32
2. Discussion
In an attempt to answer the first research question: the surface structure errors in students‟ short stories, the researcher presented the data in frequency and
percentage of their occurrence. The data presentation shown explained that there were four categories at superficial level based on Surface Strategy Taxonomy
which were also divided into several subcategories. Omission was subdivided into two classes; content morpheme and grammatical morpheme. Addition was
subdivided into three classes; double marking, regularization, simple addition. Misformation was subdivided into four classes; overregularization error,
regularization error in the comprehension of grammar, archi-form, and alternating form. Misordering stands alone. In addition, top ten categories of linguistic level
Table 4.1 continued II.
Error at Linguistic Level No.
Categories of Error Frequency
Percentage
1. Article
95 21
2. Verb inflection
51 11
3. Diction
40 9
4. Tense
31 7
5. Copula
29 6
6. Conjunction
25 5
7. Phrasal verb
23 5
8. Pronoun
21 5
9. Adverbial
19 4
10. Preposition
16 4
Total 350
77 III.
Error at Source Level 1.
Interlingual errors 88
19 2.
Intralingual errors 368
81 Total
457 100
33 were also discussed and integrated into superficial level to ease description of
students‟ errors. Besides, source level which is used to explain the errors was classified into two: interlingual and intralingual errors.
In this section, the data presented was discussed and divided into several parts based on each step, 1 description of errors and 2 explanation of errors.
a. Description of Errors
Errors based on Surface Strategy Taxonomy which were made the students on their short stories are discussed in this part to acknowledge the learner target
language. This part explores more what errors made by the students, which depicts
the learners‟ gap in processing target language. Since only top 10 categories of linguistic level were discussed, it could show what the teacher
should manage the urgency throughout this each sub discussion.
1. Omission
Omission errors are found by identifying the absence of an item in a well- formed sentence Dulay, Burt, Krashen, 1982, p. 154; for example Appendix
F: A.37: A giant _ not answered the monkey and he still eat the bananas. Omission
of did and eat E.37: _ heared
it an old man said loudly from in_ the house‟s “I don‟t _ your help” Omission of after, hearing, inside, need
The words, did, eat, after, hearing, and inside were the lost grammatical morphemes. Those words play a minor role in conveying the meaning of a
34 sentence. However if those words were ignored in every sentence, it would be an
unfavourable habit for the students in producing a sentence. In this research, there were 154
omission errors found in the students‟ writing products. It resulted 34 of occurrence. Most of the omission went up in
grammatical morpheme, 141 errors or 31. It is found that almost all the students of this research failed to add
–ed for past tense as the language feature of narrative text. The highest occurrence of omission errors was rising up because of verb
inflections 32 errors and tenses 17 errors, whose omission errors were nearly similar. The students tended to put a base infinitive or to infinitive in predicate of
one sentence. They sometimes omitted or neglected other grammatical morphemes such as articles 27 errors, copulas 18 errors, conjunctions 12
errors, phrasal verbs 6 errors, pronouns 5 errors and adverbial 4 errors as seen in Appendix H. Omission errors on content morphemes also got involved but
it did not come up as a major error.
2. Addition
Addition is identified by a wrong item in one sentence Dulay, Burt, Krashen, 1982, p. 156. In the sample data, there were 103 addition errors or 22.
It was found that 27 errors were double markings, 30 errors were regularization errors, and 47 errors were simple additions as seen in Appendix G.
Double markings were identified when an item was added twice, as in Appendix F
B.39: The mouse deer was very angry and very disappointed. C.36: Actually he was a brave boy and a kindness boy.