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omitting the third person –s as in „John play tennis‟, overlooking co-occurrence
restrictions for instance, though „quick‟ and „fast‟ are synonymous, „quick food‟
is not possible to say, or system simplification i.e., substituting a single form where the target language uses more than two forms and reducing the burden of
learning, like the use of „that‟ as a ubiquitous relative pronoun „that‟.
2.3.2 The Taxonomy
Taxonomy is defined as the scientific process of classifying things. Taxonomy must be organized according to certain constitutive criteria. These criteria should
as far as possible reflect observable objective fact about the entities to be classified. So, Error taxonomy is about classifying error into some subtypes.
According to Dulay, Burt and Krashen as stated in James 1998 there are four ways in which IL and TL forms diverge in specific and systematic ways. In
further explanation, James added one additional category. As James 1998 emphasized, the descriptive categories need to be specific and elaborated upon
with maximum care while utilizing both a linguistic taxonomy and surface structure taxonomy. The former is usually based on categories or classes of the
grammar element such as 1 lexis level 2 sentence level 3 inter-sentence level. The latter refers to the ways surface structure is altered, including:
1 Omission
In this stage, learners tend to omit a word. Usually, the function words such as: a, an, the, etc are more likely to be ignored than the content words. For
example: „How many letters are your name?‟ the author omitted the word
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„in‟ and „there‟ which make it should be „How many letters are there in your name?
‟ 2
Addition Here is the stage where learners use additional form. This manifestation of
error as Dulay, Burt and Krashensuggested in James, 1998 is the result of all-to-faithful use of certain rules P. 107. They also suggest there are two
subtypes of this classification. First is regularization, which involves the overlooking exceptions and spreading rules to domains where they do not
apply, for example: the use of eated instead of ate. And the converse form is irregularization. This occurs when a productive process such as affixation is
not applied, but instead the form is wrongly assumed to be an exception to the general rule. For example: the use of dove for the past form dived. Second
is the double-marking. It is defined as failure to delete certain items which are required in some linguistic constructions but not in others. For the
example: The boy doesn‟tgoes to school.
3 Misformation
Learners use the wrong forms of morpheme and syntax. Speaking of this third taxonomy subtype cannot be separated from grammar because it has
been traditionally been discussed in terms of morphology and syntax. Morphology is handling word structure, while syntax is handling structures
larger than the word, namely phrase, clause, and sentence. The example of misfomation is „He reads that books‟. The learner fails to use the correct
plural form of „that‟ that should be „those‟.
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4 Misordering
Learners use the wrong word order. As dulay, Burt and Karshen explained in James, 1998 observe misordering is often the result of learners relying on
carrying out „word-for-word‟ translation of native language surface structure p.111. For example: „I don‟t know where was he‟which should be „I don‟t
know where he was ‟.
5 Blend
Over-including more than one form necessary in one sentence reflecting the learners uncertain
ty to choose which form; e.g., „The only one thing I want‟ is a combination of „The only thing I want‟ and „The one thing I want‟.
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CHAPTER III
METHODS OF INVESTIGATION
Chapter III presents method of investigation, which consists of research design, object of the study, type of data, procedure of collecting data, and the method of
analyzing data.
3.1 Research Design
The qualitative research is used in the study because the main purpose is to analyze the quality of the reading texts in the student worksheet used in Demak.
Qualitative research expresses something comprehensively about the context through data collection taken by the researcher as the key instrument Mujiyanto,
2007, p.19. Creswell 1994 states that qualitative research is descriptive when the
researcher is interested in process, meaning, and understanding gained through words or pictures p.14. Along with the previous definition, Nunan 1992 adds
that “the qualitative research advocates the use of qualitative methods, concern with understanding of human behavior from the actors‟ own frame reference,
explanatory, descriptive and proce ss oriented”p.29.
