Misordering Errors Made by The Tenth Grade Students of SMA GAMA

53 selected by way of purposive sampling. Student 1 and 21 were the students who produced errors below the average or less than other students. Student 2 and 20 were the students who made average errors or more or less the same number of errors as the other students. While student 3 and 18 were students who produced lots of errors or above the average errors discovered. From those selected students, the researcher uses Table 4.2.1 to depict the percentage of the causes of errors based on the students’ words during the interview. Table 4.2.1 The Percentage of The Causes of Errors No. The Causes of Errors Percentage 1 Carelessness 83 2. First Language Interference 66 3. Translation 66 4. Overgeneralization 33 5. Error as a part of language creativity As the result of the interviews, the most popular cause of the selected students related to producing errors was carelessness. Norrish 1983 notes that, “Carelessness is often closely related to motivation” p. 21. In this case, related to this study, the students were not going to check their writings whether or not it has been appropriate or correct. Since the term of carelessness is too strong to apply, the researcher refers to call this kind of error cause as ignorance. It happened to most of the students interviewed. Student 21 said that after writing the descriptive text, she did not have any intention to recheck the work, including grammar, vocabulary, mistyping, and, punctuation. Moreover she added that she was lacking concentration in writing the descriptive text due to being in a hurry to 54 accomplish the writing. The similar expressions were told by five out of six students interviewed. One of the students said, “Kurang teliti pak, sebenernya saya tau seperti pada kalimat yang pertama di teks itu. Terburu-buru juga Pak. Maksudnya terburu-buru ingin cepat selesai pak, kalo sudah selesai kan bisa main atau ngobrol- ngobrol sama teman-teman. Terburu-buru ingin cepat selesai jadi tidak di teliti lagi. Student 20, Interview data, March 12, 2015 Student 20 told the researcher that during writing the descriptive text she was eager to finish it as soon as possible. She added that the time given by the teacher to write the description text was not enough. As the result of this, she said that she could not recheck her writing by the time she finished writing. In the same boat, student 21 explained that despite being not careful enough, she was lack of concentration and did not check her writing afterwards. Student 1 firmly claimed that she produced some errors because she was in a bad mood at that time. As the result of this she did not intend to check her descriptive text writing afterward. In line with this, student 18 expressed that she actually understood the related grammar to write descriptive text. Moreover she said that she had ever been taught both in junior high school and senior high school. She stood firmly that she was not careful in writing the descriptive text. She claimed the similar excuse to students 1, 10, and, 21 that she did not check the work by the end of the assessment submission time. Another student who agreed with the same excuse was student 3. She told the researcher that although she had been taught about descriptive text in junior and senior high school, she remained incapable of avoiding errors. She said that she forgot the lesson she had learnt, she was lacking 55 concentration, and she was in a hurry. She underlined that the latter excuse forced her not to have any chance to recheck her descriptive text writing. From the statements of students 1, 3, 18, 20, and 21, it can be drawn that ignorance had been the most popular reason of making errors among the students interviewed. In one side, ignorance had been mostly mentioned by the six selected students, in the other side first language interference was coming afterward as the second most reason of the tenth grade students of SMA GAMA Yogyakarta in producing errors in writing descriptive text. Norrish 1983 said that language is a matter of habit formation. The learner’s utterances were thought to be gradually shaped towards those of the language he was learning p. 22. In other words, it could be drawn that first language interference appears when the target language is not used in the daily communication, especially in written. Related to this study, mother tongue interference comes when students want to learn a new language or a target language, in this study the target language is English. As the result of this, the students found difficulties in dealing with the adaptation of English structure, such as the use of to be, past tense, and, countableuncountable noun. There were four out of six selected students emphasizing in first language interference as the reason of producing errors in their descriptive text writings. Those were students 2, 3, 18 and, 20. One of those students said, “Seperti is, am, are itu pak, saya bingung kapan memakainya dan makai yang mana, takutnya nanti artinya beda atau gimana gitu pak. ya bingung aja pak memakainya, soalnya di bahasa Indonesia kan gak ada pak.” Student 3, Interview Data, March 12, 2015 56 Student 3 mentioned that the existence of to be, such as am, is, are, was, and were was the main focus. Since in Indonesian there was not any to be, she felt hard to adapt using to be in constructing English sentence. Moreover she added that English was not spoken in her daily life, thus the interference of her mother tongue, in this case is Indonesian, remained affecting her English sentence. The statement of student 3 was supported by student 2. Student 2 said, “Hehehe soalnya di bahasa Indonesia kan enggak ada pak “sebuah hidung”, atau “sebuah wajah”, jadi saya gak kepikiran untuk menambahkan “a” nya itu pak”. Student D, Interview Data, March 12, 2015 Student 2 told the researcher that the existence of article as pre-modifier was hard to be applied in her writing, such as “a nose, and, a face”. She mentioned more about the difference of plural form of English and Indonesian. She said that since in Indonesian the plural noun form was no different to the singular one, she found it difficult to construct the English plural form of a noun correctly and instantly. In short, it can be sorted out from student 2 that the errors appeared in her writing because she never spoke or wrote in English in her daily life context. Student 18 claimed that the third person singular form affecting the verb was the main case. The reason was similar to the previous one. In Indonesian, the verb form will not change although the subject was he, she, or, it. This situation was hard to be adapted by the students since English was not used by her in the context of daily life. The detail case she proposed was the difference between “I want” and “she wants”. Another supportive statement referring to the first language interference came from student 20.