ELT FORUM 3 (1) (2014)

Journal of English Language Teaching

http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt

ERROR ANALYSIS ON THE USE OF TO BE AS AUXILIARY AND LINKING

VERB IN THE STUDENTS’ RECOUNT TEXT (A Case of the 8th Grade Students

of SMP N 19 Semarang in the Academic Year of 2013/2014)

Danik Cahyaningrum 

English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Semarang, Indonesia

Article Info

________________
Article History:

Received in April 2014

Approved in Mei 2014

Published in Juni 2014

________________
Keywords:

to be as auxiliary verb, to be

as linking verb, recount text,

error analysis.

____________________

Abstract

___________________________________________________________________

This final project was conducted to analyze the students’ errors on the use of to be as Auxiliary and

Linking verb on the students’ recount text that made by eight grade students of SMP N 19 Semarang

in the academic year of 2013/2014. This study has three objectives; i.e. to identify errors, to find out

the most frequent errors and how to avoid errors on the use of to be as auxiliary and linking verb.

The population of this study was eighth grade students of SMP N 19 Semarang. This study used

purposive random sampling and one class had been taken as the sample under the consideration that

the number of the sample was about 10% - 15% from the population. I chose class 8B which consist

31 students, but only 28 students could participate on the research. This study used qualitative

research method in analyzing the data since the aim of the study is to identify errors, to find out the

error, type and how to avoiding error on the use of to be as Auxiliary and Linking verb. In gathering

the data, I conducted the instructions for the students’ free writing using some topics that had been

prepared before the research on 10 may 2013. To find out the errors, I used the error taxonomy

according Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1980:50). I classified the errors into 4 types that are Omission,

addition, misinformation and misordering. The result showed that 11.3 % from the total findings

belongs to errors on the use of Auxiliary verb which consisted of 8.1 % in misinformation types and

3.2 % in omission types and 88.7 % from the total findings belongs to errors on the use of Linking

verb which consisted of 45.2 % in misinformation types, 20.9 % in omission types, 19.4 % in

addition types and 3.3 % in misordering types. After analyzing and counting the data, I found out

that the most frequent errors were errors on the use of Linking verb which were dominated by

misinformation types.

 Correspondent Address:

B3 Building, FBS Unnes

Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229

E-mail: cahya.luphvice@gmail.com

ISSN 2252-6706

Danik Cahyaningrum / Journal of English Language Teaching 3 (1) (2014)

INTRODUCTION

Every country has its own languages

including grammatical rules, speech and sound

systems, but English is selected as the lingua

franca (common communicative language) in the

world. English is the first foreign language in

most countries which do not use English as their

mother tongue. Similar with other countries,

Indonesia chooses English as the first foreign

language. Ramelan (2001:1) states that “English

has been taught in this country as the first foreign

language since the proclamation of independence

on the August, 17th 1945”. It means that English

has an important role in Indonesian education

and becomes one of the important subjects since

the elementary school to university level.

Since English is the first foreign language,

Indonesian learners need time and more process

in order to master all skills in English includes

listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Moreover, Learning English is very useful in

order to take part in globalization as the

consideration that English is the common

communicative language in the world.

It can not be denied that understanding the

grammatical structure of English becomes the

priority to the Indonesian leaners who learn

English in order to master English skills as stated

by Douglas (1980:264) that “In learning a

language we must know the grammar rules for

forming correct sentence”. It also happens on

teaching learning process in Indonesia that

grammar becomes the basic rule in order to

improve students’ ability in mastering English.

Cook and Sutter (1980: 1) also stated that

grammar is a set of rules by which people speak

and write. It means that grammar is rule how

words and their components are combined to

make sentences both of spoken or written.

Grammar is also seen as a handy tool in a

language. Since it is one of the important aspects

in learning English, Indonesian learners assessed

grammar to be one of the most difficult parts to

learn. Moreover some Indonesian learners also

stated that the most difficult part of grammar was

applied in the writing form. Basically writing is

one of basic major that has the most difficulties,

for example: using inappropriate grammatical

structure that is going to affect reader or listener

understanding about what message is going to be

delivered.

Indonesian learners either in junior high

school or senior high school also often have

problems deal with the grammatical structure

both in spoken or written forms. Particularly,

when it comes to written form, understanding the

grammatical structures include sentence pattern,

sentence structure and also functions of the

sentences are very important part in creating a

good paragraph. Mainly when it comes to the

patterns of to be uses in English and Indonesian

mother tongue are exactly different. Sometimes,

it makes them find it as one of the difficulties in

writing.

To illustrate the differences in grammatical

structure, the following is an example between

English and Indonesian sentences.

Ind : Murid – murid SMP N 19 Semarang sangat

rajin dan cerdas.

Eng : The students of SMP N 19 Semarang are

very diligent and smart.

The comparison of the two sentences

above can be stated that there are differences in

grammatical structure between Indonesian and

English language. The difference is in the use of

to be as a linking verb. The use of to be is a must,

because it links the subject with the complement

that follows regarding the example above. It

means that the sentence is not gong to be

acceptable according to the grammatical, If there

is no to be in the sentence. To be itself split up

into some forms: is, am, are, was, were, be, being,

and been depends on the type of subject and

tenses.

Truthfully, writing is one the most difficult

language skills to be learned by all of students

who learn English especially for Junior high

school students. Using the appropriate

grammatical structure makes the meaning of the

sentences are going to be accurate, easily

understood and acceptable. The other significant

part is some aspects in writing such as logical

thinking, paragraph development, diction,

spelling, punctuation and word order that are

required students to fulfil.

Danik Cahyaningrum / Journal of English Language Teaching 3 (1) (2014)

Students often make errors on the use of

grammatical structure in English because English

grammar is more complicated than Indonesian.

Errors in language learning are natural. Many

aspects are caused by the students to make errors

especially English as the first foreign language.

Sometimes, mother tongue interference also

becomes one of the causes. Errors are regarded as

substantive things to both students and teachers

since errors are important part of learning process

in order to get information.

Corder, in Ellis and Barkhuizan (in Adi

Jaya Putra 2008;13), stated that there are three

functions of learner’s errors which are as follows:

(1) They serve a pedagogic purpose by showing

teachers what learners have learnt and what they

have not yet mastered; (2) they serve a research

purpose by providing evidence about how

languages are learnt; and (3) they serve a learning

purpose by acting devices by which learners can

discover the rules of the target language. It means

that errors contain a lot of information’s about

which part of the students difficulties that are

hard to produce correctly.

Errors are unavoidable; it happened in all

components of English grammatical structure

such as errors on using to be, using verb, using

conditional sentences, etc. This study is going to

highlight about errors on the use of to be for

junior high school students in eighth grades.

Actually to be it self has two grammatical

functions and various forms. To be also has the

important role to create a sentence because to be

is the part of verb.

To overcome students problem in errors on

the use of to be using genre based approach

becomes one of the ways that was chosen by the

researcher. Basically genre based approach is

used in the process of teaching and learning

English, especially in junior high school on the

eighth grade students. In this approach, teaching

and learning process focuses on the

understanding and production of selected genres

of texts. The focuses are on the content

information and the language of the genre of the

text that is going to be used. It also focuses on

relevant vocabularies and grammatical patterns.

This study is going to use Recount text as the

students writing tasks.

Students often make some errors on the use

of to be in their recount text such as, choose the

wrong to be, put double to be, put to be after verb

and displacement of to be .Some problems

usually happen because of the students’

understanding. They know the theory about to

be, where and when to be should be put, but they

get confused when apply it in sentences,

paragraphs and also texts. For example I’m so

happy there. The right sentence is I was so happy

there, because it tells about something in the past.

The others problem is displacement of to be. They

sometimes put to be in the wrong position, for

example where your house is? It should be where is

your house?

The differences in writing English from

Indonesian mother tongue often make it more

difficult. Therefore, it is going to make some

grammatical errors. It causes ambiguity and even

changes the meaning of the sentences. Based on

the explanation above, the researcher decided to

analyze the error analysis on the use of to be as

auxiliary and linking verb in the students’ recount

text; A case of the 8th grade students of SMP N 19

Semarang in the academic year of 2013/2014.

METHOD OF INVESTIGATION

The objectives of this study are to

identify and find out the students’ errors on the

use of to be as auxiliary verb and linking verb in

students’ recount text by analyzing their errors.

This study used qualitative research with

descriptive method to analyze the errors that was

made by students in writing recount text. I use

descriptive method because it focuses on

identification, classification, description and

explanation based on the data collected from the

students’ writing of a recount text. Descriptive

method is method that used to describe

hypothesis based on the fact because it uses an

explanation to describe the research.

This research used purposive random

sampling to pick up the sample. So, the researcher

could choose a specific group of people or object

on the population to analyse and the population

Danik Cahyaningrum / Journal of English Language Teaching 3 (1) (2014)

also had an equal chance of being included in the

sample. It often chooses a group that deserve the

most information that the researchers need as

stated by Patton (1990:79), that purposive

random sampling will substantially increase the

credibility of the results even of small samples. In

this study, I chose class 8B from SMP N 19

Semarang in the academic year of 2013/2014

because the students have been studied about this

material in the second semester. They also have

done some exercises and writing about recount

text. The teachers suggested doing my research in

this class. There were 28 students that participate

in this study.

I picked up one class of 8th grade students

of SMP N 19 Semarang in the academic year of

2013/2014 was class 8B which consists of 28

students. The reasons for selecting them were

they have taken material about recount text and

also about to be. So they knew about the material

that the researcher examined in the area and

some problem on the use of to be as auxiliary and

linking verb possibly happened in junior high

school students.

The data collected by students’ free

writing. It can be said that the students were free

to choose the topic of their writing. The topics

have been prepared before, so the students could

choose one of the topics. Students wrote recount

text based on the topic that was chose and their

own idea, for example about their past

experience. I used their writing to analyze as the

data

The topic of my study are to identify and

find out the errors analysis on the use of to be as

auxiliary verb and linking verb in students’

recount text written by 8th grade students of SMP

N 19 Semarang in the academic year of

2013/2014, I collected the data by coming

directly to the school for one meeting in the class.

They wrote the text in 40 minutes and the

students should write 10 sentences to 20

sentences in their writing. After conducted the

data, I collected the data and analysed the errors

in the use of to be as auxiliary and linking verb

that they made.

RESULTS OF ANALYSIS

3.1 Results of Error Analysis on the Use of to be

as Auxiliary and Linking verb in the Students’

Recount Text

I divided the analysis of errors into two

parts. First, I analyzed errors on the use of to be

as auxiliary verb in the students’ recount text.

Second, I analyzed errors on the use of to be as

linking verb in the students’ recount text.

As previously stated in chapter III,

researcher divided 4 types of errors according

Dulay, Burt and Krashen (in Carl James

1998:106) as follows: Omissions, Additions

Misinformation and Misordering. Each sentence

had been analyzed using 4 types of errors above

to determine the errors on the use of to be as

auxiliary verb and linking verb on the students’

recount text.

Total errors that occurred are 62 items that

divided into 2 part (errors on the use of to be as

auxiliary verb and linking verb). Here, I counted

the frequency of errors based on the tables using

the formula below:

Where:

% error is the percentage of error at one field

∑n is the sum of error at one field

N is the whole error that students make

The errors on the use of to be as auxiliary verb in

the students’ recount text can be calculated as

follows:

Danik Cahyaningrum / Journal of English Language Teaching 3 (1) (2014)

Table 3.1 The frequency of error on the use of to be as auxiliary verb

No Category of Error Frequency % of

error

Omission

Additions

Misinformation

Misordering

3.2 %

8.1 %

Total 7 11.3 %

In the table above, It can be concluded

that the errors on the use of to be as auxiliary

verbs happen on 2 types of errors that are

Omission and misinformation. The incorrect

forms on the use of to be as auxiliary verbs

happened because the students missed the

important part in creating a clause that is the

progressive form of to be in the students’ recount

text. It means that to be as auxiliary verb is

needed before v- ing because of the period of time.

The detail explanation as follows:

(a) Omission

[230]. While … lunch we saw bird, beach, and

coconut tree

There are 2 clauses in this sentence. The

first clause is the dependent and the second clause

is the independent clause. In this sentence,

“while” comes at the beginning of the sentence as

the dependent clause. Based on the situation, it

can use past progressive tense because the action

was happening over time. It means, the verb in

the first clause will be form of to be as auxiliary

verb (in the form of past) + main verb (V-ing).

The correct sentence:

While we were having lunch, we saw bird,

beach, and coconut tree.

(b) Misinformation

[58]. Friday, 09 may 2014, that time I while walk

to lesson schedule

The sentence happens in period of time

based on the next sentences “[59] In speat of, in

middle trip I meet by for a dog was very horrible”.

The student wants to say that “while I was

walking to my lesson place, I met a dog that was

very horrible on last Friday”. It means that there

is no to be in the form of past. It should be to be

as auxiliary verb + the main verb (V-ing). The

correct sentence:

While I was walking to my lesson place, I met a

dog that was very horrible on last Friday.

The errors on the use of to be as auxiliary verb in

the students’ recount text can be calculated as

follows:

Table 3.2 The frequency of error on the use of to be as auxiliary verb

In the table above, it can be concluded

that error on the use of to be as linking verb

happens in all of types of errors. The incorrect

form on the use of to be as linking verb mostly

happens because the students’ missed the

important part in forming a clause that is past

form of to be (was /were). Student should be

aware about nominal clauses which need was /

were to connect the subject to its complement.

The detail explanation as follows:

No Category of Error Frequency % of error

Omissions

Additions

Misinformation

Misordering

20.9 %

19.36 %

45.2 %

3.2 %

Total 55 88.7 %

Danik Cahyaningrum / Journal of English Language Teaching 3 (1) (2014)

(a) Omission

[130]. I …. confused with what she say

The omission appears in this sentence

because it includes in nominal sentence. In

nominal sentence, to be needs to connect the

subject and the complement. The complement

here is “confused” that explains the subject

situation. So, the function of to be is as linking

verb. This sentence happens in the past because it

tells about past story, it means to be is in the past

form (was/were). The correct sentence:

I was confused with what she say.

(b) Addition

[119]. In there we are plant a paddy field

The sentence (119) is incorrect because of

the addition in the verb (predicate). The sentence

above is an active sentence. It means that the verb

is an activity (plant is menanam). The student

added to be as linking verb in a sentence which

contained verb in the past form. So, to be as

linking verb in this sentence isn’t needed. The

correct sentence:

In there we planted a paddy field.

[106]. This is my horrible experience

The sentence above [106] shows that the

student missed the information they needed in

forming a sentence in the past form.

Misinformation appears in this sentence because

the use of to be as linking verb in the form of

present, whereas it should be in the form of past.

The correct to be is was/ were depends on the

subject. The correct sentence:

This was my horrible experience.

(d) Misordering

[144]. Because I are tired and my friends, I

was not so cycling up at five intersections.

Misordering is deal with the correct

placement of words in the sentences, but I just

focus on the wrong placement of to be as a linking

verb. The sentence above [144] shows that there

is an incorrect placement of to be with the subject.

The students want to say “ karena saya dan teman

saya capek”. The form of to be is also incorrect.

It should be “because my friends and I were

tired”. The correct sentence:

Because my friends and I were tired, I was

not so cycling up at five intersections.

CONCLUSION

Based on the findings on Chapter IV, the

conclusions could be drawn as the result of

identifying the students’ errors on Dulay, Brut

and Krashen theory that there were 2 types of

errors, it was misinformation and omission,

occurred on the use of to be as Auxiliary verb and

4 types of errors, it were omission, addition,

misinformation, and misordering, occurred on

the use of to be as Linking verb. Total errors that

occurred are 62 items with 7 items errors on the

use of to be as auxiliary verb and 55 items errors

on the use of to be as linking verb.

After conducting the research, it can be

concluded that the most frequent errors occurred

is on the use of linking verb with 88.7 % and

mostly happened in the misinformation types

with 45.2%. It can be seen from the result that

error on the use of to be as auxiliary verb is 11.3

% and error on the use of linking verb is 88.7 %.

The detail percentage in each types are 8.1 %

error on the use of to be as auxiliary verb in

misinformation type and 3.2 % in omission type,

whereas 45.2 % error on the use of to be as linking

verb in misinformation type, 20,9 % in Omission

type, 19.4 % in Addition type and the last is

Misordering type with 3.3%.

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