c. Alternating forms As the student’s vocabulary and grammar grow, the use of arch forms
often gives way to the apparently fairly free alternation of various members of a class with each other. For example: this cats.
4. Misordering Misordering is a wrong placement of morpheme or a group of morphemes
in an utterance. For example: I don’t know what that is? There are three types of misordering:
a. Error based on comparative taxonomy The classification of error in a comparative taxonomy is based on
comparison between the structure of second language errors and certain others types of constructions.
b. Development error These errors are similar to errors made by the students learning the target
languages as their first language. For example: Santi go to school. c. Interlingua errors
Interlingua errors are similar in structure to a semantically equivalent phrase or sentence in students’ native. For example: he has a book green.
Interlingua errors are divided in two types: 1. Ambiguous errors
These errors reflect the students’ native language is called ambiguous error. For example: Santi no go to school.
2. Other errors Other errors are the errors made by the students native using their native
language structure on their second language developmental form, such as “she do her homework”, where “do” as verb for presents tense must add “ses” for subject
“she”. The writer used these categories of error to classify the error constructions
which were made by the students.
c.
Error Based on Communicative Effect Taxonomy
a. Global error Global error
hides communication; it prevents the learners for comprehending some aspects of message. For example: they amused that film
very much. b. Local error
Local error itself doesn’t interfere with understanding at an utterance, usually because there is only a minor violation of one segment of a sentence. “I
hungry” will be local error since the meaning of apparent. The writer uses the classification of errors given by HeidyDulay. In error
based on surface taxonomy, he describes that there are four types of error: omission, addition, misformation and misordering. These types of error are used
in this research.
5. Sources of Errors
In errors analysis, the important part is to know the source of errors which are made by students. According to Ratnah on her journal “Error Analysis on
Tenses Usage Made by Indonesian Students”there are two sources of error:
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a. Interlingual Transfer Interlingual transfer is a significant source for language learners. It is the
error which is caused by the learner’s first language. However, this should not be confused with behaviouristic approach of language transfer. Error
analysis does not regard them as the persistence of old habits, but rather as signs that the learner is internalizing and investigating the system of the
new language. Interlingual errors may occur at different levels such as transfer of phonological, morphological, grammatical and lexica-semantic
elements of the native language into the target language.
b. Intralingual Transfer Intralingual errors result from faulty or partial learning of the target
language rather than language transfer. They may be caused by the influence of one target language item upon another. For example, learners
attempt to use two tense markers at the same time in one sentence since
12
Ratnah, Error Analysis on Tenses Usage Made by Indonesian Students, Journal of Education andPractice ISSN, 2013, p. 161.
they have not mastered the language yet. When they say: “He is comes here”, it is because the singularity of the third person requires “is” in
present continuous, and “-s” at the end of a verb in simple present tense. In short, intralingual errors occur as a result oflearners’ attempt to build up
concepts and hypotheses about the target language from their limited experiencewith it. Learners may commit errors due to this reason in many
ways as in the following examples:
He made me to smile. I want learning English. The meat smells freshly. Doctors always give us good advices.
I don’t know why did he go.
According to Rod Ellis, the sources of error are:
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a. Omission
For example, they leave out the article a andthe and leave the-s off plural
nouns. b.
Overgeneralization
The example, the use of eatedin place of ate.
c. Transfer
Transfer is reflecting learners’ attempts to make use of knowledge. For example, the no what-what refers to it’s ok.
The writer
In addition, Rod Ellis and Gary Barkhuizen classify the source of errors into two: interlingual and intralingual transfer.
14
These are the classifications: a.
Interlingual transfer Interlingual transfer means interference from learners’ mother tongue. The
clearest proof of mother tongue interference is when L1 nonstandard features get transferred to L2. For example, an Indonesian learner says I have a book blue.
This error is caused by interlingual transfer. The student is interferred by his native language, that is Indonesian language, in which an adjective comes after
the noun it modifies. Hence, he produces such error.
13
Rod Ellis, Second Language Acquisition, New York, Oxford University Press, Inc, 1997, p. 19
14
Rod Ellis and Gary Barkhuizen, Analysing Learner Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 65.
b. Intralingual transfer
Intralingual transfer means the transfer which occurs within the target language itself.For example, an English language learner produces an utterance
like the following: He goed to the market two days ago. In this case, the learner has known that in English, an action done in the past should be written in the past
form which is usually characterized by the suffix –ed. He has not known that go is an irregular verb. Therefore, he simply put –ed after the verb go.
In this research, the writer uses the sources of error defined by Rod Ellis and Gary Barkhuizen. The writer thinks that those sources of error are generally
affecting the students committing the errors.
6. The Goal of Error Analysis
According to Selinker and Gass “the goal of error analysis is clearly one of pedagogical remediation”.
15
It implies that the aim of error analysis is evidently education remediation.
John Norris states that “error analysis can give a picture of type of difficulty learners are experiencing. If carried out on a large scale such a survey, it
can be helpful in drawing up a curriculum”.
16
It means that error analysis can give benefit information to fix students’ problems in learning English. It can indicate
problems to a big group or a particular group. Moreover, Dulay, Burt, and Krashen make a clear purpose of error
analysis. According to them, there are two major purposes of error analysis: 1. It provides data from which inferences about the nature of the language
learning process can be made.
15
Gass and Selinker, op. cit., p. 103.
16
John Norrish, Language Learners and their Errors, London: Macmillan Press, 1983, p. 7.
2. It indicates to teachers and curriculum developers which part of the target language students have most difficulty producing correctly and which error types
detract most from a learner’s ability to communicate effectively.
17
Error analysis is very useful for students and teachers in learning a target language. The teachers can make a prevention in the same error in order the
students do not repeat it.
B. Simple Past Tense
Simple past tense is a tense that often used in writing narrative texts. The students need to understand the structure and how to use it correctly in writing a
narrative text.
1. Definition of simple past tense
Some grammarians define the simple past tense with many ways. Betty SchramferAzar said “simple past tense indicates that an activity or situation began
and ended at particular time in the past”.
18
Douglas Bieber and friends in Grammar of Spoken and Written English stated that, “ Past tense most commonly refers to
past time via some past point of reference, especially in fictionally narrative and description, where the use of the past to describe imaginary past happening is a
well- established convention”.
19
This opinion is supported by the statement of Betty SchramferAzar in her book, Fundamental English Grammar that “the simple
past is used to talk about activities or situations that began and ended in the past e.g yesterday, last night, two days ago, in 1990”.
20
Example: a. John Played football yesterday.
b. I studied English last night. c. She visited me two days ago.
17
Dullay, op. cit., p. 138.
18
Azar, op. cit., p. 24.
19
Douglas Biberet al., Grammar of Spoken and Written English, Edinburg: Longman, 1999, p, 456.
20
Betty SchramferAzar, Fundamentals English Grammar, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, inc, 1992, 2
nd
ed. p. 42.
