Errors of articles found in news items or report texts of the English Department Students of Widya Mandala Catholic University Surabaya

Language is the necessary part in our life because people use it to communicate and interact with others. There are two ways of communication, speaking and writing. Writing emphasizes on the usage of the structure of language correctly. Article has an important rule on writing. The use of article gives understanding between reader and writer in identifying the noun or noun phrase. However, many students still make mistake in the usage of article. The purpose of this study is to find out the article errors that students made in their news items and report texts and their possible causes of third-semester of English Department students of Widya Mandala Catholic University Surabaya in the academic year of 2016/2017. The study used a descriptive qualitative research method. The source of data of this research included 48 copies of the students’ report or news items texts. The data were the article error. The collection of data then analyzed to find the types of article errors and their frequency, and also their sources. The result of the research shows that there were 93 errors (54.39%) of omission, 64 errors (37.43%) of addition, and 14 errors (8.19%) of substitution. The errors were the definite article “the” with 114 errors (66.67%), the indefinite article “a” with 49 errors (28.65%), and the indefinite article “an” with 8 errors (4.68%). While the possible causes of errors are the ignorance of rules restriction and false concepts hypothesized with the total 171 (39.68%), followed by L1 interference with the total of 89 (20.65%) The error shows that students still have problems in the use of article. Thus, the students should learn and do exercise more to master the article rules. Besides, the teacher should develop more material and teaching technique since there is correlation between Bahasa Indonesia as their language and English as the second language in omitting the articles