T1 112007158 Full text
AN ANALYSIS OF GRAM
MMATICAL ERRORS IN STUDENTS’’ E
ESSAY OF
PAST NARRATION COMIC
THESIS
Su
Submitted
in Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Evlin Yunanda Salim
112007158
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY
Y OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA
W
CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
SALATIGA
2013
AN ANALYSIS OF GRAM
MMATICAL ERRORS IN STUDENTS’ ESSAY
E
OF
PAST NARRATION COMIC
THESIS
Su
Submitted
in Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Evlin Yunanda Salim
112007158
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY
Y OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA
W
CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
SALATIGA
2013
i
AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN STUDENTS’ ESSAY OF
PAST NARRATION COMIC
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Evlin Yunanda Salim
112007158
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Hendro Setiawan Husada, M.A
Maria Christina Eko S, M. Hum
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Evlin Yunanda Salim:
iv
AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN STUDENTS’ ESSAY OF
PAST NARRATION COMIC
Evlin Yunanda Salim
Abstract
This study aimed to analyze the types of grammatical errors found in the Guided
Writing students’ essay of past narration comic. The data were collected from
17 essays. In analyzing the data, I used steps proposed by Corder (1974) in Ellis
and Barkhuizen (2005). A native speaker lecture helped identify the
grammatical errors in the students’ essay. Based on the identification of errors,
each category of errors was counted to find the types of grammatical errors
using formula P Σ 100% P=percentage, n1=total of the errors, ΣN=total of the
whole errors. Each categories of error was explained and discussed. The result
of the study show that English tenses (181 errors or 24.89%) were found to be
the most common grammatical errors followed by errors in word choice (125
errors or 17.19%), punctuations (118 errors or 16.23%), subject-verb
agreements (73 errors or 10.04%), prepositions (66 errors or 9.07%), articles (54
errors or 7.42%), singular/plurals (48 errors or 6.60%), pronoun (35 errors or
4.81%), and spellings (27 errors or 3.71%). This research concluded by
discussing the pedagogical implication.
Key words: grammatical errors, students’ essay, past narration comic
Introduction
Grammar is the central of the teaching and the basic knowledge to learning language
effectively. Grammar plays an important role (Goh, 2007) and becomes one of the more
difficult aspects of language to teach as well as to learn (Byrd, 2003). According to Mickan
(2001), grammar analyzes the way the sentences work in the writing because writing is one of
the skills which is used by people to communicate their ideas, thought, feeling, and emotions
into words and paper.
In the process of learning a foreign language, making errors is a common thing that the
Indonesian learners face when they write an essay. They necessarily need knowledge of the
grammatical rules. As a learner, producing second language (L2) is not easy. There will be
1
errors may occur because the learners often over-generalize them. An error is a noticeable
deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker, reflecting the interlangual competence
of the learner (Dulay & Burt, 1974; Brown, 1994; Ancker, 2000) and grammatical error is an
error of or pertaining to grammar (Kiser, 2009). Finding L2 learners’ errors is an evidence of
a process of learning because error has played an important role in the study of language
acquisition. Lengo (1995) also emphasized that people will learn to be better from errors that
they have made.
An analysis of errors in learning a foreign language has attracted scholars to examine
the problematic error the learners made. However, grammatical error is one of the
controversial issues in the field. One of the studies was done by Abushihab, El-Omari and
Tobat in 2011. They investigated the grammatical errors in the students’ writing in
Department of English Literature and Translation at Alzaytoonah Private University of
Jordan. They found prepositions and morphological errors were the most problematic Arab
learners made.
However, most of the studies including the one belongs to Abushihab, El-Omari and
Tobat focused on the problematic error the Arab learners made. Therefore, I will aim to
answer the following research question, “What types of grammatical errors did the English
Department students produce in their writing?”
Theoretical Framework
Error and mistake are different. A mistake reflects occasional lapses in performance;
it occurs because in a particular instance, the learner is unable to perform what he or she
knows (Ellis, 1997) and a mistake is a performance error, which is either a random guess or a
‘slip’, i.e. a failure to utilize a known system correctly (Brown, 2007). In other words the
learners know the rules, but they make a slip when producing it.
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The learner cannot avoid errors because errors mostly occur in a learning process. By
making errors, learners can improve their writing ability in their second language
(Littlewood, 1992) because error is the effect of interference the habits of first language in the
learning of second language (Corder, 1981). In other word, errors will only happen to the
learners who are not native speakers (Brown, 1994). According to Ellis (1997), errors reflect
gaps in a learner’s knowledge; they occur because the learner does not know what is correct
and an error is what a learner cannot self-correct (Edge 1989; Ancker, 2000). According to
Ellis (ibid.), there is an example of error of the learner. For example is when the learner says
“The big of them contained a snake.” the correct sentence should “The bigger of them
contained a snake.” Or another possible way is “The big one of them contained a snake.”
Because using ‘big of them’ instead of ‘big one’ is an error in the use of the pronoun ‘one’.
According to Richards (1974), error made by second language learners can be
classified into categories, as below:
Interlingual Errors
An interlingual error sometimes occurs because of the interaction between the
students’ mother tongue and the language that the students learn. The students tend to
translate their sentences word by word from their mother tongue to the target language and
this causes them in making interlingual errors (James, 1998) and it is occurred as the result of
learners’ L1 features, such as lexical and grammar, for example, an Indonesian learner of
English may say *You beautiful instead You are beautiful. It is because in the Indonesian
language there is no to-be after a subject and before an adjective. In the Indonesian language
we simply say kamu (subject) cantik (adjective). Another example which can be said as an
interlingual error is *I watch Green Hornet yesterday instead of I watched Green Hornet
3
yesterday. According to Selinker (1972); Ellis (2005), interlingual refers to the mental
grammar that a learner constructs at a specific stage in the learning process.
Intralingual Errors
An intralingual error is a kind of errors that usually occur within the language that is
being learned. These errors are not influenced by the mother tongue (Bolitho & Tomlinson,
2007) but reflect the general characteristics of rule learning, such as generalization,
incomplete application of rules and failure to learn conditions which rules were applied
(Brown, 2002; Dan, 2007). Intralingual errors can exist in the form of overgeneralization. For
example, a learner may produce *She is dances based on the blend of English She is dancing
and She dances. In the other word, the learner creates a deviant structure on the basis of other
structures in the target language. Another example is the learner applies rules to context
where they are not applicable, He made me to stay.
Developmental errors
“Developmental errors are errors which do not derive from transfer from another
language, they reflect the learner's competence at a particular stage and illustrate some of the
general characteristics of language acquisition” (Richards, 1974). In other words,
developmental errors are similar to the errors made by children learning the language as their
first language. The examples of developmental errors are the misuse of third person -s (she
work hard), the-ed morpheme (she teached us last year), of negation (I not like it) and of
interrogatives (I wonder what is she doing). Richard (1974) classified developmental errors
as similar with intralingual errors. He explained that this error occur during the learning
process of the second language learning at a stage when the learners have not really acquired
the knowledge.
4
In this study, I focused on analyzing the types of grammatical errors in students’
writing, which can/may belong to Interlingual errors, Intralingual or Developmental errors.
Chin (2000) said that grammar is the sound, structure, and meaning system of language.
Therefore, grammatical errors in writing are related to accuracy and fluency in students’
performance.
Fitikides (1990); Lado (2008) found errors found in prepositions, verb tenses,
infinitive, adjective, nouns, adverb, articles, singular/plural and word order. According to
Utoronto (2008), grammatical errors could identify into agreement, comma splices,
misplaced/dangling modifiers, passive voice, possessive case, pronoun, punctuations
(comma, semicolon/colon), sentence fragments, word choice, wordiness.
Errors in agreement occurred because pronouns did not agree with their antecedents in
number and person. Subjects and verbs must also agree in number (singular/plural) and
person (1st, 2nd, 3rd person). A comma splice that cannot join in two independent clauses with
only a comma would be said errors. Errors in misplaced occurred in the wrong position in the
sentence, therefore, describes the wrong word and changes the writer’s meaning. Errors in
passive voice would not happen if the form of ‘To Be’ followed by the past participial and
accompanied by a phrase beginning with word ‘by’. Possessive case errors occurred when
subjective and objective in the sentence and possessive/possession was correct. Sentence
fragments errors occurred when a sentence fragment miss a verb/a subject or begin with
subordinating word. Utoronto (2008) said, “You should never use words you don’t
understand.” Word choice is one of the grammatical errors occurred therefore, the learners
should always use dictionary if they are unsure of the meaning of a word. Errors in wordiness
occurred when a writer uses empty words and phrases in a sentence.
Because of the limitation of time in this study, I would identify errors proposed by
Politzer and Ramirez (1973) in Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982), they analyzed and identify
5
the errors into grammatical (prepositions, articles, singular/plural, tenses), syntactic
(subject/verb agreement, pronouns), lexical (word choice), and semantic (punctuation
spelling). Therefore, the learner should master the systems of grammar unless they would
make the errors in their writing.
Recent studies of grammatical errors
There are some researchers who have conducted the study on common grammatical
errors, for example, Darus and Khor (2009) investigated errors in essays written in English by
Form One Chinese students in a Malaysian public school. They found that the four most
common errors in their written English essays were the mechanics, tenses, preposition, and
subject-verb agreement. The students were very much influenced by their L1. Intralingual
transfer of Malay and developmental errors were also observed in the students’ writing.
A similar study was also conducted by Maros, Tan, and Salehuddin (2007). They
analyzed the interference effect, a factor that played an important role in inhibiting
acquisition of English among young Malay learners in Malaysian schools. They found that
despite having gone through six years of learning English in school environment, the learners
were still having difficulty in using correct English grammar in their writings. The most
frequent errors that student made were the use of articles, subject-verb agreement and copula
be.
In recent year, Watcharapunyawong (2013) also has done a similar study. He analyzed
writing errors caused by the interference of the Thai EFL students, regarded as the first
language (L1) in three writing genres; narration, description and comparison/contrast. He
found the similarities of errors that the EFL students made in the three writing genres: those
were sentence structure, word choice, and comparison structure.
6
Based on the studies of grammatical errors that have done before, it clearly showed
that grammatical errors are not universal but it depends on the subjects and places where the
learning takes place. For this study, I will aim to find out the types of grammatical errors
made by participants.
The Study
Context of the study
This study analyzes grammatical errors in students’ essay at the faculty of Language
and Literature, Satya Wacana Christian University, Salatiga, Central Java, Indonesia. The
source of data of this study was taken from guided writing class aimed to provide the basic
knowledge of English to the students. This study uses quantitative and qualitative method as
it counts the error, describes and examines data that is available.
Participants
The participants of this research were 17 students of Guided Writing class who
studied at the Faculty of Language and Literature, Satya Wacana Christian University in the
second semester of the academic year 2012/2013. The participants ranged in age from 19 to
21 years old and included 9 males and 8 females. The participants regard to language
background, educational level and age. However, not all the participants have the same
background of language, level of educational that they taken before and also age because the
class can be entered by the learners who want to take this class.
Data collection instrument
The data were collected through the students’ essay of past narration comic in guided
writing class. I collect the students’ essay to find the types of grammatical error that
participants produce.
7
Data Collection procedures
I took the data from the students’ essay of guided writing class. The participants
would be asked to write a past narrative story based on past narration comic. The participants
had to write their story in the paper. The result of the participants’ writing was submitted to
the lecture and copied for the analysis.
Data Analysis procedure
This study focused on grammatical error analysis. The processing of this analysis, I
took the steps proposed by Corder (1974) in Ellis and Barkhuizen (2005): (1) collection of a
sample of learner language, (2) identification of errors, (3) description of errors, (4)
explanation of errors. After collecting the data, a native speaker lecture helped identify the
grammatical error in the participants’ essay. When the error had been identified, each
category was counted using this formula
P
100%
Σ
to find the types of grammatical error in
Guided Writing students’ essays. P= percentage, n1= total of the errors, Σn= total of the
whole errors. Finally, each type of errors was explained and discussed.
Findings and Discussion
After all the writing had been checked and relevant data had been categorized based
on the purpose of the study, it was found that there were 727 errors. In regard to the research
question what types of grammatical error did the English Department students produce in
their writing? The findings showed that the most common errors which the participants
produced were tenses (181 or 24.89% errors), followed by 125 errors or 17.19% in word
choice. There were 118 or 16.23% errors belonged to punctuations, 73 errors or 10.04% in
subject-verb agreement, 66 or 9.07% errors related to prepositions and 54 or 7.42% dealt with
articles. 48 or 6.60% errors in singular/plurals, 35 errors or 4.81% was concerned with
8
pronouns, and the participants produced 27 or 3.71% errors in spelling. Table 1 showed the
grammatical errors produced by the participants.
Table 1. Grammatical Errors Produced by the Participants.
No.
Type of error
Number of
Percentage
error
Tenses
181
24.89%
1.
Word Choice
125
17.19%
2.
Punctuations
118
16.23%
3.
Subject/Verb
73
10.04%
4.
agreement
Prepositions
66
9.07%
5.
Articles
54
7.42%
6.
Singular/plurals
48
6.60%
7.
Pronouns
35
4.81%
8.
Spelling
27
3.71%
9.
Total
727
100%
As presented in table 1, the most common grammatical errors were in tenses (181
errors or 24.89%). Tenses are a temporal linguistic quality that indicates a meaning and a
function (Aitken, 1992), for example, the simple present tense is usually show the present
time (I am a teacher), simple past tense is to express the past activity (I was a student) and the
future tense is to show the future events (I will be a lecture). Table 2 showed the participants’
errors in past tense usage.
Table 2. Participants’ errors in using Tenses
No.
Errors
Reconstruction
and Fred
barked
said…..
Linguistic
Description
1.
Fred
*bark
said…..
2.
Chiko
drink……
3.
I *have to clean up I had to clean up my Incorrect verb form in
my beautiful tail.
beautiful tail.
Past Perfect Tense
4.
They *are going to They were going to Incorrect be in Past
*were Chiko
drinking……
9
and Incorrect verb form in
Simple Past Tense
was Incorrect be in Past
Continuous Tense
catch any rabbits.
catch any rabbits.
Future Tense
Because of the topic of the past narrative essays was based on the past narration
comic, the most frequently used tenses followed by simple past tense, past continuous tense,
past perfect tense and past future tense. However, based on the analysis of the errors, it was
found that almost none of the participants knew how to use those tenses correctly.
Errors in tenses occurred because participants used wrong verb tense or the use of
pattern of each tenses. It occurred in simple past tense and past continuous, for example, Fred
sleep* under the table. Other examples occurred in the sentences like, Jack’s mom turned on
the computer and look* at the picture and the postman came and ask* him in his mind.
Errors which participants produced in word form occurred because they did not
master the rule of tenses or the pattern. In order to use simple past tense, the participants
should use past form of the verb, such as asked rather than ask, slept rather than sleep and
looked rather than look. It also occurred in past continuous tense, for example, Fred still
slept*. It should Fred was still sleeping. The participants did not notice the correct usage be
for past future tense. They also did not master the use of was for singular subjects (he, she, it)
and were for more than plural subjects (I, you, we, they.)
The occurrence of errors in past tense was not surprising, because as an Indonesian
learner, English tense forms were quite different from Bahasa Indonesia. English indicates
the use of time with past, present, and future tense. On the other hand, Bahasa Indonesia does
not have tenses. These errors possibly occurred because of the lack of knowledge in using
past tense. The participants might directly translate the word from Bahasa Indonesia into
English. In line with this, Darus and Ching (2009) as cited in Dyarenggasti (2012) stated that
the differences between verb system of L1 and English tenses make difficult for students to
achieve English tenses.
10
Word choice (125 or 17.19%) also became problematic for the participants in this
study. The participants made the word choice almost in their writing, for example, maybe
your habit would *infect to me and He’ll *have steak for today. The participants should
reconstruction the appropriate words, such as pass on rather than infect and make rather than
have. Table 3 showed the participants’ errors in wrong choice.
Table 3. Participants’ errors in using word choice
No.
Errors
Reconstruction
Linguistic
Description
1.
I did not *inadvertent I did not mean to hit Incorrect form
hit you….
you….
word choice.
in
2.
You are *a
player……
in
poor You are the
player……
worst Incorrect form
word choice.
Punctuations (118 or 16.23%) are the common errors that the participants produced in
their writing. Almost the participant made error and mistake in their writing, for example,
“Hey, Jack. Where are you going?” I’m looking for you a long time!” in this sentence, the
participant almost made errors in one sentence. The participant should write “Hey Jack,
where are you going? I’m looking for you a long time.” Table 4 showed the participants’
errors in wrong choice.
Table 4. Participants’ errors in using punctuation
No.
Errors
Reconstruction
Linguistic
Description
1.
In the park*. Yorky In the park, Yorky was Punctuation in comma
was busy…
busy…
2.
Did you take my Did you take my bones? Punctuation
bones*, give it back! give it back!
question
11
in
3.
“…….” Fred asked
his two friends.
*Maybe we can
have…., added Fred.
4.
*he felt sorry for He felt
himself.
himself.
“…….” Fred asked his Punctuation
two friends. “Maybe we quotation
can have….”, added
Fred.
sorry
in
for Punctuation in Capital
The next common errors were Subject-Verb agreements (73 errors or 10.04%). The
participants made errors in the subject-verb number, for example in the sentences there *was
some rabbits. In this sentence, participants faced difficulty to distinguish be for singular and
plural subjects or objects.
Similar errors also occurred in subject-verb tense, for example in the sentence, Fred
and his wife *was the couple dogs of Mr. Ben. They should write. Fred and his wife were the
couple dogs of Mr. Ben.
Another example occurred in sentence Chiko *don’t think it
happens now. Here the participant should state Chiko doesn’t think it happens now. Table 5
showed the subject-verb agreement errors made by the participants.
Table 5. Participants’ errors in using Subject-Verb agreement
No.
Errors
Reconstruction
Linguistic
Description
1.
John gave me three John gave me three Misused subject-verb
*bone
bones
number agreement
2.
Jack, Yorky, and Jack, Yorky, and Fred Misused subject-verb
Fred *was leaving were leaving their home tense agreement
their home to….
to….
Errors in subject-verb agreements occurred due to the L1 interfere. In Bahasa
Indonesia, participants do not distinguish the usage of verb for different subjects. For
12
example the sentence “saya minum susu” (I drink milk) used the same verb to “Yohanes
minum susu” (Yohanes drinks milk) and “saya dan Yohanes minum susu” (Yohanes and I
drink milk). There were no differences in verb used, even though the subjects and the time
allocation used were different.
The next common errors were prepositions (66 errors or 9.07%). The participants
made errors in using prepositions of, in, on, and at. Some participants faced confusion
because they did not master the application of prepositions. For example, he wanted to build
it *on his backyard. Here, the participant substituted preposition in into on. The other
examples occurred when the participants substituted at into in; Chiko looked in Fred and his
wife.
Errors in prepositions appeared because there was uncertainty in participants to select
the correct preposition (Darus & Ching, 2009; Dyarenggasti, 2012). It also happened because
Bahasa Indonesia did not use preposition in its sentence. It made participants could not find
the relevant preposition to be used in English sentence. Learners tended to omit the
prepositions when they could not find which preposition to be used. Table 6 showed
participants’ errors in prepositions.
Table 6. Participants’ errors in using prepositions
No.
Errors
Reconstruction
Linguistic
Description
1.
Chiko just smiled Chiko just smiled and Subtitution in into on
and sat *in his chair. sat on his chair.
2.
Fred came out *at Fred came out of the Subtitution at into of
the bus.
bus.
13
English articles (54 errors or 7.42%) also became problematic for participants. The
participants made errors in the use of indefinite article (a/an) and definite article (the),
because they did not know how to use indefinite articles in generic reference and definite
article in specific reference, for example in the sentence Chiko was *a ignorant dog,
participants misused the article a. Misused errors in article also occurred in the sentences,
Fred was *a honest friend, and she entered in *an university which famous of the beautiful
view. The participants misused an and a because they could not distinguish the use of article
an before vowels and a before consonants.
Not only misusing the articles, the errors in the and a also appeared because the
participants omitted them, for example, ….* shining Sun was enjoyable instead of the shining
sun was enjoyable. That sentence showed that the participants omitted article the in their
writing. Omission in article was found as one of big sources of errors in participants’ writing.
Some participants also omitted article a in some sentences, for examples, Fred and his wife
went to Chiko’ house for * holiday because we have * plan to go to the park together. The
participants omitted articles the and a in their writing works, because they did not notice their
usage in a sentence. Master (2002) stated that article had function of word which were
normally unstressed and it as difficult for a non-native speaker to pay attention to. It caused
omission of article for non-native speakers.
Incorrect application in article also appeared when the participants added article
which were not needed, for example in the sentences *the Jack’s mom turned on TV and It
was *the my best friend forever. Here, article the should not be used, because things which
were referred to, were clear and both the speaker and interlocutor knew it. Table 7 showed
participants’ errors in the use of English article.
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Table 7. Participants’ errors in using articles
No.
Errors
Linguistic
Description
Reconstruction
1.
….*an
glasses.
2.
….were
friends…
3.
Fred was *hero.
4.
…went out at *the …went
afternoon.
afternoon.
unique ….a unique glasses.
*five ….were
friends…
the
Misused
consonant
for
five Omission article the
Fred was a hero.
out
an
Omission article a
at Incorrect
article the
addition
The participants got confused in using article, because they referred to Bahasa
Indonesia as the L1. The use of a and an in Bahasa Indonesia was commonly omitted in a
sentence. Moreover, Bahasa Indonesia did not have article the. According to Celce-Muria and
Larsen-Freeman (1999) in Bataineh (2005), articles were one of difficulties in learning
English, especially for learners whose language did not have articles.
Beside article, the participants made 6.60% or 48 errors in using singular/plurals. It
occurred because in Bahasa Indonesia, there was no addition forms for plural things. The
participants made errors in applying the plural form. They omitted suffix –s for plural things,
for example John have two rabbit*. Here, the participants omitted suffix –s in plural form of
rabbits.
Errors in concord also occurred when participants substituted of singular form for
plural form, for example in the sentence, John stole some *bone. The participant failed to use
the plural form of bone, which should be bones. Table 8 showed the participants’ errors in
applying singulars and plurals.
15
Table 8. Participants’ errors in using singulars and plurals
No.
Errors
Linguistic
Description
Reconstruction
1.
....*a
heroes
family
2.
…for *five minute
…for five minutes
Omission suffix –s for
plural form
3.
…*nine mangos
…nine mangoes
Failure to use suffix –
es
4.
…his *foots
…his feet
Failure to apply plural
form
of ....a hero of family
Incorrect suffix –s for
singular form
As the result of L1 interfere, the participants’ errors in singulars and plurals occurred
because of singular and plural form in Bahasa Indonesia have the same way without any
addition, for example, satu kucing (one cat) and dua kucing (two cats) had the same noun
kucing (cat). It was different with English which stated a cat and two cats.
Some participants realized the rule of singulars and plurals, but they misused this rule.
Therefore, errors occurred because of substitution in singulars for plurals and plurals for
singulars, for example the word that participant used above, the participant knew that both of
his *foots was a plural form, but he misused plural form of foot. It means that error in
singulars and plurals occurred because in the participants’ L1 there were no plural makers for
a noun (Darus and Subramaniam, 2009).
The next error that the participants made was pronoun (35 or 4.81%). The pronoun
errors were classified into subject pronoun, object pronoun and possessive pronoun. Table 9
showed errors occured in prounouns.
16
Table 9. Participants’ errors in using pronouns
No.
Errors
Linguistic
Description
Reconstruction
to*she Fred said to her that…..
1.
Fred said
that…..
2.
…. *him bone
3.
….Mrs. Ben said ….Mrs. Ben said that Subtitution
that *he wanted to she wanted to buy some pronoun
buy some dog food. dog food.
4.
John lent me *her John lent me his rabbits Subtitution possessive
rabbits to make my to make my little sister pronoun
little sister happy.
happy.
…. *his bone
Misused
pronoun
object
Misused
pronoun
posessive
subject
The participants still got confused to write the correct pronoun. Some of the
participants substituted subject pronouns. As an example of the sentence Fred, Chiko and
Jack walked to Yorky’s house and *he would eat together. In this case, participant substituted
subject pronoun they to he. Another example was Fred gave me two big bones, *she made me
happy. In this sentence, the participant used incorrect subject pronoun. It should be Fred gave
me two big bones, he made me happy. The participant substituted Fred to she instead of he. It
happened because the difficulty in using correct pronoun for some subjects.
The participants also confused using object pronoun. For example in a sentence Chiko
told *I that she met Mr. Ben. The participant used pronoun I instead of me. Another example
was John gave *she a cup of milk. The participant should write John gave her a cup of milk.
Both of the examples showed that the participants were confused in using object pronouns.
Moreover, the participants also made errors in possessive pronouns. For example,
Yorky asked *me opinion, instead of Yorky asked my opinion. The errors also appeared in the
17
sentence *It scenery was colorful. The participant should use possessive pronoun its rather
than it. It should be, its scenery was colorful. Possessive pronouns were considered as one
step more difficult application for learners rather than personal pronoun, like subject and
object pronouns (Tay, 2004) as cited in Chang, Mahadhir, & Ting (2010).
The last common errors made by the participants were spelling (27 or 3.71% errors).
Spelling error was often happened in the writing error. Spelling error was divided into some
types. In this study, spelling errors did not find as much as other errors. The participants only
produced two types of spelling errors. For example, Jack was *forgiveble that bone’s thief. It
should Jack was forgivable that bone’s thief. The participant did not notice that he/she
produced spelling error of adding to final e, they did not realize the word forgive that have
final e would change if added suffix –able become forgivable. Another example was error in
silent letters spelling. The participant wrote, I’ll *com my hair before meet my darling. The
correct sentence was I’ll comb my hair before meet my darling. The participant did not realize
that he/she did not write the correct word, he/she was like write according to what he/she
spoke. Table 10 showed errors occured in spelling.
Table 10. Participants’ errors in using spelling
No.
Errors
Reconstruction
Linguistic
Description
a Mike was a translator Error
spelling
in….
adding to final e
1.
Mike
was
*translater in….
2.
*Althought they never Although they
caught a rabbit
caught a rabbit
in
never Error spelling in silent
letters
Errors in spelling occurred because the participants write their writing in the paper
directly without any helping from electronic dictionary and computer. However, the spelling
18
error of adding to final e and silent letters occurred because the participants did not realize
when they were writing, they would write what they said in their mind unconsciously.
The errors in the findings may or maybe happen because of mother tongue’s factor
(Interlingual), learning strategies (Intralingual) or habit (Developmental) that students made.
But if I looked from the high types of grammatical errors, it probably occurred because of the
learning strategies of the students. It could be the students did not master the pattern or the
rule of tenses or they did not write in complete sentences because lack of the
acknowledgment of tenses’ rule. Moreover, Indonesian students did not use time to show
event in their language.
By knowing the types of these grammatical errors by the students, I hope the teachers
or the lectures can help and guide the students to write English using better grammar and
reduce the errors that the students made. I also expect that this study will help the English
Department students recognize the failure in using English grammar. By recognizing their
grammatical errors, the process of learning can be more fluent, specifically to Indonesian
students who learning English; they will require it in the use of English grammar.
Conclusion and Pedagogical Implication
The study was conducted to find out the types of grammatical errors made by 17
students from the Guided Writing, faculty of English Department, Satya Wacana Christian
University in their essays. The result of grammatical error’ types showed that tenses (181
errors or 24.89%) were the most. It was followed by errors in word choice (125 errors or
17.19%), punctuations (118 errors or 16.23%), subject-verb agreements (73 errors or
10.04%), prepositions (66 errors or 9.07%), articles (54 errors or 7.42%), singular/plurals (48
errors or 6.60%), pronoun (35 errors or 4.81%) and spelling (27 errors or 3.71%).
19
The study directs to a pedagogical implication on Second Language Acquisition.
Since tenses became the most common grammatical errors occurred in the participants’
writing, it was essential for the English lectures to focus on tenses as students’ weakness and
needed to strengthen students’ understanding in English tenses. The learning strategies of the
participant should be enhanced. The lectures could create teaching-learning activities which
carry important effects for students in learning L2. For example by giving the students
opportunities for personalization, which meant allowing students to create their own ideas,
feelings, attitudes, and content from their daily activities (Nunan, 2005; Dyarenggasti, 2012),
like writing what they like, for example, their favorite artist or food. The activity should be
given more than once, to accustom student’s understanding in English grammar.
I do not deny that this study has limitations. First, it concerns with the number of
participants (17 students). I believe if more participants could have involved in this study, the
results and conclusion would be more representative. Besides that, this study only based on
the past narration comic story which clearly showed that English tenses were the main
foundation. If topic used in writing as the data were various, there might be possibility that
the result of grammatical errors were more objective.
Looking at that limitation, for the future research which aims to find out grammatical
errors on learners’ writing from another department who has English course, for example
Agriculture Department. I suggest including a number of different topics on writing and
involving more participants. It might represent learners’ natural language use in English as
the data.
20
References
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Brown, D.B. (1994). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching 3rd, New Jersey:
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Brown, H.D. (2007). Principles of Language Learning And Teaching. New York:Longman.
Byrd, P. (2003). Teaching Grammar: The Essentials of Language Teaching. NCLRC: The
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2012, from http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/grammar/grindex.htm.
Corder, S.P. (1981). Error Analysis and Interlanguage. New York: Oxford University Press.
Darus, S., & Ching, K. H. (2009). Common errors in written English essays of form one
Chinese students : A case study. Europian Journal of Social Science , 10, 242-245.
Darus, S., & Subramaniam, K. (2009). Error Analysis of the Written English Essay of
Secondary School Students in Malaysia: A Case Study. Europian Journal of Social
Science, 162-170.
Dulay, H. C., & Burt, M. K. (1974). You can't learn without goofing an analysis of children's
second language errors. Language Learning , 95-99.
Ellis, R. (1997). Second Language Acquisition. Oxford University Press.
Ellis, R., & Barkhuizen, G. (2005). Analysing Learner Langusge. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Fitikides, T. J. (1990). Common mistakes in English 5th Edition. Jakarta: Binarupa Aksara.
Goh, Y.S. (2007). Learning grammar in Chinese Pronunciation. Electronic Journal of Foreign
Language Teaching vol. 6, no. 1, 100-107.
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James, C. (1998). Error in Language Learning and Use. Exploring Error Analysis, New York:
Longman.
Kiser, E. (2009). In Error? Grammatical is a Legimate Adjectives. Winston-Salem Journal
(March
8,
2009).
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December
27,
2012,
from
http://www.journalnow.com/opinion/columnists/article_adf6dffd-0584-5713-a9b6f16e97659d09.html.
Lado, M. J. (2008). Common errors in English. Jakarta: Kesaint Blanc.
Littlewood, W. (1992). Teaching oral communication: A methodological framework. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Maros, M., Hua, T. K., & Salehuddin, K. (2007). Interference in learning English:
Grammatical errors in English essay writing among rural Malay secondary school
students in Malaysia. Journal e-Bangi, 2(2), 1-15. Retrieved April 19, 2011, from
http://www.ukm.my/ebangi/index.php?option=com_jresearch&view=publication&tas
k=show&id=33&lang=en.
Master, P. (2002). Information structure and English article pedagogy. System 30, 331-348.
Mickan, P. (2001) Beyond Grammar: Text as Unit of Analysis. In James, J.E. (2003).
Grammar in the Language Classroom. (pp. 220-227). Singapore: SEAMEO. Regional
Language Centre.
Richards, I.A. (1974). Techniques in Language Control. Rowley: Newbury House Publishers.
Watcharapunyawong, S. (2013).Thai EFL Students’ Writing Errors in Different Text Types:
The Interference of The First Langauge. Retrieved April 3, 2013, from
http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/84953075/thai-efl-students-writing-errorsdifferent-text-types-interference-first-language.
22
Acknowledgement
This thesis would not been done without helps and supports from many people around
me. First, I would like to thank to my greatest Lord, Jesus Christ who always gives me His
blessing, power and faith during finishing this thesis, He always makes impossible be
possible. Second is my supervisor, Mr. Hendro Setiawan Husada, M.A. who always gave me
guidance, knowledge and helps throughout making this thesis. Big thanks also for my
examiner, Maria Christina Eko S, M. Hum, who had read, helped and given me guidance in
making this thesis better. Thank you for Mr. Andrew Thren, B.A for helping me in collecting
the data and also identification the errors of the students’ essays. Tri Buce S.Pd who gave me
some data. I also would like to give all the gratitude for my precious family, my beloved
father, mother and brother; Boas Liem Hindarto, Rut Ing Yuana, and Yonatan A.S who
always pray and also support me during making this thesis until finish. My best friend, Ayu
Dwijayanti, thank you for your helps, advices, supports, and also your time during I was
finishing my thesis. My beloved Yohanes Alison, thank you for the prayers and supports, you
always made me seriously making this thesis, and also thank you for always staying beside
me during my hard time. Thank you for mbak Tri kos, ce Esther, and ce Ricky who always
made and gave me the delicious meals when I was making my thesis and thank you for kak
Dwi Purwanti, Janti, Rike, Milo, Joyful Kids Impact’ team, all Ed teachers and all of friends
who I cannot mention here.
23
Appendix
24
MMATICAL ERRORS IN STUDENTS’’ E
ESSAY OF
PAST NARRATION COMIC
THESIS
Su
Submitted
in Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Evlin Yunanda Salim
112007158
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY
Y OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA
W
CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
SALATIGA
2013
AN ANALYSIS OF GRAM
MMATICAL ERRORS IN STUDENTS’ ESSAY
E
OF
PAST NARRATION COMIC
THESIS
Su
Submitted
in Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Evlin Yunanda Salim
112007158
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY
Y OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA
W
CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
SALATIGA
2013
i
AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN STUDENTS’ ESSAY OF
PAST NARRATION COMIC
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Evlin Yunanda Salim
112007158
Approved by:
Hendro Setiawan Husada, M.A
Maria Christina Eko S, M. Hum
Supervisor
Examiner
ii
PUBLICAT
TION AGREEMENT DECLARATION
As a member of the (SWCU
CU) Satya Wacana Christian University academic
ic community,
I verify that:
Name
: Evlin
Ev Yunanda Salim
Student ID Number
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112007158
Study Program
: En
English Language Teaching Department
Faculty
: La
Language and Literature
Kind of Work
:U
Undergraduate Thesis
In developing my knowledge,, I agree to provide SWCU with a non-exclusive
ive royalty free
right for my intellectual property
rty and the contents therein entitled:
AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMM
MATICAL ERRORS IN STUDENTS’ ESSAY
YO
OF PAST
NARRATION COMIC
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lty free right, SWCU maintains the right to copy
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Date
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Verified by signee,
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ko S, M. Hum
COPYRIGHT
COP
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iii
This thesis contains no such mate
material as has been submitted for examination inn aany course or
accepted for the fulfillment of any
a degree or diploma in any university. To th
the best of my
knowledge and my belief, thiss ccontains no material previously published or w
written by any
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Copyright@ 2013 Evlin Yunanda
nda Salim and Hendro Setiawan Husada, M.A
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Evlin Yunanda Salim:
iv
AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN STUDENTS’ ESSAY OF
PAST NARRATION COMIC
Evlin Yunanda Salim
Abstract
This study aimed to analyze the types of grammatical errors found in the Guided
Writing students’ essay of past narration comic. The data were collected from
17 essays. In analyzing the data, I used steps proposed by Corder (1974) in Ellis
and Barkhuizen (2005). A native speaker lecture helped identify the
grammatical errors in the students’ essay. Based on the identification of errors,
each category of errors was counted to find the types of grammatical errors
using formula P Σ 100% P=percentage, n1=total of the errors, ΣN=total of the
whole errors. Each categories of error was explained and discussed. The result
of the study show that English tenses (181 errors or 24.89%) were found to be
the most common grammatical errors followed by errors in word choice (125
errors or 17.19%), punctuations (118 errors or 16.23%), subject-verb
agreements (73 errors or 10.04%), prepositions (66 errors or 9.07%), articles (54
errors or 7.42%), singular/plurals (48 errors or 6.60%), pronoun (35 errors or
4.81%), and spellings (27 errors or 3.71%). This research concluded by
discussing the pedagogical implication.
Key words: grammatical errors, students’ essay, past narration comic
Introduction
Grammar is the central of the teaching and the basic knowledge to learning language
effectively. Grammar plays an important role (Goh, 2007) and becomes one of the more
difficult aspects of language to teach as well as to learn (Byrd, 2003). According to Mickan
(2001), grammar analyzes the way the sentences work in the writing because writing is one of
the skills which is used by people to communicate their ideas, thought, feeling, and emotions
into words and paper.
In the process of learning a foreign language, making errors is a common thing that the
Indonesian learners face when they write an essay. They necessarily need knowledge of the
grammatical rules. As a learner, producing second language (L2) is not easy. There will be
1
errors may occur because the learners often over-generalize them. An error is a noticeable
deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker, reflecting the interlangual competence
of the learner (Dulay & Burt, 1974; Brown, 1994; Ancker, 2000) and grammatical error is an
error of or pertaining to grammar (Kiser, 2009). Finding L2 learners’ errors is an evidence of
a process of learning because error has played an important role in the study of language
acquisition. Lengo (1995) also emphasized that people will learn to be better from errors that
they have made.
An analysis of errors in learning a foreign language has attracted scholars to examine
the problematic error the learners made. However, grammatical error is one of the
controversial issues in the field. One of the studies was done by Abushihab, El-Omari and
Tobat in 2011. They investigated the grammatical errors in the students’ writing in
Department of English Literature and Translation at Alzaytoonah Private University of
Jordan. They found prepositions and morphological errors were the most problematic Arab
learners made.
However, most of the studies including the one belongs to Abushihab, El-Omari and
Tobat focused on the problematic error the Arab learners made. Therefore, I will aim to
answer the following research question, “What types of grammatical errors did the English
Department students produce in their writing?”
Theoretical Framework
Error and mistake are different. A mistake reflects occasional lapses in performance;
it occurs because in a particular instance, the learner is unable to perform what he or she
knows (Ellis, 1997) and a mistake is a performance error, which is either a random guess or a
‘slip’, i.e. a failure to utilize a known system correctly (Brown, 2007). In other words the
learners know the rules, but they make a slip when producing it.
2
The learner cannot avoid errors because errors mostly occur in a learning process. By
making errors, learners can improve their writing ability in their second language
(Littlewood, 1992) because error is the effect of interference the habits of first language in the
learning of second language (Corder, 1981). In other word, errors will only happen to the
learners who are not native speakers (Brown, 1994). According to Ellis (1997), errors reflect
gaps in a learner’s knowledge; they occur because the learner does not know what is correct
and an error is what a learner cannot self-correct (Edge 1989; Ancker, 2000). According to
Ellis (ibid.), there is an example of error of the learner. For example is when the learner says
“The big of them contained a snake.” the correct sentence should “The bigger of them
contained a snake.” Or another possible way is “The big one of them contained a snake.”
Because using ‘big of them’ instead of ‘big one’ is an error in the use of the pronoun ‘one’.
According to Richards (1974), error made by second language learners can be
classified into categories, as below:
Interlingual Errors
An interlingual error sometimes occurs because of the interaction between the
students’ mother tongue and the language that the students learn. The students tend to
translate their sentences word by word from their mother tongue to the target language and
this causes them in making interlingual errors (James, 1998) and it is occurred as the result of
learners’ L1 features, such as lexical and grammar, for example, an Indonesian learner of
English may say *You beautiful instead You are beautiful. It is because in the Indonesian
language there is no to-be after a subject and before an adjective. In the Indonesian language
we simply say kamu (subject) cantik (adjective). Another example which can be said as an
interlingual error is *I watch Green Hornet yesterday instead of I watched Green Hornet
3
yesterday. According to Selinker (1972); Ellis (2005), interlingual refers to the mental
grammar that a learner constructs at a specific stage in the learning process.
Intralingual Errors
An intralingual error is a kind of errors that usually occur within the language that is
being learned. These errors are not influenced by the mother tongue (Bolitho & Tomlinson,
2007) but reflect the general characteristics of rule learning, such as generalization,
incomplete application of rules and failure to learn conditions which rules were applied
(Brown, 2002; Dan, 2007). Intralingual errors can exist in the form of overgeneralization. For
example, a learner may produce *She is dances based on the blend of English She is dancing
and She dances. In the other word, the learner creates a deviant structure on the basis of other
structures in the target language. Another example is the learner applies rules to context
where they are not applicable, He made me to stay.
Developmental errors
“Developmental errors are errors which do not derive from transfer from another
language, they reflect the learner's competence at a particular stage and illustrate some of the
general characteristics of language acquisition” (Richards, 1974). In other words,
developmental errors are similar to the errors made by children learning the language as their
first language. The examples of developmental errors are the misuse of third person -s (she
work hard), the-ed morpheme (she teached us last year), of negation (I not like it) and of
interrogatives (I wonder what is she doing). Richard (1974) classified developmental errors
as similar with intralingual errors. He explained that this error occur during the learning
process of the second language learning at a stage when the learners have not really acquired
the knowledge.
4
In this study, I focused on analyzing the types of grammatical errors in students’
writing, which can/may belong to Interlingual errors, Intralingual or Developmental errors.
Chin (2000) said that grammar is the sound, structure, and meaning system of language.
Therefore, grammatical errors in writing are related to accuracy and fluency in students’
performance.
Fitikides (1990); Lado (2008) found errors found in prepositions, verb tenses,
infinitive, adjective, nouns, adverb, articles, singular/plural and word order. According to
Utoronto (2008), grammatical errors could identify into agreement, comma splices,
misplaced/dangling modifiers, passive voice, possessive case, pronoun, punctuations
(comma, semicolon/colon), sentence fragments, word choice, wordiness.
Errors in agreement occurred because pronouns did not agree with their antecedents in
number and person. Subjects and verbs must also agree in number (singular/plural) and
person (1st, 2nd, 3rd person). A comma splice that cannot join in two independent clauses with
only a comma would be said errors. Errors in misplaced occurred in the wrong position in the
sentence, therefore, describes the wrong word and changes the writer’s meaning. Errors in
passive voice would not happen if the form of ‘To Be’ followed by the past participial and
accompanied by a phrase beginning with word ‘by’. Possessive case errors occurred when
subjective and objective in the sentence and possessive/possession was correct. Sentence
fragments errors occurred when a sentence fragment miss a verb/a subject or begin with
subordinating word. Utoronto (2008) said, “You should never use words you don’t
understand.” Word choice is one of the grammatical errors occurred therefore, the learners
should always use dictionary if they are unsure of the meaning of a word. Errors in wordiness
occurred when a writer uses empty words and phrases in a sentence.
Because of the limitation of time in this study, I would identify errors proposed by
Politzer and Ramirez (1973) in Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982), they analyzed and identify
5
the errors into grammatical (prepositions, articles, singular/plural, tenses), syntactic
(subject/verb agreement, pronouns), lexical (word choice), and semantic (punctuation
spelling). Therefore, the learner should master the systems of grammar unless they would
make the errors in their writing.
Recent studies of grammatical errors
There are some researchers who have conducted the study on common grammatical
errors, for example, Darus and Khor (2009) investigated errors in essays written in English by
Form One Chinese students in a Malaysian public school. They found that the four most
common errors in their written English essays were the mechanics, tenses, preposition, and
subject-verb agreement. The students were very much influenced by their L1. Intralingual
transfer of Malay and developmental errors were also observed in the students’ writing.
A similar study was also conducted by Maros, Tan, and Salehuddin (2007). They
analyzed the interference effect, a factor that played an important role in inhibiting
acquisition of English among young Malay learners in Malaysian schools. They found that
despite having gone through six years of learning English in school environment, the learners
were still having difficulty in using correct English grammar in their writings. The most
frequent errors that student made were the use of articles, subject-verb agreement and copula
be.
In recent year, Watcharapunyawong (2013) also has done a similar study. He analyzed
writing errors caused by the interference of the Thai EFL students, regarded as the first
language (L1) in three writing genres; narration, description and comparison/contrast. He
found the similarities of errors that the EFL students made in the three writing genres: those
were sentence structure, word choice, and comparison structure.
6
Based on the studies of grammatical errors that have done before, it clearly showed
that grammatical errors are not universal but it depends on the subjects and places where the
learning takes place. For this study, I will aim to find out the types of grammatical errors
made by participants.
The Study
Context of the study
This study analyzes grammatical errors in students’ essay at the faculty of Language
and Literature, Satya Wacana Christian University, Salatiga, Central Java, Indonesia. The
source of data of this study was taken from guided writing class aimed to provide the basic
knowledge of English to the students. This study uses quantitative and qualitative method as
it counts the error, describes and examines data that is available.
Participants
The participants of this research were 17 students of Guided Writing class who
studied at the Faculty of Language and Literature, Satya Wacana Christian University in the
second semester of the academic year 2012/2013. The participants ranged in age from 19 to
21 years old and included 9 males and 8 females. The participants regard to language
background, educational level and age. However, not all the participants have the same
background of language, level of educational that they taken before and also age because the
class can be entered by the learners who want to take this class.
Data collection instrument
The data were collected through the students’ essay of past narration comic in guided
writing class. I collect the students’ essay to find the types of grammatical error that
participants produce.
7
Data Collection procedures
I took the data from the students’ essay of guided writing class. The participants
would be asked to write a past narrative story based on past narration comic. The participants
had to write their story in the paper. The result of the participants’ writing was submitted to
the lecture and copied for the analysis.
Data Analysis procedure
This study focused on grammatical error analysis. The processing of this analysis, I
took the steps proposed by Corder (1974) in Ellis and Barkhuizen (2005): (1) collection of a
sample of learner language, (2) identification of errors, (3) description of errors, (4)
explanation of errors. After collecting the data, a native speaker lecture helped identify the
grammatical error in the participants’ essay. When the error had been identified, each
category was counted using this formula
P
100%
Σ
to find the types of grammatical error in
Guided Writing students’ essays. P= percentage, n1= total of the errors, Σn= total of the
whole errors. Finally, each type of errors was explained and discussed.
Findings and Discussion
After all the writing had been checked and relevant data had been categorized based
on the purpose of the study, it was found that there were 727 errors. In regard to the research
question what types of grammatical error did the English Department students produce in
their writing? The findings showed that the most common errors which the participants
produced were tenses (181 or 24.89% errors), followed by 125 errors or 17.19% in word
choice. There were 118 or 16.23% errors belonged to punctuations, 73 errors or 10.04% in
subject-verb agreement, 66 or 9.07% errors related to prepositions and 54 or 7.42% dealt with
articles. 48 or 6.60% errors in singular/plurals, 35 errors or 4.81% was concerned with
8
pronouns, and the participants produced 27 or 3.71% errors in spelling. Table 1 showed the
grammatical errors produced by the participants.
Table 1. Grammatical Errors Produced by the Participants.
No.
Type of error
Number of
Percentage
error
Tenses
181
24.89%
1.
Word Choice
125
17.19%
2.
Punctuations
118
16.23%
3.
Subject/Verb
73
10.04%
4.
agreement
Prepositions
66
9.07%
5.
Articles
54
7.42%
6.
Singular/plurals
48
6.60%
7.
Pronouns
35
4.81%
8.
Spelling
27
3.71%
9.
Total
727
100%
As presented in table 1, the most common grammatical errors were in tenses (181
errors or 24.89%). Tenses are a temporal linguistic quality that indicates a meaning and a
function (Aitken, 1992), for example, the simple present tense is usually show the present
time (I am a teacher), simple past tense is to express the past activity (I was a student) and the
future tense is to show the future events (I will be a lecture). Table 2 showed the participants’
errors in past tense usage.
Table 2. Participants’ errors in using Tenses
No.
Errors
Reconstruction
and Fred
barked
said…..
Linguistic
Description
1.
Fred
*bark
said…..
2.
Chiko
drink……
3.
I *have to clean up I had to clean up my Incorrect verb form in
my beautiful tail.
beautiful tail.
Past Perfect Tense
4.
They *are going to They were going to Incorrect be in Past
*were Chiko
drinking……
9
and Incorrect verb form in
Simple Past Tense
was Incorrect be in Past
Continuous Tense
catch any rabbits.
catch any rabbits.
Future Tense
Because of the topic of the past narrative essays was based on the past narration
comic, the most frequently used tenses followed by simple past tense, past continuous tense,
past perfect tense and past future tense. However, based on the analysis of the errors, it was
found that almost none of the participants knew how to use those tenses correctly.
Errors in tenses occurred because participants used wrong verb tense or the use of
pattern of each tenses. It occurred in simple past tense and past continuous, for example, Fred
sleep* under the table. Other examples occurred in the sentences like, Jack’s mom turned on
the computer and look* at the picture and the postman came and ask* him in his mind.
Errors which participants produced in word form occurred because they did not
master the rule of tenses or the pattern. In order to use simple past tense, the participants
should use past form of the verb, such as asked rather than ask, slept rather than sleep and
looked rather than look. It also occurred in past continuous tense, for example, Fred still
slept*. It should Fred was still sleeping. The participants did not notice the correct usage be
for past future tense. They also did not master the use of was for singular subjects (he, she, it)
and were for more than plural subjects (I, you, we, they.)
The occurrence of errors in past tense was not surprising, because as an Indonesian
learner, English tense forms were quite different from Bahasa Indonesia. English indicates
the use of time with past, present, and future tense. On the other hand, Bahasa Indonesia does
not have tenses. These errors possibly occurred because of the lack of knowledge in using
past tense. The participants might directly translate the word from Bahasa Indonesia into
English. In line with this, Darus and Ching (2009) as cited in Dyarenggasti (2012) stated that
the differences between verb system of L1 and English tenses make difficult for students to
achieve English tenses.
10
Word choice (125 or 17.19%) also became problematic for the participants in this
study. The participants made the word choice almost in their writing, for example, maybe
your habit would *infect to me and He’ll *have steak for today. The participants should
reconstruction the appropriate words, such as pass on rather than infect and make rather than
have. Table 3 showed the participants’ errors in wrong choice.
Table 3. Participants’ errors in using word choice
No.
Errors
Reconstruction
Linguistic
Description
1.
I did not *inadvertent I did not mean to hit Incorrect form
hit you….
you….
word choice.
in
2.
You are *a
player……
in
poor You are the
player……
worst Incorrect form
word choice.
Punctuations (118 or 16.23%) are the common errors that the participants produced in
their writing. Almost the participant made error and mistake in their writing, for example,
“Hey, Jack. Where are you going?” I’m looking for you a long time!” in this sentence, the
participant almost made errors in one sentence. The participant should write “Hey Jack,
where are you going? I’m looking for you a long time.” Table 4 showed the participants’
errors in wrong choice.
Table 4. Participants’ errors in using punctuation
No.
Errors
Reconstruction
Linguistic
Description
1.
In the park*. Yorky In the park, Yorky was Punctuation in comma
was busy…
busy…
2.
Did you take my Did you take my bones? Punctuation
bones*, give it back! give it back!
question
11
in
3.
“…….” Fred asked
his two friends.
*Maybe we can
have…., added Fred.
4.
*he felt sorry for He felt
himself.
himself.
“…….” Fred asked his Punctuation
two friends. “Maybe we quotation
can have….”, added
Fred.
sorry
in
for Punctuation in Capital
The next common errors were Subject-Verb agreements (73 errors or 10.04%). The
participants made errors in the subject-verb number, for example in the sentences there *was
some rabbits. In this sentence, participants faced difficulty to distinguish be for singular and
plural subjects or objects.
Similar errors also occurred in subject-verb tense, for example in the sentence, Fred
and his wife *was the couple dogs of Mr. Ben. They should write. Fred and his wife were the
couple dogs of Mr. Ben.
Another example occurred in sentence Chiko *don’t think it
happens now. Here the participant should state Chiko doesn’t think it happens now. Table 5
showed the subject-verb agreement errors made by the participants.
Table 5. Participants’ errors in using Subject-Verb agreement
No.
Errors
Reconstruction
Linguistic
Description
1.
John gave me three John gave me three Misused subject-verb
*bone
bones
number agreement
2.
Jack, Yorky, and Jack, Yorky, and Fred Misused subject-verb
Fred *was leaving were leaving their home tense agreement
their home to….
to….
Errors in subject-verb agreements occurred due to the L1 interfere. In Bahasa
Indonesia, participants do not distinguish the usage of verb for different subjects. For
12
example the sentence “saya minum susu” (I drink milk) used the same verb to “Yohanes
minum susu” (Yohanes drinks milk) and “saya dan Yohanes minum susu” (Yohanes and I
drink milk). There were no differences in verb used, even though the subjects and the time
allocation used were different.
The next common errors were prepositions (66 errors or 9.07%). The participants
made errors in using prepositions of, in, on, and at. Some participants faced confusion
because they did not master the application of prepositions. For example, he wanted to build
it *on his backyard. Here, the participant substituted preposition in into on. The other
examples occurred when the participants substituted at into in; Chiko looked in Fred and his
wife.
Errors in prepositions appeared because there was uncertainty in participants to select
the correct preposition (Darus & Ching, 2009; Dyarenggasti, 2012). It also happened because
Bahasa Indonesia did not use preposition in its sentence. It made participants could not find
the relevant preposition to be used in English sentence. Learners tended to omit the
prepositions when they could not find which preposition to be used. Table 6 showed
participants’ errors in prepositions.
Table 6. Participants’ errors in using prepositions
No.
Errors
Reconstruction
Linguistic
Description
1.
Chiko just smiled Chiko just smiled and Subtitution in into on
and sat *in his chair. sat on his chair.
2.
Fred came out *at Fred came out of the Subtitution at into of
the bus.
bus.
13
English articles (54 errors or 7.42%) also became problematic for participants. The
participants made errors in the use of indefinite article (a/an) and definite article (the),
because they did not know how to use indefinite articles in generic reference and definite
article in specific reference, for example in the sentence Chiko was *a ignorant dog,
participants misused the article a. Misused errors in article also occurred in the sentences,
Fred was *a honest friend, and she entered in *an university which famous of the beautiful
view. The participants misused an and a because they could not distinguish the use of article
an before vowels and a before consonants.
Not only misusing the articles, the errors in the and a also appeared because the
participants omitted them, for example, ….* shining Sun was enjoyable instead of the shining
sun was enjoyable. That sentence showed that the participants omitted article the in their
writing. Omission in article was found as one of big sources of errors in participants’ writing.
Some participants also omitted article a in some sentences, for examples, Fred and his wife
went to Chiko’ house for * holiday because we have * plan to go to the park together. The
participants omitted articles the and a in their writing works, because they did not notice their
usage in a sentence. Master (2002) stated that article had function of word which were
normally unstressed and it as difficult for a non-native speaker to pay attention to. It caused
omission of article for non-native speakers.
Incorrect application in article also appeared when the participants added article
which were not needed, for example in the sentences *the Jack’s mom turned on TV and It
was *the my best friend forever. Here, article the should not be used, because things which
were referred to, were clear and both the speaker and interlocutor knew it. Table 7 showed
participants’ errors in the use of English article.
14
Table 7. Participants’ errors in using articles
No.
Errors
Linguistic
Description
Reconstruction
1.
….*an
glasses.
2.
….were
friends…
3.
Fred was *hero.
4.
…went out at *the …went
afternoon.
afternoon.
unique ….a unique glasses.
*five ….were
friends…
the
Misused
consonant
for
five Omission article the
Fred was a hero.
out
an
Omission article a
at Incorrect
article the
addition
The participants got confused in using article, because they referred to Bahasa
Indonesia as the L1. The use of a and an in Bahasa Indonesia was commonly omitted in a
sentence. Moreover, Bahasa Indonesia did not have article the. According to Celce-Muria and
Larsen-Freeman (1999) in Bataineh (2005), articles were one of difficulties in learning
English, especially for learners whose language did not have articles.
Beside article, the participants made 6.60% or 48 errors in using singular/plurals. It
occurred because in Bahasa Indonesia, there was no addition forms for plural things. The
participants made errors in applying the plural form. They omitted suffix –s for plural things,
for example John have two rabbit*. Here, the participants omitted suffix –s in plural form of
rabbits.
Errors in concord also occurred when participants substituted of singular form for
plural form, for example in the sentence, John stole some *bone. The participant failed to use
the plural form of bone, which should be bones. Table 8 showed the participants’ errors in
applying singulars and plurals.
15
Table 8. Participants’ errors in using singulars and plurals
No.
Errors
Linguistic
Description
Reconstruction
1.
....*a
heroes
family
2.
…for *five minute
…for five minutes
Omission suffix –s for
plural form
3.
…*nine mangos
…nine mangoes
Failure to use suffix –
es
4.
…his *foots
…his feet
Failure to apply plural
form
of ....a hero of family
Incorrect suffix –s for
singular form
As the result of L1 interfere, the participants’ errors in singulars and plurals occurred
because of singular and plural form in Bahasa Indonesia have the same way without any
addition, for example, satu kucing (one cat) and dua kucing (two cats) had the same noun
kucing (cat). It was different with English which stated a cat and two cats.
Some participants realized the rule of singulars and plurals, but they misused this rule.
Therefore, errors occurred because of substitution in singulars for plurals and plurals for
singulars, for example the word that participant used above, the participant knew that both of
his *foots was a plural form, but he misused plural form of foot. It means that error in
singulars and plurals occurred because in the participants’ L1 there were no plural makers for
a noun (Darus and Subramaniam, 2009).
The next error that the participants made was pronoun (35 or 4.81%). The pronoun
errors were classified into subject pronoun, object pronoun and possessive pronoun. Table 9
showed errors occured in prounouns.
16
Table 9. Participants’ errors in using pronouns
No.
Errors
Linguistic
Description
Reconstruction
to*she Fred said to her that…..
1.
Fred said
that…..
2.
…. *him bone
3.
….Mrs. Ben said ….Mrs. Ben said that Subtitution
that *he wanted to she wanted to buy some pronoun
buy some dog food. dog food.
4.
John lent me *her John lent me his rabbits Subtitution possessive
rabbits to make my to make my little sister pronoun
little sister happy.
happy.
…. *his bone
Misused
pronoun
object
Misused
pronoun
posessive
subject
The participants still got confused to write the correct pronoun. Some of the
participants substituted subject pronouns. As an example of the sentence Fred, Chiko and
Jack walked to Yorky’s house and *he would eat together. In this case, participant substituted
subject pronoun they to he. Another example was Fred gave me two big bones, *she made me
happy. In this sentence, the participant used incorrect subject pronoun. It should be Fred gave
me two big bones, he made me happy. The participant substituted Fred to she instead of he. It
happened because the difficulty in using correct pronoun for some subjects.
The participants also confused using object pronoun. For example in a sentence Chiko
told *I that she met Mr. Ben. The participant used pronoun I instead of me. Another example
was John gave *she a cup of milk. The participant should write John gave her a cup of milk.
Both of the examples showed that the participants were confused in using object pronouns.
Moreover, the participants also made errors in possessive pronouns. For example,
Yorky asked *me opinion, instead of Yorky asked my opinion. The errors also appeared in the
17
sentence *It scenery was colorful. The participant should use possessive pronoun its rather
than it. It should be, its scenery was colorful. Possessive pronouns were considered as one
step more difficult application for learners rather than personal pronoun, like subject and
object pronouns (Tay, 2004) as cited in Chang, Mahadhir, & Ting (2010).
The last common errors made by the participants were spelling (27 or 3.71% errors).
Spelling error was often happened in the writing error. Spelling error was divided into some
types. In this study, spelling errors did not find as much as other errors. The participants only
produced two types of spelling errors. For example, Jack was *forgiveble that bone’s thief. It
should Jack was forgivable that bone’s thief. The participant did not notice that he/she
produced spelling error of adding to final e, they did not realize the word forgive that have
final e would change if added suffix –able become forgivable. Another example was error in
silent letters spelling. The participant wrote, I’ll *com my hair before meet my darling. The
correct sentence was I’ll comb my hair before meet my darling. The participant did not realize
that he/she did not write the correct word, he/she was like write according to what he/she
spoke. Table 10 showed errors occured in spelling.
Table 10. Participants’ errors in using spelling
No.
Errors
Reconstruction
Linguistic
Description
a Mike was a translator Error
spelling
in….
adding to final e
1.
Mike
was
*translater in….
2.
*Althought they never Although they
caught a rabbit
caught a rabbit
in
never Error spelling in silent
letters
Errors in spelling occurred because the participants write their writing in the paper
directly without any helping from electronic dictionary and computer. However, the spelling
18
error of adding to final e and silent letters occurred because the participants did not realize
when they were writing, they would write what they said in their mind unconsciously.
The errors in the findings may or maybe happen because of mother tongue’s factor
(Interlingual), learning strategies (Intralingual) or habit (Developmental) that students made.
But if I looked from the high types of grammatical errors, it probably occurred because of the
learning strategies of the students. It could be the students did not master the pattern or the
rule of tenses or they did not write in complete sentences because lack of the
acknowledgment of tenses’ rule. Moreover, Indonesian students did not use time to show
event in their language.
By knowing the types of these grammatical errors by the students, I hope the teachers
or the lectures can help and guide the students to write English using better grammar and
reduce the errors that the students made. I also expect that this study will help the English
Department students recognize the failure in using English grammar. By recognizing their
grammatical errors, the process of learning can be more fluent, specifically to Indonesian
students who learning English; they will require it in the use of English grammar.
Conclusion and Pedagogical Implication
The study was conducted to find out the types of grammatical errors made by 17
students from the Guided Writing, faculty of English Department, Satya Wacana Christian
University in their essays. The result of grammatical error’ types showed that tenses (181
errors or 24.89%) were the most. It was followed by errors in word choice (125 errors or
17.19%), punctuations (118 errors or 16.23%), subject-verb agreements (73 errors or
10.04%), prepositions (66 errors or 9.07%), articles (54 errors or 7.42%), singular/plurals (48
errors or 6.60%), pronoun (35 errors or 4.81%) and spelling (27 errors or 3.71%).
19
The study directs to a pedagogical implication on Second Language Acquisition.
Since tenses became the most common grammatical errors occurred in the participants’
writing, it was essential for the English lectures to focus on tenses as students’ weakness and
needed to strengthen students’ understanding in English tenses. The learning strategies of the
participant should be enhanced. The lectures could create teaching-learning activities which
carry important effects for students in learning L2. For example by giving the students
opportunities for personalization, which meant allowing students to create their own ideas,
feelings, attitudes, and content from their daily activities (Nunan, 2005; Dyarenggasti, 2012),
like writing what they like, for example, their favorite artist or food. The activity should be
given more than once, to accustom student’s understanding in English grammar.
I do not deny that this study has limitations. First, it concerns with the number of
participants (17 students). I believe if more participants could have involved in this study, the
results and conclusion would be more representative. Besides that, this study only based on
the past narration comic story which clearly showed that English tenses were the main
foundation. If topic used in writing as the data were various, there might be possibility that
the result of grammatical errors were more objective.
Looking at that limitation, for the future research which aims to find out grammatical
errors on learners’ writing from another department who has English course, for example
Agriculture Department. I suggest including a number of different topics on writing and
involving more participants. It might represent learners’ natural language use in English as
the data.
20
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22
Acknowledgement
This thesis would not been done without helps and supports from many people around
me. First, I would like to thank to my greatest Lord, Jesus Christ who always gives me His
blessing, power and faith during finishing this thesis, He always makes impossible be
possible. Second is my supervisor, Mr. Hendro Setiawan Husada, M.A. who always gave me
guidance, knowledge and helps throughout making this thesis. Big thanks also for my
examiner, Maria Christina Eko S, M. Hum, who had read, helped and given me guidance in
making this thesis better. Thank you for Mr. Andrew Thren, B.A for helping me in collecting
the data and also identification the errors of the students’ essays. Tri Buce S.Pd who gave me
some data. I also would like to give all the gratitude for my precious family, my beloved
father, mother and brother; Boas Liem Hindarto, Rut Ing Yuana, and Yonatan A.S who
always pray and also support me during making this thesis until finish. My best friend, Ayu
Dwijayanti, thank you for your helps, advices, supports, and also your time during I was
finishing my thesis. My beloved Yohanes Alison, thank you for the prayers and supports, you
always made me seriously making this thesis, and also thank you for always staying beside
me during my hard time. Thank you for mbak Tri kos, ce Esther, and ce Ricky who always
made and gave me the delicious meals when I was making my thesis and thank you for kak
Dwi Purwanti, Janti, Rike, Milo, Joyful Kids Impact’ team, all Ed teachers and all of friends
who I cannot mention here.
23
Appendix
24