Definition of Error Grammatical Errors on Students' Writing of Recount Text (An Error Analysis at the Second Grade Students of SMP Dharma Karya UT Pamulang)

1. Omission Error of omission is where some element is omitted which should be present. It means that omission error occur when learners miss or omit necessary items from an utterance. For example, “I very happy”. In the sentence, an auxiliary was which should be put after pronoun “I” is omitted. Hence, the sentence should be “I was very happy”. 2. Addition Error of addition is where some element is present which should not be there. It is the opposite of omission error. Learners do not only omit element which they regard as redundant but they also add redundant element. For example, in a sentence written in past tense, learner produces utterance as following: “I was visited my grandmother last month”. In the example, the learner adds was before visited. Hence, the sentence should be “I visited my grandmother last month”. 3. Misselection Error of selection is where the wrong item has been chosen in place of the right one. For example, a learner writes a sentence as following: “I go to Bandung last week” In the example the learner selects the wrong verb for simple past tense form. The correct verb of go is went . Hence, the sentence should be “I went to Bandung last week”. 4. Misordering Error of ordering is where the elements presented are correct but wrongly sequenced. For example, “What you are doing?”. In this example, auxiliary –are is supposed to be put before pronoun you. Hence, the sentence should be “What are you going?”. 8 8 S.P. Corder, Error Analysis and Interlanguage, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981, p. 36.

3. Causes of Error

Error happened because of some causes. One of obvious cause is interference from the native language. One of the strategies to prevent students from making the same errors is by looking at causes of errors itself. H. Douglas Brown classified causes of error into four categories, interlingual transfer, intralingual transfer, context learning, and communication strategy. 9

a. Inter-lingual Transfers

Inter-lingual errors happened because the interference of a mother tongues into a target language. “In this early stage, before the system of the second language is familiar, the native language is the only linguistic system in previous experience upon which the learner can draw. ” 10

b. Intra-lingual Transfers

The early stage of language learning is characterized by a predominance of inter-lingual transfer, but once the learner has begun to acquire part of the new system, more and more interlingual generalization within the target language manifested, his previous language itself experience begin to include structure within the target. 11

c. Context of Learning

Context refers to the classroom with its teacher and its materials in the case of school learning. 12 In a classroom context the teacher or the textbook can lead the learner to make faulty hypotheses about a language. Students often make errors because of misleading explanation from the teacher, faulty presentation of a structure or word in a textbook. 9 H. Douglas Brown, Principles of Language Learning and Teaching, USA: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1980, p. 173. 10 Ibid., p. 177. 11 Ibid., p. 178. 12 Ibid., p. 179.