Student 19 NK) Student’s Writing Grammatical of
C. Causes of Errors
In this case, uses James‟ theory as the reference. He divides causes of errors into three factors, namely; interlingual transfer, intralingual transfer, and induced errors.18 The short explanation about those causes of errors will be given as follows:
1. Interlingual Transfer
It means that mother tongue interlingual is causes of error from transferring knowledge of native language into the target language. The students are often doing such an error because they are interfered by their mother tongue. However, when they proceed the new language data in their mind, it also produces a new rules, so they often over generalize about their second language rules.
Interlingual errors relateed to the mother tongue influence. Students committed errors because of difference rule between the students‟ first language and their second language. They still influenced by the rule of simple past tense in their mother tongue. The writer took some examples from her study in SMP YMJ that shows the factor from interlingual transfer. The example of errors that is caused by interlingual is in omission
14 ibid
15 ibid
16 ibid
17 ibid
18 ibid
the auxiliary verb and “was”. Some students put the only the main verb to construct the writing. They omitted the auxiliary verbs of “to be” which indicated sentence as simple past tenses. They made errors by putting the main verb in form of present verb or present participle. The examples were shown in sentences below:
“She very happy”, it should be “she was very happy”
“Bella big party”, it should be “Bella‟s big party”
“The party finish”, it should be “The party finished”
“like as hope”, it should be “like as hoped”
“Bella‟s friends come back”, it should be “Bella‟s friends came back”
Those errors occurred because the differences application of rule in forming simple past tense between Indonesian language and English. In Indonesian language, when the students wanted to construct the past event, they only need to put the word “sudah” before the verb whatever the verbs which are going to be attached and whenever the action happened.
However, in English, to form a sentence, it should consider on the tenses and the types of verb. In this context (simple past tense), when they wanted to make a sentence, they have to change the verb into simple past.
2. Intralingual Transfer
Intralingual transfer also can be called as target language; it means that target language is a major factor in second language learning19. In this case, errors can occur as a result of students‟ attempt to build up concept about target language from the limited experience with it. Target language also refers to caused by the lack of competence in learning foreign language.
The students also made errors which was the result of language transfer/translation that was caused by the learner„s first language. It also said that errors occurred because the students„ native language did not have the same rules of the target language has, but the learner applied the
19 ibid
rules of their native language into target language, and this error called interlingual error.
Although the students found some difficulties in their writing, they had high enthusiasm and motivation in learning. Based on the observation, they were not ashamed to ask the teacher when they faced some difficulties in doing the task about writing. Some examples were taken from the students‟ writing, and found some examples that showed intalingual transfer. The examples were shown in sentences below:
“frend‟s”, it should be “friends”
“the party bigend”, it should be “the party began”
“bella‟s friends”, it should be “Bella‟s friends”
“some present”, it should be “some presents”
“the party took place”, it should be “The part took place”
From those example errors above, it could be seen that the students did not have the target language. Intralingual error reflects the errors which are caused by incapability to use the language correctly.20 There was a different way when the Indonesian students want to write English sentences. They must have made grammatical changes to produce when the situation happen because it shows the meaning. That was why it leads to the students made errors.
3. Induced Errors
This error seems natural; it means that, this error was the result more from the classroom condition than from either the students‟ incomplete competence in English or their mother tongue. Errors can appear to be induced by teaching process itself and an error is an evidence of failure of ineffective teaching or lack control.
In this study, there were not found this cause of errors because did not have much time to analyze the students‟ English book or analyze the
20 ibid
teaching English in the class. So, only found two categorizes in causes of errors.
Furthermore, the result of causes of errors showed that three types of causes of errors that students made in writing narrative paragraph, they are; interlingual transfer or mother tongue influence, intralingual transfer or target language cause, and induced errors. To know the frequency of occurrence from students‟ writing used calculating number of causes of errors. This calculation used the formulae of descriptive analysis technique as can be seen as below:
Table 4. 5
The Frequency of Causes of Errors
No Causes of Errors Frequency of Errors Percentage of Errors 1 Interlingual
Transfer
64 34.40%
2 Intralingual Transfer
122 65.60%
Total Number of Causes of Errors
186 100 %
Based on the table above (table 4.6) cause of errors in interlingual transfer was 34.40% or 64 errors because the students might be influenced by their first language influences in terms of patterns or rules.
Then, intralingual transfer with 65.60% or 122 errors because this causes of errors can occur by the lack of competence in learning foreign language.
Interlingual transfer can be called as mother tongue influence because mother tongue is students‟ first language which confused them and contaminate the foreign language.21 In the contrary intralingual transfer refers to caused by the lack of competence in learning foreign
21 ibid
language.22 On the other hand induced errors refer to the students‟ errors which the result more than classroom situation.23
22 ibid
23 ibid
65