42 benefit for foreign language teachers, e.g., errors can provide feedback and tell the
teacher something about the effectiveness of his teaching techniques as cited in Hendrickson, 1981, p. 3.
Besides, Corder 1973 mentions that errors are also able to show the teacher what parts of the syllabus he has been following have been inadequately
learned or taught need further attention as cited in Hendrickson, 1981, p. 3. Furthermore, Hendrickson 1981 states that learners can learn from their
mistakes if they are given supportive feedback from their teachers p. 3.
5. Error Analysis
This part deals with the steps in doing an error analysis. According to Ellis and Barkhuizen 2005, error analysis consists of a set of procedures for
identifying, describing, and explaining learner errors p. 51.
a. Steps of Error Analysis
According to Corder 1974, error analysis can be conducted through several steps, namely collection of a sample of learner language, identification of
errors, description of errors, explanation of errors, and error evaluation as cited in Ellis Barkhuizen, 2005, p. 57.
1 Collection of a Sample of Learner Language
In this step, the researcher has to decide the sample of the research and to collect them. In addition, Ellis and Barkhuizen 2005 add that in this step, the
researcher may specify the sample that he wants to collect p. 57.
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2 Identification of Errors
This step involves a comparison between what the learners have written in their written work and what a native speaker counterpart would write in the same
context Ellis Barkhuizen, 2005 p. 58.
3 Description of Errors
After all the errors have been identified, the researcher can start to describe and to classify the errors into types of errors. According to Ellis and Barkhuizen
2005, this step deals with specifying how the forms produced by the learners differ from those produced in the target language p. 60.
4 Explanation of Errors
This step involves finding out the sources of errors. In this step of error analysis, the researcher has to explain the reason or the factors why learners make
the errors Ellis Barkhuizen, 2005, p. 62. Since the objectives of this research are to find out subject-verb agreement
errors made by students in Paragraph Writing class of ELESP and to find out the factors that caused students in Paragraph Writing class of ELESP to make those
subject-verb agreement errors, the researcher, therefore, decided not to do the next step of the error analysis mentioned by Corder 1974, which is error evaluation
as cited in Ellis Barkhuizen, 2005, p. 57. It means that in this research, the researcher only did four steps in conducting error analysis. Those four steps are
collection of a sample of learner language, identification of errors, description of errors and explanation of errors.
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B. Theoretical Framework
In this part, the researcher tries to synthesize the relevant theories discussed in the previous subchapter which become the grounds to support this
research and to analyze the data of the research. The theories about subject-verb concord both in number and in person tell the researcher about the kind of
agreement that a subject and its followed verb have. Therefore, principally, subject-verb agreement discussed in this research requires a subject to agree with
its followed verb in number and in person. To be able to form subject-verb agreement in number, Langan 1987 states that a singular subject, which is one
person or thing, should take a singular verb, while a plural subject, which is more than one person or thing, should take a plural verb p. 338. In addition, the
concord of number also occurs between a subject and its finite verb. Then, subject-verb agreement in person mostly deals with the usage of the first, the
second, and the third person as a subject in determining the form of a verb that follows the subject.
In addition, the agreement of subject and of verb is always applied whenever the verb displays disctinctions in number and in person Greenbaum,
1989, p. 208. Thus, the researcher is required to be able to clearly understand whether a subject in every sentence that the students wrote has a singular meaning
or has a plural meaning and also to clearly understand whether a subject in every sentence that the students wrote is the first person or the second person or the
third person. It aims to make the researcher able to know whether or not a verb that follows the subject agrees with the subject.
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