Background of Study INTRODUCTION

E. Significance of Study

The results of the study will hopefully give advantages to the English teachers, students, other researchers and the readers. For the English teachers, this study may help them to know what types of errors are encountered by the students in using conditional sentences type two. So, they may be aware of the student s’ needs and be more focus on their teaching. For the students, the study may be used as a source of information about the errors that are usually encountered by learners in terms of learning conditional sentences type 2. By knowing this, the students are hoped to be able to avoid the same errors. For other researchers, the result may serve as a guideline for the future study related to the subject. And hopefully, they can do a better research. For the readers, they can broaden their knowledge especially about conditional sentences and their common errors.

CHAPTER II THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

In this chapter, it will be explained the definition of error analysis, definition of conditional sentence, and theories related to this study.

A. Error Analysis 1. The Definition of Error

The identification of an error is more than explaining the definition of error. However, as language experts give attention to the differences between an error and a mistake, it is necessary to review it. Many expert have tried to explain the uniqueness of errors done by human beings. James defines error as “an instance of language that is unintentionally deviant and is not self-corrigible by its author. A mistake is both intentionally or unintentionally deviant and self-corrigible ”. 1 In simple words, when the learners make error they do not recognize it and even if they know about the error they do, they cannot correct it by themselves. Otherwise, when the learner do a mistake, and we show the mistake they did, they can correct it by themselves. Meanwhile, Norrish states that an error is a systematic deviation occurs when a learner has not learnt something and consistently gets it wrong. And a mistake, in other side, is the inconsistent deviation made when a learner has noticed or has been taught about something. 2 In other words, Norrish differentiated error and mistake in the term of learning: whether someone has learnt or not about something. If the learners do incorrectly about something that they have not learnt before, they do error. Otherwise, if the learners do incorrectly about something that they have learnt, they do mistake. 1 Carl James, Errors in Language Learning and Use – Exploring Error Analysis, New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998, p.78. 2 John Norris, Language Learners and Their Errors, London: The Macmillan Press. Ltd, 1983, p. 7. 5 Furthermore, Brown stated that mistakes refers to a performance error that is either a random guess or a slip, in that it is a failure to utilize a known system correctly. It means mistake can be self-corrected when attention is called. Whereas, an error is the use of linguistic item in a way that a fluent or native speaker of the language regards it as showing faulty or incomplete learning. 3 In other words, it occurs because the learner does not know what is correct, and thus it cannot be self-corrected. To distinguish between an error and mistake, Ellis suggests two ways. The first one is to check the consistency of learner ‟s performance. If he sometimes uses the correct form and sometimes the wrong one, it is a mistake. However, if he always uses it incorrectly, it is then an error. The second way is to ask learner to try to correct his own deviant utterance. Where he is unable to, the deviations are errors; where he is successful, they are mistakes. 4 From the definition above, it can be concluded that an error made by a student because they might not know what the correct form and believe what they are writing or speaking is correct. Whereas a mistake is slip of the tongue or pen. They might make a mistake because of their carelessness, less concentration or quick writing. And to be able to distinguish error and mistake the students do, we can check the consistency of learners ‟ performance and their ability in to correct it by themselves. 3 H. Douglas Brown, Principles of Language Learning and Teaching: Fourth edition, New York: Adisson Weasley Longman, Inc, 2000, p. 217 4 Rod Ellis, Second Language Acquisition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, p.17.