1

STUDY OF GRAMMATICAL ERRORS MADEBY EIGHT GRADERSOF

SMP 2 AMBARAWA IN WRITING RECOUNT

THESIS

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of

SarjanaPendidikan

RestyFebrianty

112011704

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

SATYAWACANACHRISTIANUNIVERSITY

SALATIGA

2013

2

STUDY OF GRAMMATICAL ERRORS MADE BY EIGHT GRADERS OF

SMP 2 AMBARAWA IN WRITING RECOUNT

THESIS

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of

SarjanaPendidikan

RestyFebrianty

112011704

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

SATYAWACANACHRISTIANUNIVERSITY

SALATIGA

2013

3

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT

4

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT

This thesis contains no such material as has been submitted for examination in any course or

accepted for the fulfillment of any degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my

knowledge and my belief, this contains no material previously published or written by any other

person except where due reference is made in the text.

Copyright@ 2013. RestyFebrianty andDr. ElisabetTitikMurtisari, SPd, MTransStud.

All rights reserved. No part of this thesis may be reproduced by any means without the

permission of at least one of the copyright owners or the English Department, Faculty of

Language and Literature, SatyaWacana University, Salatiga.

RestyFebrianty

5

6

STUDY OF GRAMMATICAL ERRORS MADE BY EIGHT GRADERS OF SMP N 2

AMBARAWA IN WRITING RECOUNT

RestyFebrianty

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the types of grammatical errors found in eight graders in

recount writing. The data were collected from 20 students‟ essays of their holiday experience. In

analyzing the data, I used steps suggested by Corder (1974) applied by Ellis and Barkhuizen

(2005). With this method, a native speaker teacher helps identify the grammatical errors in the

students‟ work and these errors are later classified based on Politzer and Ramirez‟s Linguistic

Taxonomy (1973). Finally, based on the identification of errors, each category of errors was

counted to find each proportion and explained and discussed.

Key words: error analysis, grammatical error, linguistic taxonomy

Introduction

Learning a foreign language may pose many challenges. There will always be errors that

may occur not only in listening, speaking, reading but also writing. In a learning process, finding

second language learners‟ errors is an evidence of a process of learning. Error has played an

important role in the study of language acquisition (Lengo, 1995, p.20). Many learners seem to

find writing the most difficult skill to acquire. Richards and Renandya even claims that writing is

the most difficult skill for second language learner to master, because the skills involved in

writing are highly complex. (2002, p.303)

Writing is not only a context to chain words, but also to make a kind of understandable

text, and has a well-organized idea. To translate ideas from first language to second language,

learners have to pay attention to the way they think because writing in second language is

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different from writing in first language. Shen (1988, p.461) says, “In order to write a good

English, I knew that I had to be myself, which actually meant not to be my Chinese self. It meant

that I had to create an English self, and be that self.” From what Shen explains, in composing a

good writing, learners have to think like the native speakers, that is why grammar is one of

important aspect that they should be capable of in making a good writing text.

Grammar in second language teaching sounds very old-fashioned to some people, but the

fact is grammar takes an important role in communicative approach for those who learn English

as their second language. Richard and Renandya (2002, p.145) believes that people now agree

that grammar is too important to be ignored, and that without a good knowledge of grammar,

learners‟ language development will be severely constrained. From this explanation I want all

my thesis readers would like to be aware of the era of “Grammar Crisis” in which there are many

people who do not consider a good grammar in their communication. Grammar has many

important essences to communicate with each other; it helps the speakers to construct their brief

idea better in every aspects of communication including, business, education and many other

field, to have an effective communication, and reduce the level of misunderstanding between the

speakers and listeners, and it also helps the speakers to have a good credibility of educated

person.

Furthermore, in order to be able to communicate effectively, people need to master the

communicative competence, in which grammar plays an important role. Johnson & Johnson

(1999) stated that communicative competence is the knowledge which enables someone to use a

language effectively and their ability to actually use this knowledge for communication.

According to Canale (1983) grammatical competence is one major component of this

communicative competence and it include knowledge of vocabulary, rules of words and sentence

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formation, linguistic semantics, pronunciation and spelling. In line with this, Hymes (1972) said

that the notion of communicative competence is the underlying knowledge a speaker has of the rules

of grammar including phonology, orthography, syntax, lexicon, and semantics, and the rules for their use in social

appropriate circumstances.

Based on the explanation above, I assume that grammar is central in language learning.

One cannot be said to have learned a particular language, without knowing the grammar. People

learn how to concept a good message based on the rules they have known and try to convey the

message to the others, and these rules are termed as grammar.

In creating a writing product, making errors in grammar are expected.

AnchaleeSattayatham and PongratRatanapinyowong (2008) find many students have difficulty in

using English grammar. Error analysis plays an important role in this aspect because it can help

in students‟ error recognition and thus aid students in writing good paragraphs after they learn

how to correct these errors through practice.

Although errors are common in daily life, people learn better from their errors. In

identifying second language learners‟ errors, Ellis (1998) points out that we will see two

different kinds of negative production in second language performance, which are mistake and

error. That is why in order to analyze learners‟ errors in learning English as a foreign language, it

will be better to make a distinction between mistakes and errors. According to Brown (2004,

p.216) “an error is a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker, reflecting

the interlanguage competence of the learner.” From this explanation I assume that errors can be

caused by the different structure between first and second language. On the other hand, a mistake

refers to a performance error that is neither random or a slip tongue, in that it is failure to utilize

a known system correctly (Brown, 2004, p.216).

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A simpler definition of errors and mistakes according to Edge (1989) cited in Ancker

(2000, p.20) is “an error is what a learner cannot self-correct, and a mistake is what a learner can

self-correct. So as a conclusion based on Brown‟s and Edge‟s opinions, errors are a deviation

from the native speaker‟s grammar reflecting the learner‟s competence, but cannot be self-

corrected by them, whereas mistakes are native speaker‟s grammar deviation which can be self-

corrected.

From those linguists‟ explanation above, this study focused only on grammatical errors.

In language learning, there are two types of errors which are interlingual errors and intralingual

errors. According to Eun-pyo (2002) interlingual errors are commonly known as transfer errors.

It occurred as the result of learners‟ first language features, such as lexeme and grammar. This

definition is similar to Ellis‟s description about interlingual errors (1998) when second language

learners commit errors which could be traced back to the first language, those errors are known

as interlingual errors. Interference from first language is usually the cause of second language

learners‟ errors as Towell and Hawkins (1994) describe that L1 transfer is likely to affect all

linguistic levels including phonetics/phonology, morphology, lexicon, syntax and discourse.

AnchaleeSattyatham and PongratRatanapinyowong from Silpakorn University Bangkok

(2008) found that the sentence „I hungry very much‟ produced by Thai learners is a clear

example of a transfer of Thai grammatical structures into English. According to Thai

grammatical structures, similar to Bahasa Indonesia grammatical structures, adjectives exist in

the verb position and so do not need „be‟ in front of the adjective. This example illustrates that

learners‟ first language, Thai, has a negative effect on their second language learning which

results in interlingual errors.

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On the other hand, intralingual errors occur as a result of learner‟s failure in

comprehending language (Eun-pyo, 2002). Richards (1974:124) defines, intralingual errors

reflect the general characteristics of rule learning such as faulty generalization, incomplete

application of rules and failure to learn conditions under which rules apply. An example of

intralingual errors can be found in Abushihab, et al ‟s journal which analyzed the grammatical

errors made by Arab learners in Alzaytoonah Private University of Jordan (2011), the sentence “I

saw many womans.” The use of “womans” instead of “women” is an example of an

overgeneralization error when learners create their own rules for the plural noun form.

Even though there are different types of errors in writing, this study focused only on

interlanguage errors made by English learners on their writing. Knowing the common errors in

writing means finding out how well learners understand and know the language they learnt

(Lennon, 1991). Some research about grammatical errors in writing has been done recently. A

study conducted by Ibrahim et al (2011) who investigated and classified the grammatical errors

in the writings of 62 students of the Department of English Literature and Translation at

Alzaytoonah Private University of Jordan found that the largest number of errors was the errors

of prepositions, which comprised 26 % of the total errors. The following next problematic areas

were respectively: morphological errors, articles, verbs, active and passive and tenses.

Similar to this, Su-Hie Ting et al (2010), who examined the grammatical errors in spoken

English of university students who are less proficient in English, found that from 42 students

participated in five role play situations during the 14 week semester showed that the five

common grammatical errors made by the learners are on the use of prepositions, questions,

articles, plurals form of nouns, subject-verb agreements and tenses. Mehdi Abbasi and Amin

Karimnia (2011) also investigated a number of grammatical errors made by Iranian students in

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their translation and found that 98 % of the students had problems grammatically, and most

errors the students produced were interlingual errors, indicating the influence of the mother

language.

Unlike those previous study, which mostly analyzed errors from students who learn

English in secondary or university level, this study explored the errors made by the students from

junior high school, which English firstly taught as a primary lesson in Indonesia. It is hoped that

this study may provide recommendations on how to prevent learners from making any kind of

grammatical errors, so that in the next level of study, they will at least decrease their number of

grammatical errors in their writing, or even they can do self correction on their writing. Also, it

may aid English teachers in minimizing their learners‟ errors in writing English text, and by

reading the result of this study, they may find new methods to anticipate errors making in

grammar. With these reasons in mind, this study seeks to answer the research questions “What

are the grammatical errors that mostly occur in recount text written by eighth grade of junior

high school students?”

To answer that research question, it is essential to define what recount is. Recount is a

reconstruction of something which happened in the past and the purpose is to tell what happened

in the past. As stated by Seaton (2007) that recount begins by telling the reader who was

involved, what happened, where this event took place, and when it happened. The sequence of

event is then described in some sort of order, for instance a time order. According to 2004

competence Based Curriculum, recount is being taught in eighth grade. Recount text is the

simple form of text which can be considered as basic of writing, where learners can freely write

their past experiences. As Harmer (2004, p.3) says, writing a recount should be done with the

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understanding from the past time in order to inform and express what had happened. For this

reason, I prefer to analyze the grammatical errors made by students in writing recount.

The Study

Context of the study

The setting of this study was eighth grade of SMP N 2 Ambarawa, a small town in

Semarang Residence, Central Java. Since an international standard is to be implemented in this

school, the students had to be able in speak and write in English. I was quite sure that a research

to avoid grammatical errors in writing English text is needed. This research focused on recount

text, which was being taught in eighth grade level.

Participants

The participants of this study were twenty students of the eighth grade (8C) in SMP

Negeri 2 Ambarawa, with an average level of proficiency in English, and they ranged in age

from 13-14 years old, including 12 females, and 8 males. Based from my observation, English

was commonly taught in a translation method, in which the students had to translate every word

in their book including the texts, the questions, and the orders.

Instruments and Procedure of Data Collection

In collecting the data, this study used the steps suggested by Corder (1974) as cited in

Ellis (1994:48). The first step was collecting samples from the students, and then identifying the

errors made by the help of a native speaker. After the errors had been identified, the next step

was classifying the grammatical errors such as tenses, articles, prepositions, singular plural,

pronoun and subject-verb agreements. Based on the identification of errors with the help of the

native speaker, each category of errors was counted to find each percentage of types of

grammatical errors. And the last, each category of errors was explained and discussed.

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The data from this research were taken from 20 recount essays with the topic “My

Holiday”. Each student was asked to write a recount essay of minimum 20 sentences about

holiday, in 60 minutes class session. During the class session, students were not allowed to use

any kind of dictionary. As the class finished, I collected their essay, and took them for a further

analysis.

Findings and Discussion

Based on the correction done by the native speaker on twenty students‟ writings, I found

218 errors which belonged to the six framework categories of grammatical errors (tenses,

singular/plural, prepositions, articles, pronouns and possessive pronouns, and subject verb

agreements). To answer the research question “What are the grammatical errors that mostly

occur in recount text written by eighth grade of junior high school students?” the findings

showed that the most common errors were tenses, 141 errors, followed by articles, 30 errors, 26

errors in prepositions, 9 errors belonged to singular/plurals, 7 errors related to pronoun, and the

last 5 errors dealt with subject-verb agreements.

To get the percentage of each type of errors, I use the following formula:

p = x 100%

P: percentage of each error

n1: total of the given error

∑ N: total of the whole error

From this formula, I found the percentage of each error as shown in table 1.

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No Type of Error Total of Error Percentage

1 Tenses 141 64.7%

2 Articles 30 13.8%

3 Prepositions 26 11.9%

4 Singular/plurals 9 4.1%

5 Pronouns 7 3.2%

6 Subject-Verb Agreements 5 2.3%

Total 218 100%

Table 1. Grammatical Errors Made by the Participants

Compared to the previous findings, the result of this research is very different. Ibrahim

et.al (2011) found that the use of prepositions make up the most frequent error in their

participants‟ writings. But in my research however, I found that tenses have shown to be the

most problematic items. The differences may occur because of the participants mostly learned

English grammar since they were in seventh grade of junior high school. But, the subjects of

study in Ibrahim et.al‟s research were 62 students of the Department of English Literature and

Translation atAlzaytoonah Private University of Jordan.

Errors in Tenses

The most frequent errors made by the eighth grade students were in tenses 64.7%. Based

on the data analysis, I found that the students tended to use the simple present tense than the

simple past tense. In the previous session, during the data collection, they were asked to write a

recount text to tell their holiday experience. It seemed that the students often forgot to use the

correct grammatical form of verbs.

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Although they had already learned about recount text and the use of simple past tense in

recount text, they failed to put the verbs in the past form (verb2). From 141 errors of tenses, table

2 shows the details of tenses errors:

Errors in tenses Number Example

Use of incorrect tenses (simple

present instead of simple past)

103 It has* a strong and sharp

yellowish beak.

Incorrect form of past verb

(over generalized –ed form)

18 Before that, we eated* in the

restaurant

No tense marker (use of present

participle or gerund)

12 Then, I Jogging* with Lia.

Changing the verb instead of the

modals

8 At this place, we can enjoyed* the

uniqueness of Javanese culture.

Total 141

Table 2. Details of students‟ errors in tenses

Some of the errors discussed as follow:

It has* a strong and sharp yellowish beak.

At the zoo, I rest.*

Before that, weeated* in the restaurant

I swimed* in the beach.

Then, I Jogging* with Lia.

At this place, we can enjoyed* the uniqueness of Javanese culture

In the sentences above, the students failed to use the past form of the verbs. In the first

and second sentence, the students have employed an incorrect tense. Instead of using the simple

16

past tense, they used the simple present tense. This may due to lack of mastery of grammatical

rules for the use of tenses. For example, in order to use simple past tense, the students should use

past form of the verb, such as had instead of has and rested instead of rest. In these examples,

students supposed to write it in the past form of verbs, because the context of their writing is

their past experience.

In the third and fourth examples, students used incorrect form of the past tense by over-

generalizing adding –ed as the ending. This might happen because their lack understanding about

regular and irregular verbs.

The fifth example was students tend to write their verb action in a form of gerund, adding

suffix –ing to show an action verbs. This might be because in their past time, referred to the

English book for elementary students like grow with English, many LKS (compilation of

students‟ handouts and exercises), and English for real communication etc, I noticed that they

were taught many action verbs in a form of gerund without any explanation about the function of

using them. This probably used to be one way to make the students easier to remember some of

words in English, for example singing, dancing, running, playing, etc.

In the last sentence, student didn‟t apply the correct grammatical form, instead of

changing the modal “can”, the student changed enjoy as the past form. This might happened

because the students didn‟t know the rule of simple past tense for modals. Table 3 showed the

correction of the students‟ errors in using simple past.

Errors Correction

It has* a strong and sharp

yellowish beak.

It had a strong and sharp

yellowish beak.

At the zoo, I rest.* At the zoo, I rested.

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Before that, we eated* in

the restaurant.

Before that, we ate in the

restaurant

I swimed* in the beach. I swam in the beach.

Then, I jogging* with Lia. Then, I jogged with Lia.

At this place, we can

enjoyed* the uniqueness of

Javanese culture

At this place, we could

enjoy the uniqueness of

Javanese culture

Table 3. Students‟ errors in using simple past tense

The errors made by students were not surprising because Bahasa Indonesia does not have

any tenses. On the other hand, English traditionally differentiates the use of time with past,

present and future tense. The errors probably occurred because the students transferred the words

from Bahasa Indonesia into English directly. Darus and Ching (2009) stated that the differences

between verb system of L1 and English tenses make it difficult for students to master English

tenses.

Errors in Articles

Based from the analysis, the second problematic item for the students was articles. There

were 30 errors or 13.8% on article. According to Cowan (2008), articles are a type of determiner

and can be classified into definite and indefinite. The definite article, the, appears before singular

and plural countable nouns as well as uncountable nouns. Besides definite article, there are also

indefinite articles, a andan. The errors made by the students in using article were probably

because they did not know how to use indefinite articles for generic references, and definite

article for specific reference. Here are details of errors in articles, as shown in the table below.

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Errors in articles Number Example

Absence of “a / an” 16 I had * holiday in Jogja

Incorrect use of “a / an” 1 Before that, I brought back a

gift from a* trip.

Absence of “the” 8 All my friends wanted to go to

* beach.

Incorrect use of “the” 3 I bought the* ticket

Incorrect use of the article “a”

as an uncountable noun

1 I ate a* fried rice.

Incorrect use of the article “a”

instead of “an”

1 It was a* unforgettable

moment.

Total 30

Table 4. Details of students‟ errors in using articles

Some examples of article errors were as follow:

All my friends wanted to go to * beach.

I had * holiday in Jogja.

I bought * souvenir.

After that, I bought the* ticket.

I atea* fried rice

It was a* unforgettable moment.

The First, second and third sentences showed that the students did not use the articles

“the” and “a” in their writing. The reason why the students did not use articles in their writing

was may be because they did not know how to use it in a sentence.

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The fourth and fifth sentences, incorrect articles, which were not needed, were applied in

sentences. According to English Grammar for Today, (Leech, 1982) Article „the‟ in the fourth

sentence should be replaced by „a‟, because the entity which was referred to was first mentioned

in the text. In the last sentence, the use of article „a‟ should be omitted, because fried rice was an

uncountable noun.

The last sentence was the example of misused article “an” instead of “the” or “an”. It

might have occurred because the students probably did not know the different functions between

article “a” or “an”, so that they seemed to have over-translated from sebuah, or seoranginto “a”.

Whereas the incorrect use of “a” to “the” may be because the students did not know the rule of

using article “a” as indefinite article with generic reference of a thing or “the” as indefinite

article with the specific reference of a thing. The table below shows the correction of the errors

in article.

Errors Correction

All friends wanted to go to *

beach

All friends wanted to go to the

beach.

I had * holiday in Jogja I had a holiday in Jogja

I bought * souvenir. I bought a souvenir.

After that, I bought the* ticket After that, I bought a ticket

I atea* fried rice I atefried rice

It was a* unforgettable moment. It was an unforgettable moment.

Table 5. Students‟ errors in using articles

The incorrect uses may have been influenced by the interference of Bahasa Indonesia.

The use of Indonesian article is to show honorific and diminutives and there is no corresponding

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Indonesian article to show definite or indefinite noun. Although the language hassri, sang, yang

and si, these articles have different functions. According to Alwi (1998), sri, sang, and yang

serves to honor a person, while “si” is used to lower a person status, and sometimes has a

negative connotation and to show a close relationship between the speaker and the addressee, for

example, there is a person named Andy but because he has a bad character, people tend to call

him as sipenjahat (the villain), orsiAmir.

Celce-Muria and Larsen-Freeman (1999) in Bataineh (2005) stated that articles were one

of difficulties in learning English, especially for learners whose language did not have articles.

Article the uses to particularize a noun which usually is already mentioned before. It helps to

distinguish the known from the unknown. While a/an used if the noun has not been mentioned

before.

Errors in Preposition

The third common errors produced by the students were prepositions 26 errors or 11.9%.

The students made errors in using prepositions in, on , and at. Darus and Ching (2009) stated that

errors in prepositions appeared because there was uncertainty in students to select the correct

prepositions. Table 6showed details of prepositions erors:

Errors in articles Number Example

The use of “In there” 12 In there* I stayed in my grandfather‟s

house.

The use of ”In” 14 I arrived in* bus station at half past seven.

Total 26

Table 6. Details of errors in prepostitions

Some errors in using prepositions:

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I arrived in* bus station at half past ten

In there,*I stayed in my grandfather‟s house.

I played some game in* PlayStation 2.

I arrived in* home at ten o‟clock.

In the* Sunday, I went to my friend‟s house.

Based on the errors found on students‟ handwritings, most errors of preposition appeared

probably because the students over translated „di‟ into in without knowing that other preposition

like at and on also have different function as preposition. According to (Darus and Ching, 2009),

errors in prepositions appeared because there was uncertainty in participants to select the correct

preposition. From the explanation, it seemed the students could not find the relevant

prepositions to be used in English sentences. This made the students incorrectly use “in” as

preposition in all English sentences.

It can be seen from the total 74 sentences which used preposition, 48 sentences were

correct by translating di as in, for example: di rumah tanteku in my aunt‟s house, and also

using at to indicate time, for example: at 03.00 pm, i went to my grandparent‟s house. Some

examples of errors in preposition are shown in table 7.

Errors Correction

I arrived in* bus station at

half past ten

I arrived at bus station at half

past ten.

In there,* I stayed in my

grandfather‟s house.

There, I stayed in my

grandfather‟s house.

I played some game in* I played some game

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PlayStation 2. onPlayStation 2.

I arrived in* home at ten

o‟clock.

I arrived at home at ten

o‟clock.

In the* Sunday, I went to

my friend‟s house.

On Sunday, I went to my

friend‟s house.

Table 7. Students‟ errors in using preposition

In all the sentences, I came up to a conclusion that students faced confusion because they

did not master the application of prepositions. They substituted preposition at, and on into in. It

happened because Bahasa Indonesia did not have variation in prepositions. It made the students

could not apply the correct preposition to be used in English sentence. Also, prepositions are

relative. English often has a different way to refer to relative position. E.g. A bird in the tree,

(Ind. Burung di ataspohon,) Sometimes it is confusing because di atas is usually translated into

on.

Errors in Singulars / Plurals

The next errors are related to the use of singular / plurals. The students made 9 errors

(4.1%). It probably occurred because in Bahasa Indonesia, there was no addition forms for plural

things. Based on Alwi (1998), to show singular or plural nouns, Bahasa Indonesia will use

reduplication of the noun or use quantifiers in front of the noun. For example, teman-temanku

means my friends in English. According to Cowan (2008) plural and singular in English is used

to show the number of noun. They omitted suffix –s for plural things. Some of the examples

were as follow:

We bought some food and drink.*

We saw many historical building.*

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I went to Bali for five day.*

…many kind* of Batik in Manahan

We bought a souvenirs.*

From the examples above, most errors occurred because Bahasa Indonesia stated singular

and plural form in the same way when the number of noun is identified, for example satuhari (a

day) and lima hari (five days) had the same noun hari (day) without any additional. From four

sentences above, the students omitted suffix-s for plural things. And for the last sentence the

students misused suffix-s in the noun.

Another form of plural form in Bahasa Indonesia is Reduplication which repeats a

gramatical unit in a full form or some part of it, and can be followed by a phonemic variation or

not. For example:berbulan-bulan, satu-satu, seseorang, compang-camping, sayur-mayur. The

table below shows errors in singulars and plurals.

Errors Correction

We bought some food and

drink.*

We bought some foods and

drinks.

We saw many historical

building.*

We saw many historical

buildings.

I went to Bali for five

day.*

I went to Bali for five days.

…many kind* of Batik in

Manahan

…many kinds of Batik in

Manahan

We bought a souvenirs.* We bought a souvenir.

Table 8. Students‟ errors in using singulars and plurals

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According to Martinus (2008), making a singular noun becomes plural in the sentence is

by adding –s/-es. The errors were found because the students did not add –s/-es for making plural

noun in their sentences, because in Bahasa Indonesia the rule of plural is sometimes by repeating

the word for example murid-murid (Students).

Errors in Pronouns and Possessive Pronouns

The next common errors were pronouns and possessive pronouns (7 errors or 3.2%).

Here were some examples of students‟ handwritings omitting „sin possessive noun, and also

using object pronoun incorrectly. Tay (2004) in Chang, Mahadir, and Ting (2010) stated that

possessive pronouns were considered as a step more difficult application for learners rather than

personal pronoun, like subject and object pronoun.

In my uncle * house, I had a friend

I stayed in my aunt * house

She* name was Tata.

In these sentences, the students failed to attach „s in order to show possessiveness. It may

have been because the students did not know how to apply it and could have been the result of

Bahasa Indonesia interference. In Bahasa Indonesia, to show ownership, the students wrote

„rumahpamanku‟ without a possesive grammatical marker like „s‟ in english. And when they had

to write in English sentence, they directly translated „rumahpamanku‟ into „my uncle house‟.

I went to Solo with they.*

My parents bought I* T-shirt.

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Other examples are from the sentences above which showed that the students failed to

use object pronoun. The students seemed to over generalize subject pronouns into object

pronouns. Table 9 showed the pronoun and possessive pronoun errors made by the students.

Errors Correction

In my uncle * house, I had a

friend

In my uncle‟s house, I had a

friend

I stayed in my aunt * house I stayed in my aunt‟s house

She* name was Tata. Her name was Tata.

I went to Solo with they.* I went to Solo with them.

My parents bought I* T-shirt. My parents bought me T-shirt.

Table 9. Students‟ error in using pronoun and possessive pronoun

Errors in Subject-verb Agreements

The last type of errors made by the students was Subject-verb agreements (5 errors or

2.3%). Agreement between subject and verb is influenced by the subject form whether it is

singular or plural. To construct a correct sentence structurally, the verb must agree with the

subject. From the examples below, the students failed to identify whether the subject was

singular or plural.

There was* many Bali Souvenirs.

There was* many animals, birds, and plants.

The beaches in Yogyakarta was* so beautiful.

My brother and I was* happy.

My parents was* exciting.

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In all sentences, the students made errors in the subject-verb number. Here, students

found the difficulty to differentiate „be‟ form for singular and plural subjects or objects. They

also over generalized the use of „was‟ instead of „were‟ as „be‟ past form. Table 10 below

showed the subject-verb agreement errors made by the students.

Errors Correction

There was* many Bali

Souvenirs.

There were many Bali Souvenirs.

There was* many animals,

birds, and plants.

There were many animals, birds,

and plants.

The beaches in Yogyakarta

was* so beautiful.

The beaches in Yogyakarta

were so beautiful.

My brother and I was* happy. My brother and I were happy.

My parents was* exciting. My parents were exciting.

Table 10. Students‟ errors in using Subject-Verb Agreements

Errors in subject-verb agreement appeared because of the L1 interference. In Bahasa

Indonesia there was no „be‟ (was or were), that was why the students were confused to write the

correct use of „be‟.

Conclusion and Pedagogical Implication

Based on the research, the study found that the students made several types of errors in

their recount texts. The types identified are tenses 64,7% was the most problematic errors. It was

followed by errors in articles 13.8%, prepositions 11.9%, singular/plural 4.1%, pronoun and

possessive pronoun 3.2%, and the last was subject-verb agreements 2.3%. It is different with the

previous study done by Ibrahim et al (2011) and Su-Hie Ting et al (2010), they found that

27

preposition seemed to be the most problematic item in their participants‟ writing, and tenses only

took less part than that, it might have been because their participants were all from English

Department in university level so that they already knew about English tenses better.

Based on the findings, it could be concluded that the students had not mastered the use of

the simple past tense. They directly translated the sentence from L1 to L2. Although they had

learnt about the simple past tense, they were still confused. With this problem, the teachers play

an important role to strengthen the students‟ awareness of their errors in using English tenses by

giving feedback. Feedback is the most importance thing in the writing process. Without any

attention and feedback on errors, students will not improve.

I do not deny that this study has limitations, it concerned with the number of participants

(20 students), and it was done only in one place, SMP Negeri 2 Ambarawa. I believe that if more

participants could have involved in this study and also the data could have taken from other

junior high school, the result and conclusion would be more representatives. Based on that

limitation, for further research which aims to investigate grammatical errors on Junior high

school students‟ writing, I suggest to take the data from other school to compare the result of

common grammatical errors made by junior high school students.

28

Acknowledgement

This thesis would not have been possible without helps and supports from several

individuals who have given their contributions in the progression of this study. First, I am

heartily thankful to my dear God, Allah SWT, and His prophet, Muhamad, SAW.For my

supervisor, Mrs. Dr. ElisabetTitikMurtisari, S.Pd, MTransStud, and my examiner Mrs. Listyani,

SPd, M, Hum thank you for all the guidance and knowledge throughout the process of doing this

study. Mypast supervisor,Mr. HendroSetiawanHusada, M.A, thanks for giving me some great

articles, rest in peace, sir. Mr. Brandon Donelson Sims, thank you for helping me deals with

identification of students‟ writing. For all my students in SMP N 2 Ambarawa (8C), thanks for

the cooperation, guys.I also want to thank Mama and Bapak, iyo, uwik for the unbreakable

supports and prayers. Then, for my boyfriend, Mas Andy, all my friends Johan, Arya, Andika,

Septyan, Suhendra, Bintang, Mas Eko,Dhiaz, all EDers, my friends in Jasmine English Course,

my students and whom I couldn‟t mention name by name, finally I can make it! Thank you very

much.

29

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