16
d. Overgeneralization
Norrish 1983 argues that in this cause of error, “the error might be made as a result of blending structures learnt early in the learning sequence” p. 31. In
other words, this kind of errors happens when students or learners use two kinds of structures in one sentence. As Ellis 1994 states, “overgeneralization error
generally involves the creation of one deviant structure in place of two target language structures” p. 59. The example is the sentence “We are go to school”.
It shows a blending simple present and continuous tense.
e. Error As a Part of Language Creativity
Norrish 1983 says that the learners who have limited capability in English would form a hypothetical rules related to English on insufficient
evidence. It means that when learners do not have enough capability but they need to create new utterances, they may produce errors. According to Norrish 1983,
language creativity is divided into two major factors. The first factor is the incapability of the students to follow the rules of the target language. The second
one is the creative arts. It deals with literature, such as song lyrics, poems, novels or prose.
3. Error analysis
Ellis and Barkhuizen 2005 state that “error analysis is the study of errors that learners make in their speech and writing” p. 51. It means that through error
analysis, the identification, description and explanation of learners’ errors are stated. Asher 1994 adds that error analysis is the procedure of describing and
17
explaining errors systematically p. 740. According to Asher 1994, there are two aims of error analysis. Those are the pedagogical and psycholinguistic aim.
The pedagogical aims to provide feedback about teaching methods and materials, while the psycholinguistic aim is to elucidate on how languages are learnt and
produced p. 740. Errors analysis has its own benefits. As it is stated by Norrish 1983 that
Errors analysis can give a picture of the type of difficulty learners are experiencing. It is clearly stated that errors analysis could draw a depiction about
what kind of difficulty the students are mostly facing. Another benefit of error analysis, as it is claimed by Norrish 1983 is it can indicate common problems to
all, and common problems to particular group. For teachers, they can assess how far they have progressed to the target language.
Dulay et al. 1982 say that studying learners’ errors gives data to teachers and curriculum developers about the students’ difficulties in some parts and to
show what type of errors the students make p. 138. The purpose of errors
analysis by Dulay et al. 1982 is related to the objective of this study which is to show the errors made by the tenth grade students of SMA GAMA Yogyakarta in
writing descriptive text.
4. Theory of writing
Zimmeerman and Rodrigues 1992 say that writing is a way of sharing ideas with others p. 4. Writing can be used as device to reveal the ideas to other
people. Zamel 1983 says, “Writing is a process which the students can explore
Kategori