ABSTRACT

The aims of this study are to answer the problem statements which are formulated as: (1) to find the types of errors made by the students in writing descriptive  text;  (2)  to  describe  the  factors  influencing  the  students’  error  in writing descriptive text.

The method of this research is descriptive qualitative. This research was carried out at SMA Negeri 1 Sukoharjo. It was conducted in May. The sample of this research is 35 students of class XI IPS 2 of SMA Negeri 1 Sukoharjo. The sampling technique applied in this research is purposive sampling. The instrument is in the form of test booklets to make descriptive texts. To analyze the students’ error, the researcher followed some steps which are identifying the errors, describing the errors, explaining the errors, and evaluating the errors. The researcher used surface strategy taxonomy to sort the type of errors yielded by the students from their descriptive text compositions.

The result of this research showed that for the surface strategy taxonomy, total errors of each kind of errors were 73 errors or 29.68% in omission errors, 31 errors or 12.60% in addition errors, 129 errors or 52.44% in misformation errors, and 13 errors or 5.28% in misordering errors. For the four types of errors, misformation errors were the highest number of errors with 129 errors or 52.44%.

There are four causes of errors, namely: errors caused by overgeneralization, errors caused by incomplete application of rules, errors caused by false concepts hypothesized, and errors caused by ignorance of rule restriction.

The results of this research are beneficial to the process of teaching and learning. This research can be used by the teacher to measure the students’ understanding in accepting English language learning especially on the use of auxiliary, adjective, and noun in descriptive text.

Keywords: Error Analysis, Surface Strategy Taxonomy, Descriptive Text