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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

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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

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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:

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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.

25

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