6 agreement errors made by students in Paragraph Writing class at ELESP and to
find out the factors that cause them to make those subject-verb agreement errors. Furthermore, this research uses human as a research instrument, the document,
which is students’ written work of Progress Test II, and interview as the instruments to obtain the data.
Because this research presents subject-verb agreement errors made by students in Paragraph Writing class at ELESP and the factors behind it, the
students are expected to see and to know the errors that they made, to realize the factors behind their errors, to learn from their errors, and then not to make the
same errors in other writing classes held in upper semesters. When the students are able to always write sentences whose subject-verb
agreement is correct since they are in the lower semester, it will lead them to become a future English teacher who does really understand and master subject-
verb agreement in a sentence. This condition will also lead them to become English teachers who are able to be a model for their future students especially in
giving the example of a sentence whose subject-verb agreement is correct and to teach their future students to write a sentence using correct subject-verb
agreement, afterwards.
B. Research Problem
Through this study, the researcher formulates the problems which are presented into two questions. They are:
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
7 1.
What are subject-verb agreement errors that are made by students in
Paragraph Writing class of ELESP?
2. What are the factors that cause students in Paragraph Writing class of
ELESP to make those subject-verb agreement errors?
C. Problem Limitation
In order to make this research feasible and to make readers obtain the point of the research, the researcher limits the research to a certain area. The researcher
is only concerned with subject-verb agreement errors made by the second semester students in one Paragraph Writing class of ELESP in 20102011
academic year. The grounds for the limitation are that the students in Paragraph Writing
class are still at the beginning level where errors, particulary in subject-verb agreement, tend to happen. In addition, they are prepared to be English teachers
who must be able to be a model for their future students especially in giving the example of a sentence whose subject-verb agreement is correct. Besides, the
students in one Paragraph Writing class are chosen as the participants of the study because the researcher considered them the representative of subject-verb
agreement errors made by the second semester students in other Paragraph Writing classes at ELESP.
Furthermore, in this study, the researcher does not differentiate errors and mistakes. Its underlying reason is that the researcher does not conduct further
analysis in order to check whether what he finds in the students’ work is an error
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
8 or a mistake. Therefore, the researcher assumes that every incorrect subject-verb
agreement in a sentence is due to the errors that students make.
D. Research Objectives
In this study, the researcher determines two objectives. They are to find out:
1. Subject-verb agreement errors made by students in Paragraph Writing
class of ELESP. 2.
The factors that caused students in Paragraph Writing class of ELESP to make those subject-verb agreement errors.
E. Research Benefits
