INVESTIGATING STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING GRAMMAR: A STUDY AT A PRIVATE SCHOOL IN INDONESIA

This study aims to investigate the difficulties experienced by senior high school students in learning English grammar. The research focuses on seven interrelated aspects: cognitive, affective, physiological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. A qualitative descriptive method was used, and data were collected through interviews and focus group discussions involving eight students from a private senior high school in Indonesia. The data were analyzed using the Miles and Huberman model, including data reduction, data display, and conclusion
drawing. The findings revealed that students experienced grammar learning difficulties in various forms, such as problems related to learning styles and thinking speed (cognitive), motivation and anxiety (affective), learning time and environment (physiological), verb form changes and modal usage (morphological), sentence structure and passive voice (syntactic), article and preposition use (semantic), and challenges in reported speech and distinguishing formal-informal language (pragmatic). These difficulties are influenced by both linguistic and nonlinguistic factors, including limited understanding of grammar rules, low confidence, and a lack of contextual learning support. The implications of this study highlight the need for grammar instruction that is contextual, adaptive, and responsive to students’ individual needs and learning backgrounds to support more effective grammar mastery.