AN ERROR ANALYSIS IN RECOUNT TEXTS WRITTEN BY FOURTH

SEMESTER STUDENTS OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF UNIVERSITAS

NEGERI SEMARANG

Submitted as final assignment in Second Language Acqusition

Written by:

Fatimatuzzuhroh 2201416048

Rombel : 507-508

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

LANGUAGES AND ARTS FACULTY

UNIVERSITAS NEGERI SEMARANG

2019
 ABSTRACT

Error Analysis is one of the major topics in the field of second language acquisition
research. Errors are an integral part of language learning. The learner of English as a second
language is unaware of the existence of the particular system or rule in English language. The
learner’s errors have long been interested for second and foreign language researchers. The
basic task of error analysis is to describe how learning occurs by examining the learner’s
output and this includes his/her correct and incorrect utterances. This paper examines the
errors and categorize it into particular types of error. The researcher used one kind of recount
text written by two second-year students of English Education program at Universitas Negeri
Semarang as the object analysis. The method that is used in this research is qualitative
approach. The objects are analyzed using the error analysis method by Rod Ellis.
Keywords: error analysis, recount text, error
I. INTRODUCTION

Learning a foreign language especially English is a gradual process of making error. The
error that learners made should be analyzed because it has many positive side both for the
learners and the teachers.

Vecide Erdogan stated that Error Analysis appeared in the sixties to points out that
learner’s errors not only because of the learners’ native language. Errors have many other
causes and sources. He said that Error Analysis deals with the learners’ performance in the
way students adapting to new rule of communication.

Therefore, the main focus of it is on process of second language acquisition. For Error
Analysis, many researchers are interested in its purpose of observing errors in students’
writing as part of students learning process. In teacher point of view, there are some
advantages of this method for both learners and teachers when applied in class activities or
only as a supporting instrument for teachers. It provides information for the teachers about
students’ errors. Error analysis assists the teachers in three ways; in correcting errors,
improving teaching performances and focusing on certain aspect that need reinforcement as
Al-haysoni stated in 2012.

Recount text in second-year students of English Education program noticed as the genre
based writing approach. The materials support students in retells past events which the place
and occurred events are based on the sequences of times. (Anderson and Anderson: 1998).
This paper presents the process of analyzing one kind of written text, recount text. The
recount text is written by three English education program’s student of Universitas Negeri
Semarang. They are noted as the second-year students in English Education program.

II. PROBLEM STATEMENTS

The problems of this study are formulated as follows:

1. What kinds of error are made by the second year students of English Education Program at
Universitas Negeri Semarang in writing recount text?

2. What is type of error the most frequently made by the fourth semester students of English
Department at Universitas Negeri Semarang in writing recount text?
III. THEORITICAL REVIEW

a). Recount Text

A recount text is a text which tells about something that happened in the past. The
details in a recount can include what happened, who was involved, where it took place, when
it happened and why it occurred. Its purpose or goal is to entertain or inform about the past
activity to the reader or listener. Recount text can be factual information, such as a news story
or procedural information, such as telling someone how you built something or personal
information, such as a family holiday or your opinion on a subject.

According to Derewinaka (1990:15) recount text usually have some language features
such as: a. Specifics participants, such as my mother, my friends, etc.

b. Use of simple past tense, simple past tense indicates a completed action about what
happened in the past at the specific time.\

c. Use of material processes or action verb, such as went, saw, left, etc.

d. Use of first person pronoun, such as I, we.

e. Circumstances of place, where did the story take place?

f. Temporal sequences or linking items, such as the, next, later, etc. g. Circumstances of time,
in past tense, and adverb of time can be found in the sentence such as ago, yesterday, last
week, etc, may show a period of times that can be meant by the context or situation (Hornby,
1975:85-86)

b). Error Analysis

Error analysis is one of major topic in the field of second language acquisition. Error
analysis is a method used to document the errors that appear in learner language, determine
whether those errors are systematic, and (if possible) explain what caused them. Native
speakers of the target language (TL) who listen to learner language probably find learners'
errors very noticeable, although, as we shall see, accuracy is just one feature of learner
language.

While native speakers make unsystematic 'performance' errors (like slips of the
tongue) from time to time, second language learners make more errors, and often ones that no
native speaker ever makes. An error analysis should focus on errors that are systematic
violations of patterns in the input to which the learners have been exposed. Such errors tell us
something about the learner's interlanguage, or underlying knowledge of the rules of the
language being learned (Corder, 1981, p. 10).

IV. DATA COLLECTION

In this research, the data was taken from class C English Education Program in genre
based writing. The students are twenty eight students, but the researcher only took 3 as the
sample. The data was chosen randomly to find the ability of the class. In this research, the
researcher use randomly chosen data of the students’ works as the source instrument. The
main instrument is the researcher, who uses describing skill to analyze the data and explain
the result of the analyzing. The data of this study were taken by collecting the students’
original composition with no treatment before in order to understand the basic skill level of
the students.

This research describes the analysis of students’ writing product of recount text. As
Susanto (2000:36) stated that descriptive research is a research that gives and interprets a
condition; and according to Marshal and Rossman (1999), the purpose of qualitative research
is “to stress the unique strength of the genre for the research that is exploratory or descriptive,
that assumes the value of context and setting, and that searches for deeper understanding of
the participant’s lives experiences of the phenomenon;” Therefore, this research aims are to
describe the analysis procedure and result conclusion using descriptive qualitative study. A
qualitative research has four purposes: exploration, explanation, description, and prediction
(Marshall and Rosman, 1995, cited in Wilson); and as stated in the research questions, this
research will analyze students’ work of recount text to find out the error they made. And
analyzing based on the scope of the study namely: language features (verb, pronouns, articles,
preposition, and conjuction of the generic structure in recount text.

According to Ellis (1997: 15-20) there are procedures to analyze data in error analysis
that consist of:

1. Identification of errors

In identifying errors, the sentences that produced by students are compared with the normal
and correct sentences in the target language.
2. Describing error

In this step, the errors are classified into language feature in the generic structure of recount
text categories relating to the distribution of noun phrase in sentence or construction of
sentence. Beside that, describing error is to identify the differences of disordering of word
between students’ utterances and there constructed of target language utterances. Such ways
include:

 Omission is leaving out an item that is required for an utterance to be considered

grammatical. For example: “ My mother smart cooking”. It should be, “My mother is
msart in cooking”.
 Misinformation (i.e using one grammatical form in place of another grammatical
form). For example: “Me don’t like’’. It should be, “I don’t like”.
 Misordering (i.e putting the words in an utterance in the wrong order). For example,
“She fights all the time her brother”. It should be “She fights her brother all the time”.
 Addition is the opposite of omission.

3. Explanation of errors

Explaining is a step to analyze the kinds of errors. In other words, in this step the researcher
tries to explain how and why a sentence called to be erroneous. For example, they leave out
the articles ‘a’ and ‘the’ and leave the -s off plural nouns. They also overgeneralize forms that
they find easy to learn and process. The use of ‘eated’ in place of ‘ate’ is an example of an
evergeneralization error. Both errors of omission and overgeneralization are common in the
speech of all L2 learners, irrespective of their L1. Other errors, however, reflect learners’
attempt to make use of their L1 knowledge. These are known as transfer errors. Irrespective
of the type of errors, however, learners are to be seen as actively involved in shaping the
‘grammars’ they are learning. Learners ‘create’ their own rules.

4. Evaluation of errors

Evaluation is a process to collects, clarifies and verifies relevant values and standard. It is
designed to reduce, revised and devise remedial lessons in teaching learning process.
However, in this research, the researcher uses evaluating the errors as a step that involves
drawing conclusion. Some errors can be considered more serious than others because they are
more likely to interfere with the intelligibility of what someone says. Some errors, known as
global errors, violate the overall structure of a sentence and for this lesson may make it
difficult to process.

V. ANALYSING DATA

After collecting the data, the researcher start to analyze it.

Students 1’s Composition

There was a horrible accident between a car and container truck. It was on Wednesday,
August 6th 2016. When my class went to Bandung. There was a container truck in front of our
bus which walked slowly because it brought many big woods. Then our driver wanted to
overtake it, but from the opposite direction there was a big bus, and beside that bus, there was
a car that wanting to overtake it, but our driver said that the car could not do that, so our driver
directly stop, but a big container truck did not do that, and the accident could not be avoided.

A car crashed with a big container truck and made the car threw away to the cliff. All
of us in our bus were screaming, and I closed my eyes by my hands. After that there were
many people came to help them, and in a few minutes, police came too. The container truck’s
driver was in critical condition, but other victims passed away. We didn’t know what happened
after that accident because we continued our journey to Bandung.

Student 2’s Composition

Yesterday morning, when I went to campus, I saw a horrible accident between a a

motorcycle and a truck. I left home at 07.15 a.m by my motorcyle. It was a busy morning
because that day was Tuesday. Some people were going to work at that time. After 20 minutes
leaving home, I stopped at a traffic light in a crossroad. It was on Pandhawa Streert. I saw a
motorcycle rider with a woman crossing the road when the light was red.

Maybe, they were in a hurry. Unfortunately, there was also a speeding truck from their
right side. Because the distance between the truck and the motorcyle was too near, the accident
couldn’t be avoided. The motorcyle hit the left side of the truck. The passengers of the
motorcyle were flung away. Both of the passengers were carried to the nearest hospital. The
rider could be saved. He had broken his left leg. Meanwhile, the hitchhiker suffered severe
head injuries and couldn’t be saved. According to me, this accident happened because of the
lack of fidelity from the motorcyle rider.
 In the second’ student compository, the learner wrote, ....’After 20 minutes leaving
home, I stopped at a traffic light in a crossroad’. It should be, ‘after 20 minutes of leaving
home,’

Students’ 3 Composition

A tragic accident happened in front of my house when I was in Senior high school at
04.00 p.m. It happened on Ir. Suradi highway, Pageruyung, Kendal regency. This location has
many winding road. That is the reason why many accidents happened in this area. The
accident involved a truck carrying sand and a car. It happened when a high speed truck met a
car in the winding road from the opposite direction. The car driver did not realize and he was
avoiding the truck immediately. The car hit the wall of the house. The truck was upside down
and the sand spilled. All citizens helped to get the victims out from the car. The driver of the
truck broke his leg and his hand. On the other hand, the car driver and his wife only got their
head bleeding. His wife was unconscious. Finally, the ambulance came to escort the victims
to the hospital.

VI. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

In the first student composition, the students made mistake. The learner wrote
‘.....there was a car that wanting to overtake it, meanwhile the appropriate sentence should be
‘.........there was a car that wanted to overtake it’. So, that is called as misinformation in
grammatical. And this happened might because the learner experience with the transfer
error. By placing verb-ing after the conjuction ‘that’ and forgeting that this should be in a
form of past tense.

In second student’ compository, at the first paragraph, the learner wrote ‘Yesterday
morning, when I went to campus, I saw a horrible accident between a a motorcycle and a
truck’. The right sentence should be ‘Yesterday morning, when I went to campus, I saw a
horrible accident between a motorcycle and a truck’.
 Another mistake is when the learner wrote ‘........It was on Pandhawa Streert’. This
sentence should be ‘...it was on Pandhawa Street’. The mistake is on the writing of the word
‘streert’, it should be ‘street’. So, this might called as overgeneralization.

In the third paragraph, there are some misspelling word. That happened three times
with the same word. The learner wrote, ‘....Because the distance between the truck and the
motorcyle was too near,...’ the second sentence is, “..The motorcyle hit the left side of the
truck”. And the last sentence is, “....because of the lack of fidelity from motorcyle rider”. The
same mistake is on the writing of the word ‘motorcyle’ it should be ‘motorcycle’. So, it might
called as overgeneralization.

In the first paragraph of the third student’ compository, the learner made mistake. The
learner wrote, “It happened on Ir. Suradi highway, Pageruyung, Kendal regency”. It seems
that the word ‘regency’ is a proper noun in this context. So, it should be capitalizing the
word.

Another mistake is when the learner wrote ‘.....This location has many winding road’.
The word ‘road’ should be written by adding-s become ‘roads’. The singular countable noun
road follows the quantifier many, which requires a plural noun. As the researcher observed, it
happened twice, the second sentence is, “ ..... car in the winding road from the opposite
direction”. So, the source of this error is called omission. Because it should be adding ‘s’ in
the end of the word ‘road’.

It happened when a high speed truck met a car in the winding road from the opposite
direction. The word ‘high speed’ seems missing a hyphen. Because it should be ‘high-speed’.
The next unappropriate sentence is , “All citizens helped to get victims out from the car”. In
this sentence, the student made mistake in putting the word phrase in the wrong order.
Therefore, it should use “.....get victims out of the car”.
VII. CONCLUSION

After analyzing all three students’ works, researcher found that :

1. Student 1 commits most error in placing verb after conjuction. But it indicates that the
student is careless because the student is able to write the right sentence in the previous.
There is no mother tongue source of error spotted. All the errors’ source is intralingual.

2. Student 2 commits most error in spelling and preposition usages. It can be said that the
student errors are developmental errors in words diction as seen in the misspelling ordinary
words. The errors committed are varied in putting the wrong preposition in a phrase and
having a double article in front of a noun. Also, there is a misspelling that happened in three
times.

3. Student 3 commits most error in preposition usages. It can be said that the error is
happened because the students didn’t know about the appropriate prposition usage in a word
phrase or transfer error. Since, the lack of vocabulary mastery of the learner itself.

According to the findings, it can be concluded that not all students have mastered well the
language feature of written recount text as seen at the number of the errors made.

VIII. REFERENCES

Pangestu, Ayu Putri. (2016). Error Analysis on Students’ Writing of Recount Texts Written by
Eighth Graders of SMP Negeri 28 Surabaya. RETAIN, Volume (04), 3-8.

Ellis, Rod. (1997). Second Language Acquisition. (Edisi rev.2007). England: Oxford
University Press.
University of Minnesota. Overview of Error Analysis. Retrieved from
https://carla.umn.edu/learnerlanguage/error_analysis.html

British Course. Recount Text : Definition, Purposes, Generic Structures, Language Features.
Retrieved from http://britishcourse.com/recount-text-definition-purposes-generic-
structures-language-features.php