An Error Analysis in Spelling English Word by The First Grade Students of SMAN 14 Pekanbaru

Spelling becomes an important thing in writing because it can influence the meaning of word itself. It can influence the meaning of a message because the message in writing is delivered in a composition of words that form a sentence, and words are formed from spelling letter. The research aims to find out what types of errors made by students in speliing English word and what is dominant type of errors made by students in spelling English word made by the first grade students of SMAN 14 Pekanbaru. The design of this research was qualitative research. The research only described and analysed types of error in spelling English word. In collected the data, the researcher is used writing test by audio they listened. Then, the data are analyzed by used error analysis procedures which consist of collected the data, identified students’errors, classified errors, explained errors based on the sources of errors. From that result, the data was analyzed by Bestgen and Granger’s category, to classify the types of spelling errors. The result of this research showed that students of first grade social science program (X IPS 1) at SMAN 14 Pekanbaru committed seven categories of spelling errors. These seven categories covered omission of a letter, addition of a letter, single letter instead of double letter, double letter instead of single letter, substitution of letter, interchange of two adjacent letter, and two or more error of the same type or different types (multiple errors). Meanwhile, the most frequently error that occurred in the students’ writings was substitution of letter category. Key Words: Error, Error Analysis, Writing, Spelling, Spelling Erro