1
AN ERROR ANALYSIS OF USING NOUN PHRASES IN STUDENTS’
WRITING PARAGRAPH AT SECOND SEMESTER OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
Novi Alvionita
English Departement, STKIP PGRI SUMBAR, Jl. Ombilin No. 6, Lapai, Padang [email protected]
Abstract
This research is a qualitative research to analyze the errors in using noun phrases in students’ writing paragraph of English Department students at STKIP PGRI SUMBAR in academic year 2014/2015. The researcher collect the data from the lecturers that teach Writing 1 at second semester students of English Department at STKIP PGRI SUMBAR. The data has been analyzed by using the theory of error analysis by Richard (2001). The finding shows that most of students were disable to use the correct noun phrases in their writing paragraph, because they still made errors in the three types of error in using noun phrases.
Those were head error, premodifier error, and postmodifier error. The researcher suggested that the students to learn more about the use of noun phrase, since this phrase is the most common used in the writing.
Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian kualitatif untuk menganalisa kesalahan dalam penggunaan frasa benda dalam tulisan paragraf mahasiswa pada jurusan bahasa Inggris di STKIP PGRI SUMBAR tahun ajaran 2014/2015. Untuk kerangka analisa, peneliti menggunakan penelitian kualitatif untuk menjawab pertanyaan penelitian. Peneliti mengumpulkan data dari dosen yang mengajar Writing 1 di semester kedua pada program studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatra Barat, Padang 2015. Data tersebut dianalisa dengan menggunakan teori error analysis yang terdapat pada penelitian ini. Data yang diperoleh dilihat dari indikator kesalahan dalam penggunaan frasa benda (Richard, 2001). Hasil dari analisa ini menunjukkan bahwa kebanyakan dari mahasiswa semester kedua jurusan bahasa Inggris di STKIP PGRI SUMBAR membuat kesalahan dalam menggunakan frasa benda. Berdasarkan temuan tersebut, dianjurkan kepada mahasiswa agar lebih memahami penggunaan frasa benda.
Keywords: noun phrases; writing
INTRODUCTION
Writing is a process of communicating about something on the paper. Through writing, the students can convey, share, and also express their idea, opinion, feeling, and desire. Writing is the process which a person selects, develops, arranges, and expresses idea in unit of discourse. The topic must be elaborated into sentences, the sentences should be arranged to paragraph, and the paragraph can be categorized as an essay.
In writing, students will deal with grammar, the use of noun, particularly noun phrases in writing paragraph. It is difficult for Indonesian to use correct structure in English. This is mostly because the students are influenced by their mother tongue on the acquisition of the new structure. Making sentences using noun phrase is not easy for
the foreign language students. Many errors appear in choosing and placing correct noun and determiner.
Related to background of the problem above, the researcher found some errors in students’ writing paragraph, especially the use of noun. Most of students’
difficulty was in placing the element of noun phrase. They made error in placing the correct adjective and noun. Next, the students got difficulties in distinguishing singular and plural noun which is part of noun phrase. Then, the students made error in choosing the correct determiner.
A noun phrase or nominal phrase is a phrase which has a noun (or indefinite pronoun) as its head word, or which performs the same grammatical function as such a phrase. Noun phrase are very common cross-linguistically, and they may
2 be the most frequently occurring phrase type.
According to Frank (1972:34) a noun is one of the most important parts of speech. A noun is attached to a verb to arrange a form that becomes a sentence core which is essential to every complete sentence. In addition, it also functions as the
“head” of sentence in many modification structures. A noun phrase is the same, the noun becomes the head of the phrase. The position of noun phrase is typically as subject, object, and complement of sentence and as part of prepositional phrases.
According to Langacker (1972:194), a noun phrase can be defined as a phrase with a noun as a head. In fact, some noun phrases do not consist of the noun at all, for example “the rich”. It means noun phrase is not always has a noun, but it is followed by modifier.
As Cowan (2008:54) states that noun phrase (NP) is a grouping of words that includes an obligatory head noun and all other structures determiners and modifying elements which attach to it. In line with Eggins (2004: 96), says that in the English noun phrase, the head noun acts as the center or core of the NP upon which its constituents can build. It means that a noun phrase plays the role of a noun, the head word in a noun phrase will be noun or pronoun. A noun phrase may consist of just one head noun, but the word phrase speaks to the potential of expansion for that noun
According to Biber (1999: 83), noun phrases can be categorized as simple or complex, depending on how many constituents are present in the phrase.
However, the determination as to what makes a noun phrase simple or complex seems to be fluid and researcher dependent.
It is suported by Colombi (2004:60) defines that a complex noun phrase as containing more elements than one determiner (and/or adjective) plus one noun. In addition, some syntactic theories define a complex noun phase as one in which the head noun is modified by a clause. This means noun phrase consists of noun and other words to explain the noun itself.
In learning a foreign language, learners make errors partly because the process of learning is influenced by their mother tongue as first language. Errors can occur in grammatical, phonological, and semantic level. Foreign language teachers should realize that errors made by the
students need to be analyzed, that is by conducting error analysis.
Douglas Brown (2000:170) states that errors as a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker, reflecting the inter-language competence of the learner.
Learner of language has different competences of level in learning English and automatically has involved different cause of error.
According to Ellis (2000: 296), error analysis is a procedure involving collecting sample of the learner’s language, identifying the errors in the sample, describing these errors, classifying them according to their hypothesized causes, and evaluating their seriousness. It means to do error analysis teacher must put attention step by step from collecting sample to evaluating errors made by students.
According to Richard (2001), there are three types of errors in using noun phrases, head errors, premodifier errors and postmodifier errors.
RESEARCH METHOD
The design of this research was qualitative, because this research only focuses on describing the phenomenon without giving treatment to the students. It is also supporting by Hennie (20010:10) that the purpose of qualitative research is to describe and understand social phenomenon in term of meaning people bring to them. Based on these theories, the researcher used qualitative design because it was the most suitable type for this study.
Source of data in this research were documents, it was the result of students’ writing paragraph at second semester students of English Department of STKIP PGRI SUMBAR.
The source of data of this research was writing that consists of noun phrase. According to Creswell (2009:182), document is one of qualitative data collection approach which come from participants. In other word, document of this research was students’ writing mid and final test in second semester, academic year 2014/2015 at STKIP PGRI SUMBAR.
In this reseach, the researcher got the data from the lecturers of English department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera that teach writing I in academic year 2014/2015. The researcher got the documents of students’ mid test and final test.
Hence, the researcher did several steps to collect the data. First, the researcher got to know how many lecturers that teach writing I in academic year 2014/2015, after the researcher
3 known that there were two lecturers, then the resercher asked for the permit to use it. Second, the researcher collected the documents from lecturers of writing subject. The document consists of students’ writing midtest and finaltest at English Department students of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera Padang. After the researcher collected students’ mid test and final test, the researcher read that documents, to make sure that data was needed in this research.
It helped researcher to analyze the documenst into data research. Then, the researcher described the using of noun phrases at the second semester students of English department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera Padang.
After the researcher collected the data, the researcher did analysis to achieve the intended objectives. The technique that was used to analyze the data was descriptive and error analysis. According to Elliz and Barkhuizen (2005:51), error analysis is a set of procedures for identifying, describing, and explaining errors. When conducting an Error Analysis, there were some steps that were included in the process.
FINDING AND DISCUSSION
To find out the type of students’ error in using noun phrase in writing paragraph, the researcher had to analyze students’ writing paragraph by using error analysis. In this research, the researcher used the types that conducted by Richard (2001:10). There were three types of error in using noun phrase, which were head error, premodifier error, and postmodifier error. Furthermore, researcher classified the error into each type and described the errors.
The researcher finally answered the research question, that is “what are the types of errors in using noun phrases in writing paragraph that made the second semester of English department students at STKIP PGRI SUMBAR in Academic Year 2014/2015?”.
The researcher answered the research question by using the theory of Richard (2001), which has three types of errors in using noun phrase, they were head errors, premodifier errors, and postmodifier errors. Head errors is divided into two, which are wrong placement of noun and wrong form of noun. Premodifier errors is divided into three types, those are determiners errors, enumerator errors, and adjective errors. The last one is postmodifier errors that divided into two, they are prepositional errors and relative clause errors.
Generally, the students made such kinds of errors because they only transferred rules from their mother tongue. It happened since they did not really comprehend the target language.
Furthermore, the most of students were disable to use the correct noun phrases in their writing paragraph, because they still made errors in the three types of error in using noun phrases. They were not able to use the components of noun phrase, those were noun, adjective, pronoun, quantifier, determiner, genitive, number, preposition, and relative clause.
CONCLUSION
Writing is the process which a person selects, develops, arranges, and expresses idea in unit of discourse. In writing, students will deal with grammar, the use of noun, particularly noun phrases in writing paragraph. It is difficult for Indonesian to use correct structure in English. This is mostly because the students are influenced by their mother tongue on the acquisition of the new structure.
Source of data in this research were documents, it was the result of students’ writing paragraph at second semester students of English Department of STKIP PGRI SUMBAR.
The technique that was used to analyze the data was descriptive and error analysis. When conducting an error analysis, there were some steps that are included in the process, collecting the sample of learner language, identifying the errors, classifying the errors, and describing the errors.
From the finding, the researcher concluded that most of students were disable to use the correct noun phrases in their writing paragraph, because they still made errors in the three types of error in using noun phrases.
Those were head error, premodifier error, and postmodifier error.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
In this opportunity, the researcher would like to express her gratitude and to present great honor to her advisors, Siska, S.S, M.Pd, and Melvina, M.Ed, who have given her time, support, guidance, ideas, kindness, contributions, and patience in correcting and helping her in finishing this final project.
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