149 Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics Vol. 9, No. 2, December 2022 http://ejournal.umm.ac.id/index.php/celtic/index ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL COMPETENCE OF AMONDUS IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Yanuarius Seran, Joni Soleman Nalenan* Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, Fakultas Ilmu Pendidikan, Universitas Timor, Indonesia ABSTRACT Second language (L2) occurs when an individual has acquired first language (L1) and commonly acquired through scientific and natural ways. Second language acquisition generally takes place at younger age and through formal and nonformal education. Amondus, the participant of this study, confirmed that he started to learn and acquire English as his second language at his adulthood. Having started to learn English in high school, he just found it interesting and important during his college time. He found many English terms in his major, nursing. This reason led him to put his extensive effort in learning English. This qualitative descriptive case study aims at investigating Amondus’ grammatical competence in his second language acquisition. Semi-structured and extensive interviews were used to collect the data before they were analyzed through transcription, investigation and classification, analysis, and conclusion drawing. The results showed that Amondus has possessed and mastered nine grammatical morphemes, despite a minor error related to the use of copula that was still contextually understandable. Amondus’ oral grammatical competence related to nine grammatical morphemes was considered effective. Keywords: Communicative competence; grammatical competence; second language acquisition ABSTRAK Proses pemerolehan bahasa kedua (B2) dapat terjadi setelah pemerolehan bahasa pertama (B1, baik secara alami atau melalui pembelajaran. Pemerolehan bahasa kedua dapat dimulai sejak usia dini dan berlanjut pada pendidikan formal dan nonformal. Amondus, partisipan penelitian ini, mulai belajar dan memperoleh bahasa Inggris sebagai bahasa keduanya setelah ia dewasa. Ia baru tertarik mempelajari bahasa Inggris lebih serius ketika ia kuliah pada jurusan keperawatan, walaupun ia telah memulainya sejak duduk di sekolah menengah. Hal ini terjadi karena adanya tantangan saat ia menemukan banyak istilah bahasa Inggris bidang keperawatan. Penelitian deskriptif kualitatif ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui kemampuan gramatikal Amondus dalam pemerolehan bahasa keduanya melalui wawancara dengan semi- structured dan extensive interview. Data yang diperoleh dianalisis memalui tahap transkripsi data, investigasi dan klasifikasi data, analisis data, dan menarik simpulan. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa Amondus telah menguasai sembilan grammatical morphemes walaupun masih melakukan sebuah kesalahan minor terkait penggunaan copula, yang secara kontekstual tidak tepat tetapi dapat dipahami. Kompetensi gramatikal Amondus terkait dengan sembilan grammatical morphemes telah dianggap efektif. E-ISSN: 2621-9158 P-ISSN:2356-0401 *Correspondence: joninalenan07@gmail.com Submitted: 3 April 2021 Approved: 21 November 2022 Published: 29 December 2022 Citation: Seran, Y., & Nalenan, J., S. (2022). English Grammatical Competence of Amondus in Second Language Acquisition. Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics, 9(2), 149- 163. Doi: 10.22219/celtic.v9i2. 20965 Yanuarius Seran, Joni Soleman Nalenan English Grammatical Competence of Amondus in Second Language Acqusition 150 Kata Kunci: kompetensi komunikatif; kompetensi gramatikal; pemerolehan bahasa kedua INTRODUCTION Second language can be acquired through scientific and natural ways. In scientific way, it is commonly acquired through formal education, while through natural way, it is unconsciously acquired through self-exposed to speech community. It means that learning a new language might be similar with children learning and acquiring their mother tongues and second languages, and requires time and consideration (Azad & Kamarei, 2021). An additional time, more focus, and patience could be argued to be some affective aids for a successful second language acquisition (SLA). The successful language acquisition also depends on some effective methods one could apply in the process of acquiring the language (Nelson, 1987). There might be various types of methods an individual could apply in process of learning and acquiring a language. In that process, one could adopt an expert’s method, follow instructions in any sources such as, book, online platform, or even join language courses. Some studies have been carried out on second language acquisition. If they were linked to Krashen (1988) which indicates the difference of second language acquisition of a younger learner, older learner, and adults, the evidences approved his theory. Younger learners acquire it better and the older does it faster, while adults proceed faster than children through early stages of syntactic and more phonological development. Walberg and Rasher (1978) found out in their research that younger acquirers are more effective than older acquirers in second language acquisition. Acquirers who naturally get exposure to second language during childhood life generally attain high proficiency than those who begin in adulthood. According to Noort et al. (2019), young learners also retain the second languages or foreign languages better, and most often speak them with near-native pronunciation. Seminal study was conducted by Labastida (2021) on second language of a 1.5 years old Filipino child. This study focused on how language is acquired through the two mechanisms such as imitation and gestures. It was found that the two mechanisms; imitation and the use of gestures are significant in one’s second language acquisition. As most Filipinos are exposed to both Tagalog and English earlier during their very young age, they continue to acquire English during their adulthood. Meniado (2019) evidenced that Filipino migrant workers’ proceed the second language faster. The study was carried out to examine what encourages and hinders Filipino migrant workers’ new foreign language acquisition and learning process in their status as adult learners. The result of this study showed that (1) a leaner could fast and handily acquire a language through three ways, namely a real engagement, instrumental and integrative motivation, and community support in target language; (2) second language acquisition can be slower due to old age and less essential of second language in workplace; (3) the most common communication strategy used is syntactic avoidance, then followed by direct appeal to native speakers and use of gestures, facial expressions, and translation tools. Different from current situation in the Philippines, a case study on second language acquisition was carried out by Nufus and Yuliani (2020) in Indonesia. This Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics Vol. 9, No. 2, December 2022 http://ejournal.umm.ac.id/index.php/celtic/index 151 case study was conducted to a-three-year-old Sundanese child, named Virendra, and they found out that environment, parents and friends became great supports for his second language acquisition. Surrounded by people speaking Sundanese, Arabic and English are his first foreign languages while Bahasa Indonesia is the most common language used by his teacher and friends at his pre-school that becomes his second language. As the result, he used 75% Bahasa Indonesia, 10% Sundanese, and 15% Arabic and English, in his daily conversation. Meanwhile, in a country where Arabic is the community language and English is a language of instruction at school, young learners who learn English earlier obtained better result than those who started learning in school (Alhaj, et al., 2020). In case of Indonesia where 735 local languages spread throughout 17, 767 islands across the archipelago and spoken by the society as their first languages (Zein, 2012), it is important to note that English is offered to students in high school after they acquire Bahasa Indonesia as national language. Therefore, many Indonesian experience to learn English during their adulthood. One of the examples is the case that the participant of this study, Amondus (29 years old), has been striving to acquire English during his adulthood. As a Dawanese, a local tribe in East Nusa Tenggara province, Eastern Indonesia, he speaks both Dawan language as his mother tongue and Bahasa Indonesia as the national language at home. He uses Bahasa Indonesia only in workplace. His experience in using English was started from his high school classroom where English is a compulsory subject and then continued to the first semester of his college, majoring nursing. According to the interview, he has started formally learning English since he was at school since it was one compulsory subject taught. However, he said that he had not learned and acquired English at that time because the way English taught did not attract his attention and interest. The teacher just relied on textbook and students were supposed to understand the text while learning the grammar in each part of the textbook. Listening, speaking and Writing skills were not as the focus, so that his ability in each skill was not well-improved. Consequently, it could be interpreted that he might obtain less competence from formal English learning. In college, he learned English at the age of 21. There was a big passion that he wanted to master English because he had to use many English terminologies in nursing and medicine. Besides, he also wanted to continue his study to a master degree level. As a solution, he bought a book entitled English for Children as one of references besides some grammar books that he collected from his colleagues. The reason why he took very Basic English book was h to acquire more Basic English vocabulary prior to knowing grammar rules. As he learned English grammar by himself, the researchers found several grammatical mistakes, after learning English more than 5 years, during the interview sessions. It is in contrary to the theory that a learner should learn Basic English skills and the other components including grammatical aspect to mastery English Grammar (Suparmi, 2015; Putri & Wahyuni, 2019). Then, as a considerable effort, he is currently joining an English course for preparation as a pathway to his master degree overseas. He is taking all the four English skills as compulsory modules. However, issues emerged during the learning process as he found it hard to get involved in an interactive communication and put his idea into writing text. Along with this matter, Canale and Swain (1980) stated that the message of an Yanuarius Seran, Joni Soleman Nalenan English Grammatical Competence of Amondus in Second Language Acqusition 152 effective interaction could be delivered if a meaningful communication takes place in a conversation. Then, it is argued that it demands not the form of the target language, but with the ideas or contents they express and comprehend (Krashen, 1988). One of four main features that is considered make input language easy to understand is content (Benati, 2021). Amondus admitted that his first language was a bridge in his process of transferring and processing any ideas when he was engaging with English conversation. It significantly influenced his English acquisition. Some studies have been conducted to find out that cognitive and academic development of one’s first language, has a significant influence on Second Language Acquisitffion. One’s cognitive and academic development are extremely important and have positive effects in SLA. It is stated that language skills, literacy development, concept or knowledge, and learning strategies built and developed in the first language will be all transferred to the second language (Collier, 1995). A learner benefits immensely from first developing proficiency in his first language, and this condition helps him obtain implicit knowledge of language and structures that he can then apply in his second language learning (Gaiduchik, 2020). As learners expand their vocabulary and their oral and written communication ability in second language, they could progressively expose their knowledge base established in the first language. If a learner is exposed to the L2 in the same way as he is exposed to the L1, better accomplishment will be gained. This occurs due to the natural L2 learning situation (Zoubi, 2018) Beside first language, there were also other factors that contributed to the Amondus’ second language acquisition, namely motivation and social-psychological factors. Amondus has a big passion to study abroad. This is seen as Amondus’ high motivation. In line with this, (Liang & Kelsen, 2018) argued that motivation is believed to be one of the main determinants and crucial in one’s second or foreign language achievement. Besides that, motivation can be an affective source of knowledge and understanding to implement any relevant activities to stimulate one’s motivating learning process (Suryasa et al., 2017; Al Noor et al., 2019). Furthermore, Lin and González (2021) believe that a learner who is still in the process of learning a language will be much more motivated. In terms of social and psychological factors of Amondus, he occasionally engaged with native speakers in his English course time to get direct language exposure. Language exposure and its use are among the other crucial conditions that can lead a learner successful in a language learning (Arndt et al., 2021; Paradowski, 2021). Communicative approach should be used in second language teaching and learning process (Canale & Swain, 1980). This approach is believed to be one of effective methods in the process of learning a second language. Communicative approach comprises four communicative competencies, namely grammatical competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. They argued that in an early stage of second language learning, a learner should optimally employ these communicative skills. Grammatical competence is essential as it is broad enough to be investigated in SLA. Grammatical competence covers mastery on vocabulary, words formation, sentences formation, and spelling. However, the researchers specified their investigation to nine grammatical morphemes or variables that were also obligatory in one’s grammatical Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics Vol. 9, No. 2, December 2022 http://ejournal.umm.ac.id/index.php/celtic/index 153 proficiency. The nine morphemes or variables were (1) Copula or Linking verb BE, (2) Progressive ING, (3) Auxiliary BE, (4) Past Irregular, (5) Plural, (6) 3rd singular, (7) Article, (8) Possessive, and (9) Past regular. From the aforementioned related studies, it is presumably fair to state that the best age for SLA is at younger age while starting to acquire and effectively produce a second language is at adult age. This present study is urgent to be conducted because of the importance of this study (1) second language acquisition usually takes place at younger age, while this study focused on an adult, and (2) this study focused to investigate to what extent grammatical competence of an adult in his SLA. Besides, another statement to support the reason is proposed by Burea- Titica (2020) that adolescents and adults have cognitive skills and self-discipline which enable them to learn more even though children are intrinsically better learners. Based on several SLA studies that have been investigated and reviewed concerning with the learners’ fluency, mechanisms, and vocabulary, the researchers have not found any studies of SLA that focused on nine morphemes of grammatical competence as stated in previous paragraph. Therefore, the scope of investigating grammatical competence especially the nine morphemes becomes the novelty of this study. METHOD Research Design This study used descriptive qualitative method that employed a case study approach. It means that the data were collected by using a case study approach and then were analyzed qualitatively. Descriptive qualitative method is a complex field which is not a single unity, but it covers a considerable variety. The core feature of qualitative research is reflecting its natural designs. It is naturalistic. It studies about people, events, and their natural setting (Punch & Oancea, 2014). Descriptive qualitative method related to how people describe and understand everything around them. This argument provides the researchers of this present study a reflection that this research appropriately utilized qualitative method. This is because the field that was investigated was a study of a person who strives to acquire English. Then, the data obtained were in form of descriptive data, and analyzed and described qualitatively. Instruments and Tools This is a sociolinguistics study that requires the natural data so researchers as key instruments (Mulyadi, 2013). Therefore, the main instrument used to collect the data of this study is a list of questions. The list of questions was used as an interview guide that led to researchers and Amondus’ communication. The list of questions was used to obtain the data related to Amondus’ oral grammatical competence. Then, tool to document the data was an audio recorder. The audio recorder was used as the main tool to record the interviews. Methods of Data Collection To collect the data of this study, the researchers combined two methods, namely semi-structured interview and extensive interview. The implementation of semi- structured interview was to stimulate Amondus to get involved in a talk. It was Yanuarius Seran, Joni Soleman Nalenan English Grammatical Competence of Amondus in Second Language Acqusition 154 conducted face-to-face and used flexible, open-ended questions to explore Amondus’ perspective (Petty et al., 2012). While the talk was going on, the researchers recorded it by using an audio recording device. Besides, the researchers also utilized extensive interview. This interview was used to raise some follow up questions to emphasize the data obtained from semi-structured interview. Data Analysis Process Data were recorded using audio recording device and were transcribed and then analysed qualitatively to answer research questions stated in the previous part. In analysing the data, the researchers utilized four competences indicated by Canale and Swain (Kung, 2016). The four competences were grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, strategic competence, and discourse competence. However, researchers just focused on grammatical competence of Amondus’ SLA. To analyse the data, the researchers went through several stages. First, the researchers transcribed the data that had been recorded to be a text. Second, the transcribed data were investigated and classified based on the grammatical competence. Third, the data were analyzed and discussed based on nine grammatical morphemes or variables of grammatical competence of second language acquisition indicated by Canale and Swain. Finally, the researchers drew conclusion of the data analysis and discussion. FINDINGS This research was carried out with Amondus as the subject in order to investigate his grammatical competence. Amondus has been learning English since junior high school, however, his English acquisition took place when he informally got involved in an English course. He stated in the interview that his English acquisition took times, starting from his attraction to English when he was in nursing school until motivation to continue his study overseas. His awareness brought him to considerable efforts that cause a fluency in his oral English communication. One of his efforts that made him satisfied was he had a real conversation with some English native speakers. By actively having real conversation, he gained a great self-confidence. This is also proved by his fluency in the interview of this study. In this study, the researchers obtained 33 data of Amondus related to his grammatical competence. The 33 data covered the nine grammatical morphemes of grammatical competence. There were six data found related to copula or linking verb BE, two data of progressive ING, two data of auxiliary BE, six data of past irregular verbs, two data of plural, four data of 3rd singular, three data of articles, four data of possessive, and four data of past irregular verbs. The 33 data are presented in the followings. Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics Vol. 9, No. 2, December 2022 http://ejournal.umm.ac.id/index.php/celtic/index 155 Table 1. Findings of The Data No Classification of Nine Morphemes by Canale and Swain Data Found 1 Copula or Linking verb BE (01) My unforgettable experience is about my ai… excorsion to Malang (02) That is free because it was ahhh, ahh .. I mean that it was ahh… arranged by thahh (03) It was a beach. (04) I was scared (05) It was small boat (06) So we just felt happy about that. 2 Progressive ING (07) I was dancing (08) We were singing on the small boat a friend of mine suddenly (what is it) jumped to the sea and we screamed, girls were like, please help him, please help him 3 Auxiliary BE (09) I was dancing (10) We were singing on the small boat and a friend of mine suddenly (what is it) jumped to the sea and we screamed, girls were like, please help him, please help him. 4 Past Irregular Verbs (11) Ahh, it took just a… about to four hours to get there by bus… (12) We did many things. (13) We got on the ship and went to the middle of the sea. (14) He got his life jacket. (15) I was done…… very seriously at……. ok. (16) Ehhhm, everyone had to join in a small dancing party. 5 Plural (17) I went on a trip to south Mal,,,, Malang, East Java to celebrate the end of my student life with some of my course friends and the lecturers. (18) Ahh, it took just a.. for me about four hours to get there by bus, and the place is a ,,,,,,, place for tourists 6 3rd singular (19) Ahh, it took just a….about four hours (20) …. because it was a beach (21) ,,, fortunately, he could swim (22) He got his life jacket. He said that I jumped to swim in the sea. 7 Articles (23) I went on a trip to south Mal. (24) I was so nervous and I think it was an embarrassing moment. (25) My course friends and the lecturers…. 8 Possessive (26) My unforgettable experience is about my ai… (27) He got his life jacket. (28) Place for tourists as well to spend their vocation because it was a beach. (29) I also like people there, especially the locals’ hospitality. 9 Past regular verbs (30) Eh, just the moment just before I finished my course of English (31) I mean that it was ahh… arranged by thahh… Yanuarius Seran, Joni Soleman Nalenan English Grammatical Competence of Amondus in Second Language Acqusition 156 (32) And also tried to diving with my friends. (33) I was scared DISCUSSION Grammatical competence is one of the four components of communicative competence. Grammatical competence focuses on any linguistic competence lies on an individual which covers mastery of vocabulary, words formation, an arrangement of words that creates a sentence, pronunciation, spelling, and another whole unit criterion related to grammatical proficiency, that is nine grammatical morphemes (Kung, 2016). To know grammatical competence of Amondus, the researchers focused on his oral language proficiency. The numbers of data shown in this sub discussion part are the repetition data from findings part. Therefore, discussion related to grammatical competence of Amondus in this study is presented as follows. Grammatical Competence of Amondus In this part, the researchers focused the investigation on the nine grammatical morphemes used by Amondus. The nine grammatical morphemes are Copula or Linking Verb BE, Progressive ING, Auxiliary BE, Past Irregular Verbs, Plural, 3rd Singular, Article, Possessive, and Past Regular Verbs. Amondus’ grammatical competence based on the nine grammatical morphemes in this study are shown in the following discussion. 1. Copula or Linking verb BE Linking verb also called copula is a verb that joins a subject with a predicate that often describes a quality to that subject. Linking verbs are usually distinguished from action verbs, which indicate an action performed by the subject (Aziz, 2014). Copula or linking verbs found in this study were is, was, and felt. The data of copula or linking verb in this study are presented below. (01) My unforgettable experience is about my ai… excorsion to Malang (02) That is free because it was ahhh, ahh .. I mean that it was ahh… arranged by thahh (03) It was a beach. (04) I was scared (05) It was small boat (06) So we just felt happy about that. The data (01), (02), (03), (04), (05), and (06) are the copula or linking verb used by Amondus in this study. Copula or Linking verb of data (01) and (02) is TOBE is. Copula is in data (01) is used to show that the sentence is in simple present. In data (02) Amondus wanted to express his intention that the sentence is in simple past. Grammatically, this sentence is correct but contextually it is incorrect because he is telling his experience. Thus, he had to use simple past tense. Copula or Linking verb of data (03), (04), and (05) are was. Copula was is used by Amondus shows that it happened in the past. Therefore, the use of copula was by Amondus was grammatically and contextually correct. Copula or Linking verb of data (06) is in form of a stative verb. Semantically, the stative verb is also a verb that expresses a linking verb or a copula in a sentence. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/linking%20verb Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics Vol. 9, No. 2, December 2022 http://ejournal.umm.ac.id/index.php/celtic/index 157 2. Progressive ING Progressive ING reflects that activities predicate expressing the prototypical meaning of actions are still on progress (Zeng et al., 2021). Progressive ING are divided into three kinds, namely the past progressive, the present progressive, and the future progressive. The data of progressive ING found in this study are shown below. (07) I was dancing (08) We were singing on the small boat a friend of mine suddenly (what is it) jumped to the sea and we screamed, girls were like, please help him, please help him. Data (07) and (08) are progressive ING used by Amondus Grammatically the progressive ING used by Amondus in data (07) is correct because: (1) the sentence of the data is past progressive, and (2) the subject in this sentence is first person singular. Amondus used TOBE were in the sentence of data (08) to show that the sentence is also in simple past but the subject is third person plural. 3. Auxiliary BE Auxiliary verb is verb used to assist a main verb in a sentence (Popal, 2021). In other words, an auxiliary verb usually accompanies an infinitive verb or a participle, which respectively provide the main semantic content of the clause. Therefore, it is clear that the auxiliary verb cannot be used without the main verb in a sentence. There are several auxiliaries in English, namely be, have, do, can, could, would, etc. However, in this study, researchers focus on auxiliary BE because it is the most commonly used by Amondus in this study. The data of auxiliary BE found in this study are presented as follows. (09) I was dancing (10) We were singing on the small boat and a friend of mine suddenly (what is it) jumped to the sea and we screamed, girls were like, please help him, please help him. Data (09) and (10) contained auxiliary BE. Amondus utilised TOBE was and were to complete those sentences that in form of past progressive tense. These two data are grammatically correct because the subject in data (09) is first person singular that requires TOBE was, and the subject in data (10) is first person plural that requires TOBE were. 4. Past Irregular Verbs Past irregular verbs are verbs that do not follow the normal patterns for tense and past participle in any number of unpredictable ways (Kaufman, 2021). On the contrary, regular verbs follow the standard grammar rules of English in adding “-ed” or “-d” to form the past tense and past participle forms. However, irregular verbs could be said have their own rules that require the learners memorise them. The followings are Amondus’ use of past irregular verbs. (11) Ahh, it took just a… about to four hours to get there by bus… (12) We did many things. (13) We got on the ship and went to the middle of the sea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participle Yanuarius Seran, Joni Soleman Nalenan English Grammatical Competence of Amondus in Second Language Acqusition 158 (14) He got his life jacket. (15) I was done…… very seriously at……. ok. (16) Ehhhm, everyone had to join in a small dancing party. Data (11) to (16) are past irregular verbs that found in Amondus’ grammatical competence in his second language acquisition. Grammatical competence related to past irregular found are pure irregular verb, past participle, and modality. The irregular verbs that he utilised are took, did, and got as in the data (11) to (14). Past participle used by participant is done as in data (15) formed as an adjective. Then, modality used is marked by the use of had to in the sentence of the data (16). 5. Plural Most nouns in English simply add –s or –es to the end to become plural. A plural noun in is the form of a noun used to show there are more than one (Joshi, 2020). Irregular nouns do not follow plural noun rules, so they must be memorized or looked up in the dictionary. The plural data in this study shown below. (17) I went on a trip to south Mal,,,, Malang, East Java to celebrate the end of my student life with some of my course friends and the lecturers. (18) Ahh, it took just a.. for me about four hours to get there by bus, and the place is a ,,,,,,, place for tourists Data (17) and (18) are Amondus’ use of plural that reflects his grammatical proficiency. The use of plural form by Amondus in this study is grammatically suitable and marked lexical as friends, lecturers, hours, and tourists. However, it is seen in data (17) that there is a part of the sentence grammatically unacceptable. It is the use of the word student in phrase “my student life”. It is because student in this phrase refers to possessive, so it must be added with –‘s at the end of it. 6. 3rd singular One variable of the grammatical competence that should be concerned by an English learner is third singular. Third singular or third person singular is a subject that refers to someone else (Paramour, Z., & Paramour, 2020). There are three kinds of third person singular in English, namely He, She, and It. The followings are third person singular found in this study. (19) Ahh, it took just a….about four hours (20) …. because it was a beach (21) ,,, fortunately, he could swim (22) He got his life jacket. He said that I jumped to swim in the sea. Based on data (19) to (22), it is fair to say that Amondus has already possessed a good understanding of third person singular. It is because he could effectively utilised third person singular It, and He in some sentences. 7. Articles Articles are a type of determiner. They function like adjectives, as they modify the noun in the sentence. There are two kinds of articles in English, namely indefinite article and definite article. Indefinite article is ‘a/an’ , and Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics Vol. 9, No. 2, December 2022 http://ejournal.umm.ac.id/index.php/celtic/index 159 definite article is ‘the’ (Celentano, 2013). In this study, Amondus also utilised articles that presented as follows. (23) I went on a trip to south Mal. (24) I was so nervous and I think it was an embarrassing moment. (25) My course friends and the lecturers…. Data (23) to (25) are articles used by Amondus in this study. There are two kinds of article of the data above, namely indefinite and definite. The indefinite article in this study found out in sentence of data (23) to (24) are a and an, beside definite article in data (25) is the. Based on the data above, it shows that Amondus’ grammatical competence in terms of article could be said fair. The use of definite article in data (25) is incorrect. Data (25) is in phrase form that consists of two nouns. First noun is my course friends and second noun is lecturers. In this case, the second noun in data (25) does not need article the because lexical lecturer as second noun is not previously mentioned. 8. Possessive Possessive is a pronoun that is used to express ownership or possession. There are two kinds of possessive in English, namely possessive adjective and possessive pronoun. Possessive adjective is an adjective that modifies a noun by identifying who has ownership or possession of it, and possessive pronoun is also called absolute or strong possessive pronouns. They replace a noun or noun phrase already used, replacing it to avoid repetition (DeCapua, 2016). The followings are possessive that were used by Amondus in this study. (26) My unforgettable experience is about my ai… (27) He got his life jacket. (28) Place for tourists as well to spend their vocation because it was a beach. (29) I also like people there, especially the locals’ hospitality. Data (26) to (29) are possessive used by Amondus. The data shows that Amondus just used one of the possessives that is possessive adjective. Possessive adjective found in data (26) to (29) are my, his, their, and locals’. Syntactically, he started using possessive adjective my of first person singular and as a part of a whole subject ‘my unforgettable experience’ in data (26). In data (27), Amondus used possessive adjective his of third person singular and as a part of the whole object ‘his life jacket’ in data (27). Then, the other possessive adjective used by Amondus in this study is their of third person plural and as a part of the whole object ‘their vocation’ in data (28). The last possessive adjective used by Amondus in this study is locals’ which is also third person plural and as a part of the whole object ‘locals’ hospitality’ in data (29). Generally, it could be argued that grammatical competence especially possessive was perfectly utilised by Amondus. 9. Past regular verbs Past regular verb is one that conforms to the usual rule for forming its simple past tense and its past participle. In English, past regular verb is a verb whose https://www.grammar-monster.com/glossary/simple_past_tense.htm https://www.grammar-monster.com/glossary/simple_past_tense.htm https://www.grammar-monster.com/glossary/past_participles.htm Yanuarius Seran, Joni Soleman Nalenan English Grammatical Competence of Amondus in Second Language Acqusition 160 past tense version is formed by adding an -ed to the end (Kaufman, 2021). The followings are past regular verbs that used by Amondus in this study. (30) Eh, just the moment just before I finished my course of English (31) I mean that it was ahh… arranged by thahh… (32) And also tried to diving with my friends. (33) I was scared Data (30) to (33) are past regular verbs that were used by Amondus. There are two kinds of past regular verbs in these data, namely simple past regular verb and past participle regular verb. Simple past regular verbs contained in data (30) to (32). All past regular verbs are marked by –ed at the end of the verb, as verb finished, arranged, and tried that in sequence presented in data (30), (31), and (32). Then, past participle regular verb is found in data (33) that is marked by the use of TOBE was serialised with verb scared. CONCLUSION Based on the result and the discussion of this study, it is concluded that Amondus has possessed and utilized the nine morphemes or variables of grammatical competence. The ability of Amondus’ grammatical competence of his oral language use related to the nine morphemes has been effective. However, there is certain part that could be a minor error. This error is related to the use of copula that contextually incorrect yet still could be comprehended. Amondus incorrectly stated his past experience using copula or linking verb BE in present simple form. It was supposed to be in past simple form. After discussing the data found, there are some implications for second language learners and teachers. First, second language can be acquired through semi-formal teaching and learning. Second, for formal education, English teachers should take into consideration the nine grammatical morphemes in teaching English not based-text teaching. It is suggested more research dealing with grammatical competence especially the nine grammatical morphemes should be carried out in SLA. Further researchers could find out different proficiency of participants that could enrich the findings of SLA research. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This paper and the research behind it would not have been possible without the exceptional support of Universitas Timor who provided permission through Institution of Research and Community Services (LPPM). Researchers would like to express very great appreciation to the head of LPPM and staff who issued letter of assignment and permission letter that this research could be conducted. REFERENCES Alhaj, A. A. M., Ali, D. A. A., Ahmed, M. B., & Alian, E. M. I. (2020). 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