IG 20 -ERROR ANALYSIS ON COMPOSITION OF THE FOURTH SEMESTER STUDENTS OF ENGLISH

ERROR ANALYSIS ON COMPOSITION OF THE FOURTH

SEMESTER STUDENTS OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT AT

MUHAMMADIYAH UNIVERSITY OF SURAKARTA

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

1.1    Background of the Study

Writing is one of language skills. Writing involves the other English skills, namely listening, reading and speaking. It can also be used for the purpose of communication. Writing is not as easy as speaking. You can speak but sometimes it is difficulties to write what we are speaking. In Addition, in speaking, we are able to make our meaning clear by-repeating the same idea in different words, but when we write the words as they appear must be clear. Sometimes it is difficult to decide what word order to use.

In order to develop writing, students must be able to master grammatical structure and vocabularies, so that its content will be meaningful and correct. Concerning with the many difficulties with which the students are faced in learning how to write foreign language, the fundamental principle of guiding them towards a mastery of grammatical structure and vocabularies, is for example perhaps by controlling what they write, and trying to eleminate errors, and giving kind of taken home tests in easy writing consistently (Byrne,1981: 27).

The writer thinks that not all students can develop their writing effectively. It is obvious in their writing that they often repeat the same ideas from one paragraph to the others. They also get troubles in expressing their Ideas because of limited the structure and limited range of vocabulary. Due to the difficulties, the students have to learn everything which can improve writing skill especially structure and vocabulary.

In writing activity, especially in composition, the students knowledge of the foreign language and the frequency of error made can be clearly seen, for examples: in grammatical form and syntactic pattern, the choice of structure and lexical items to give a particular tone as flavor to the writing, and the use of graphic convention of the language (Harris, 1969: 68-69).

Considering that the learner's native language is different structurally and lexically from the foreign language, therefore, the foreign language learners tend to make errors in their writing. Their problems are various. Some of them are vocabulary, structure, punctuation, etc. In line with vocabulary, the learners usually have difficulty in choosing the right words for the appropriate situation. While the structure, the difficulty is usually caused by the differences between the learners native language and the foreign language.

In order to make good writing, there are some steps, the first step that the learners have to do in writing a composition is to determine the ideas of their composition, while the next step is to organize these ideas into unified sentences, they should arrange their sentences to be a good sentences that have coherence and logical order. What sentences come first and what sentences come next. Moreover, the learners should give a serious consideration about the mechanic of punctuation. The principles of punctuation differ from one language to the others. Therefore, the learners of English should have enough knowledge about punctuation in order to be able to write comprehensibly. Other problems faced by the learners may be on the topic of writing and the contents of writing.

Most of the students often make errors to compose sentences in writing. Making mistakes and errors are an important aspects of learning writing skills and also crucial aspects in acquiring a new information. As Dulay (1981: 138) states, Errors are flawed side of learner's speech of writing which are those parts of conversation and composition. So by committing errors, the learners are expected to understand the errors they have made and consequently will be able to correct their own mistakes and errors.

In this thesis, the writer is interested in discussing about the error analysis on the composition. It might be a good reason why she is interested in statement above. Before starting this thesis, she found many errors in English writing written by the fourth semester students of English Department. The students usually omit or add one or more elements which should not exist in the correct sentence and the students still make errors in the use of tense marker d/-ed in the regular verbs or put the ending /-s/ in the noun that doesn't have the regular addition /-s/.

Stepping from the previous explanations, the discussion about the title terms thesis "Error Analysis on Composition of the Fourth Semester Students in English Department at Muhammadiyah University of Surakarta" will be very interesting.

1.2    Review of Related Literature

In the previous research, the writer takes one thesis written by Mulyani (1997), in her thesis "Error Analysis on the use of Conditional in the Composition Written by the Second Year Student of SMK Adi Sumarmo Colomadu". She says that the students still have many difficulties in using conditional in compositions, in expressing their ideas in composition the students mostly used conditional sentences type I, they seldom use the other types and in expressing their ideas the students still make errors in the auxiliary, especially his formation of the verb after modals and addition, the students usually add one or more elements which should not exist in the correct sentences.

The writer has opinion that her research is different from Mulyani's thesis. Mulyani investigated the problem in Conditional while the writer more concern in the structural errors in composition.

1.3    Research Problem

The problems of the study are terminated in questions as stated below :

1.       What types of errors are made by the students based on Surface Strategy Taxonomy?

2.       What is the dominant error produced by the students? 3. What are the causes of errors?

1.4    The Objective of the Study

Based on the formulation of the problem mentioned above, the research has objectives:

1.       The writer wants to know the types of error made by the students based on Surface Strategy Taxonomy.

2.       The writer wants to know the dominant error produced by the students.

3.       The writer wants to know the source of errors.

1.5    The Benefit of the Study

The writer expects that this thesis have some benefits:

1.       This study will give clear description about structural errors according to the Surface Strategy Taxonomy which is divided into omission, addition, misformation, alternating form and misordering.

2.       This thesis is expected to be a feedback for teaching and learning process, especially in writing.

1.6    Paper Organization

This thesis consists of five chapters :

Chapter I deals with the introduction which consists of background of the study, review of related literature, research problem, objective of study, benefit of study and paper organization.

Chapter II is underlying theory which consists of composition in English writing, error analysis, types of error and sources of error.

Chapter III deals with research method which consists of type of research, description of the school, data source, methods of collecting data and methods of analyzing data.

Chapter IV deals with data analysis which involves result and discussion.

Chapter V is one of' the thesis which involves conclusion and suggestion.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arikunto, Suharsini. 1992. Prosedur Penelitian. Jakarta: Rineka Cipta.

Ary, Chirzim, 1983. Introduction to Research in Education. New York: Rivegard and Winston.

Brown, H. Douglas, 1980. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Corder, S. Put, 1981. Error Analysis and Interlanguage. London: Oxford University Press.

Donn Byrne. 1981. Teaching Writing Skill. Longman House. Burnt Mill: Harlow, Essex, U.K.

Dulay H., Krashen S. and Burt M. 1981. Language Two. San Fransisco: Oxford University Press.

Frank, Marcella, 1972. Modern English : A Practical Reference Guides. Prentice Hall, Inc.

Hornby, AS., 1984. Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English. London: Oxford.

James M, Mc. Crimmon. 1984. Writing with a Purpose. Boston: Houghton Miffin Company.

Richards, Jack, C., 1974. Error Analysis. Limited London: Longman Group.

Vochell, Edward V. 1985. Educational Research. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co Inch.

Wardhaugh, Ronald, 1972. Introduction to Linguistics. New York: Mc Graw Hill, Inc.

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