An Analysis On Grammatical Errors Types In Descriptive Text Written By Efl Students

Abstract

It is normal for anyone who learns a second language to make mistakes and errors, especially in writing. It is even possible for students of the English Language Education Study Program, who have taken an Advanced Writing class, to make grammatical errors in writing. Hence, this study intends to investigate the grammatical error types in descriptive text written by students of the English Language Education Study Program of Lambung Mangkurat University batch 2017 by employing the descriptive qualitative method. There were 33 students of batch 2017 taken as the sample in this research. The data obtained through the students' writing of descriptive essays was analyzed based on surface strategy taxonomy by Dulay. This study showed that the students made four types of grammatical errors. They were omission, addition, misformation, and misordering. Based on the data analysis, the most dominant grammatical error type made by the students is omission. It was found that most omission errors occurred because the students omitted auxiliary verbs or main verbs, plural markers, articles, subjects or objects, prepositions, conjunctions, and third-person singular 's' markers. Moreover, addition is the second most dominant grammatical error type made by the students. However, there were only simple addition sub-category errors found in the tests. In this research, simple addition errors occurred due to auxiliary verbs or main verbs, prepositions, articles, short plural markers, third-person singular 's', and other unnecessary items that should not have appeared. In addition, the possible sources of error that the researcher found in this research were interlingual transfer and intralingual transfer. Finally, it is suggested for the students to avoid the unnecessary omission and addition of auxiliary verbs or main verbs, plural markers, articles, subjects or objects, prepositions, conjunctions, and third-person singular 's' markers. Furthermore, writing is a skill, which needs a process and practice. Therefore, the students should practice writing starting from the simple one such as writing a daily activity or writing their past experience like recounting text. The students are also suggested to enrich their knowledge about dictions or word choices and the structure of the subject-verb agreement, modal auxiliaries, and to be in order to minimize the grammatical errors. While this study does not investigate the cause of errors, the researcher concludes that it is necessary to find out the cause of errors in order to avoid unnecessary errors in writing. Thus, it is also suggested for other researchers who want to conduct research particularly that concerned with grammatical errors in writing to investigate the cause of errors made by the students