JOALL (Journal of Applied Linguistics and Literature)

Vol. 4 No. 2, 2019 ISSN (print): 2502-7816; ISSN (online): 2503-524X

Available online at https://ejournal.unib.ac.id/index.php/joall/index
doi:

SYNTACTICAL ERROR ANALYSIS ON REPORT TEXT

Soraya Grabiella Dinamika1; Ridwan Hanafiah2

Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Manajemen Sukma Medan1; Universitas Sumatera

Utara2 Corresponding email: [email protected]

Abstract
This study aims at investigating and classifying the syntactical errors in
the writing of report text made by 20 students of Department of English
Literature of FIB-USU. Syntactical errors in writing made by EFL
students are needed to be investigated by using the Error Analysis theory
developed by Gass & Selinker in 2008 as it provides six appropriate
investigation procedures, namely; collecting data, identifying errors,
classifying errors, quantifying errors, analyzing errors and remediation.
Each of students was assigned to write a topic- based report text with the
length of 150 up to 250 words in count. This study dealt with a
qualitative descriptive approach. After the EA procedures applied, in this
study found that the students made major syntactical errors within the
use of article ‘a/an’,’ the’ in terms of omission and addition of articles,
the use of relative pronoun, and the use of subject-verb agreement in
terms of past tense agreement and number agreement. Based on the error
analysis procedure applied, it was obtained that the most predominant
syntactical errors made by the students was the use of article which
comprises of 125 errors (50.2%), followed by the use of subject-verb
agreement with 117 errors (47%) and followed by the use of relative
pronoun as the least error which comprises of 7 errors (2.8%). The
syntactical error made by the students caused by two major sources,
intra-language error and intra-language error. By seeing at these
problematic areas, the researcher has suggested to take out several
related pedagogical remediation to the students.

Keywords: report text writing, syntactical error, error analysis, pedagogical

remediation

INTRODUCTION
There are several numbers of English texts that should be mastered by the students;
one of the notable is the report text. Gerot & Wignell (1994:196) define report text
as a genre of text which aims to describe the way things are, with reference to a
range of natural, man-made and social phenomenon in our environment. Report text
may reveal the natural phenomenon such as

1 Journal of Applied Linguistics and Literature, Vol 4(2),

2019
 Syntactical Error Analysis On Report
Text

living or non-living things, and social phenomenon such as technology, economic

issue, parliament, and political parties. Since report text is a common text taught to
students of English major, therefore it has been assumed that the students are
familiar with it, in terms of the use of its grammatical features and generic
structures. Yet, though the fact appears to be so, the errors in writing are still found
in non-English speaking students’ writing productions.
In learning L2, errors are common to happen. There are factors causing it, for
instance that L2 may have different language grammar with L1, the lack of students’
knowledge about L2 structure, misperception, language misuse and interference.
But, in fact, the errors are often ignored by the teacher as the guide in learning.
Therefore the students don’t have idea about the errors they make. They don’t
receive any uptakes and feedbacks in their writing production, while it is essential
for their writing skill. Error refers to the systematic errors of the learner from which
are able to reconstruct his knowledge of the target language. It reflects a portion of
the learner’s competence in the target language. Thus, error cannot be self-
corrected. Corder (1981:24) claims that the making of errors is significant because it
is part of the learning process itself. He also adds that the process of learning a
second language is a fundamentally different nature from the process of primary
acquisition. In order to get the uptake and feedback on their writing, it is needed to
have a further analysis toward the errors students make. Therefore, in order to
analyze errors made by the learners, some experts in second language acquisition
field then construct an approach namely, Error Analysis (EA).
Gass & Selinker (2008:103) define EA as a procedure for analyzing second
language data that begins with the errors learners make and then attempts to explain
them. According to them, there are two main sources of error, namely inter-language
(negative interference from L1) and intra- language (developmental errors between
L1 and L2). Error analysis has successfully proven its function in analyzing L2
learners’ errors in numerous research of classroom situation. By seeing at the
success of EA procedures conducted in L2 classroom situation, it is necessary for
the researcher to take an insight over several previous researches on this field.
Research on error analysis has been frequently done. Thus, it is important to
take a view on former ones. Zawahreh (2012) investigated the written English errors
of 350 tenth grade students in females and males schools in Ajloun, Jordan. The
students were asked to write a free essay about "A journey to the ancient city of
Jerash in Jordan" in an ordinary English language exercise in the class. The findings
were respectively; the most predominant errors among tenth grade students in
Ajloun schools within morphology errors of lack of agreement between subject and
the
main verb, function words errors of insertion of prepositions, syntax errors of
omission of the main verb, tenses errors of using present instead of past, and lexical
items errors of lexical item order.
Barzegar (2013) committed to analyzing Persian Learners of English made in
converting ten Persian sentences into English. The data of the research was analyzed
according to several procedures, such as collecting, describing, analyzing and
evaluating the errors that were made by the intermediate level students from the
Simin Institute in Ramsar, Iran. The result of the study indicate that the majority of
errors produced by these learners involve syntactic morphological errors in the
descriptive of errors, substitution in the process of errors, and intralingua errors
dominated the source of errors.
Those previous researches took places in Middle East countries which
known as non-English speaking countries just like Indonesia, but, the similar
research hardly nationally ever done in Indonesia and North Sumatera Province,
locally. Since the Indonesian language and English language have different language
structure, thus the errors occur may differ in some ways as well. Therefore, research
on syntactical errors is immediately necessary to do in this local area, for avoiding
Indonesian students from making another error by going through the factors causing
it.
This research answers its necessity by analyzing the syntactical errors made
by students of Department of English Literature of FIB-USU, in their English report
text writing. The students have been exposed to English language and structure since
they were in the first semester. Since being the English students requires them to be
able to use English both in written and oral register, therefore they are expected that
making error sentences is none of their problem any longer. Thus, this research aims
at investigating whether the students make any syntactical errors. If any, the
researcher intends to classify the type of errors and explain the source of errors as
well. Furthermore, to define errors made by the students, contrasting L1 and L2
grammar is undertaken. Moreover, error analysis is expected to give some useful
pedagogical remediation for the students to avoid making another syntactical error in
their writings in the future. The objectives of this study are to; (1) find out the most
predominant errors made by the students, (2) investigate the source causing the
errors, and (3) take out pedagogical remediation that suits the syntactical errors
found.

METHODS
This research engaged with qualitative descriptive approach. In this research, to
analyze the student’s syntactical error, only the student whose L1 is Indonesian and
L2 is English taken as the data source. Besides, in order to analyze the source of
errors in English students’ report text writings, the
researcher applies the Error Analysis approach designed by Gass & Selinker in
2008, for it provides complete procedures of EA, namely collecting data, identifying
errors, classifying errors, quantifying errors, analyzing errors and remediation; it is
appropriate to be applied in the typical of classroom second language research; and
it provides the analysis with the causing factors called inter-language and intra-
language errors.

Participants
There were 20 undergraduate students of English Literature Department of FIB-
USU, class of Regular A & B in the academic year of 2015/2016 involved in this
research. They were at the sixth semester and had passed the subject of writing I-IV
and English structure I-IV as well. They were assumed that they had achieved whole
Basic English grammatical skills. Moreover, these students were going to continue
writing their final thesis to reach a bachelor degree, in which the final thesis
generally in the form of report text. Thus, the researcher took them as the
participants.

Instruments
The participants were assigned to write a topic-based report text on Indonesian
General Election 2014. The researcher defined the length of the writing as 150 up to
250 words in count. The writing sheet were distributed to the students, afterwards
the writing sheets were collected as the data source of this study.

Procedures
There were six EA procedures applied in this study to analyze the data, respectively
named; (1) collecting data, (2) identifying errors,(3) classifying errors, (4)
quantifying errors, (5) analyzing errors and (6) remediation.
At first, the data are analyzed based on each student’s writing result. Next,
the errors found categorized into its type of errors. The analysis is tabulated to make
it easier to be read. Then, the researchers expose the error form by italicizing it, in
order to distinguish it with the correct form. Afterward the error is quantified to
know its frequency of occurrence. Then, the errors are analyzed due to its source of
error, whether inter-language error of intra-language error. Moreover, this type of
tabulated analysis is applied to the entire 20 students’ writing results. As the last
procedure of error analysis, the pedagogical remediation is intended to be carried out
to the students based on problematic area in syntactical errors.

FINDINGS
The 20 students’ writing sheets were respectively analyzed due to six procedures of
EA. After all of the data had been analyzed thoroughly, then it
came to several findings. The typical syntactical errors found in the students’ writing
sheets were mostly the use of article in terms of omission and addition of articles,
the use of relative pronoun, and the use of subject-verb agreement in terms of past
tense agreement and number agreement. The result of analysis is presented as
followings;

The Use of Article ‘a/an’,’ the’

The first error being analysed was the use of English article, namely ‘a/an’,’
the’. The use of article was then subcategorized in two subs; omission and addition.
On the table 1 below, the brief view of analyzed error is presented.

Table 1: The use of article error

Frequenc Source
No Initia Type of Errors Error y of &
l Form Occurrenc
e Cause
1 APP The use of article
Omission of ‘a/an’ - - -
…their logo
Intra-language
which called
Omission of ‘the’ 2 error
Red Garuda1
…KPU1 Intra-language
officially error
announced …
Addition of ‘a/an’ - - -

On the brief example above, it was found that the student still made errors in
using article ‘the’. The proper noun should be preceded by article ‘the’, as in Red
Garuda and KPU for they belong to definite noun. Meanwhile, the students omitted
using article ‘the’, it reflects his inability in using L2 structure or called intra-
language error.
After all data analyzed, then the final quantification was made to gather the
results of article error. Then it was found that article errors occurred for 125 times
with 125 intra-language error source.

The Use of Relative Pronoun

The second errors being analyzed was the use of relative pronoun, which was
projected to the use of relative pronoun unit, such as; who, whom, which, whose,
that. The table 2 below is presented to show the show the example of clause error
made by the student.

Table 2: The use of relative pronoun error

Frequency
Student’ Type
No Error Form of Source &
s of Occurrence Cause
Initial Error
s
 Frequenc
Student’ Type
No Error Form y of Source &
s of
Occurrenc Cause
Initial Error e
s
The use The party who1
of Intralanguage
1 APP receive 25% of 1
relative error
pronoun national vote,
was out of number.

From the example above, it could be seen that the student wasn’t able to use
the proper relative pronoun unit. For a name of an organization, he put ‘who’ instead
of ‘which/ that’. It shows that he found it difficult to distinguish the subject
preceding the relative unit.
After all data analysed, the final quantification was made to figure out the
total number of the use of relative pronoun error. Thus, it was obtained that relative
pronoun errors donated seven occurrences with 1 inter-language source and 6 intra-
language sources.

The Use of Subject- Verb Agreement

The last syntactical error categories being analysed was the use of subject- verb
agreement (SVA). The SVA analysis then subcategorized into two; the use of
number and the use of tenses. Table 3 below is presented to project the example of
error found in the clause.

Table 3: The use of SVA error

Frequency
Student’ Type
No Error Form of Source &
s of
Occurrenc Cause
Initial Error e
s
1 APP The use Even though there
Intralanguage
of were several 1
miscommunication1 error
number
agreement
The party who receive1
25% of national vote,
was out of number.
As the former parties
which hold2 the flag
The use Intralanguage
were PDI-P and 4
of tense Gerindra error1,2,3,4
agreement Jokowi and Jusuf
Kalla
take3 the
responsibility
of the election
The KPU
 announced both of
them, govern4
Indonesia legally…

The student on the example above made several errors in using subject-verb
agreement. In terms of number agreement, he couldn’t deal the auxiliary ‘were’ and
quantifier ‘several’ with the noun ‘miscommunication’,
which was supposed to be parallel with its former class of words, it needed to be
‘miscommunications’. Whilst in the use of tense agreement the student made errors
in selecting the verbs. In fact, the report text he made happened in the past few
years, in which verb type II (past tense) needed to be used. It showed that the student
still had problem in using L2 structure or called intra-language error. Therefore, the
verb ‘receive’ should be ‘received’, the word ‘hold’ should be ‘held’, the word
‘take’ should be ‘took’, and the word ‘govern’ should be ‘governed’.
After all data of SVA analysed, the final quantification was obtained as
followings; SVA errors occurred for 117 in total, with description of 22 number
agreement errors and 95 tense agreement error. While inter- language errors
occurred for 9 times and 108 intra-language errors.
At last, the syntactical errors made by the students in 20 report texts came to
249 errors in total. In which respectively construed for 10 inter- language errors and
239 intra-language errors.

DISCUSSION
The errors found in this analysis might have caused by several factors. The most
logical one is that the students’ L1 is Indonesian language while English language is
foreign to them. Those findings are further presented in discussion section below.
The use of article errors was sub-categorized into type of article whether
addition or omission. The omission of ‘a/an’ occurs for 9 times, which entirely
caused by the intra-language error. The omission of ‘the’ occurred for 69 times,
which entirely caused by the intra-language errors. Meanwhile, the addition of ‘a/an’
occurred for 10 times, and the addition of ‘the’ occurred for 37 times, then the
additions of article were entirely caused by intra-language error as well. These
results showed that the students hadn’t completely mastered using the article in
English language. No interference from L1 in this type of syntactical error happened
for there is no function of article use in Indonesian language just like what English
language has.
Table 2 showed that the use of relative pronouns errors occurred only 7
times. The errors mostly caused by 6 intra-language error and 1 inter- language
error. This was the least syntactical errors occurred, because the students wrote
lesser relative clauses than other clauses. Yet, writing English relative clauses was
demanded to be practiced more by the students, since there is only relative pronoun
unit in Indonesian language, namely “yang”, while the English has five, namely
who, which, whose, whom and that.
Table 3 showed that the use of subject verb agreement (SVA) occurred for
117 times. It was constituted by the use of number agreement and the use of past
tense agreement. The number of agreement errors occurred for 22
times which caused by 3 inter-language errors and 19 intra-language errors.
Meanwhile, the tense agreement errors occurred for 95 times which caused by 6
inter-language errors and 89 intra-language errors. It was obviously a huge number
of errors found in 20 students’ writing results. Differences in structure of Indonesian
language and English language might have been causing the occurrences of SVA
errors. In Indonesian language structure, change of tenses doesn’t exist, so there are
no verb or predicate changes. Moreover, number of subject doesn’t affect the
changes of verb.
Eventually, in relation to the objective of the study, it was found that the
most predominant syntactical errors fell into the use of article, followed by the use
of SVA and the use of relative pronoun respectively. The most influencing errors
caused by the intra-language source (L2 interference). Clearly, by seeing through
these findings, some pedagogical remediation related to syntactical and English
grammatical needed to be carried out.

Remediation
The remediation is carried out to be the step of overcoming the findings of this
study, therefore errors can be avoided in the future study. This step can be beneficial
for; the students as the language learner; the teacher as the classroom learning
mediator and facilitator; the course and syllabus designer; and the other researcher
who work in language field.
Firstly, in relation to the results of article use error analysis, it is suggested
for the students to learn more about the function of article in sentence. Therefore the
students need to understand when they need to omit the unnecessary article, and in
what condition they need to add a necessary article, or even when to use no article at
all. Reading more about the theory of English article and part of speech may
improve students’ knowledge. Practicing more to write or read about English text
stories, poems, movie scripts, songs and any other printed mediums may challenge
students to be more aware on article errors. The teacher may provide them with
more complete medium of learning and exact method to teach article.
Secondly, due to the errors of relative pronoun, the students are required to
have more understanding in using the relative pronoun relator. They have to learn to
use the relative pronoun in different type of clause, for each relative pronoun relator
has each own function in different clause context. The teacher may ask the students
to do some practice in using relative pronoun relator directly when the students want
to say two or more clauses at one time, so they could avoid redundancy in using
clauses.
Thirdly, on the error of SVA use, the students need to be consistent on the
tenses form being used. For instance, when a student writes a text composition by
using past tense form, apparently the next sentence fragment should be written by
using past tense form as well. However, learn
more about the use SVA can be started from memorizing verb changes such as Verb
Type I, II, and III. Then, they may go one step further to use it in daily conversation
or task. They also need to practice it in writing sections. Facing this kind of error, it
is suggested to the teacher to give facilitations and proper medium for learning SVA,
such as giving the proper course design and upgrading the method of teaching SVA.
By applying this consistency, hopefully, can help students to avoid making tense
agreement errors. The number agreement errors can be avoided if the students
completely understand about the verb changing form depending on the singular or
plural subject. Thus, it is suggested that the students work more on the
understanding of number agreement and focus on the number case of subject. Due to
the findings that the error is caused mostly by intralanguage errors, thus, the students
are required to be even more serious in learning and practicing English grammar,
whether in writing or speaking skill. In addition, the researcher recommends the
students to keep reading books which related to English grammar and genre-based
writing.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

Based on the error analysis applied, it is concluded that the 20 students of
Department of English Literature of FIB-USU still make syntactical errors in their
report text writing results. The results appeared to be; the use of article is the most
predominant errors which comprises of 125 errors (50.2%), followed by the use of
subject-verb agreement with 117 errors (47%) and followed by the use of relative
pronoun as the least error which comprises of 7 errors (2.8%). In relation with the
analysis of source of errors, the intra- language error causes the most errors with
account of 239 times of occurrences, while the inter-language error occurs for 10
times. This finding shows that the students cannot completely master and apply the
grammar of English in terms of syntactical function into their writing. In line with
the result of analysis, the researcher has carried out several pedagogical remediations
for the students based on problematic area of syntactical error.
Analyzing error is a field that might develop day by day according to the
type participants, degree of education, language skill, source and target of language
and any other influencing factors, moreover, the further studies on error analysis
needs to be administered within different aspects, whether it is still in the field of
language either in the field of its grammatical structure. Therefore, analysis on error
may go beyond the morphological aspects or even beyond the clause and discourse
ones. This study is supposed to be references for another researcher, linguist and
educator, for their further study on error analysis.
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