Grammatical Errors Found in Recount Texts Written by Tenth Graders of SMAN 1 Turen

ABSTRAK Yoga B. S., Dicky. 2017. Grammatical Errors Found In Recount Texts Written By Tenth Graders Of SMAN 1 Turen. Thesis, English Department, Faculty of letters, State University of Malang, Advisors: Dr. Furaidah, M.A. (II) Dr. Mirjam Anugerahwati, M.A. Keywords: error, grammar, recount text English as a foreign language is taught as a compulsory subject in junior and senior high schools in Indonesia. For most students, learning a foreign language is difficult since the target language has different rules compared to their native language and therefore students frequently make errors in writing. The tenth graders of social class X1 of SMAN 1 Turen that consisted of 33 students were required to achieve the learning objective more quickly than other classes because these students were involved in the acceleration program. However, the researcher still found that this class frequently had low perfomance in English like students in regular classes. Therefore, the researcher was interested in conducting a study to analyze the errors they made in writing a recount text. The method used in this study was a descriptive qualitative research and the procedure of Error Analysis used is according to Ellis’ and Barkhuizen’s (2005) theory. The data were obtained by giving the students a test to write a recount text. Afterwards, the data were collected, identified, and then classified based on Azar’s (1993) grammatical errors classification. After analyzing the data, the researcher found that there were 307 errors from 30 pieces of students’ recount texts. Those errors were classified into fourteen types: singular-plural, word form, word choice, verb tense, add a word, omit a word, word order, incomplete sentence, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, article, meaning not clear and run-on sentence. From all those errors, there were 3 major errors. One hundred twenty five (125) errors or 40.7% related to verb tense, add a word was 31 or 10%, spelling was 26 errors or 8.4%. the other errors were; word choice was 23 errors or 7.5%, word form is 20 errors or 6.5%, singular-plural was 17 errors or 5.5%, omit a word was 15 errors or 4.8%, capitalization was 13 errors or 4.2%, word order was 10 errors or 3.2%, incomplete sentence was 8 errors or 2.6%, meaning not clear was 6 errors or 1.9%, punctuation was 6 errors or 1.9%, article was 5 errors or 1.6% and the last was run-on sentence which was 2 or 1%. The findings of this study show that verb tense is the most frequent error that occured in the students’ recount texts. Therefore, the teacher in writing classes, should use a suitable strategy to improve students’ grammar ability and minimize their grammatical errors so that they can apply their grammar well in writing a recount text