An Analysis of Syntactical Errors on Sentence Level Made by the Eleventh Grade Students of MAN Wonokromo Bantul in the Academic Year of 2014/2015

The aim of this research is to describe: (1) the types of syntactical errors in the sentences found in the analytical exposition texts made by eleventh grade students of MAN Wonokromo in the academic year of 2014/2015, and (2) the possible causes of the syntactical errors in the sentences occurring in the analytical exposition texts made by the eleventh grade students of MAN Wonokromo in the academic year of 2014/2015. The research was a descriptive study. It was conducted at MAN Wonokromo Bantul. The data sources were 30 texts made by 30 eleventh grade students of the school. The data were collected by using writing tests. The students were asked to write three analytical exposition texts based on the topic given by the researcher. After the data were collected, the identification and checking of the students’ errors were done. The errors found were underlined and entered to the table or the data cards based on the linguistic taxonomy and surface strategy taxonomy. The results of the study show there are five types of syntactical errors and two causes of syntactical errors. The types of the syntactical errors are (1) omissions (32.46%) which cover omissions of (a) to be, (b) –s or –es as plural marker, (c) preposition, (d) pronoun, and (e) article; (2) mis-formations (22.72%) which cover misformations of (a) verb, (b) noun, (c) gerund, (d) pronoun, and (e) tense; (3) mis-selections (22.41%) which cover mis-selections of (a) verb, (b) preposition, (c) phrase, (d) noun, and (e) pronoun; (4) additions (17%) which cover additions of (a) preposition, (b) article, (c) verb, (d) conjunction, and (e) sub-clause marker; (5) mis-orderings (5.41%) which cover mis-orderings of (a) phrase, and (b) auxiliary verb. The causes of the students’ syntactical errors are (1) intralingual and developmental errors (53.67%) and (2) interlingual (46.33%). Finally, the results imply that both teachers and students must see syntactical errors as the key in understanding and solving the syntactical errors in English writing lesson. Then, it is the English teachers’ responsibility to adopt, modify or even develop remedial procedures that can minimize the students’ syntactical errors, especially in omissions, mis-formations and mis-selections