Educare 2-2012.indb EDUCARE: International Journal for Educational Studies, 4(2) 2012 229 Indonesian Gramatical Interference towards the Students’ Spoken and Written English Pudiyono ABSTRACT: This research aimed to find out: (1) interference forms of Indonesian grammar towards the students’s spoken and written English competence; and (2) grammatical factors influencing grammatical Indonesian interference towards the students’s spoken and written English competence. The research method used was “metode simak dan catat” or observation and note taking mathod. This method was applied by notifying any expressions being interferenced from any academic activities. Therefore, the data were collected from students’ academic activities such as writing practices, reports, structured academic assignments, and also from discussion, seminars, and presentations. After the data had been collected and analyzed, they went into two main classifications. Those were sentencial interference (63.16%) and phrasal interference (36.84%). Further analyses showed that sentencial interfernce came into several sub-classifications such as the following: (1) sentence pattern S + Very + Verb + Object, 31.21%; (2) sentence pattern of Noun + Adjective, 12.2%; (3) sentence pattern of unapppropriate form, 6.57%; (4) sentence pattern of unintended or “ketidaksengajaan”, 5.3%; (5) impersonal it sentence pattern, 3.94%; and (6) active-passive sentence pattern, 3.94%. Meanwhile, phrasal interference came with 36.84% data and was classified into the following: (1) unorderly arrangement, 11.84%; (2) adverb formation, 5.3%; (3) inappropriate number, 9.2%; and (4) miscellaneous, 5%. Furthermore, the grammatical factor which influenced the Indonesian interference towards the English learning, both spoken and written, was the fact that the English language learners had little imposure and practice which made them difficult to internalize English linguistic knowledge they learned. KEY WODS: Sentencial interference, phrasal interference, linguistic environtment, grammatical patterns, acceptable patterns,”bahasa” Indonesia, and English language. Introduction English learning in Indonesia, from time to time, has not been considered a success. The complaints on this unsuccessful result keep echoing in almost all parts of the Indonesia archipelago. Unfortunately, the failure of this English learning happened in almost all education levels, since English is introduced in Elementary School, Junior High School, up to University level. Such complaint also happened to the special Department responsible for running English college, English Department of Teacher Training College. Pudiyono, M.Hum. is a Lecturer at the Department of English Education, Faculty of Education and Teacher Training UMP (Muhammadiyah University of Purwokerto), Jalan Raya Dukuhwaluh, Purwokerto, Central Java, Indonesia. He can be reached at: pudiyono_12@yahoo.co.id PUDIYONO, Indonesian Gramatical Interference 230 The fact that English is considered and treated as a foreign language in Indonesia could be the core reason for all of these mishaps. Social and formal environments do not obviously give encouragements to lead the success of this learning. Students find quite a few social and cultural environments which encourage them to feel that they need to develop their English. Even though, frankly speaking, English is officially considered as the first international language in this archipelagic country in which it turns out as well that through the fast technology development the need to master the language increase much a lot from time to time. Another factor which brings English learning into the worst condition is the fact that people do not use English as a means of communication in this country, neither in the form of formal nor informal gatherings. Therefore, the use of Indonesia language even becomes the only choice as the means of communication formally and informally in everyday events. It does not surprise us that the use of the Indonesian language becomes much stronger and more dominant in all aspects of life. By the fact of the Indonesian language use which becomes much stronger and more dominant, another problem followed that the English language they use in the linguistic encounters was much interfered by their Indonesian language. The interference happened in all learning of language aspects, including phonological, morphological, and grammatical aspects. The interference did not just happen in spoken communication, but this also happened in the written communication as well. This research accomplished to find out the interference of Indonesian language to the English learning which only focused on the oral and written grammatical interference. Writing skill is considered as a unique skill, especially when related to the second language learning. Writing skill is not only considered as the delta of adjoining all language aspects for people to learn a language, such as vocabulary, spelling, and grammar, but this skill also needs a media by which people have to express their ideas. In the context of the second language learning, people do not have necessary need which pushed them to do writing skill. Therefore, it is not easy for everyone to develop the writing skill. The problem of this writing skill became even worse, especially for students who have academic tasks such as term paper, final academic scientific writing. The problem does not only deal with the students’ problem in using correct English patterns, but it also deals with the fact that the first language, Indonesian language, interferes their English learning as the second language. They often express their opinions and ideas just merely like that when they express in Indonesian language without considering the English grammar input correctly. With this mind-set, the language products they produced were not acceptable; therefore, people did not understand the writing products they made due the grammar irregularities. This research focused on the following problem as to: (1) find out the interference forms of Indonesian grammar to the English learning, both oral and written English; EDUCARE: International Journal for Educational Studies, 4(2) 2012 231 and (2) find out grammatical factors influencing people to have interfered English, both oral and written. Theoretical Review On the Second/Foreign Language Learning. Language acquisitions in human life have become interesting phenomena to observe. When we observe in depth, the first language learning (mother tongue) happened as a natural learning. The learning proceeded gradually in line with the development of the natural physical growth of people. Besides that, coming into the curious stage of life, children have got the highest and most productive time not only to digest and master the grammar of the mother language, but to also that language perfectly in accordance with their age. Therefore, the fist language acquisition is far much better that the second or foreign language one. Let alone, socio-culturally, the second or foreign language learning does not have equal support from the environment which encourages the learners to adapt the situation perfectly as they have when they learn the first language. In the society which develops more and more pluralistic, it is not enough for someone to master just one language. There are many reasons why they have to study and master one language, either considered as a foreign or second language. A foreign language learning is conceived whenever people do not learn the language by its origin. S.M. Gass (1989:26) stated that foreign language learning takes place when the language to be learned is not the native language of the society; for example, learning English as a foreign language in Japan. Second language learning takes place in a country when that language is spoken. With such a statement, it is quite clear that learning English in Indonesia can be considered as learning a foreign language. Either second language learning or foreign language learning will certainly bring significant success for the learners. People will not only learn and achieve the success of communication in the international forum on all aspects of life and science, but they will also learn how to achieve the language itself. Again, S.M. Gass (1989:3) further insisted that the study of second language acquisition was a viable topic of study in and of itself; its justification no longer came from the concern of language pedagogy. Instead, its justification came from the insight that it provided about the nature of the process of acquisition. There are many factors which contribute to the success of learning a second language. Besides socio and cultural factors, the first language acquisition also influences the success of a second foreign language. This condition is also highlighted by J.P. Harmer (1990) as saying that the second language acquisition is much influenced by the first language acquisition. J.P. Harmer (1990:215) also said that L2 (Second Language) acquisition is considered to be completely determined by previous cognitive and linguistic knowledge. Research result showed that people could possibly use interactive strategy taken from achieving the first language (mother tongue) to that of learning the second or foreign language. This PUDIYONO, Indonesian Gramatical Interference 232 is as what J.P. Harmer (1990:220) stated as saying that the successful strategies used in mastering the first language people use them much for their second or foreign language. Within this context, Sridhar stated that the first language interference can be used as the learning language strategy and can be taken as an input in learning either the second or foreign language (cited by Ramelan, 1991). Because of having different language learning sources, the transfer of language rules and interference of the first language have different stages from one language learning to another language learning. The transfer of language rules happen whenever there are similarities between the first language and the second or foreign language. Interferences may come out whenever the learners find some irregularities between those two languages. However, Zoblin (1990:65) underlined that the transfer and interference may develop well when the language learner “has little contact with L2 speakers in natural setting“. Therefore, within this context, Nababan (1991:31) clearly stated that Indonesian language interferes much the second or foreign language learning in Indonesia, by saying that in Indonesia, the enveloping language is Indonesia in the major cities and the local vernacular and Indonesia in the smaller towns. As a foreign language, English does not certainly give facilities to the people learning the language to master it fast. As pointed clearly by Suwarsih Madya (1991:67) stating firmly that Indonesian students benefit very little from the environment. Besides the unfavorable environment, the clear difference between the first and the foreign language will certainly serves as the source of interference. The first language acquisition which interferes the second or foreign language learning is considered as the habit interference. On the Grammatical Interference. Interference happens in a linguistic production, especially in the use of second or foreign language which is caused by the first language acquisition. S.P. Corder (1980:65) stated that another attitude to errors is that they are all the result of the influence of the mother tongue on the learning process “interference” as it was called from the habits of the first language. From the linguistic forms view point, language interference can be classified into several types. Those are phonological, morphological, and grammatical interference. The communication necessity seems to stress that grammatical interference poses the most significant contribution. The ungrammatical sentences will certainly pose problems to the listeners which in turns they will bring about problems or misunderstanding. Therefore, the successful performance of someone depends very much on the knowledge and fluency of the second language. To make it worse, the aspects of the two languages are certainly not similar or identical. Grammar involves other aspects to learn as S.M. Gass (1989:12) stated the following that “grammar is not monolithic”. Rather, it is a module that interacts with other modules, such as conceptual knowledge, pragmatic knowledge, and perception; and is governed by human processing constrains. EDUCARE: International Journal for Educational Studies, 4(2) 2012 233 However, someone’s language knowledge is not always identical to that of the art in producing or expressing the language using that knowledge. It is quite possible that much knowledge will not surely lead language learners to produce proper and acceptable language. S.M. Gass (1989:19) reiterated that humans have knowledge of language quite apart from their ability to use that language. It has high possibility that knowledge will not go hand in hand with the ability. But it is exactly correct that ability expresses knowlwdge, especially when it comes to the grammatical knowledge. Again, S.M. Gass (1989:5) underlined that a theory of language acquisition must be constrained by knowledge of what a grammar consists of, and a grammar of a language must be something that humans are capable of constructing, given the general characteristics of the information available to the learner. In the process of second language learning, S.M. Gass (1989:5) stated “utterances which are ungrammatical or otherwise ill-formed, when judged by the generally accepted rules of the language they are learning”. Those unacceptable expressions ares used and learned whether they belong to mistakes of interference or non-interference. Principally, there have clear different characterictics between mistakes caused by interference and those mistakes casued by non-interference. This difference leads us to have through understanding on the causal factors. Further, S.M. Gass (1989:6) clarified as stating that in second language acquisition, learners are confronted with the dynamic interplay of the two (or more) linguistic systems. For further development, Judith Chun clarified that interference has then developed into a study which is well known as error analysis (cited by Madya, 1991). This later on will give significant contribution to the development of language learning. Error language learning will certainly lead us to have the skill to identify learning strategy through analyzing errors language learners make both on spoken as well as written language. Judith Chun stated, further, that error analysis will obviously help language teachers access and learn students’ progress more critically through remedial assignments given to students in developing their language learning (cited by Madya, 1991). Within this context, language learners will be able to anticipate or even avoid mistakes they most commonly do. This will help a lot not only for him but for the sake of designing further language lessons. With such this description, it is not surprising that students’ mistakes in learning the language have now become the focus in the trend of learning the second or foreign language. It is also reasonable that within these years, error analysis has been one of the compulsory subjects students have to learn. The helpful relevance on the error analysis and the strategy to plan learning material on the second or foreign language learning has made error analysis as the the source of reasearches considered significant as stated by Ho Peng (cited by Ramelan, 1991). Considering those several descriptions on the language interference above, it can be concluded that the difference of language systems will result in producing language interference in the use of a language or in second or foreign language PUDIYONO, Indonesian Gramatical Interference 234 learning. Grammatical interference plays a very important role and much discussed in the language learning as grammar becomes the most strategic factor in making or expressing a sentence or utterance. Therefore, this research only focused on the grammatical interference. Result and Discussion This chapter discusses the way the data were achieved and how they were analyzed in this research. After the data had been gathered or collected, the data analysis was done by grouping them referring to the structural patterns/forms of each data. Through the structural forms or patterns, the data were then classified into two main classifications. Those were data belonging to sentencial structure dan phrasal structure. However, the data were not classified in accordance to the way how the data were achieved or from the data sources whether from oral or written source as the main goal of this research was to know the typical interference in learning a second or foreign language. The data sources were not the main points or goal in this research analysis. On the Types of Sentencially Grammatical Interference. The type of grammatical interference on the sentencial structure was in the form of linguistic mistakes highy influenced by the first language acquisition in the form of sentencial interference. Therefore, the final results achieved from the data analysis were in the form of structural mistakes of English sentences. Further, analysis showed us that sentencially grammatical interference was classified into two subtypes, either in the form of full sentencial interference or partial sentencial interference. The sentencially grammatical interference taken from this research can be presented in detail as the following: First, Sentencially Grammatical Interference: S+Sangat+Verb+Object. This type of sentencial interference in kind of this sentence pattern has the most number of data. This typical interference cound be the most common mistakes students make in their Engish learning. It can be concluded that this typical interference dominated the number of data reaching more than 23% of the total data. With such pattern, Indonesian speakers express Indonesian utterances acceptably. The utterance can be as the following: “Dia sangat mencintai adiknya”. With such grammatical pattern as the example, an Indonesian learning English could possibly express the idea just like in that Indonesian pattern as the following: “She very loves her brother”. Of course, such an utterance is not grammatically acceptable in English. The English grammatical rule tells us that the word very cannot be used to explain a verb as in “very loves”. Very in English is used to modify an adjective. Therefore, the morpheme very is linked directly before an adjective, for instance: very busy, very beautiful, very angry, very important, very much, very little, very handsome, etc. In short, the word very can’t stand alone. On the contrary, the word which can be used to modify an English verb is very much. But, such expressions usually come after the verb concerned. In another word, the structural order would be VERB + EDUCARE: International Journal for Educational Studies, 4(2) 2012 235 VERY MUCH. So, Indonesian sentence mentioned earlier “Dia sangat mencintai adiknya” has the similar expressions in English as “She loves her brother very much”. In detail, the following is the list of data belonging to this type of interference: I was very regret because I didn’t care with my parents. At that time, I very liked horror films. I very enjoyed when I was watching it. I went to home because I was very miss with my parents and my cousin. I have many friends that very care and love me. I very like music because music can help me forgetting to my sadness and bareness. I am very like R & D because R & D music is very enjoyable when I listened to it. She is very like children. He very enjoy with his lived. I very much enjoyed the party. He very cares to me. I want with her together and I very loved her. How I very hate this city? The tourists very enjoy stay in Borobudur Temple. When I was a little girl, I have many friends that very care and love me. I have special figure who very influence my life. All students love her and other teacher very respected her. Commonly, environment surrounded the teenagers in Bandung very influence to teenager development and behaviors to days. Second, Sentencial Interference Nominal 1 (Nominal + Adjective). Most Indonesian students learning English have the understanding that the sentence pattern of Nominal + Adjective is the productive sentence pattern by which it can generate by no means acceptable English sentences. They don’t generally know that such sentence pattern is an English sentence pattern interfered by the Indonesian sentence pattern. That sentence pattern is in fact still understandable, especially to the Indonesian speaking community learning English. But to English speaking people, such sentence pattern sounds very strange. The following sentence data shows how students learning English have tried to express their ideas in English. However, as a result, their sentences were much interfered by the Indonesian grammatical patterns. The sentences are as the following: He is falling down and his hand is broken. Mom, my paper is left on my desk at home. They said that my leg was broken. Hasti’s hand was broken. The sentence “He is falling down and his hand is broken” has several grammatical mistakes. The sentence should be expressed in “the past tense”. But the part of the sentence which shows us grammatical interference is on “his hand is broken”. That English sentence comes from the Indonesian language: “tangannya patah”. To make the English sentence acceptable, such idea should be expressed into “he broke his hand” with the grammatical pattern “Subject + Verb + Object”. So, such an idea could be expressed in complete into “He fell down and he broke his hand”. PUDIYONO, Indonesian Gramatical Interference 236 The next sentence, “Mom, my paper is left on my desk at home” has similar pattern case. The source of mistakes does not come from language interference, but it also comes from the incorrect tense as well. That sentence should also use past tense. The sentence pattern should use basic pattern “Subject + Verb + Object”. Therefore, the sentence then should be as the following “Mom, I left my paper on my desk at home”. From the Indonesian concept, such English sentence patterns “Mom, I left my paper on my desk at home” sounds unusual and funny. Such pattern seems to inform us that the subject or the doer did the activity on purpose or by design. And that’s the idea of grammatical arbitratiness in English language which could be understood differently by other language users, such as Indonesian. Third, Sentencial Interference Nominal 2 (Nominal + Adjective). Indonesian sentence pattern (Nominal + Adjective) as in the following examples: “Kita perlu …”; “Mereka sangat sulit untuk mendapatkan …”; and “Dia tidak perlu untuk …” is an acceptable sentence pattern of Indonesian language. But the case would pose different matters when such pattern then is transfered into English within the same pattern. English grammatical patterns do not have such pattern. Therefore, when it is expressed into English into: “We are necessary …”; “They are very difficult to get …”; and “He is not necessary …”, of course, those sentences are not grammatically correct in English. The correct English grammatical pattern people can use is “Impersonal It”. This can be used to express ideas or opinion which is properly related to the situation. The correct pattern is: “It + be (is, was) + adjective + for + Pronoun + to …”. The example which can illustrate the situation is as the following: “It is necessary for you to study hard before you get the exams”. The following list shows English sentences which are interfered by the Indonesian grammatical patterns: We were very difficult to get them. We are too late to get the information. The society isn’t easy to avoid the influence from the culture of other society. Those sentences can be revised easily using that English sentence pattern into the following: It was very difficult for us to get them. It is too late for us to get the information. It isn’t easy to avoid the influence from the culture of another society. Fourth, Gramatical Interference without Linking Verbs. This type of interference is a complex interference which has no clear grammatical patterns such as those discussed earlier. However, the form of interference can be analyzed easily that those sentences do not have complete sentence structure. In that case, such sentences are considered as uncomplete sentence and, therefore, those sentences are accepted as unacceptable utterance. EDUCARE: International Journal for Educational Studies, 4(2) 2012 237 The sentences belong to sentences which are interfered by the Indonesian concept without paying attention to the accepted English grammatical patterns. The speakers just express the English sentences by translating word to word from Indonesian into English without refereeing to the basic English sentence patterns. Their ignorance of the speakers to the existing patterns was due to the limited linguistic knowledge of English. Another factor leading to the interferent mistakes shows the fact that the data was commonly taken from oral data. It is possible that the speakers uttering the expressions were under psychological pressures which lead them to have no chance to revise their ideas into the acceptable sentences. The following example underlined the statement: “She very closed with me”. That expression could be concluded as one interfered by the Indonesian grammatical pattern in such a way that leads to be unacceptable sentences. The Indonesian sentence which interfered could be: “Dia sangat dekat dengan saya” into “She very closed with me”. The speaker did not only recoqnize that the sentence was not grammatical; he/ she did make a wrong diction by taking the word “closed”. “Closed” lexically means “tertutup”, while “dekat” shold be expressed into “close”. Inappropriate choice of words was the word “with” which was the interferent of the word “dengan”. Yet, the correct choice of the word “dengan” should be “to”. Therefore, the correct sentence of “Dia sangat dekat dengan saya” would be expressed as “She was very close to me”. The complete data of the sentences in the case alike are in the following list: She very closed with me. I was shock because my IP in this semester very bad. My PA very angry with me. She cry when meet me and talk all of her problems. Have long we not meet. How far from here? I will tell it about when I holiday in Semarang. Fifth, Active-Passive Grammatical Interference. An active-passive grammatical pattern is one of the factors leading to language interference in learning English. This means that the language learners tend to produce active-passive sentences in line with the Indonesian trend in making sentences without any reference to that of the English patterns. This leads them to produce English expressions which are unacceptable to the English community. In the communication culture, not all passive sentences are well accepted. Usually, English speaking people tend to use active sentences and, therefore, avoid using passive ones. Active sentences are more welcome than that of the passive ones. The following example is more acceptable: “I have taken the medicine” than that expressed in the passive ones: “The medicine has been taken by me” to mean that the same thing that he has taken the medicine. Several sentences were on the spot in this research stressing that students learning English as the subject of the research did not understand well using the active- passive sentences. As the example: “It (back to campus) is made me can forgot PUDIYONO, Indonesian Gramatical Interference 238 my problems”. The idea should not be expressed in the passive voice as this only makes the listener find the sentence more difficult to catch. The idea can then be express into: “Coming back to campus has made me forget my problems”. This type of interference does not have large distribution. Yet, that shows us enough evidence that we have to pay good attention to this language fenomena in order to have good communication skill using the language we learn. The following sentence also points out that the speaker has been interfered by the Indonesian language badly that the sentence is totally unacceptable: “Because she very loved by her cousin”. Indonesian concept which interfered the English could be the following: “Karena dia sangat dicintai oleh keponakannya”. Such concept was, then, transferred into unacceptable English above. When the speaker has good knowledge and ability, he would then express that into an active sentence. Therefore, the acceptable expression would be as the following: “Because her cousin loved her very much”. The whole sentences belonging to this type of active-passive interference can be presented as the following: It (back to campus) is made me can forgot my problem and I can do my live better. And my friend is very cool because all of my story is listen of my friend. Because she very loved by her cousin. She is a smart girl, without it is also beautiful. Sixth, Grammatical Interference in Parallelism. This type of interferent mistakes is quite common for students in learning English. Students learning English have no similar concept found bahasa Indonesia as they have to learn in English. Students learning English find quite many forms for certain lexis. English shows that there are many forms of verbs by which each has its own different function. For example, the verb “break” has the forms of: break, to break, breaking, broke, broken. These different forms bring about problems for the learners. The following is an example of such interferent mistake: They are just having fun, example: watching TV, sleeping in the boarding house, shopping in the mall, take a walk, or make a date with boy friend or girl friend. This typical errnoues expression is much interfered by the Indonesian concept that Indonesian grammatical patterns do not have various forms of the verb like those in English. Therefore, to correct this type of mistakes is not too difficult. To do that, we just change the verbs which are not parallel into the correct ones proportional to the context the sentence needs. The following is the correct version of the sentence: They are just having fun, example: watching TV, sleeping in the boarding house, shopping in the mall, taking a walk, or making a date with boy friend or girl friend. On the Grammatical Interference in Phrases. This type of interference can be classified into phrasal interference. This has the argument that the English mistake EDUCARE: International Journal for Educational Studies, 4(2) 2012 239 students make does not necessarily contribute to the central or core sentence. This type of interference relates much to the word formation, choice of words or diction, word order, and agreement between number and the modifier which comes before the word concerned. To show in detail, the following presents the complete types of such interference on phrases: First, Word-Order Grammatical Interference. This type of interference relates to the fact that Indonesian word order is very much different from that of the English. Therefore, students learning English should much pay attention to word order pattern of English and the difference between the Indonesian and English word order patterns. It is quite often that Indonesian word orders interfere the English sentences the students produce. Unfortunately, the word order patterns of both English and Indonesian are considered arbitrary. Therefore, there is no logical argument which can lead to have easy description for language learners to understand easily. “I and my friend” is an example of word order which is interfered by the first language, Indonesia language. This type of expression on word order is considered unusual in English, which is, of course, unacceptable found in this research. Indonesian word order confirms that it is just common to express the writer or speaker as the first to mention, like “Saya dan ibu” or “I and my mom” and “Saya dan kawan-kawan” or “I and my friends”. These examples underline that most students learning English produce similar word order in English, which is of course, errornous. More data on this type of mistakes are on the following list: I and my friend. I am and my friend. Me and my sister. Me and my family. I with three my boarding house’s friends. Me and my friends. I and my family. After I and my family finished my lunch. Everyday after went to school, I and my friend play in the garden. It is just easy to correct such mistakes as long as the students learning English have known well the word order pattern in English. To correct this mistake can be done just by change the word order. Second, Grammatical Interference in Adverbs. This type of interference happens when the learners just translate a pair of Indonesian words into English without referring to the grammatical rules in English. Certainly, the English expressions produced do not have acceptable meaning, because such pair of Indonesian words has already got its own similar expression. Therefore, the students do not have to translate such Indonesian expression into English using their own expressions. The frequent expression which interferes students’ English is adverb. An adverb is a word which modify a verb, therefore, English adverb is usually transferred PUDIYONO, Indonesian Gramatical Interference 240 into “dengan …”. For example, an expression “Ia membaca dengan perlahan-lahan” will be expressed into English “He read with slow”. The correct sentence for that expression is “He read slowly”. The following sentence “We make sentences with good” has the same linguistic phenomena. Students, then, translate that into an adverb “with good”. That must come from the Indonesian interference “dengan baik”. Therefore, to correct such mistakes, students can just change the expression “with good” into “well”. The expression “well” is the adverb form of the adjective “good”. So, the correct sentence of the expression above would be the following: “We make sentences well”. Another form of interference is on the choice of word or diction. The wrong diction of the utterances will bring about problem for the listeners. The form of interference is obvious as in the following sentences: As long as in the trip, we are very happy. As long as holiday, I was very bored because I didn’t do many activities. The interferent mistakes on the above sentences can be stemmed from the Indonesian grammatical concept. It seems the speaker is about to say: “Sepanjang perjalanan, kita sangat senang”. The word “panjang” is usually translated into English “long”. That’s the reason the speaker says “sepanjang” into “as long as”. Such choice of words was not exactly perfect. The idea “selama liburan” or “sepanjang perjalanan” has the equivalence into “during” in English. Third, Grammatical Interference in Agreement. The next form of interference refers to the relationship between one word to another word on their agreement. Therefore, people call it interference on agreement. Grammatical atreement does not exist in Indonesian language. Therefore, students learning English frequently make this type of mistakes, especially beginners. That trend happens because the English rules have not internalized into their linguistic concept. So, what they can do in trying to express their ideas into English is expressing the ideas using their Indonesian concept. Agreement concept in English refers to the noun quantifier and the noun forms which come after the quantifier. For example, quantifier some, few, many, two, a lot of or lots should usually come before plural nouns, like: students, books, mistakes, classes, boys, ladies, etc. Then, some examples of their combinations would be like few students, many books, a lot of mistakes, some boys, etc. Indonesian language does not have such linguistic rules. Therefore, when the situation comes, Indonesian students learning English would tend to produce such interferent expressions. One of the examples is like the following: “My boyfriend is very handsome, cute, and a clever boys”. The sentence above has several mistakes. The fist mistake is on the interferent expression pointing to the article “a”. That article should only be followed by a singular noun “boy” not “boys”. The next problem is the student’s failure in arranging those multiadjectives into one correct phrase as the following: “a very handsome, cute, and clever boy”. The sentence would then be like this: “My boyfriend is A very handsome, cute, and clever BOY”. EDUCARE: International Journal for Educational Studies, 4(2) 2012 241 The following data also shows similar problems; no correct agreement between the subject of the main sentence and that of the sub-sentence. The problem will certainly disturb the understanding of the listeners or the speaking partner. Therefore, the agreement between referents must undoubtedly be considered well. The sentence in point is as follows: “As we know if the woman go to supermarket, they will spend a lot of time to chose something which they will purchase, like me”. The agreement of referents on the sentence above is between the woman as the subject of the sub sentence and the subject of the main sentence “they” in “they will spend” and “they” in “they will purchase”. They don’t agree to each other because “the woman” is a singular noun, while “they” refers to plural noun. Another problem is on the use of the article “the”. The correct article should be “a” as the expression does not show the definite subject to talk. So, the correct version of the sentence would be: “As we know if A woman, like me, goES to a supermarket, SHE will spend a lot of time to choose something which SHE will purchase”. The following is the complete data found to have similar case discussed in this research. The disagreements found in this analysis in each of the sentences are shown by italizing the words: My boyfriend is very handsome, cute and a clever boys. As we know if the woman go to supermarket, they will spend a lot of time to choose something which they will purchase, like me. A sweet memories when I was a little girls. She is beautiful girls and can sing well. I was very bored because I didn’t do many activitie. Fourth, Grammatical Interference in Diction. The form of this type of interference refers to the failure of the students learning English to identify the question they are to ask. They fail to reflect to their ability whether the question they will ask may need a “yes” or “no” answer or those questions need further clarification depending on the question word they use. Basically, a question could either go to a yes or no question or a question word question. Interstingly, Indonesian language does not offer any choice as that of English. In Indonesian, those two types of questions both use the question words “apakah” or “apa”. “Apakah” and “apa” are considered similar or synonymous. The following are examples to clarify the statement: “Apakah kamu menyukai dia?” or “Do you like him?” and “Apa yang kamu sedang pelajari?” or “What are you studying?”. Those two questions look alike. Both begin with the question word “apa”. Yet, basically they refer to different ideas. The question “Apakah kamu menyukai dia?” is enough to have yes or no answer. This question is considered to be a “yes/no question”. The other question “Apa yang kamu sedang pelajari?” is not enough to have a yes or no answer. Therefore, that question needs a clarification referring to the question word “What”. This type of question is generally considered as “Question word question”. The question form referring to the question “Apa” brings language interference to students learning English to formulate the correct questions. They most readily PUDIYONO, Indonesian Gramatical Interference 242 use “What” to mean “Apa” in whatever situation; whether a yes or no question or question word question. The following list shows the complete data found in this research. The list is as follows: Whether Susi study in UMP, too? What is the right? What are you like me, too? In there, whether you have get a job? Those four questions are yes or no questions. But, due to the fact that the speakers are much interfered by the Indonesian concept, each of those questions begin with the question word “What” or “Whether” as the interference of the question “Apa” or “Apakah”. To correct those sentences, language learners have to change the question word “What” to that of the correct auxiliary appropriate to the tense of each of the sentence. Fifth, Miscellaneous Grammatical Interference. The next type of interference refers to the active-passive used in the infinitive forms. The form of active-passive infinitive is much interfered by the Indonesian grammar. The interfered forms can be seen on the following expressions: “There are many places to be visited together” and “The paper has to collect in that day”. The expression “to be visited” comes from the interference source “untuk dikunjungi” which sounds passive. Yet, to express that idea correctly, language learner just uses “to visit”. So, the correct sentence would be: “There are many places TO VISIT together”. The next interference form refers to the habit of translating word to word sentences into English ones using Indonesian concept. This is due to the reason that students have the trend to express their Indonesian ideas into English without considering or referring the use of English grammar. As the example is of the following sentence: “Reason me choose study in Purwokerto is for getting experience”. The words in italics are expressions interfered by the Indonesian concept: “Alasan saya memilih belajar di Purwokerto adalah …” which then is translated into “Reason me choose study in Purwokerto is …”. This should be “The reason I chose to study in Purwokerto is ...” or “My reason in choosing to study in Purwokerto is …”. The next expression is also interfered by the Indonesian concept. The idea “Saya bingung” is just translated word to word into “I confused”. Bingung is an adjective. The correct pattern of the correct combination when combined with the subject needs a linking verb “am”. The correct sentence would go into: “I am confused”. Conclusion and Suggestion From the data analysis, it can be concluded that the grammatical interference of bahasa Indonesia into English can be classified into two main classifications. Those were grammatical interference on sentences and phrases. Grammatical interferences on sentence forms can also be classified into sub-classifications as those in the EDUCARE: International Journal for Educational Studies, 4(2) 2012 243 following: sentence pattern S + Very + Verb + Object (31.21%); sentence pattern of Noun + Adjective (12.2%); pattern of unapppropriate form (6.57%); sentence pattern of unintended or ketidaksengajaan (5.3%); impersonal it sentence pattern (3.94%); and active-passive sentence pattern (3.94%). Meanwhile, phrasal interference rose with 36.84% data and were classified into the following: unorderly arrangement (11.84%); adverb formation (5.3%); inappropriate number (9.2%); and miscellaneous (5%). Furthermore, the grammatical factor which influenced the Indonesian interference towards the English learning, both spoken and written, was the fact that the English language learners had little imposure and practice that made them difficult to internalize English linguitic knowledge they learned. Therefore, to make the English grammar internalize in the students’ mind-set, they have to get much linguistic imposures, both in spoken and written environtment. References Corder, S.P. (1980). Error Analysis and Interlanguage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harmer, J.P. (1990). Bilinguality and Bilingualism. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gass, S.M. (1989). Linguistics Prospectives on Second Language Acquisition. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lindolof, T.R. (2010). Qualitative Communication Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, USA: Saga Publications. Madya, Suwarsih. (1991). “Error Analysis and Interference” in Journal of TEFLIN, Vol.2. Yogyakarta: University of Sanata Darma. Nababan. (1991). “Foreign Language Learning Indonesia” in Journal of TEFLIN, Vol.2. Yogyakarta: University of Sanata Darma. Ramelan. (1991). “Second Language Learning” in Journal of TEFLIN, Vol.2. Yogyakarta: University of Sanata Darma. Rubin, H. (1995). Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data. London: Saga Publication. Surakhmad, W. (1969). Guru dan Pendidikannja. Djakarta: Ditdjen [Direktorat Djenderal] Pendidikan Guru dan Tenaga Teknis P dan K [Pendidikan dan Kebudajaan]. Sutopo, H.B. (1996). Metodologi Penelitian Kualitatif. Surakarta: UNS [Universitas Negeri Solo] Press. Zoblin. (1990). Bilinguality and Second Language Acquisition. New York: Cambridge University Press. PUDIYONO, Indonesian Gramatical Interference 244 The fact that English is considered and treated as a foreign language in Indonesia could be the core reason for all of these mishaps. Social and formal environments do not obviously give encouragements to lead the success of this learning.