An Analysis of the Students’ Difficulties in Mastering Phrasal Verb at SMAN 2 Kejuruan Muda Kabupaten Aceh Tamiang

Grammar is important rule in arranging a sentence, the ungrammatical sentences make reader confused of the information which is presented by writer. Phrasal verb is one of the categories which are studied in grammar. It is the order of verb, adverb or preposition in a well organized structure. There are three kinds of phrasal verb that is consisting of verb and preposition, verb and adverb or both of them. The aspect of grammar is taught at formal and informal schools in Indonesia. Based on the writer’s interview to English teacher in SMAN 2 Kejuruan Muda, the writer found that students still are confused when teacher asked them to use verb especially phrasal verb in their speaking or writing. Based on the description above, the writer is interested to do the research to analyze the difficulties faced by the tenth grade students at SMAN 2 kejuruan Muda and describes the tenth grade students’ ability in mastering phrasal verb. The research belonged to qualitative descriptive approach which was done to 30 students at the tenth grades which was chosen randomly. In the case of techniques of collecting data, the writer did interview and writing test on 08th January 2015. Based on the result of the research, the writer got that there were some difficulties which was faced by the students at SMAN 2 Kejuruan Muda in mastering phrasal verb. The difficulties such as: avoidance, style deficiency, semantic confusion, lack of collocational awareness, using ‘idiosyncratic’ phrasal verb, and syntactic errors.