ABSTRACT

Bhagas Nur Ramadhantyo. K2212012. An Analysis of Grammatical Errors in Writing Recount Text by the First Grade Students of SMA Negeri 3 Surakarta in the Academic Year of 2015/2016. A Thesis. English Education Department of Teacher Training and Education Faculty of Sebelas Maret University. Surakarta. December 2016.
The objectives of this research are to investigate (1)  the errors made by the students and (2) the causes of errors made by the students in writing recount text.
This research is descriptive qualitative research, carried out in June 2016. The population of this research was the first grade students in SMA Negeri 3 Surakarta. Class X MIPA 7 consisting of 32 students was selected out of 12 classes as the sample of the research by using cluster random sampling technique. The instruments used to obtain the data were test and interview. The test was used to obtain the data of errors. Meanwhile, the interview was used to obtain the source of errors. Then, the data were analyzed by using error analysis procedure suggested by Corder (in Ellis 1994: 48).
The research reveals that there were 406 errors made by the students. Those errors are classified based on the taxonomy of grammatical error. They are error in sentence pattern (138 or 33.99% of 406 total errors), error in using tenses (179 or 44.09% of 406 total errors), preposition error (56 or 13.79% of 406 errors), pronoun error (21 or 5.17% of 406 error), and adverb error (12 or 2.96% of 406 errors).
The errors made by the students were caused by two factors, namely: (1) interlingual transfer which is caused by the interference of the first language or mother tongue (214 or 52.71% of 406 errors) and (2) intralingual transfer which refers to the negative transfer of items within the target language (192 or 47.29% of 406 errors). Most of the students tended to directly translate English sentences into Indonesian. They did not understand that unlike in Indonesian, there are some rules in constructing English sentence. Therefore, the teacher should minimize the cause of errors and attempt to overcome students’ problem in writing.

Keywords: grammatical errors, error analysis, recount text