Syntactic Errors Made by English Department Students in Writing Undergraduate Thesis Abstract

This study aims at identifying the types of syntactic errors committed in the undergraduate thesis abstracts as well as the factors contributing to the errors. This study applied a descriptive-qualitative approach with observation, documentation method and note-taking technique. The data source was 30 abstracts written by English Department students of Udayana University who graduated in the 2021 period. In identifying the type of errors, this study employed the surface strategy taxonomy theory proposed by Dulay, Burt, and Krashen. Moreover, in identifying the factor of errors, this study applies Brown’s theory, supported by a theory about the intralingual error by Richards. The finding shows that 467 errors are found in the students’ abstracts.  Errors in all syntactic categories were found. However, six out of eight types of error based on surface strategy taxonomy were found. In terms of factor, all factors of error contributing to the errors. According to the discussion, it can be concluded that the major issue in writing abstracts is the student's inability to avoid mother tongue interference as an ESL learner. As a result, the point from the source language had been ambiguously transferred into the target language