| dc.description.abstract | In this thesis the researcher investigates the errors made by the students of
the 5th semester of English Study Program of Politeknik Negeri Jember in their
narrative writing texts. Learning English as a foreign language is different thing to
do for the most of Indonesian students, because it cannot be learnt naturally as
their mother tongue. In other words, learning foreign language means learning the
dictionary, grammar and the sound of system in that language. The learners of
English, in which English is completely a foreign language like Indonesian
students, will of course face a new language structure which is different from the
language system they have mastered. Indonesian learners may face some
problems in learning English because English and Indonesian have different
language families.
It is essential to know the term of errors when we are discussing them. In
this case, Dulay et al. (1982:138), state that “errors are parts of a conversation or
composition that deviate from some selected norm of mature language
performance”. Meanwhile Ellis (1996;51) explains the errors reflect the gaps in
the learner’s knowledge; that is, an error is produced due to the fact that the
learners cannot identify what is correct and incorrect. In contrast, a mistake
reflects the learners’ inefficient performance; that is, it occurs because the learners
are not able to perform what they already know correctly. He also suggests two
ways in determaining error or mistake. The first one is to check the consistency of
learner‟s writing. If he sometimes uses the correct form and sometimes the wrong
one, it is a mistake. However, if he always uses it incorrectly, it is then an error.
The second way is to ask learner to try to correct his own deviant utterance.
Where he is unable to, the deviations are errors; where he is successful, they are
mistakes.
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This research belongs to a case study which is done under the purpose to
provide more information thorough an analysis and give clear explanations about
the objects analysed. The data of this research are qualitative data, they are some
errors that taken from the studens’ writing narrative texts. 48 students in the 5th
semester of English Study Program of State polytechnic are as the respondent of
this research. In getting the data, there were two tests were applied. The first test
was applied to 48 students of the 5th semester of English study program of
Politeknik Negeri Jember. The test showed the result that there were 22 students
who did not make any erroneous, and there were 26 students who made some
erroneous in their works. To make sure whether the 26 students make some errors
or mistakes, they were given a second test. The second test was aimed to know the
students’ consistency in making the mistakes so that it can be said that they made
some errors. The result of the second test indicated that 14 students made some
mistakes in their first test, but they did not make any mistake in the second test. In
contrast, 12 students were consistently making some mistakes both in test 1and
test 2. It meant that there were only 12 students who made Errors in the first and
second data.
The 12 students made 323 errors in their narrative text writing. The
identified errors were classified based on their frequencies. When the same error
occurred twice, they were counted as two errors in the tabulation. From the errors
analyzed, the result showed that the category of errors committed by the students
in their narrative writing texts were 5 categories, they were Verb tense (228
errors/71%), Plurality (30 errors/9%), Article (24 errors/7%) Subject Verb
Agreement (23 errors/7%), , and Preposition (18errors/6%).
The students committed errors in applying sentence structure rules in
English. These students have problems in acquiring normal grammatical rules in
English. Since grammatical features of each language are not similar, errors made
are obviously different. These errors are caused by the interference of the
students’ first language and their inadequate understanding of grammatical rules
of English. They tend to refer to their first language whenever they face
difficulties when they write in English. They construct sentences with errors
because of the differences of the grammatical rules of Indonesian and English
beside the students have problems with English grammatical rules and also
confuse with the rules in their first language. It means that Indonesian plays a
considerable role in causing students to make errors when they write in English.
In general, the findings of the study show that the Indonesian students were very
much influenced by their first language in their process of learning English, which
were evidently illustrated in their writings.
Therefore, It is important to make the students aware of the differences of
the structure of these 2 languages to produce a good and acceptable sentence. And
the teachers need to emphasize on how the concepts are handled in English and
Indonesian. Teachers should also highlight certain rules in Indonesian that are not
appropriate to be used when they write in English. This is to ensure that the
students apply the correct form while they write in English and hence, it will
decrease the occurrence of errors. | en_US |
