A
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NALYSIS ON THE
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NGLISH
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TUDENTS
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ARRATIVE
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RITING
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EXTS
Cholimatus Zuhro, Sukarno, Albert Tallapessy
Magister of Linguistics, Faculty of Letters, University of Jember (UNEJ) E-mail: [email protected]
A
BSTRACTThis research investigates the errors made by the students of the 5th semester of English Study Program of Politeknik Negeri Jember in their narrative
writing texts. This study revealed that there were 323 errors in the students‘
narrative writing texts and classified into 5 grammatical categories, they were Verb tense (228 errors/71%), Plurality (30 errors/9%), Article (24 errors/7%), Subject Verb Agreement (23 errors/7%), and Preposition (18 errors/6%). The students committed errors in applying sentence structure rules in English. Since grammatical features of each language are not similar, errors made are obviously different. These errors are caused by the interference of the
students‘ first language and their inadequate understanding of grammatical rules of English. Therefore, it is important to make the students aware of the differences of the structure of these two languages to produce a good and acceptable sentence. The teachers need to emphasize on how the concepts are handled in English and Indonesian.
Key words: Error analysis, Students‟Narrative Writing Texts
Introduction
English is considered as an international language, since people use it all over the world. As an international language, English is used as medium in many fields, such as in scientific and technology research as well as international trade. In Indonesia, English has a special place as the first foreign language with different statuses from one institution to another. At particular schools, such as polytechnics, colleges or universities, English is treated as a compulsory subject because most of the textbooks, journals, and other resources given to the students are written in English.
differences. The second reason is English and Indonesian are from different language families. English belongs to the Germanic family, while Indonesian belongs to the Austronesian language family. The third reason is Languages differ cross culturally. It means that when people talk about learning language, they also have to learn about the way of thinking of the native speakers and the culture of the target language.
It is important to shed the light on some of the studies conducted on students‘ errors in some parts of other countries. Darus & Hei Ching (2009) conducted a study about an error analysis in written English Essays of Chinese students from vernacular schools in Malaysia. This study investigated the common errors in essay written in English by 70 Chinese students in a selected public school in Perak. For all these students, Chinese is their first language (L1). 70 essays were analyzed and catagorized into 18 types of errors. The result of the analysis shows that four most common errors were mechanics, tenses, preposition, and subject-verb agreement. In composing these essays, the students were very much influenced by their L1.
Darus & Subramaniam (2009) studied secondary school students‘error in writing English essays in Malaysia. This study examined errors in a corpus of 72 essays written by 72 participants. The participants are Form Four Malay students who are studying at a secondary school in Malaysia; 37 male and 35 female. They have experienced approximately the same number of years of education through primary and secondary education in Malaysia. All of the participants come from non-English speaking background and hardly communicate in English outside the school. The instrument used for this study was participants‘ written essays and Mark in software. All of the errors in the essays were identified and classified into various categorizations. The results of the study show that six most common errors committed by the participants were singular/plural form, verb tense, word choice, preposition, subject-verb agreement and word order. These aspects of writing in English pose the most difficult problems to participants.
It is essential to know the term of errors when we are discussing them. In this case, Dulay et al. (1982: 138), state that ―errors are parts of a conversation or composition that deviate from some selected norm of mature language performance‖. Meanwhile, Brown (1987: 70) defines errors as noticeable systematic deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker reflecting the interlanguage competence of a learner. From these ideas, it can be restated that errors are systematic deviation tha can be found in both oral and written language and they can be caused by competence factors or performance factors.
does not know grammatical properties in a new language. The rules of L1 knowledge are then employed in the use of L2 writing, which causes the mother tongue interference. While Ellis (1996: 51) explains the errors reflect the gaps in the learner‘s knowledge; that is, an error is produced due to the fact that the learners cannot identify what is correct and incorrect. In contrast, a mistake reflects the learners‘ inefficient performance; that is, it occurs because the learners are not able to perform what they already know correctly. He also suggests two ways in determaining error or mistake. The first one is to check the consistency of learner‟s writing. If he sometimes uses the correct form and sometimes the wrong one, it is a mistake. However, if he always uses it incorrectly, it is then an error. The second way is to ask learner to try to correct his own deviant utterance. Where he is unable to, the deviations are errors; where he is successful, they are mistakes.
Error Analysis in language Learning
Teachers who have waged long battles againts their students‘ language errors have come to realize that making errors is an evitable part of learning. People cannot learn language without first systematically comitting errors, Dulay et.al state that studying learners‘ errors serve two major purposes. First, it provides data from which inferences about the nature of the language learning process can be made. Second, it indicates the teachers and curriculum developers which part of the target language students have most difficult producing correctly and which errors types detract most learners‘ ability to communicate effectively (Dulay et al., 1982:138).
Based on the opinion above, it can be concluded that studying learners‘ errors are useful for the lecturers, the learners, and the researcher. It is expected that the learners‘ errors can help (a) the lecturers judge the effectiveness of certain methods in language learning, (b) the students get feedback and improve their mastery of language, and (c) the researcher gets an evidence of how the students learn or acquire the language.
The Source of Errors
Interlanguage Errors
Dulay et al. (1982:171) state that interlanguage errors are similar in structure to a semantically equivalent phrases or sentences in the learners‘ native language. In line with this, Richards (1974:173) states that interlingual errors are caused by interference of the learners‘ mother tongue. It means that interlingual errors happen because there is influence of the learners‘ native language construction of phrases and sentences. It can be taken as an example in the usage of English in oral or written forms. It is found in the interference of the Indonesian construction. For instance, the students omit the verb ―be‖ in the simple present tense pattern, for example: He at home. In this sentence, the students make a grammatical error by omitting the verb ―is‖. This error may be caused by interlingual errors, because the sentence is influenced by their mother tongue‘s sententence construction. In the English sentence, the verb ―be‖ must be put between the subject and complement. This system does not happen in Indonesian. The correct sentence should be: He is at home.
Intralanguage Errors and Developmental Errors
According to Richards (1985:174) intralanguage errors are those which reflect the general characteristics of learning rules and failure to learn condition under which rules apply. Further, he states that developmental erros illustrate the learner‘s attempt to build up hypothesis about the English language from his limited experience of it in the classroom or textbook. Briefly, developmental errors happen because the learner has limited experience of attempting to build up hypothesis about the English language. The causes of intralanguage and developmental errors are a) overgeneralization, b) ignorance of rule restrictions, c) incomplete application of rules, and d) false concepts hypothesized.
The Definition Narrative text
Meyers (2005:52) states that narrative is one of the most powerful ways of communicating with others. A good written story lets your reader response to some event in your life as if it were own. They not only understand the event, but they can almost feel it. The action, details, and dialogue put the readers in these seem and make it happen for them. Moreover, Anderson (1997: 8) states that narrative is a piece of text tells a story and, in doing so, entertains or informs the reader or listener.
narrative is generally more complex than the orientation and sequencing typical of recounting.
Method
This research belongs to a case study which is done under the purpose to provide more information thorough an analysis and give clear explanations about the objects analysed. The data of this research are qualitative data, they are some errors that taken from the studens‘ writing narrative texts. 48 students in the 5th semester of English Study Program of State polytechnic are as the respondent of this research. The data were collected through 2 steps. In the first step, the respondents were given test 1, they were asked to write narrative text writing and the topic was about Holiday. They had to write their texts based on their experiences of their own holiday. The narrative writing text ranged from 200-300 words each. Then, the second step was applying a second test. The second test was aimed to know the students‘ consistency in making the mistakes so that it can be said that they made some errors. The 26 students were asked to write narrative writing texts based on their experiences when they joined the field study at Kebun Raya Purwodadi and Wonosari Tea Plantation Lawang, Malang. The narrative writing text ranged from 300-400 words each.
The document used in this research is students‘assignments on writing narrative texts. The document itself is used to analyze students‘ errors made in their narrative writing texts. Three steps are used to analyze the data obtained from the students‘ hand writings. Firstly, the students‘ works are all checked and read. The incorrect sentences are given check marks by using stabilo ink. Secondly, the students‘ errors are classified into some types. The classification of errors is tabled based on Ellis‘ theory (1996:48).
Findings and Discussion
The data were collected through 2 steps. In the first step, the respondents were given test 1, they were asked to write narrative text writing and the topic was about Holiday. They had to write their texts based on their experiences of their own holiday. The narrative writing text ranged from 200-300 words each. Having been analyzed, the test showed the result that there were 22 students who did not make any mistake, and there were 26 students who made some mistakes in their works. The result of test 1, can be presented in Table 1.
Table 1. The Result of the First Test
Category Number of the Students Percentage
Making some Mistakes/Errors 26 54%
Making no Mistakes 22 46%
Referring to Table 1, there are only 26 students who made some mistakes in their narrative writing texts that can be considered as the first data, because the other 22 students did not make any mistake. The aim of this research is to investigate and examine the students‘ errors not their mistakes in their narrative writing texts.
For this purpose, to make sure whether the 26 students make some errors or mistakes, they were given a second test. The second test was aimed to know the students‘ consistency in making the mistakes so that it can be said that they made some errors. The 26 students were asked to write narrative writing texts based on their experiences when they joined the field study at Kebun Raya Purwodadi and Wonosari Tea Plantation Lawang, Malang. The narrative writing text ranged from 300-400 words each. Having been analyzed, the second test indicated that 14 students made some mistakes in their first test, but they did not make any mistake in the second test. In contrast, 12 students were consistently making some mistakes both in test 1 test 2. It meant that there were only 12 students who made Errors in the first and second data. The result of test 2 can be presented in Table 2.
Table 2. The Result of the Second Test
Category Number of the Students Percentage
Making Mistakes 14 54%
Making errors 12 46%
Total of the Students 26 100%
After conducting the first and the second step, it was considered that the data of this research were in the form of the students‘ errors that were obtained from the 12 students in their first and second test of narrative writing texts.
The 12 students made 323 errors. The identified errors were counted based on their frequencies. When the same error occurred twice, they were counted as two errors in the tabulation. From the errors analyzed, the result showed that the category of errors committed by the students in their narrative writing texts were 5 categories, they were Verb Tense (VT), Subject Verb Agreement (SVA), Plurality (Pl), Article (Ar), and Preposition (Prep). The distribution of the data according to the 5 categories can be presented in Table 3.
Table 3. The Distribution of Errors in the Students’ Narrative Writing Texts No Categories of Error Frequency of Errors Percentage (%)
1 Verb Tense 228 71%
2 Plurality 30 9%
3 Article 24 7%
4 Subject Verb Agreement 23 7%
5 Preposition 18 6%
This sub section analyzes and interprets the research findings that were obtained during the research. In Table 3, it can be seen that there were three hundred and twenty three (323) errors of various grammatical categories were found in the students‘ narrative text writings. In this section, 10% up to 20% of errors of each category were taken as sample of errors that were analyzed and interpreted. In determining the sample, Arikunto (1989:107) states that if the subjects are less than 100, we can take all of them, while if the subjects are more than 100, we take 10%-15%, 20%-25%, or more as sample. Therefore, to avoid the overlapping in taking the sample of errors that will be analyzed; each category of error was taken 10% up to 20% as the sample. 10% for the category is applied to the data which had more than 100 errors and 20% applied to the data which had less than 100 errors. Following the calculation, the data that will be analyzed are as follows; Verb tense (23 errors), Plurality (6 errors), Subject Verb Agreement (5 errors), Article (5 errors), and Preposition (4 errors). The discussion of all those errors will be discussed in the following subchapters below.
Verb Tense (VT)
As explained before there were 23 samples of errors that will be discussed. This category is the largest grammatical category of errors in the classifications. Since the topics were My holiday and My field trip in Malang, it obliged the students to compose sentences mostly in the past tense to refer to something that happened. The result of the tests showed that the students made the most errors in the usage of the tenses. The list of the example of errors in verb tense can be seen in Table 4.
Table 4. Errors in Verb Tense 48 My lecturer invite us... My lecturer invited us...
70 We continue the journey to Malang. We continued the journey to Malang.
80 ...we do not know anything. ...we did not know anything. 99 I have final examination. I had final examination. 120 We decide to reach... We decided to reach... 124 I get a lot of information... I got a lot of information... 139 ..the driver drives us.. ...the driver drove us...
173 I also get a knowledge... I also got a knowledge... 178 The assignments consists... The assignments consisted... 198 We visite agrotourism object. We visited agrotourism object. 224 We need someone to be our friends. We needed someone to be our
friends.
245 We rent a car from the car rental. We rented a car from the car rental. 261 We finish the task in a few minutes. We finished the task in a few
minutes.
289 We think that we are hungry We thought that we were hungry 294 ...when we watch some videos ...when we watched some videos 323 We leave Malang to continue our trip
to Jember
We left Malang to continue our trip to Jember..
All those sentences in Table 4 should be in the form of past tense because they told about the activities happened in the past. However, the students used verbs 1 in their sentences. This is an error because students should use verb 2 in the past form instead of verb 1. It shows that the students have not captured the sequence rule of tenses. This type of error can be attributed to intralingual interference mainly incomplete knowledge of the rules.
The wrong application of verb tense can also be seen when the students did not apply the correct tense to the verb in the sentences. It can be assumed that the students were not aware of the different rules for tenses application. The result is not surprising since English notion of tense is somewhat confusing to the Indonesian learners. In English, there is an indication of time with present, past, future and continuous tense but Indonesian verb itself does not indicate time. English verbs change according to aspect of time. However, in Indonesian, the same form of verb can be used for present, past, future and continuous tense.
In short, the differences between the verb system of Indonesian and English tense make the students difficult to grasp the English notion of tense. Due to the rule of Indonesian that do not need any changes of verbs according to time aspect, students tend to omit the inflection of the English verb. This is correct in Indonesian, but it is not acceptable in English.
Plurality
The common errors on plurality of English are the omission of plural markers from the nouns. Pluralization is a process of adding morpheme (-s/-es) to pluralize nouns. There are many exceptional nouns that do not use adding -s/-es to construct their plural forms. The list of the example of errors in plurality can be seen in Table 5.
Table 5. Errors in Plurality Number
of Data
Error Identification Error Correction
hindu heritage Hindu heritage 34 We visited 2 place they are
Purwodadi and Wonosari
We visited 2 places they were Purwodadi and Wonosari
109 There are three class... There are three classes ... 112 We stop in some mosque We stopped in some mosques 148 There are three main process in
making tea product.
There are three main processes in making tea product.
Some of the students did not know that the plural marker using the suffix ‗-s/-es‘ must be applied to the countable noun. A possible reason is in Indonesian, there is no plural marker for plural noun. Those errors may be attributable to the different system of plurality between Indonesian and English. Indonesian only has quantifiers before nouns without additional affixed plural marker to noun. For some students, they have already hypothesized that English nouns have plural and singular forms. However, they were not sure when they should apply the plural marker.
Article
An article is a word that is used with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. English has two articles, they are definite and indifinite: the and a/an. The is used to refer to specific or particular nouns; a/an is used to modify non-specific or non-particular nouns. We call the the definite article and a/an the indefinite article. (Leech and Startvik, 1981: 52).
The errors on articles are classified into the errors arising from the omission of an article when it needed. The list of the examples of errors in article can be seen in 210 I am an university student. I am a university student. 248 We wait for about a hour. We wait for about an hour
The students had difficulties in deciding whether a definite article is needed for a noun in a particular context or not. They also omitted them to simplify their tasks or replaced them with each other. This showed that the students still had difficulty in understanding the concepts of definiteness and indefiniteness.
some instances where the indefinite articles are confusing for the students. For example when a word starts with a vowel sound but is pronounced with a consonant sound as in ―auniversity student‖ the student might get confused and use ―an‖ instead. The same applies for instances where a word starts with a consonant letter but is pronounced with a vowel sound as in ―an hour‖. This might confuse the students and cause the errors to be made.
Subject Verb Agreement
Subject verb agreement means that in a sentence, subjects and verbs must agree with one another in number (singular or plural). Agreement between subject and verb is influenced by the subject form whether it is singular or plural. To construct a correct sentence structurally, the verb must agree with the subject.Thus, if a subject (the person or thing doing the action) is singular, its verb (the word representing the action) must also be singular; if a subject is plural, its verb must also be plural (Surina & Kamaruzaman, 2009:190).
When the students fail to recognize this, it means that they fail to construct the correct sentences structurally. Thus, the students must be able to identify the subject whether it is singular or plural. If the students do not have any competence in identifying the subject, they will fail to use the correct form of the verbs. It means that the students have made errors in making the agreement between subject and verb. The list of the example of errors in subject verb agreement can be seen in Table 7.
Table 7. Errors in Subject Verb Agreement Number
of Data
Error Identification Error Correction
66 One of my friends like to cook One of my friends likes to cook 81 There was two buses already in my
campus
There were two buses already in my campus.
140 ...and the tree were green and big. ...and the tree was green and big. 183 ...they was Mam Titik and Mam
Tutus.
...they were Mam Titik and Mam Tutus.
216 My friend Syarah like to go hiking My friend, Syarah, likes to go hiking.
Preposition
A preposition is a word that shows the relationship between a noun or pronoun and other words in a sentence. It links nouns, pronouns and phrases to other words in a sentence. The word or phrase that the preposition introduces is called the object of the preposition (Littel 2007: 127). The great majority of the students in this study demonstrated confusion for the right usage of prepositions as shown in the examples in Table 8.
Table 8. Errors in Preposition Number of
Data
Error Identification Error Correction
14 I am in twenty years old I am twenty years old 63 She lives at Malang. She lives in Malang. 224 He works in the office. He works at the t office. 311 He put the camera in the table. He put the camera on the table.
Referring to Table 8, those errors arise mostly from the confusion of the selection of appropriate preposition and the irregularity of uses. This category comprised the omission, insertion and the wrong choice of preposition. The errors are dominated by the wrong selection of preposition. The wrong choice is, normally, caused by mother tongue interference. Some of Indonesian prepositions are similar in meanings and functions with the English prepositions. Sometimes, a single Indonesian preposition maybe translated into various English prepositions.
When the students do not know in using the suitable preposition in a sentence, they use their first language rules to map up and shape the intended form. Therefore, students were incapable of choosing the correct prepositions when more than one English preposition corresponds to a single Indonesian preposition and they created errors. When the students were not sure of which prepositions to use, they omitted the prepositions. There is no good way or rule on how to use prepositions; the students just have to learn when and how to use them.
Recommendations to Overcome the Problem
The study of the students‘ errors helps teachers to identify the problematic areas of headline in language learning and teaching. It implies that teachers must see errors as the key to understand and solve accuracy problems in English writing courses. Then, they should adopt, modify or even develop remedial procedures that can elevate the students‘ level and minimize their errors. Teachers should try to find the best method to deliver the lesson to their students.
the point of error and to emphasize more on those errors where the error frequency is higher. Teachers should then be more aware of these types of errors and provide the necessary follow up work to check the problem areas as discussed earlier. It is important for teachers to establish what the error is, to establish the possible sources of errors, to explain why they happen. Errors provide feedback, they tell the teachers something about the effectiveness of their teaching techniques and show them what parts of the syllabus they have been following have been inadequately learned or taught and need further attention.
Clonclusion
The 12 students made 323 errors in their narrative text writing. The identified errors were classified based on their frequencies. When the same error occurred twice, they were counted as two errors in the tabulation. From the errors analyzed, the result showed that the category of errors committed by the students in their narrative writing texts were 5 categories, they were Verb tense (228 errors/71%), Plurality (30 errors/9%), Article (24 errors/7%) Subject Verb Agreement (23 errors/7%), and Preposition (18 errors/6%).
These students have problems in acquiring normal grammatical rules in English. Since grammatical features of each language are not similar, errors made are obviously different. These errors are caused by the interference of the students‘ first language and their inadequate understanding of grammatical rules of English. They tend to refer to their first language whenever they face difficulties when they write in English. They construct sentences with errors because of the differences of the grammatical rules of Indonesian and English.
Therefore, it is important to make the students aware of the differences of the structure of these 2 languages to produce a good and acceptable sentence. And the teachers need to emphasize on how the concepts are handled in English and Indonesian. Teachers should also highlight certain rules in Indonesian that are not appropriate to be used when they write in English. This is to ensure that the students apply the correct form while they write in English and hence, it will decrease the occurrence of errors.
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