14 Grammar in writing should mean helping writers develop their knowledge of
linguistic resources and grammatical systems to convey ideas meaningfully and appropriately to intended readers. Frodesen in Celce-Murcia, 2001: 233
7. Grammatical Error
Grammar is more than just a set of rules. It is the ever-evolving structure of our language, a field which merits study, invites analysis, and promises
fascination.http:www.dartmouth.edu~writingmaterialsstudentac_papergram mar.shtml
a. Competence errors It is developed from a lack of knowledge or ability.
b. Performance errors It is developed from a mistake in language processing in the head. E.g.
error in typing the word, “the” becomes “teh”.
8. Stages of Error
Pit Carder 1993 carried out three successive stages of error analysis. They are Recognition, Description, and Explanation.
a. Recognition of Error
“Erroneous” means any utterances which are either superficially deviant or inappropriate in terms of the target language grammar. Pit Corder
distinguishes between mistakes, lapses, and errors. They correspond to what he calls Pre-systematic, Post-systematic, and Systematic errors.
15 1 Pre-systematic errors are those committed by the learners while he or
she is trying to come to grips with a new point. 2 Post-systematic errors occur when one temporarily forgets a point that
has been previously understood. 3 Systematic errors are those which occur when the learner has formed
inaccurate hypothesis about the target language i.e. the language that he is learning.
b. Description of Errors
Description of errors tries to explain to the learners how they failed to realize the intended message. Errors that occur repeatedly should be
looked so that the rule that the learner uses and tries to describe can be observed. It is a difficult task to do because individual learners may be
highly inconsistent in their errors. Inconsistency is more characteristic of errors than systematicity. Once errors are described properly, explanation
of errors can begin.
c. Explanation of error
Explanation is still largely speculative because of the limited knowledge of the psychological and neurological process involved in language learning.
The same error could be looked at from various points of view, but once it has been decided to give an explanation from a particular point of view,
then classifying the errors can be started. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
B. Theoretical Framework
Basically, students in learning writing have already known about types of texts. One of those texts is descriptive text. The goal of descriptive text or description
is to enable the reader to visualize a person, place, or thing as much detail, and the right kind of detail, as possible. It includes all the appropriate senses, particularly
sight. But the other senses - smell, hearing, touch, and taste - can also play important role in description. McMurrey, 1983: 239.
Writing for the seventh grade students can be more difficult than the other skills because they have to pay more attention on the grammar and the spelling.
Students in their writing often make many grammatical errors which can make the writing quite odd to understand. Students also sometimes lack of vocabulary.
Therefore, it makes them use words which are not suitable to the context of the sentences.
Seeing the difficulties of writing, the researcher gave more attention to the errors that students made in their writing. The aim of the research is to find out what
are the grammatical errors commonly made by the seventh grade students of SMP N 1 Muntilan in their descriptive writing and also what can the teacher do to improve
students’ descriptive writing. The data collected from the students is about descriptive writing. In analyzing the students’ descriptive writing, the researcher uses the
frequent errors made by ESL writer’s checklist which consists of articles, verb tense, subject verb agreement, singularplural, punctuation, word class, vocabulary, spelling,
and sentence structure. Finishing the step, the researcher gives mark to the students’ PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
