than
active sentences. However, the findings show
different. Based on the test’s result, students are more
familiar with active sentence rather than passive
sentence.
In Kindergarten A, results in active sentence task
are 78, 9% students can identify wrong sentences, and
78, 1% students can correct the jumbled sentence. In
passive sentence task, 80, 9% students can identify
wrong sentences, and 55, 9% students can correct the
jumbled sentence. Meanwhile, in Kindergarten B,
results in active sentence task are 92,1% students can
identify wrong sentences, and 57,9% students can
correct the jumbled sentence. In passive sentence
task, 95, 8% students can identify wrong sentences,
and 35, 9% students can correct the jumbled sentence.
Then, the total number of students that can answer the
test is 73, 6% for Kindergarten A and 71,3% for
Kindergarten B. Some of the students can identify
which sentence is wrong, but they confuse how to put
the words into the right order.
Figure 1: Kindergarten A.
Figure 2: Kindergarten B.
Figure 3: Total Percentage of two Kindergartens.
78.90%
80.90%
78.10%
55.90%
Active Sentence Passive Sentence
Identification Correction
92.10%
95.80%
57.90%
35.90%
Active Sentence Passive Sentence
Identification Correction
73.60%
71.30%
Kindergarten A Kindergarten B
Total
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
236

5 CONCLUSION
As explained previously, this study assesses students’
syntactic awareness in Bahasa Indonesia. The
quantitative data were analysed by using MS. Excel
2010. According to the result, it can be concluded that
children ages 5-6 years have had a high syntactic
awareness. It can be seen from the test results that
children are able to answer more than 50% of the
answers correctly. The finding is similar with Nation
and Snowling (2000), that children are able to answer
active sentence rather than passive sentence. In other
way, the students were had difficulties in correcting
jumbled sentence, specifically on passive sentence.
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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