LEXICAL ERROR ANALYSIS IN THE DESCRIPTIVE TEXT WRITING MADE BY THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS OF MTS. WAHID HASYIM KUNIR

Abstract

Writing skill is one of the language skills which should be mastered by Indonesian students in learning English as a foreign language. In writing, the students must use the appropriate lexical items in order to avoid the readers’ misunderstanding about the content of their writing. However, there are a lot of students who still confused in choosing the appropriate words to describe the particular thing in writing descriptive text, so they make some lexical errors which make them failed to convey the exact meaning of their writing. It happens because of the different system between the vocabulary (lexicon) in their mother tongue (Bahasa Indonesia) and the vocabulary in the language target (English). Based on the preliminary study that was done on December 26th, 2015, it was found out that there were many lexical errors produced by the eighth grade students of MTs. Wahid Hasyim Kunir in their descriptive text writing. This research deals with lexical error analysis. The objectives of this research were to know the lexical error types, the percentage of each lexical error type and the causes of lexical error type found in the descriptive text writing made by the eighth grade students of MTs. Wahid Hasyim Kunir in the 2015/2016 academic year. The research used a descriptive study of which the data were obtained from the students’ descriptive text writing. Then, the results of writing were analyzed by the researcher based on Llach’s lexical error taxonomy. The lexical errors were classified into 6 types. They were borrowing, coinage, calque, misspelling, misselection and semantic confusion. This research used proportional random sampling in determining the research respondents and the total number of the research respondents was 30 students of the eight grade students of MTs. Wahid Hasyim Kunir in the 2015/2016 academic year. The respondents were taken 30% from each class which consists of 32 to 33 students. The taken respondents represented the research population, consisting of 100 eighth grade students at MTs. Wahid Hasyim Kunir. The data was collected by writing test From the result of the errors analysis, it could be concluded that the students made 86 lexical errors which were classified into 26 errors of misspelling, 22 errors of semantic confusion, 20 errors of calque, 13 errors of misselection and 5 errors of borrowing. The results on the analysis showed the highest number of lexical errors occurred in the descriptive text writing in the research was the misspelling having 30.23%. The other types were semantic confusion (25.59%), calque (23.26%), misselection (15.11%), and borrowing (5.81%). The causes of the lexical error are different for each type of lexical error based on their source of errors and major type of errors. In conclusion, based on the result of the research findings, it can be stated that the most lexical error made by the eighth grade students of MTs. Wahid Hasyim Kunir in the 2015/2016 academic year was misspelling as many as 26 items consisting of 30.23%. So, this lexical error type needs more instruction to minimize the occurrence in students’ writings. The source of misspelling is interlingual error and it belongs to formal error major type. It is suggested to the English teacher at MTs. Wahid Hasyim Kunir to assist the students to enrich their lexicon (vocabulary) by doing vocabulary teaching. The teacher should train the students to accustom themselves in writing the English words with correct spelling. The teachers can lead the students to the classroom discussion so the students can recognize their errors when they produce some errors either in oral or written production.