Carelessness Discussion on the Factors that Caused the Students to Make the Errors

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e. Carelessness

Most of the respondents conveyed that carelessness might become another factor that caused them to make errors on subject-verb agreement when they wrote an English sentence. However, before coming to the discussion, the researcher would explain briefly what is meant by carelessness. It aimed to make it easier for readers to follow the discussion in this part. Norrish 1974 states that carelessness can be caused by learners’ lack of motivation, but it is not only learners’ fault if they lose interest p. 21. According to Norrish 1974, learning materials and the style of presentation that do not accord learners can be other factors that make them to have lack of motivation p. 21. In this part, the carelessness dealt with motivation. There were three essential bases that could affect the motivation of students. They were the students themseleves who are able either to increase or to decrease their motivation, the way the lecturer teaches hisher students, and the learning material given by the lecturer. This motivation really had big effect to the learning process, especially in their writing skill, that every student did. If a student did not have the motivation to learn something, he or she might obtain negative result on his or her learning process, especially while they were writing English sentences. It was admitted by some respondents who agreed that errors on subject- verb might happen because they were lack of motivation when they were in the classroom. It was because of their lecturer who could not explain the learning material clearly to the students. Consequenlty, when the respondents wrote the PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 84 sentences, they could possibly write them carelessly. Then, the errors on subject- verb agreement could possibly appear in their sentences. It was in line with what admitted by an interviewee. “Sebenernya sih ada sih beberapa dosen yang njelasinnya juga aku bingung ya, jadi ya karena aku bingung itu trus aku ga ngerti jadi ya udahlah aku ngerjain yang aku bisa aja. Kaya gitu.” R 6, interview result Frankly, there are some lecturers whose explanation makes me confused. Since I am confused and I also do not understand about the explanation, I decide to do the part which I can do, therefore. Most of the respondents conveyed that when they were not able to understand the explanation from their lecturer, they tended to write a sentence with the existing knowledge that they had already known. Consequently, they could possibly make some errors in their sentence. One of them was the error on subject-verb agreement. In addition, from the information obtained from the interview, the researcher found that the feedback really had an essential role to minimize the errors and to help students not to make a lot of errors, especially on subject-verb agreement. It was also found that lack of feedback from the lecturer to the errors on subject-verb agreement that the respondent made might also cause the respondents to continue making the same errors as what they had done. It was in line with was said by an interviewee. “...tapi kalo yang dulu tu semangat, ya nilai juga jadi bagus, nah kalo sekarang gak tau ni semester 2, karena efek dosen juga sih, dosennya PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 85 penjelasannya gak clear, gak pernah kasi feedback, trus kita mau tau progress kemajuan nulis kita darimana gitu lho, gak pernah ada feedback dari dosen... “...He em..iya..dari dosen, soalnya kalo kita sering dapet feedback, misalnya salah-salah, kita salah, dikasi feedback, dikasi feedback, kan misalnya kesalahannya tu sama kan, misalnya kesalahannya kayak yang there is, there is tadi itu, kalo kita salah tapi sering dibenerin-dibenerin itu kan otomatis kita juga bakal apal sendiri. Tapi kalo dosennya sendiri, misalnya mbenerin cuman kaya dibunderin-dibunderin, gak dikasi benernya tu kayak gimana, kan kita juga gak ngerti salahnya dimana, gitu...”R 11, interview result ...I was enthusiastic with the previous writing class, so my score on writing was also good. Hence, I do not know what will happen in this second semester. I think it is also because of some factors: the lecturer, the unclear explanation from the lecturer. Besides, the lecturer never gives feedback to us. We do not know how to see the progress of our writing because the feedback is never given by the lecturer... ...In my opinion, it is because of the lecturer. If we often obtain the feedback to the errors that we often make, e.g., the errors in the case of there is, we will automatically recognize the error and then be able to know the correct one. However, if the lecturer only circles the errors without telling the correct one, we will not understand what the error is. Besides the lack of feedback given by their lecturer to the errors they made, most of the respondents also conveyed that the lack of motivation which was because of themselves might also cause them to make errors on subject-verb agreement as what some interviewees said. “Iya, iya itu juga pengaruh tu mas, itu juga apa ya, banyak pengaruhnya buat diri saya, apalagi kalo seandainya misalnya sorenya ada kegiatan trus tiba-tiba kita ingetnya gak ada tugas, trus tiba-tiba besoknya eh besoknya misalnya malemnya sms temen ada tugas ga? tau-tau ada tugas, waduh...itu apalagi yang kayak gitu mempengaruhi banget, udah badan capek, kan apalagi masih di suru mikir wah itu mempengaruhi banget mas.” R 5, interview result Yes, it is. It happens in this case: I have an activity to do in the afternoon and I think I do not have any assignments to do at that time. Then, as soon as I send the message to my friend, I have been realizing that actually I have an assignment to do. This condition does really affect me because at PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 86 that time, I must be so tired that it is almost impossible to me to think about my assignment. “Iya sih, males-malesan sih sebenernya, iya bener, males belajar, males mengulang kembali...Iya, iya seperti itu, dan kurang teliti sih sebenernya, ya...” R 12, interview result The facts that I am unwilling to restudy and to review the theory of subject-verb agreement are correct. Besides, I do not write my sentence carefully. It was admitted that the factors that could decrease students’ motivation were not only caused by the lecturer but also caused by the students themselves. Most of the respondents argued that having a lot of assignments, but only having short time to finish it might become the factor that could decrease their motivation to finish their assignments very well. In addition, they thought that they could not finish doing the assignments well in that short time, so they tended to finish doing them carelessly. In addition, most of the respondents also agreed that their unwillingness to recheck the sentences after they had finished writing them could became a factor behind the subject-verb agreement errors in their written work. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 87

CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

There are two main parts in this chapter. In the first part, the researcher presents the conclusions of the research which are drawn from the data analysis. Then, in the second part, the researcher presents recommendations for students in Paragraph Writing class, lecturers in Paragraph Writing class and future researchers who are interested to follow up this research.

A. Conclusions

The objectives of this study were to find out subject-verb agreement errors made by students in Paragraph Writing class of ELESP and to find out the factors that caused students in Paragraph Writing class of ELESP to make those subject- verb agreement errors. Therefore, there were two main conclusions to present in this section.

1. The Students’ Subject-Verb Agreement Errors

As an attempt to answer the first research question, subject-verb agreement errors made by students in Paragraph Writing class of ELESP, the researcher conducted document analysis. The documents to analyze were the students’ written work. From the data gathered, the researcher found twenty-eight 28 subject-verb agreement errors in the students’ written work. Those errors were included in three types of errors based on the surface structure taxonomy. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI