AN ERROR ANALYSIS OF DESCRIPTIVE WRITING MADE BY THE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMA N 1 ANDONG IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2016/2017

Siti Musthoriyah. 2017. An Error Analysis of Descriptive Writing Made by the Tenth Grade Students of SMA N 1 Andong in the Academic Year 2016/2017. Thesis. English Education Department, Islamic Education and Teacher Trainer Faculty, The State Islamic Institute of Surakarta. Advisor : Muhammad Zainal Muttaqien, S.S., M.Hum Key words : Error Analysis, Descriptive, Writing Writing skills are complex and sometimes difficult to teach. As the first foreign language, it is normal condition for the students who have various problems or difficulties in writing descriptive text. Therefore, the study of learner’s errors is needed to gives some contributions on attempts to deal with the students’ difficulties. The aims of this research were (1) find out the types of errors in descriptive writing made by the tenth grade students of SMA N 1 Andong in the academic year 2016/2017 and (2) find out the causes of errors in descriptive writing made by the tenth grade students of SMA N 1 Andong in the academic year 2016/2017. This researcher uses descriptive method with qualitative research. The research was conducted on Monday, April 10th, 2017 at SMA N 1 Andong. The researcher came to the class and asked the students to write descriptive texts. Then the data was analyzed by Surface Strategy Taxonomy to classify the types of errors and sources of errors. The researcher collected the data from documentation. The researcher identified and classified the types of errors in descriptive writing made by the tenth grade students and classified the causes of errors in descriptive writing made by the tenth grade students. The subject of the research was X MIPA 1 which consists of 36 students. However the students’ works submitted to the researcher were only 27. The techniques of analyzing data were identification, classification, explanation and evaluation. After the data had been collected, the researcher identified, classified, explained, and evaluated the types of errors in descriptive writing made by the tenth grade students and classified the causes of errors in descriptive writing made by the tenth grade students. The instruments to collect the data were writing task. In this research the researcher crosscheck the data used investigator triangulation. The result of the research showed that there are 4 types error made by the students on their descriptive writing. The totals errors were 264 errors which are divided 26% omission errors in 5 kinds, 11% addition errors in 6 kinds, 54% misformation errors in 14 kinds and 9% mis-ordering errors. According to the data analysis, the common error made by the students was mis-formation. The causes of errors were interlingual and intralingual transfer. The researcher concluded that the possible causes of errors are from the mother tongue (Interlingual transfer), those errors are resulted from the transfer of the first language (Indonesian) grammatical to the second language (English). Based on the result of the research, the student can choose which word is appropriate and correct within writing a good sentence