The errors made by the sixth semester students of the English Department of Widya Mandala Surabaya Catholic University in constructing compound and complex sentences

The mastery of English compound and complex sentences is of a paramount importance because it can help us to study the basic utterances of English spoken and written sentences. In addition, compound and complex sentences can also be used to express ideas that are impossible to express in one word, one phrase, or even in one simple sentence. In fact, they can be used to produce the effectiveness and clarity in English oral or written communication. Thus, the analysis of errors in English compound and complex sentences can be used as an input for the remedial teaching program. The present research tries to study three types of compound sentences and three types of complex sentences with the limitation on twenty five coordinators and thirty five subordinators being tested. The problems which were investigated in this study were: 1) the types of errors made by the students in constructing English compound and complex sentences, 2) the frequency of occurrence of each type of error made by the students in constructing compound and complex sentences, and 3) the areas of difficulties encountered by the students in constructing compound and complex sentences. With these problems, the present study had three purposes: 1) to find out the types of errors made by the students in constructing compound and complex sentences, 2) to find out the frequency of the occurrence of each type of error made by the students in constructing compound and complex sentences, and 3) to describe the areas of difficulties encountered by the students in constructing compound and complex sentences. The subjects of this study consisted of 79 sixth semester students of the English Department who were taking the translation course at Widya Mandala Surabaya Catholic University. The instrument used to collect the data was a pencil and paper test on compound and complex sentences in sentence combining and translation with 25 coordinators and 35 subordinators. This test was administered to the subjects who had finished their grammar courses. The study reveals the following findings: 1) The types of errors made by the students in constructing compound and complex sentences consisted of (1) 11.51 % errors of omission, (2) 80.93 % errors of misformation, and (3) 7.57 % errors of misorder. The results further show that in constructing compound and complex sentences, the students made 40.48 % errors on the average from the test. This means that the students' qualitative mastery in constructing compound and complex sentences was fair. 2) With regard to the frequency of occurrence of errors of each coordinator and subordinator, it can be concluded that: a) Six coordinators were difficult i.e. (1) correlative conjunctions: either... or, neither... nor; (2) conjunctive adverbs: however, otherwise, besides, and likewise b) Three coordinators are fair, i.e. (1) correlative conjunctions: both ... and (2) conjunctive adverbs: moreover, then, and meanwhile c) Five coordinators are easy, i.e. (1) Coordinate conjunctions: but, or, for ; (2) Correlative conjunctions: not only ... but also ; (3) conjunctive adverbs: therefore. d) Thirteen Subordinators are difficult. i.e. (1) Noun clause: that-request, what-exclamation; (2) Adverb clause: while, since, before, after, as soon as, whereas, in order to, unless, only if, whether or not, and in case. e) Three Subordinators are fair, i.e. (1) Adjective clause: whose; (2) Adverb clause: when, and although f) Nineteen Subordinators are easy, i.e. (1) Noun clause: that-statement, whether, who, which, what, when, where, how, why, how-exclamation; (2) Adjective clause: who, whom, which, when, where, that; (3) Adverb clause: then, because, it: In terms of each coordinator and subordinator being tested in this study, an attempt was made to trace back the causes of errors from the areas of difficulties with the limitation on interlingual and intralingual errors. These errors were mostly caused by the students' insufficient knowledge of the target language rules in constructing compound and complex sentences. Semantically, compound and complex sentences between Indonesian and English are similar but it did not guarantee the students could master English compound and complex sentences in general. It implies that those errors representing the students' language background were due to intralingual errors rather than interference from Indonesian, as the students' native language