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THE ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL ERRORS ON
STUDENTS’ GUIDED WRITING
Dwitiya Ari Nugrahaeni
ABSTRACT
This study examined the sources of errors produced by students in Guided Writing
class. The research question was asked “What are the sources of learners‟ grammatical errors
in the students‟ Guided Writing drafts?”. Fourteen participants from the Guided Writing class
were selected to be the participants of this study. The data were obtained from fourteen students‟
first drafts. The analysis used steps suggested by Corder (1974) in Ellis and Barkhuizen (2005)
which included: (1) collection of a sample of learner language, (2) identification of errors, (3)
description of errors, and (4) explanation of errors. To find out the sources of the grammatical
errors, individual interviews were held. The results of the study revealed that intralingual errors
were more significant than interlingual errors. This result supported several previous findings
found by Richards (1971), AbiSamra (2003), Bataineh (2005), Husada (2007) and Sattayatham
& Honsa (2007). The results also supported several previous finding which viewed that
interference of L1 was not the major factor in student‟s production of errors in L2 whereas the
students‟ competency in acquiring L2 played more significant roles (Richards, 1971 in Darus &
Subramaniam, 2009; Dulay, Burt & Krashen, 1982).
Key words: error, grammatical error, error analysis, sources, interlingual, intralingual.
Introduction
Writing is a multifaceted production of language skills. The ability to write a good and
proper composition is not an acquired process. It needs a lot of step by step practice, even if it is
done in the first language. Myles (2002) believes that writing skill is a process that should be
practiced and learned. It also involves the ability to tell or retell and transform the information in
the form of text. It is undeniable if not all language learners can successfully produce a good
writing although they can perform well in other skills. Moreover in the field of education,
writing in English still becomes the difficult subject. Myles (2002) believes that it is because in
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writing in L2, learners need more attempt in gaining, formulating, and analyzing ideas. They do
not only gain the ideas but also have to deliver them in L2 which needs their proficiency in
exploiting the strategies needed (ibid.).
This complex area of writing makes it impossible for the learners, especially those
who learn English as the target language, not to produce errors. According to Dulay, Burt, and
Krashen (1982) errors are the parts of the students‟ language production that deviate from the
norm of language. This flaw is an inevitable part in learning a language. Brown (1980) in Darus
and Ching (2009) argues that error is something that cannot be avoided. Error has become the
part of students‟ learning and it is natural. Corder (1981) states that error is something that can be
committed by both native speakers and the language learners. However, both speakers show
different errors. For the native speakers, error can occur as the „breaches of the code‟, while error
for the non-native speakers is the parts of the language production which are different from what
native speakers produce. Chomsky (1965) in Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982) differentiates
errors based on the factors that cause it to happen. The first one is performance error which is
caused by the carelessness of the students. This type of error was then called mistake. The second
type is competence error which is caused by the lack of knowledge in using the language.
Errors can also be classified into two based on the source, which are interlingual and
intralingual errors. Selinker (1972) in Darus and Subramaniam (2009) believes that interlingual
is the system where there is separation between the native language system and the second
language system. It means that actually second language learners have their own system to
differentiate the native language and the second language. However, they still made errors in
differentiating it. James (1998) mentions that intralingual errors occur as the result of the deviant
use of the L2. In this theory, it is believed that learners have acquired the rules of L2 at a certain
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level, however, errors still occur. Darus and Ching (2009) believe that intralingual errors may be
caused by failure to understand and apply the rules in L2. Brown (1994) in Darus and Ching
(ibid.) explaines that at the early stages of learning a second language, learners may be
influenced mostly by their first language, but once they have acquired some rules in L2, more
intralingual errors take place. In regards to the error production, many studies showed that
interlingual error is not the main factor that causes the error to occur in the students‟ writing.
Richards (1971) in Darus and Subramaniam (2009) showed that interference from the native
language was not the key factor in the way learners construct sentences in the target language. In
many research, researchers gave more attention to intralingual and developmental theory.
Many studies have conducted the analysis on students‟ errors. There are two theories
that are used to analyze the errors. Until 1960s, contrastive analysis (CA) was applied (Ellis &
Barkhuizen, 2005). Wardhaugh (1983) as stated in Husada (2007) believes that CA predicts the
error which can occur in learning the target language by contrasting the linguistic system of L1
and the target language. Ellis and Barkhuizen (2005) mention one more major purpose of the
CA, which is to inform which parts of the target language that the teachers need to teach.
However, CA gained many protests because the errors that CA predicted to occur did not occur
but those which are not predicted did occur. Besides that, the differences of those two languages
do not become the major source of error in the target language (Dulay, Burt, Krashen, 1982).
Seeing many rejections addressed to CA, there is another approach to analyze,
identify, describe, and explain the errors done by the students which is Error Analysis (Ellis and
Barkhuizen, 2005). Error analysis becomes more popular because it does not only compare two
languages and believes that the cause of error is only from the interference on one another, but
also on how the target language can also become the main source of errors. Lennon (1991) in
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Ellis and Barkhuizen (2005) believes that the analysis on students‟ errors can be done by
examining the linguistic context where the errors occur. Corder (1974) in AbiSamra (2003)
suggests that error analysis has two objectives. The theoretical objective provides ways for
researchers to see what and how learners learn the second language, and the applied objective
enables the learner to learn more extensively. Thus, error analysis provides large space of
analyzing the influence of developmental process in producing the errors. The error analysis will
be helpful for the teachers to see the areas of L2 that still needs to be emphasized.
The study of error in writing has been the subject of many studies. Researchers are
intended to find out what the causes of errors in students‟ productions of language are. Richards
(1971) in Darus and Ching (2009) argued that error made by the learners appeared because of the
interference of the strategies they used in acquiring the language, especially the L2. AbiSamra
(2003) carried out a study which focused on indentifying, describing, categorizing, and
diagnosing errors in students writing. The study involved 10 students who were in grade 9. They
shared the same backgrounds: they had been learning English since kindergarte, they were taught
by American and Canadian teachers, and they spoke Arabic in their daily life. From the students‟
writing about „planning for the future‟, AbiSamara (ibid.) concluded that 64.1% of the errors
were caused by intralingual aspects, while the rest was caused by interlingual or transfer from
their L1. Her conclusion was also supported by Lance (1969), Richard (1971), and Brudhiprabha
(1972) in AbiSamara (ibid.) who mentioned that only one third of all errors made by second
language learners could be included in interlingual errors.
Another study was done by Bataineh (2005). She analyzed the use of indefinite article
in the the composition written by 209 Jordanian students. Their age ranged from 18 to 23 years
old. In this study, the participants were asked to write one composition about „Why do you study
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English?‟, „Yarmouk University campus‟, „violence in movies‟, „car accident‟, or „my favorite
author/story/poet‟. Based on her identification, she found out that language transfer or
interlanguage aspect played a very minimal role in the students‟ errors. She also concluded that
from all errors that she found, only one error could be included in interlingual error. The majority
of the errors were caused by the developmental factors and the common learning strategies.
Sattayatham and Honsa (2007) analyzed the errors in the writing of 237 Medical
students in Mahidol University, Thailand. The students were asked to translate a paragraph from
the Thai language to English. After that, they were asked to write their opinion about medical
ethics. The result of the study showed that errors could be caused by both interlanguage and
intralanguage factors. However, they found that the interference of mother tongue was in smaller
proportion than the interference of the rules applied in English.
A study on the error analysis was also done by Husada (2007). The study investigated
the errors in concord committed by fifteen Structure II Indonesian students in Satya Wacana
Christian University. The result showed that 73.3% errors were intralingual errors. The study
focused more on the sources of intralingual errors introduced by James (1998), which are
misanalysis, incomplete rule application, exploiting redundancy, hypercorrection, false analogy,
system simplification, and overlooking coocurence restriction. The findings proved that 57.14%
errors were classified as misanalysis, 12.25% were because of incomplete rule application and
hypercorrection, and 11.57% were caused by false analogy. There were only small number of
errors which became the results of the three other sources. Those were system simplification
(4.08%), exploiting redundancy (2.04%), and overlooking coocurence restriction (0.68%).
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Although there had been a lot of research which prove that intralingual errors account
more on the second language students‟ errors, there were still a small number of research
investigating the source of those intralingual errors. In fact, knowing the source of errors in
students‟ production of language is very beneficial. Teachers can be more aware of what things
cause the students to produce the errors (ibid.). Teachers can also identify the specific source of
errors to then design more effective ways materials and ways of teaching. Darus and
Subramaniam (2009) add that knowing the source of error can prepare the teachers to help the
learners facing and overcoming their difficulties in producing L2. However, only the study
conducted by Husada (2007) explored more on the source of the intralingual errors. Realizing
that understanding the source of errors is very beneficial and the number of studies investigating
it is not sufficient, this research aims at investigating the sources of the errors in students‟
writing. The research question that will be answered in this study is “What are the sources of the
learners‟ grammatical errors in the students‟ Guided Writing drafts.”
The Study
1. Context of the study
This research was conducted at the Faculty of Language and Literature Satya
Wacana Chrstian University, Salatiga, Indonesia. This research used the students‟ first draft
in the Guided Writing class. There were two reasons why this research focused on the
Guided Writing class. The first reason was that this was the class whose participants had
passed IC course, the basic pre-requisite subject in the Faculty of Language and Literature.
For this reason, it was assumed that the participants had already had the basic knowledge of
grammar. The second reason was that in this class, the students had to perform their
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understanding of grammar in form of written production. The purpose of this class was to
prepare the students to continue to the higher stages of writing.
2. Participants
The participants of this study were fourteen students who were enrolled in the
Guided Writing class in the second semester of academic year 2011/2012. The method that
was used in selecting the participants was random sampling. The participants ranged in age
from 17 to 18 years old and all of them belonged to the class year 2011. There were two
males and twelve females in this study. Among those fourteen participants, four of them
were repeaters. The participants had been learning English in a formal setting for about
seven to eleven years. All of them were Indonesians who spoke Bahasa Indonesia in their
daily communication and English was their second language. Regarding nationality,
language background, educational level and age, the participants could be considered
homogeneous.
3. Materials
In this class, there were three „in-class writing‟ assignments with the topics: past
narration – comic storytelling, present narration – what do you usually do in your holiday?,
and movie review. The length of each writing was about one until two pages and ranged
from 200 to 350 words. Because of the time constrain, this study used the second writing
assignment which required the students to write present narration about what they usually do
in their holiday. This study would only use the students‟ first drafts because these drafts
would best represent their way of thinking before they got feedback from the teacher. Before
the drafts were returned back to the students to be revised, the teacher, who was also a native
speaker, noted down several corrections on the students‟ writing. There were five aspects
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that were corrected: grammar, word choice, content, spelling and punctuation. This study
focused on the linguistics errors only, therefore, only grammatical errors were analyzed. The
word choice and content of the writing were not included because they were subject to the
teachers‟ preferences and the context, and thus could affect the objectivity of this study.
4. Data collection
There were two steps of data collection in this study: collecting the samples of
learners‟ language and interview. In collecting the samples of the learners‟ language, I
collected and copied the students‟ first drafts with the corrections on them from the teacher.
The second step was done through individual interview. The interview was held by using the
participants‟ native language (Bahasa Indonesia) to avoid problems in communication
(Husada, 2007). In attempting to find out the sources of the grammatical errors, the
participants were asked to see the sentences in their writing where they produced errors in.
They were asked to explain the reason why they produced such sentences. From this, the
students‟ way of thinking could be revealed and the source of errors could be identified. The
results of the interviews were transcribed to be analyzed further.
5. Data analysis
In conducting the error analysis, this research followed the steps mentioned by
Corder (1967) in Ellis and Barkhuizen (2005). They were: 1) the collection of a sample of
learner language, 2) identification of error where there is an evaluation of the learners‟
production compared to what it supposed to be according to the grammar rules, 3) the
description of error, and 4) the explanation of errors. After collecting all data, the
grammatical error analysis of the participants‟ writing was carried out. The error marking in
the students‟ writing was done by a native speaker who was also the teacher of the class
9
being studied in this research. From all error aspects found, I selected the grammatical errors
only to be analyzed further. The purpose of this study was to classify errors based on two
different sources: interlingual (the participant‟s mother toungue) and intralingual (their
learning strategies). In analyzing the intralingual errors, this study used the sources of error
suggested by James (1998). The strategy involved (1) false analogy (a kind of over-
generalization), (2) misanalysis, (3) incomplete rule application (a kind of under-
generalization), (4) exploiting redundancy, (5) overlooking co-occurrence restrictions, (6)
hypercorrection, and (7) system simplification.
Discussion
After all drafts had been analyzed and investigated, this study found 274 grammatical
deviances in the students‟ drafts. Among those deviances, 255 or 93.07% could be included as
errors, while 19 or 6.93% belonged to mistakes. Concerning the research question “What are the
sources of the learners‟ grammatical errors in the Guided Writing drafts”, the finding showed
that out of 255 errors, 183 or 71.77% were intralingual errors, and only 43 or 16.86% belonged
to interlingual errors. This finding supported some previous studies (e.g. Richards, 1971;
AbiSamra, 2003; Bataineh, 2005; Husada, 2007; Sattayatham & Honsa, 2007) which confirmed
that errors were not only caused by the interference of learners‟ L1, in fact, intralingual factors
were found to be the major cause of those errors. Besides the errors caused by both intralingual
and interlingual factors, this study also found 15 or 5.88% developmental errors and 14 or 5.49%
induced errors.
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Between mistakes and errors, James (1998) suggests that errors are the learners‟
productions of language which are unintentional and are not self-corrigible, while mistakes can
be intentional or unintentional but they are self-corrigible. Self-corrigible here means that the
learners can spot their mistakes and reconstruct the sentence in a correct form. Ellis and
Barkhuizen (2005) in Husada (2007) mention two ways to differentiate learners‟ errors and
mistakes. The first way is by checking the participants, whether they can reconstruct and make
the sentence correct. For example in the sentence:
We always *watching TV…. . [We always watch TV…] (Participant G).
Here, when the participant was asked, he directly pointed out his mistake and he was able to
provide the correct form of the sentence. The second way is to see the frequency of the learners
in producing ungrammatical forms. When they consistently produce the wrong forms, then those
are errors. However, when the learners produce wrong forms but in other sentences they can
provide the correct ones, then those are categorized as mistakes. Yet, this study found an
interesting fact. One participant was repeatedly wrote wrong form of present sentences, which is
subject + verb+s/es (e.g. I goes, I feels ). She used this form in almost all subjects without
Intralingual 71.77%
Interlingual 16.86 %
Developmental 5.88%
Induced 5.49%
Figure 1. The distribution of errors
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considering the subject-verb agreement. When she was asked to compare her correct sentences
and the wrong ones, she immediately mentioned that the correct ones were wrong and she chose
the ungrammatical sentences. Therefore, because of her inability to choose the correct forms of
the sentences, those deviances were included as errors.
Interlingual errors
Interlingual errors are defined by Corder (1983) in Ellis and Barkhiuzen (2005) as the
result of mother tongue influences. Weinreich (1953) in AbiSamra (2003) believes that
interlingual errors are the norm deviances of language which are caused by the learners‟
familiarity with more than one language. Because the participants‟ mother tongue is Bahasa
Indonesia, it is undeniable that Bahasa Indonesia affects several participants‟ sentences. For
example, the use of to infinitive after the verb let in the sentence
My parents let me *to do anything in my house. [My parents let me do anything in my
house.] – (Participant A).
Participant A explained that he only translated the sentences from Bahasa Indonesia. In Bahasa
Indonesia, memperbolehkan (let) commonly collocates with the word untuk (to). Therefore, he
used the word to. In fact, Azar (1999) explains that let is followed by simple form of verb, not an
infinitive.
Another example of negative transfer from the first language was the use of with to form
adverbs in the sentence
We back home *with happy. [We go back home happily.] (Participant I)
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In Bahasa Indonesia, adverbs are marked by the word dengan (with), for example, dengan
lambat (slowly), dengan cantik (beautifully). In English, many adverbs are formed from an
adjective + -ly (Murphy, 2004) (e.g. slowly, quickly, or beautifully). However, because of the
learners‟ inadequacy to acquire the rule in English, they provided different form of words.
Unfortunately, this difference could not be realized by Participant I and she directly translated
the word from her L1. She actually wanted to form an adverb of happy, however, she mentioned
that she referred to her mother tongue when she wrote this sentence and it resulted to the
deviation of happily into with happy.
Intralingual errors
“Intralingual errors are the negative transfer within the target language.” (Brown, 1980,
p. 173). Richards (1971) in Darus and Ching (2009) argues that intralingual errors reflect the
general characteristics of L2 rules. Those errors show the students‟ competency in a certain
stage. James (1998) mentions six categories of intralingual errors: false analogy, misanalysis,
incomplete rule application, exploiting redundancy, overlooking cooccurrence restriction,
hypercorrection, and overgeneralization or system simplification. This study showed that the
majority of the errors were included as misanalysis. Out of 183 intralingual errors, 57 or 31.15%
belonged to misanalysis (MA), while 29 or 15.85% were due to both overgeneralization (OG)
and exploiting redundancy (ER). 27 or 14.75% were caused by both overlooking cooccurrence
restriction (OCR) and hypercorrection (HC), 10 or 5.46% were included as incomplete rule
application (IRA), while only 4 or 2.19% errors belonged to false analogy (FA).
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The first source of errors found in this study is misanalysis. In this study, misanalysis
was found to be the most dominant category. According to James (1998) misanalysis occurs
when the learners have formed hypotheses of L2 items, but the hypotheses are unfounded.
Husada (2007) gives an example of the wrong use of are in the sentence An orange and black
bird *are sitting in that tree. Several participants thought that an orange and black bird are two
different nouns, therefore, they used the auxiliary are. The examples of misanalysis in this study
are the wrong use of –ed and –ing adjective as seen in these examples:
1. It‟s so *bored. [It‟s so boring.] (Participant B)
2. She laughs because I and my family feel *annoying with her shoes. [She laughs because
my family and I feel annoyed with her shoes.] (Participant E)
Participant B and E failed to know the different use of –ed and –ing adjectives. Willis (1991)
states that –ing adjectives are used to describe the effect that something has on your feelings, and
–ed adjectives are used to describe people‟s feeling (p.46). Therefore, because the subject it in
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
MA OG ER OCR HC IRA FA
Figure 2. The sources of intralingual errors
14
Participant B‟s sentence caused boredom to her, she should use boring. Whereas, because
Participant E wanted to show what she and her family felt, she should use annoyed instead of
annoying.
Other examples of misanalysis occurred in the use of wrong verb forms due to the
participants‟ wrong assumption of the function of the verbs:
3. After that, at home I just *watching film. [After that, at home I just watch film.]
(Participant J)
4. We will stay home, *playing cards, or *playing monopoly, and *watching TV. [We will
stay home, play cards, or play monopoly, and watch TV.] (Participant L)
Those two participants explained that verbs which described activities involving process should
be in form of present participle. Azar (1999) and Carter and McCarthy (2006) mention that the
use of present participle verbs is to show that an action is in progress at specific time. However,
that function can be fulfilled if the verbs are used in the correct sentence structure (e.g. present
continuous, past continuous, perfect continuous). Participant J mentioned that because watching
film took place for long time, she had to use the present participle verb, in fact, she used it in
present simple tense, which is according to English grammar not suitable. On the other hand,
Participant L argued that play cards, play monopoly, and watch TV were activities which took
place for a long time, therefore she used gerundial verbs. However, she did not believe that the
verb stay in her sentence was an activity. Actually, what the Participant L did not realize is that
she produced a parallel structure and according to correct English grammar (Azar, 1999), in
parallel sentence, the structure between the coordinate conjunction (and, but, or) should be the
same. Seeing that misanalysis was the most dominant category of errors found in this study, the
table below shows several other errors due to misanalysis:
15
Errors Reconstructions Description of misanalysis
I can eat many *kind of
cakes.
I can eat many kinds of
cakes.
The word cakes was thought to be the
main noun.
My family always
*spend the holiday …
My family always spends
the holiday …
My family was misinterpreted as a
plural noun.
The *most happiness
moment is …
The happiest moment is
…
The noun happiness was thought to
be an adjective.
A nickname for *the
Javanese old man.
A nickname for a
Javanese old man.
Wrongly interpreted that Javanese
old man was a definite noun.
… so that the yield from
that *sell increase.
… so that the (profit)
from that sales (can)
increase.
The word sell was wrongly assumed
as a noun.
We always watching TV
*at my mother‟s room.
We always (watch) TV in
my mother‟s room.
Misinterpreted the words my mother‟s
room as an exact place that needed
preposition at.
Holiday is the time *who
everyone expects.
Holiday is the time which
everyone expects.
The word everyone was thought to be
the main subject.
The second category was overgeneralization. According to James (1998)
overgeneralization occurs when the learners “overindulgence one member of a set and underuse
others in the set.” (p.187). Richards (1970) in AbiSamra (2003) explains that overgeneralization
may be caused by the learners‟ intention to reduce the linguistic burden they have to face by
applying other structures that they have already known in the target language. The example
found in this study was the overuse of indefinite article in this sentence:
I watch *a television. [I watch television.] (Participant C).
In that sentence, Participant C tried to be consistent with the knowledge of the use of indefinite
article. She mentioned that she had to use indefinite article when she described something that
had not been introduced before. As a result, when she first mentioned the word television in her
16
writing, she added an before it. However, that sentence does not require any article. It does not
need an indefinite article because television is something definite. Nevertheless, it does not need
the definite article either because as what Murphy (2004) explains that the article the is used
before the word television if what we mean is the television as a set of thing. If we make use the
function of the television, which is we watch it, it is commonly used without the.
Overgeneralization also can be seen in the overuse of present verb (verb+s/es) in this
sentence:
I *leaves home in the morning and *comes back at night. [I leave home in the morning
and come back at night.] (Participant B)
Participant B showed that she tried to be consistent with her previous knowledge that one way to
mark present sentences was to add -s after the verbs. However, she did not pay attention to the
subject and caused the verbs not to agree with the subject.
The third source was exploiting redundancy. Exploiting redundancy can be described as
the omission of the grammatical features that do not contribute to the meaning of the utterances.
(James, 1998 in Ellis and Barkhiuzen, 2005). Exploiting redundancy can be illustrated in the
omission of verb and possessive marker in these sentences
1. We *back home …. [We go back home …] (Particpant I)
2. I with my friends go to our classmates* home. [(My friends and I) go to our
classmate‟s homes.] (Participant D)
From examples 1, it is clear that participant I omitted the verb go. She explained that the adverb
back could serve as a verb and had the same meaning with go back or return, therefore, she did
not need to add other words. However, the sentence was grammatically incorrect because it
needed the verb go before the adverb back. Whereas in the second example, participant D
17
omitted the possessive marker „s. It is obvious that she only considered the information that she
wanted to deliver and forgot to pay attention to the possessive marker. From the interviews, the
thing that could be inferred from both Participant I and D was that the use of grammatical
elements were not really important as long as they felt that people could understand their
sentences.
The fourth source of error is overlooking cooccurence restriction. Richards (1983) in
Husada (2007) argues that learners sometimes fail to view the rule of grammar existing in the
sentence. James (1998) gives an example of overlooking cooccurrence restriction in the use of
the word quick and fast. Learners may think that those words share the same meaning and
function because they are synonymous. In fact, they carry their own functions in the sentence.
We can say fast food, but we cannot say quick food. This source of errors was shown in the
misformation of the verb in this sentence:
I also have a tradition after *watch a movie. [I also have a tradition after watching a
movie.] (Participant N)
Here the participant stated that she chose to use present verb (watch) because she only focused
on the tense. Because she was asked to write a present narration, she was concerned with the
present tense form of verbs. She ignored the fact that she used the verb watch after the
preposition after. Willis (1991) states that “if the subject of main clause and the time clause are
the same, you sometimes omit the subject in the time clause and use a participle as a verb” (p.
180). Because in her time clause she had omitted the subject I, she had to use watch in participle
form as the verb. The wrong use of verb was also the example of overlooking coocurence
restriction as seen in this sentence,
18
I *look they very happy. [I see they (are) very happy.] (Participant I)
That sentence showed that Participant I used the verb look where actually what she wanted to say
required the verb see. She stated that she used the word look because she thought that all words
which carried the meaning of „seeing something‟ could be used interchangeably. However, the
use of look was different from see. According to Collins Cobuild Dictionary (2006), look means
directing eyes to one direction to see something clearly, and see means realizing something by
observing it. Therefore, because knowing that people were happy was done trough observing, the
correct verb for her sentence was see.
The fifth source of intralingual errors is hypercorrection. Hypercorrection occurs when
the learners over monitor their L2 output by attempting to be consistent (James, 1998).
Hypercorrection could be found in these sentences
1. … then I make *a breakfast to my parents. […then I make breakfast (for) my parents.]
(Participant J)
2. Please forgive me and I *wouldn’t do the mistake again. [Please forgive me and I will
not do the mistake again.] (Participant H)
In the first example, Participant J felt that the sentence could be correct if she added the
indefinite article. Because of having the fear to make error, she was too focused on how to make
the sentence looked correct. In fact, breakfast was an uncountable noun, therefore it did not need
any articles. While in the second example, participant H stated that she actually intended to use
will instead of would. Nevertheless, because she realized that she did the mistake in the past, she
thought that she had to change will into would. Actually, this sentence requires agreement of the
tenses and the modal auxiliaries. If the sentence used the present tense, it should use will, and if
19
it is in the past tense, it should use would. This example shows that because the participant tried
to be consistent with the rules she had acquired before, she ignored the structure of the sentence.
The sixth source of errors is incomplete rule application. James (1998) in Ellis and
Barkhuizen (2005) explains that incomplete rule application is the opposite of overgeneralization
(under-generalization) and could be found in the failure to make use of word order. The wrong
use of conjunction in the sentence could be included as hypercorrection as seen in this sentence
… and clean my aquarium. *In order to, I can enjoyed watching film … [… and clean
my aquarium so that I can enjoy watching film …] (Participant J)
In writing that sentence, Participant J stated that she knew the meaning of the conjunction in
order to. However, because of the lack of grammar comprehension, she thought that she could
put it everywhere in the sentence without making necessary adjustment to the sentence. In fact,
Azar (2004) and Cowan (2008) mention that the conjunction in order to should be followed by
infinitive. It could not be followed by a clause or a complete sentence.
The last source of errors is false analogy. James (1998) points out that false analogy is the
error where “the learner wrongly assumes that the new item B behaves like A.” (p. 185). One
example is the wrong transformation of adverb in this sentence
Not all of children can forget her mother‟s milk *fastly. [Not all children can forget her
mother‟s milk fast.] (Participant E)
Here, the participant assumed that all adjectives could be changed into adverbs by adding the
suffix –ly. She believed that the adjective fast could behave like any other adjectives and
therefore, she transformed the word fast into fastly. Willis (1991) states that there are several
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adverbs of manner which have the same form and same meaning as the adjective forms (e.g. fast,
hard, and late). Therefore, the adjective fast can also act as an adverb without having any
additional suffixes.
This study also found several errors which could not be included in interlingual or
intralingual. It was found that those errors were not interfered by both the learners‟ L1 and L2.
Those errors were categorized as developmental errors and induced errors.
Developmental errors
According to Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982) developmental errors are errors which
are similar to errors made by children who have the target language as their first language.
Richards (1971) in Darus and Subramaniam (2009) explains that there are no interference of any
languages in the developmental errors, in fact, those errors show some basic characteristics of
language acquisition. Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982) give an example,
Dog eat it.
The missing article and wrong use of tense may be attributed to developmental errors
because those errors are also found in children‟s speech who learn English as their first language.
The example of developmental errors found in this study was,
There is *many scene of song. [There are many musical scenes.] (Participant N)
Here the participant stated that she did not know how to combine her ideas in the sentence. What
she knew were only scene and song. Therefore, she just tried to put all things she knew in the
sentence. This example shows that she reflected the way someone learn a first language, which is
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by putting together all content words, like nouns and verbs (Ellis, 1997) without making
adjustment to the rules in the sentence.
Induced errors
In James (1998), Stenson (1983) states that induced errors are the
learner errors that result more from the classroom situation than from either the students‟ incomplete
competence in English grammar (intralingual error) or first language interference (interlingual errors).
(p.189)
This category of errors occurs when the learner is misled by his or her learning environment.
James (1998) divides induced errors in three based on their sources: material-induced error,
teacher-talk induced error, and exercise-based induced errors. One example found in this study
which is in line with this explanation was:
Watching a movie will be more *pleased when … [Watching a movie will be more
enjoyable when …] (Participant N)
Participant N explained that she did not know English word of menyenangkan (enjoyable,
interesting, pleased) and she asked her friend for the translation. However, not knowing the
structure of the sentence, her friend mentioned the word pleased and she directly put it in her
sentence.
However, Stenson (1983) in James (1998) also suggests that these errors could be very
similar to intralingual errors in which the learner fails to make secondary change in the things
being learned and tends to use one type of structure only. This study found several induced
errors, the example is as follow:
When I was watch *the TV. [When I (am watching) TV.] (Participant A)
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Here, the participant mentioned that in his learning process, he learnt that a noun should be
preceded by an article. In fact, the use of a definite article in that sentence was not necessary
because he did not refer to a set of television, but to the activity of watching television Murphy
(2004).
Conclusion
The results of this study show that the intralingual errors became the considerable
source of errors committed by the students in acquiring and applying grammar in their writing.
This study found 274 deviances where 255 of them or 93.07% belonged to errors, while 19 or
6.93% were mistakes. Among those errors, 183 or 71.77% were intralingual errors, and only 43
or 16.86% belonged to interlingual errors. These results agreed with several previous arguments
which view that interference of L1 is not the major factor in student‟s production of errors in L2.
It showed that the students‟ competency in acquiring rules and characteristics of L2 played more
significant roles (Richards, 1971 in Darus & Subramaniam, 2009; Dulay, Burt & Krashen, 1982).
Concerning the intralingual errors, this study found that misanalysis was the major source of
errors. From 183 intralingual errors, 57 or 31.15% belonged to misanalysis, while 29 or 15.85%
were due to both overgeneralization and exploiting redundancy. 27 or 14.75% were caused by
both overlooking cooccurrence restriction and hypercorrection, 10 or 5.46% were included as
incomplete rule application, while only 4 or 2.19% errors belonged to false analogy.
This study also found three sources of deviances which were not caused by both
interlingual and intralingual factors. The first source was the participants‟ carelessness. The
participants admitted that they were not careful so that they made mistake. They stated that they
only focused on delivering their idea without considering the grammar. Some of them also
mentioned that in the process of writing, they realized that they made mistakes, however,
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because of the time limitation, they forgot to correct their previous mistake. Because of the
participants‟ ability to recognize and correct those deviances, mistakes were not included as
errors and could be considered insignificant. The second source was the developmental errors
which were caused by the participant‟s inability to combine their ideas into grammatically
correct sentences. Some of the participants mentioned that they just put all the things they
wanted to deliver in the sentence. These errors were similar to the process of learning a first
language (Dulay, Burt & Krashen, 1982). The third source was induced errors which were the
result of being misled by the participants‟ learning environment (James, 1998). Some
participants stated that they asked the translation to their friend or they tried to look for it on the
internet and they used it in their sentence without making necessary adjustment. From this
reason, this study also found that not all learning supporting medium (e.g. peer help, dictionary,
online search) could be utilized directly by the students. They still needed to modify the output
based on the structure of the sentence, and this ability was what lack from the participants..
However, this study still has some limitations. The first limitation is the number of
participants (n=14). Having bigger number of participants for further study will be more
beneficial for the reliability of the study. The second limitation is on the type of writing that was
used. This study only used present narration and therefore only focused on limited grammatical
features. Wider variety of writing would be favorable in finding more variety of errors.
Seeing that intralingual factors played more significant role in students‟ production of
error, it showed that the participants had recognized the grammar features, however, they still
failed to apply and combine them in the sentence. Ur (1988) mentions that some teachers and/or
coursebooks may too focus on explaining how to get certain form correct without giving
sufficient exercise. Therefore, more exercise is needed to help the students get accustomed to the
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use of certain rules. Hopefully, this study will be beneficial for English teachers to recognize not
only what errors produced by the students but also the sources and reasons behind them.
Furthermore, by understanding the sources of errors, I hope that English teachers will be able to
apply suitable explanation, methods, and exercise to anticipate the students‟ errors so that
effective and efficient teaching and learning process will be gained.
Acknowledgement
I would not be able to finish this thesis without the help and support from several
individuals around me. Therefore, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Allah SWT for
all of his greatness to make everything possible for me. I would like to express my sincere
gratitude to my supervisor, Hendro Setiawan Husada, M.A. for his immeasurable supervision
and help during the completion of my thesis, and also my examiner, Martha Nandari, M.A. for
the fundamental suggestion and guidance for this thesis. Special thank is given to Andrew Thren
for his help in collecting the data and doing the analysis. I also want to say thank you to all of my
participants for their help in the process of collecting data.
I am especially grateful to Ibu, Bapak, Mbak Ifa, Om Ndut, and the cute Nares for the
endless patience, support, help, and also for keeping me believe that I can do this. Big thank is
also given to Febrika „Temon‟ for providing me immense support and restless companion. My
special and very deep thanks go to ED 2008. It is a very great opportunity to be in a great family
of 2008. Thanks for trusting me. Thanks for the joy, laughter, and togetherness that make my 4
years in ED SWCU enormously enjoyable and unforgettable. I also deliver my thanks to all of
my friends for their support and help. Last but not least, I would like to send my appreciation to
all lecturers in ED SWCU for guiding, teaching, and educating me throughout my 4 year study.
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