The Types of Error

different characteristic of language which is different in their own mother tongue. However, it is important for the teacher to recognize the errors. Thus, for the students will not do the same errors. The study of learner‟s error is called by the linguist as Error Analysis. It is away of looking at errors made by the learners of the target language. Error analysis is an independent source of valid data. It provides information on student‟s error and also improves the effectiveness of their teaching. Apparently, errors give the sign to the teacher and researcher how target learning is successfully achieved. According to Corder as quoted by Brown: “ A learner‟s error ... are significant in that they provide to the researcher and the learner is employing in the discovery of the language. 11 The writer tries to conclude that error analysis is a way of looking at errors that made by the students because inevitably the students will make errors in the process of acquiring new language system. Error analysis was born as a response of Contrastive Analysis theory which claimed that L1 is the source of errors made by students. Contrastive Analysis is based on theory of behaviorism which assumes that language is a set of habit formation. On the other hand, Error Analysis believes that learner‟s errors are not only caused by L1 but alsodeal with the learning process in the classroom. Therefore, making mistakes is unavoidable in learning process; it is natural. Errors indicate three important aspects of language learning: the first aspect is show what the learner has acquired and what remains to be learned, secondly, provide information on how language is learned and acquired, and what strategies and procedures a language learners is utilizing, the last aspect is serve as a guide to the language learners with aspect to hypothesis about the nature of the target language. 11 H. Douglas Brown, Principle of Language Learning and Teaching, Fifth Edition, New York: Longman, 2007, p. 257. To be more detail, Error Analysis was first introduced by W.R. Lee in 1957, and it gained popularity in the 1970s. 12 Even though, the field of error analysis in SLA Second Language Acquisition was established in the 1970 by Corder and collegues, error analysis was an alternative to contrastive analysis. 13 According to Crystal, “Error analysis in language teaching and learning is the study of the unacceptable forms produced by someone in learning a language, especially foreign language. ” 14 So the writer tries to conclude that the errors analysis is a way of looking at errors made by the learners of the target language, as a source of information to the teachers, which in turns helps them correct the students ‟ errors, and improves the effectiveness of their teaching.

2. Procedures in ErrorAnalysis

In analyzing students‟ errors, there are some steps to be followed. Many linguists have already discussed how to analyze students‟ errors in their book. One of them is Corder; he suggests five steps in analyzing students‟ errors, they are: collection of sample of learner language, identification of errors, description of errors, explanation of errors and evaluation of errors. 15 a. Collection of Sample of Learner Language The first step of analyzing errors which suggested by Corder is collection of sample. In this step, the researcher must decide a number of students which is being sample for the research. Then, they will be given regular examination in order to get data. 12 Nuril Huda, Language Learning and Teaching: Issues and Trends, Malang : IKIP Malang Publisher, 1999, p. 5. 13 http:en.wikipedia.orgwikisecond language acquisition. 27 Agustus 2012. 14 David Crystal, An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Languages, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, p.125. 15 Ellis, op.cit., p.46 b. Identification of errors In this step the researcher must identify error from data collection. For identifying error, the researcher must compare the sentence that was produced by students to the correct sentence in the target language. For examples: Sari watched TV, and Rudi sleeped in his room. The correct form in target language is Sari watched TV, and Rudi slept in his room. By comparing two sentences it can be seen that the student produced an error in constructing simple past tense sentence where she used –ed after sleep instead of using irregular verb. c. Description of Errros After identifying errors, the next step is description of errors. In this step, all errors that have been identified, then they would be classified into the types of errors. In description of error James introduces a table to make it easy. This table can be seen as below. 16 16 Carl James, Error in Language Learning and Use: Exploring Error Analysis, New York: Wesley Longman Inc., 1998, p. 274.