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3 Alternating forms
This type of errors occurs because of the growing of the student’s grammar-vocabulary. In this error, the students may alternate between the forms.
The examples of alternating forms are I seen her yesterday, I could have drank it, those dog
.
d. Misordering
Dulay et al. 1982 state that misordering error is characterized by the incorrect placement of a morpheme or a group of morphemes in an utterance. It
can be indicated by the wrong place of an auxiliary in simple questions and an adverb. The examples are “You will go tonight ?”, and “He yesterday came here.”
It should be “Will you go tonight?”, and ”He came here yesterday” or “Yesterday he came here”.
3. Factors Causes of Errors
Errors are caused by many kinds of factors. In this research, the researcher will employ the factor causing errors proposed by Norrish 1983. According to
Norrish 1983, there are five factors causing errors. Those are carelessness, first language interference, translation, overgeneralization, and error as a part of
language creativity. The following paragraphs are the elaboration of each cause of errors.
a. Carelessness
According to Norrish 1983, “Carelessness is often closely related to motivation” p. 21. In this case, related to this study, the students are not going to
check their writings whether or not it has been appropriate or correct. The
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examples of carelessness causing errors in students’ writings are they forget to write down fullstop in the end of the sentence, and they mistype the word.
b. First Language Interference
The first language, or generally considered as mother tongue, is one of the cause of errors proposed by Norrish 1983. Norrish 1983 says 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
can be drawn that first language interference appears when the target language is not used in the daily communication, both spoken and written. Related to this
study, mother tongue interference comes when students want to learn a new language or a target language.
c. Translation
Another popular cause why students make errors is translation word by word. Norrish 1983 says, “Translation word by word of idiomatic expression in
the learner’s first language can produce classic howlers” p. 26. Norrish 1983 says that this cause of errors is the most common one. In this cause of errors, the
learners try to translate a familiar expression in their first language into the target language they are learning. This happens when students or learners do not know
the exact translation of such expression they want to write. As Norrish 1983 says, “the most typical situation is when a learner has been asked to communicate
something writing but is aware that he does not know the appropriate expression or structure” p. 27. For example, the students try to translate the word “Rumah
Tangga” into “Ladder House”.
