An Error Analysis of Recount Text Writing of the Eleventh Grade Students of SMAN 58 Jakarta in the 2014/2015 Academic Year

dwikora harjo; drs. bahrul hasibuan, m. ed; fidaniar tiarsiwi, m. pd;

DWI WIBOWO. NIM: 1101065024. An Error Analysis of Recount Text Writing of the Eleventh Grade Students of SMAN 58 Jakarta in the 2014/2015 Academic Year. A Paper; The English Study Programme of English Department, The School of Teacher‟s Training and Education, The University of Muhammadiyah Prof. Dr. HAMKA (UHAMKA), Jakarta, 2015. This research was conducted at SMAN 58 Jakarta. The objective of this research was to find out the most common errors that the students made in their recount writing along with the sources of the errors. The samples of this research were 30 students in class XI IIS A. The writer asked the students to write a recount text about their last vacation. To distinguish between error and mistake, the writer took the data twice in two meetings. The first meeting was used to find the students‟ mistakes. The second one was used for students to correct their mistakes that had been pointed out by the writer. The writer found that the most typical error at SMAN 58 Jakarta in their writing are word choice (21.69%), verb tense (15.81%), omit a word ( 14.71%), add a word (8.46%), punctuation (8.09%), word order (7.72%), capitalization (5.15%), word form (4.41%), singular-plural (4.04%), spelling (3.68%), article (2.21%), meaning not clear (1.84%) incomplete sentence (1.47%), and run on sentence (0.74%). Moreover, the percentage of the sources of error is as follow: intralingual transfer (34.93%), communication strategy (28.30%), interlingual transfer (23.53%) and context of learning (13.24%). The result indicates that most of the students still have a low range of vocabulary and therefore need to be exposed to English writing more to improve their vocabulary. The teacher may also need to give some remedial teaching to give the students clearer understanding regarding the common errors they made.