An Error Analysis of Descriptive Text Writing of the Tenth Grade Students of SMAN 57 West Jakarta in the 2016/2017 Academic Year

ella mae matsumura; dr. roslaini, m.hum; drs. zuhad ahmad, m.pd;

FEBRIANA KHOIRUNISA. 1201065081. An Error Analysis of Descriptive
Text Writing of the Tenth Grade Students of SMAN 57 West Jakarta in the
2016/2017 Academic Year. A Paper, Jakarta: The Study Programme of English
Education. The School of Teacher Training and Education. The University of
Muhammadiyah Prof. DR. HAMKA. August 2017.
This study was conducted at SMAN 57 West Jakarta on the tenth grade
students. The objective of this study is to find out the most typical errors and the
sources of error made by the students.
The writer used descriptive analytical as a method to analyze and describe
errors that made by the students. To collect the data the writer gives a descriptive
writing test to students. Then, the writer analyzes the writing errors made by the
students. The population of this study is the tenth grade students of SMAN 57
West Jakarta, and the sample is 31 students in one class of the tenth grade students
with purposive cluster sampling technique.
Based on the calculation, it was found that the three most typical errors
made by students are errors in capitalization with 81 errors or 24.62%, errors in
punctuation with 56 errors or 17.02%, and errors in verb tense with 52 errors or
15.81%. The three least typical errors are meaning not clear with 8 errors or
2.43%, article with 1 error or 0.30%, and run on sentence with 1 error or 0.30%.
It was also found the sources of errors are intralingual transfer with 252 errors
or 76.60%, and interlingual transfer with 77 errors or 23.40%.
Based on the data analysis, the most typical error is capitalization and the
least typical error is run on sentence. It shows that the students still don’t
understand the explanation of English, especially in grammatical rule of English
by the English teacher, and they can not apply English well, especially in writing.
It would be better if the material of English grammar is given more explanation
and practices in learning process.