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INTRODUCTION

In the Philippines, English generally has been learned by the students since they were in
the basic level of education. When students learned English, they are focused on mastering four
language skills: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. Listening and reading are receptive
skills while speaking and writing are productive skills. All of the skills are to be improved in the
process of teaching and learning English.
In the process of teaching and learning English, writing ability is the most difficult and
complicated language skill to be learned almost by the students in every level of education.
Writing needs well knowledge and hard thinking when the students produce words, sentences,
paragraph at the same time with good grammar in English. It is also an intricate cognitive
activity necessitated by a number of processes and strategies (Flavell, 47). In today’s society,
the act of writing is ingrained in every aspect of the human lives and will continue to shape
human interactions as we head full force into the 21 st century. The ability to write articulately
gives one the power and opportunity to share and influence thoughts, ideas, and opinions with
others, not only in day-to-day situations, but across time and space. As Mary Heller writes, “The
value that we place on reading and writing arises out of the shared need to be literate people,
this a function of the society and culture (13). This is a challenge for language teachers to teach
and develop students’ writing skills.
Apparently, students lack the competence to write a syntactically correct sentence as
reflected in the study of Chen (76-110), as cited in Almejas & Arago (47). The results showed
that the most common errors were in sentence structures (30%), followed by wrong forms of
verbs (21%), fragmented sentences (15%), and wrong use/choice of words (15%), respectively.
In composing a good writing, students should notice some aspects. Grammar is one
important aspect that should be mastered in order to make a well structured writing. But, writing
in different language is not always as easy as writing using the first language since there are
some different rules in the writing systems and these differences sometimes make us make
errors. Some mistakes are made when the students do not understand well about the English
grammar. Many of the students commonly make grammar mistakes in their learning especially
in writing. But, students are not aware on their committed mistakes in their composition writing
since their teachers do not have any correction on their work.
According to Emmaryana (2), there are many aspects why students make errors and
sometimes mother tongue interference also become one of the caused. Errors in language
learning are natural. Therefore, when the teachers teach in the school, they will find many
phenomena; they will find many students who have good writing in English, many students who
have middle writing, and may also have low ability in writing English.
In the explanation above, it can be said that it is important for a teacher to give error
analysis in students writing. Error analysis is an activity to identify, classify and interpreted or
describe the errors made by someone in speaking or in writing and it is carried out to obtain
information on common difficulties faced by someone in speaking or in writing English
sentences. Carl James (1) stated that Error Analysis is the process of determining the
incidence, nature, causes, and consequences of unsuccessful language.
Although errors are bad things in learning English, error analysis is advantageous for
both students and teachers. For students, error analysis is needed to show them in what aspect
in grammar which is difficult for them, to show the errors made by the students, to know the
source or the cause of the error and how the students can learn from their mistakes in order that
they will not make some errors repeatedly. And for teachers, it is required to evaluate
themselves whether they are successful or not in teaching English.
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Committing errors especially in grammar are still a problem even in the tertiary level
specifically the pre-service teachers as observed by the researcher. These students still commit
major errors as seen in their writing composition. This is due to incapability of the speaker to
deliver the meaning he or she wants to express to the listener in which failure of communication
occurs. Mastering English cannot be separated from Grammar since grammar is the heart of
English (Saaristo, 279-318). Grammar is an essential part of language process, both in spoken
and written languages. It is a description of the pattern in language to convey the meaning, so it
would be impossible to learn language effectively without the grammar because grammar helps
learners to identify grammatical forms, which serves to enhance and sharpen the expression of
meaning.
Therefore, this study aimed to analyze the grammatical errors of the Pre-service
teacher’s writing composition. By using error analysis, the researcher analyzed the process of
language learning. The assumption was anchored on the error analysis by Dulay, Burt and
Krashen (205) in which they considered error as “goofs”. The theory explained that an error is a
deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker which reflects the learners inter language
competence. It is called competence error when learners make errors because they lack
knowledge of the rules of the target language. They will not be able to correct the errors by
themselves quickly. They need guidance to correct the errors. They may also make the same
errors at the times.

OBJECTIVES
The study aimed to analyze the grammatical errors of the pre-service teacher’s writing
composition. Further, the study intended to investigate the grammatical errors in composition
writing made by the pre-service teachers as a basis of a proposed remedial writing instruction.
The study sought to answer the grammatical errors of the pre-service teachers writing
composition and the causes of the errors in writing composition.

METHODOLOGY
This research was designed by using descriptive qualitative design because it was
aimed to identify the grammatical errors in the writing composition of the pre-service teachers
and to describe the causes of those errors. The data about grammatical errors in the writing
composition were analyzed based on the results of the data collection instruments.
Descriptive qualitative method is called as interpretive method because the result of the
research is related to interpreting about the data found in the field (Sugiyuno, 4). Arikunto (234)
states that descriptive research has no purpose to test the certain hypothesis, but just to
describe some variable and condition naturally. So the researcher described and explained
about anything related to the analysis.
The main source of data was the writing composition of the pre-service teachers and
interview. Data were analyzed comprehensively. Although the researcher more focused on
descriptive qualitative method, but serving numerical data in order to get valid and countable
result were needed. So, the quantitative method has been conducted in this research study to
see the percentage and frequencies for the supporting the result.
The participants were enrolled in an English Plus subject and Literary Criticism class
during the first semester of school year 2018- 2019. The compositions were all written in a 60-
minute class session. The compositions were required to fulfill the following criteria: (1) The
students’ writing should consist of about 100-150 words; (2) The participants ought to take into
consideration the elements of good writing: unity, coherence, cohesion, grammar, and
vocabulary.
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FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

Table 1. Grammatical Errors in the Composition Writing of the Pre-Service Teachers

The table shows the analysis of the grammatical errors in the composition writing of the
pre-service teachers. The errors were categorized as: tenses, gerund, adjectives, nouns,
subject-verb agreement and pronoun-antecedent agreement based on the study of
Krishnasamay (53). Grammatical errors were ranked according to the number of frequency
committed by the pre-service teachers.

Grammatical Errors
Others
Pronoun/
Student Subject- (Spelling
Verb & Pronoun-
Gerund Adjectives Nouns Verb Adverbs and
Tenses Antecedent
Agreement Punctuation
Agreement
marks)
1 2 1 1 1 1 1
2 3 1 2 1 1 2 2 1
3 3 2 3 1 2 3
4 1 1 1 1 3
5 2 1 1 1 1
6 1 1 1 1 1
7 - 1 1
8 - 1 1 1
9 2 2 1 1 3
10 1 1 1 3
11 1 1 1 1
12 1 1 2 1
13 - 1 2
14 1 1 1 2
15 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1
16 1 1 2 2
TOTAL 20 6 19 8 12 12 5 22
TOTAL 35.7% 10.7% 33.9% 14.3 21.4% 21.4% 8.9% 39.3%
% %