An Error Analysis on Students’ Descriptive Writing at the Tenth Grade Students of SMA MUHAMMADIYAH 4 Jakarta in the 2015/2016 Academic Year.

muhammad yasir yusuf; drs. sigit sumarsono, m.pd.;

LADY GISSELLADIKA MUTIARA ARYA. NIM: 1101065048. An Error Analysis on Students’ Descriptive Writing at the Tenth Grade Students of SMA MUHAMMADIYAH 4 Jakarta in the 2015/2016 Academic Year. A paper; The Study Programme of English Education, The school of Teacher Training and Education, The University of Muhammadiyah Prof. Dr. Hamka (UHAMKA), Jakarta, 2015
The research was held at SMA Muhammadiyah 4 East Jakarta. The objective of the study are: to know the typical errors on the students’ descriptive writing, to know the sources of the errors, and to design remedial teaching that is appropriate in order to reduce the students’ errors which are made by the students in the first semester at the tenth grade on SMA Muhammadiyah 4 East Jakarta in the 2015/2016 Academic Year in their descriptive writing. The samples of this study were 30 students at X MIA 2. The writer asked the students to compose or arrange a descriptive writing in the writing task that has been given. The writer gave the themes, namely: “Your Family”, “Your Favorite Food”, “Your Idol”, “Your Interesting Place”, and “Your Hometown” . Meanwhile, to differentiate the errors and mistakes, the writer did the collecting of the data two times. In the first meeting, the writer asked the students to make a descriptive writing based on the instruction that has been given in the writing task. After that, in the second meeting, the writer asked the students to revise their mistakes that have been underlined by the writer. Then, the writer used Azar’s theory for the types of error and Brown’s theory for the sources of error in analyzing the data.
Based on the calculation results, the most types of errors which the students made were verb tense (24%), capitalization (17%), spelling (12%), word choice (11.6%), singular–plural (11%), add a word (8.2%), omit a word (8%), word order (3%), punctuation (2.2%), word form (1.5%), article (1%), and the less error that students never made in their writing are incomplete sentence, meaning not clear and run on sentence. For the sources of error, the first rank is intralingual transfer (51.7%). The second rank is context of learning (19.8%). The third is communication strategies (14.6%). The last is interlingual transfer (13.9%).
The results of the data analysis have shown that the most typical errors were verb tense and the less was article. It indicates that the most of the students need more explanation and remedial teaching from the teacher to evaluate their errors in English writing. Meanwhile, the tenth grade students of SMA Muhammadiyah 4 East Jakarta also need more practice in order to develop their writings. From this research the students are also suggested to correct their mistake in writing, and for the teacher they have to develop their teaching technique especially in writing.