Syntactical Errors Made by the Second Year Students of MAN 2 Jember in the 2004/2005 Academic Year in Writing A Descriptive Paragraph.

Abstract

The problem of this research were (1) what type of syntactical errors made by the second year students of MAN 2 Jember in the 2004/2005 academic year in writing a descriptive paragraph, (2) what is the percentage of each type of syntactical errors made by the second year student of MAN 2 Jember in the 2004/2005 academic year in writing a descriptive paragraph. The objectives of this research were to describe the types and to describe the percentage of each type of the syntactical errors made by the second year students of MAN 2 Jember in the 2004/2005 academic year in their descriptive writing. The samples of this research were 42 students which were taken by proportional random sampling by lottery (15 % of the population from 6 classes). The method of collecting the main data was Descriptive writing test, and the methods used for collecting the supporting data were interview, and documentation. The collected main data were analyzed by applying descriptive quantitative method. By analyzing the students’ data and consulting the results of the data analysis, it was found that the percentage and the category of the students’ errors of each component were as follows (1) the percentage of articles errors (a, an, the) was medium (22, 67%); (2) the percentage of preposition errors was medium (23, 26%); (3) the percentage of word order was high (37, 5%); (4) the percentage of subject verb-agreement was low (16, 57%). Based on the results, it is suggested that the English teacher to improve the students’ Syntactical mastery and their writing skill.