Error Analysis

AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL ERRORS FACED BY THE FIRST GRADE STUDENTS OF SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

ABSTRACT

This research entitled An Analysis of Grammatical Errors Faced by the First Grade Students of SMA Muhammadiyah 1 Prambanan in Writing Narrative Text is intended to identify grammatical errors faced by the first grade students of SMA Muhammadiyah 1 Prambanan, to find out the highest frequency of grammatical errors, to find out the possible causes of errors found in the students’ composition.
This research belongs to a qualitative and quantitative research. The use of qualitative research is suitable with the methods of analyzing data. The data of this research are in the form of sentences, clauses, and phrases that contain grammatical errors. The population of this study consists of 59 students of the first grade of SMA Muhammadiyah 1 Prambanan. In collecting the data, the researcher uses the testing technique. The test consists of writing a narrative text. The researcher analyzes the grammatical errors from 59 (fifty nine) students’ composition. The researcher reads the data focusing on narrative text. She observes the data carefully to find out the grammatical errors. The data are signed and written down based on the types of the grammatical errors.
The result of the research shows that the grammatical errors found in the students’ composition deal with the simple past tense and connectives or conjunctions. Those errors are distributed into addition, omission, misformation and misordering. The most common mistake that has the highest frequency that is made by the students deals with simple past tense with 122 out of 130 or 93.85%. The second is connectives or conjunctions errors with 9 out of 130 or 6.15 %. The third for adverbial of time and place errors are not found. The grammatical errors faced by the students in writing narrative text come from two possible causes: intralingual and interlingual transfers. Intralingual transfers include over generalization, ignorance of rule restrictions, and false concepts hypothesized; meanwhile, interlingual transfers come from the interference of the students’ first language.