says that even very advanced learners often make inappropriate or unacceptable collocations. 1990: 13. Since English as a Foreign Language students mostly
live outside English-speaking countries, many of their teachers are also non-native English speakers, who can be regarded as very advanced learners, but not people
equipped with native- like competence. These views may suggest that non-native English teachers generally do not have sufficient competence in this area so that
they are unable to teach it to their students.
2. Brief Review on Language Errors
As mentioned previously, the researcher concerned with the students’ errors in the production of written works. Therefore, it is necessary to reveal some
theories about language errors. The theories consist of the definition of errors, the distinction between errors and mistakes, theories on error analysis, sources of
errors in production and the significance of learners’ errors.
a. Definition of Errors
The first definition comes from Chomsky stated in Dulay, 1982: 139, Chomsky says that error can be divided into two, the first error caused by fatigue
and inattention performance and the second resulting from lack of knowledge of the rules of the language competence. From this definition of errors, the
researcher suggests that collocational errors happen because the students lack knowledge of the rules of the language lacking of competence.
Another definition is from Corder as cited in Dulay, 1982: 139 that error is a systematic deviation due to the learner’s still developing knowledge of the L2
rule system. In making some collocational errors, it means that the students still need to develop their knowledge of the L2 rule system especially the rule of
combining words. Dulay 1982: 139 concludes the definition of Chomsky and Corder,
according to him error refers to any deviation from a selected norm of language performance, no matter what the characteristics or causes of deviation might be.
From this conclusion, it can be said that collocational errors are also deviations of norms of language which has their certain characteristics and causes.
Learners who do not have good knowledge about collocational appropriateness will find it difficult to learn a language. They will combine many
words without considering whether it is accepted in English or not. It means that they have used their own idea to combine many words imp roperly or to create
collocational errors. As Taiwo 2004 stated that learner’s lack of knowledge of collocational patterns of lexical items makes the learner to be flat to all sorts of
collocational errors, which can be more disturbing in communication than grammatical errors. There are many possible sources or errors in learning a
language such as interlingual errors overgeneralization from first language structures or semantic or lexical structure and intralingual errors over application
of second language rules. Whatever the sources, it would be useful for the learners of English to find the information on frequently occurring error patterns.
b. Errors Versus Mistakes
