Other Sources of Errors

59 tense should be back shifted. In surface structure taxonomy, this kind of error was categorized into misformation error because the students used the wrong form of tense. Additionally, the tenses errors happened in some special cases, in which tense changes should not be applied. Some of the students changed the tense in some special cases, in which the reporting clause was in the form of present or when the reported clause was general truth. This kind of error could be categorized as misformation because the students formed the wrong form of tenses by applying the rule of back shifting in special cases. The cases of errors in pronouns, adverbs, and demonstratives were almost similar. Those three kinds of errors happened when the students did not change the form of pronoun, adverb, or demonstrative in indirect speech although they should be changed when the sentence was in the form of indirect speech. Those kinds of errors, based on surface structure taxonomy, could be categorized as misformation because the students used the wrong form of pronouns, adverbs, or demonstratives. Another form of error that commonly happened was error in word order. In this kind of error, the students misplaced the position of some words. The example was found in indirect questions, in which the students did not change the position of the auxiliary verbs, and kept their position as they were in the direct speech. In surface structure taxonomy, this kind of error was called misordering error because there were some misplacement of some words. 60 Conjunction errors were also found in the students’ answers to the test. Commonly, the errors in conjunction happened when the students used the wrong form of conjunction. The examples are using if as the conjunction in indirect statements, using that as the conjunction in indirect questions, omitting the conjunction, or adding unneeded conjunction. The conjunction errors happened could be categorized as omission errors when the students omitted the conjunction. They were categorized as addition errors when the students added unneeded conjunction. While misformation errors happened when the students used the wrong form of conjunction. From the kinds of the errors found in the students’ answer in the test, the researcher analyzed the possible sources of errors based on Brown’s theory about sources of errors. The errors caused by interlingual transfer were the errors which were influenced by the students’ native language, which was Indonesian language. The most common errors which were possibly caused by interlingual transfer were errors in tenses. It was categorized as so because in Indonesian language there is no tense changes when a direct speech was changed into indirect speech so that the students ignored the rule of tense changes. Another example was errors in word order, as in the use of to + not in indirect negative imperatives. This error might be because the students translated it from Indonesian language in which they usually say untuk tidak, which made them form the word order as to not instead of not to. Different from interlingual transfer, which was influenced by the students’ native language, intralingual transfer was influenced by the factors within the 61 language itself. In this research, intralingual transfer refers to overgeneralization. The first kind of error caused by overgeneralization was the students’ tendency to backshift the tenses in all kinds of direct speech, including in direct speech which had present form of reporting clause or direct speech which was categorized as general truth. Another example of error that was possibly caused by rule overgeneralization could be found in the use of backshift in indirect imperatives. Some students formed indirect imperative using to, but the to was followed by verb + ed as in to filled. This error might be caused the students generalized that the verb in the reported clause should be back shifted. The causes of the students’ tendency not to change the pronouns, adverbs, or demonstratives when they were should be changed could not be categorized both in intralingual transfer and interlingual transfer. From this reason, the researcher tried to analyze the other sources of those errors. The changes in pronouns, adverbs, and demonstratives in changing direct speech into indirect speech also happen in Indonesian language. Besides, the students might have no problems with the meaning of some pronouns, demonstratives, or adverbs. That is why the cause of those errors did not belong to interlingual transfer. In addition, the errors in using incorrect form of pronouns, adverbs, and demonstratives were not related to overgeneralization of any rules. The rules of the changes in those aspects were applied based on the context where and when the direct speech was reported. The researcher concluded that the factor caused those errors was contextualization. Contextualization in this context means the students’ 62 unawareness toward the context of the sentence. They might use the wrong form of pronouns, adverbs, or demonstratives because they did not notice that there were different contexts between the direct speech and the indirect speech.

B. Recommendations

The recommendations were formulated based on the research results. They were addressed to Structure Class lecturers and students of the English Language Education Study Program, and to other researchers.

1. Recommendations for the Structure Class Lecturers of ELESP

Lecturers take an important role in students’ mastery of direct and indirect speech besides the students themselves. The lecturers need to pay more attention on the students’ understanding of the topic. Students with higher ability may have understood about the topic, but sometimes the lecturers pay less attention to students with different ability who probably do not understand the topic as well as students with higher ability. Giving students exercises which are more applicable can help the students understand more about the topic. The example is by showing them a short movie which contains some dialogs and then asked the students to write the indirect version of the dialog. Other types of exercise can also be given more frequently. Drilling the students with some exercises is helpful for the students to be accustomed to transferring direct speech into indirect speech.