ELT FORUM 4 (1) (2015)

Journal of English Language Teaching

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

INTERLANGUAGE: GRAMMATICAL ERRORS ON STUDENTS’

RECOUNT TEXTS (A Case Study of First Year of MAN 2 Banjarnegara

in the Academic Year 2014/2015)

Isti Nurhayati

English Department. Faculty of Languages and Arts. State University of Semarang

Aticle Info

________________
Article History:

Received in Juni 2015

Approved in Juli 2015

Published in Agustus

2015

________________
Keywords:

Grammatical errors,

interlanguage, writing, and

recount text.

____________________

Abstract
___________________________________________________________________
Differences between Indonesian and English language makes students often feel difficult in learning English

especially in terms of grammar. Those difficulties tend to lead students to make errors in building English

sentences. However, errors are actually natural because they are regarded as developmental stage to gain English

competence, and errors are result from the students’ efforts to find ways of solving their problems. Those ways are

called interlanguage. This study aims to find out the grammatical errors that students make in writing recount

text and the interlanguage processes happen in it. The collecting data was done through writing recount text task

to get kinds of errors data made by the students, and interview for getting interlanguage data happen to the

students. The analysis steps started from identifying the errors, categorizing them into four categorizations of

errors, and triangulating the errors with other supporting data. It reveals that students tend to make the errors

omission, addition, misinformation, and misordering. The interlanguage processes happened are systematicity,

permeability, fossilization consisting of language transfer, transfer of training, strategy of second language

learning, and overgeneralization.

 Correspondent Address:

B3 Building FBS Unnes

Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229

E-mail: istinurhayati@gmail.com

ISSN 2252-6706

Isti Nurhayati / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015)

INTRODUCTION

One of the challenges faced by Indonesian

students in learning English as a foreign language

is ‘grammar’. Flynn (1995), for example, states

that language learners have some grammar,

before they begin learning their second language

which may not have any bearing on their prior

linguistic knowledge. Therefore, the learners will

unconsciously apply their grammar while

learning a new language. Because of difference

between Indonesian and English grammar, many

of the learners find it difficult to learn a new

language, English. Therefore, it makes them are

afraid of making errors when they deal with

grammar.

Nevertheless, making error is natural and

actually necessary for language learners so that

they achieve certain language competence

(Krashen, 1982: 74). Therefore, errors are not

regarded as a failure anymore, but it is considered

as an important learning process that the students

should experience for developing their

competences. Selinker (1972) calls this

phenomenon as ‘interlanguage’. An IL “can be

defined as the language of the learner” (Davies,

1989: 460), “a point on the way to a full natural

language” (Davies, 1989: 461); a development

process involving the “learner’s systematic

approximations toward the target language”

“systematic approximations toward the target

language” (Davies, 1989: 448).

Wilkins as quoted by Nunan (1991: 152)

says that acquiring grammatical system of the

target language is a central importance, because

an inadequate knowledge of grammar would

severely constrain linguistic creativity and limit

the capacity for communication. For that

statement, it is clear that when learners are not

capable in acquiring grammatical system of

language, they will not be able to achieve

language competence.

Rajeev Sinha (2003), states that there is a

question asked “Why is grammar so popular in

certain schools and with certain teachers?” First,

it is possible for a teacher to teach the grammar of

a language although he has no real command

over that language; second, grammar is so

popular with examiner. It is difficult to test fluent

speaking ability or writing ability grammar

questions are easy to set and correct; third,

Directors of Education demands grammar. They

observe that the children in the schools speak and

write ungrammatically and say, “Therefore teach

them more Grammar”.

The importance of grammar is not only for

oral language, but also the writing language needs

grammar. Some linguists argue that fluency in

writing is in paramount point that accuracy.

Writing skills is regarded as the highest level of

language competence because it needs good

performance of three other skills. Writing is also

known as a complex system because it needs

more tools and skills. According to Ramelan

(1992: 42), writing is defined as a representative

or symbol. It is not a usual symbol, but writing is

a meaningful symbol.

This study focuses on the discussion about

grammatical errors made by students and the

interlanguage process happens in it.

Interlanguage itself can be identified from the

grammatical errors made by the students. As

Endang Fauziati says in her journal entitled

Interlanguage and Error Fossilization: A Study of

Indonesian Students Learning English as A Foreign

Language, that the errors of the students become

the source for studying the system of the learners’

L2 or Interlanguage (IL). Furthermore, the writer

will use the errors of the students especially the

grammatical errors to find out the interlanguage

process happens when the students learn English,

especially in writing Recount Text.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The writer aimed to find out the varieties

of grammatical errors made by the students in

order to be able to reveal the interlanguage

happened behind the errors in that school.

Data used in this study were students”

recount texts task, and interview. The task was

given to 33 students of X7 of MAN 2

Banjarnegara consisting of 16 boys and 17 girls.

The interview was done to 16 students which

represented the kinds of errors findings. The

analysis technique of the data included

Isti Nurhayati / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015)

identifying the grammatical errors, categorizing

them into four categorizations, and analyzing the

interview data to find out the interlanguage

process happened.

In conducting this study, the writer came

to the Subject class and explained the material

about recount text to refresh the students’

memory about it. Then, the writer gave the

students time to choose the topics given and make

a free recount text consist of seven until ten

sentences of the topic they chose. After getting

their written text, the writer analyzed and

described the errors made by the students. Then,

after knowing the students who made more

grammatical errors than others and discussed

with the teacher to select the Subject of interview,

after that the writer interviewed the selected

students to find out the interlanguage process

happened and categorized it based on the matrix

of interlanguage.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

The kinds of errors that the students often

made were omitting some elements, adding,

using wrong form or misinformation, and

misordering the sentence structure. It was like

Corder said that errors are typically produced by

people who do not yet fully command some

institutionalize language systems. It happened to

the students who did not yet fully understood

about recount text and English sentence rule.

Moreover, from the errors we knew that

the interlanguage process actually happened in it

like systematicity, permeability, language transfer

transfer of training, second language learning

strategy, and overgeneralization as Selinker

explained. Those interlanguage processes

happened to the students when they faced some

tasks relating to the English material and

elements and they tried to solve that problem like;

a. Task of grammar

Most of the students felt difficult in

grammar because the rule of grammar in

Indonesian and English is quite different like the

rules of ‘to be’, gerund, and tenses including past

and present tense. In Indonesia, there is no such

kind of those rules. The errors that the subjects

often made such as using ‘to be’ in the sentences

that actually did not need that, and they also often

forgot to change the tenses that should be used. It

was because they had not been familiar with

English rule.

Those differences made students often

used Indonesian grammar when they wrote

English sentence especially when they found

difficulties in deciding the grammar that should

be used. Even though they already knew about

the differences and English grammar, when they

rarely exercised writing English sentence they

would often forget about English rule. Moreover,

when they used inappropriate learning strategy,

they would still found difficult in writing English

text like they learned English by reading only and

never practice writing. Furthermore, if such kind

of situations happened continuously, the subjects

would find ways to solve those difficulties like

construct their own rule by mixing the

Indonesian grammar and English grammar that

they already knew. Even they used Indonesian

grammar in all of their sentences because what

they knew and remembered was all about

Indonesian. Then, the interlanguage process

happened to the students when such kind of

situation above happened.

b. Task of vocabulary

Different language must have different

vocabularies. This rule is applied for Indonesian

and English languages. Most of the subjects felt

difficult in finding the words that they wanted to

use in their text while they did not know those

words in English.

When they faced such kind of situations,

some of the subjects preferred to open the

dictionary and some others liked asking to

somebody like friends and teacher. Those

strategies were not wrong as long as when the

subjects knew how to use the dictionary and also

they knew the rule of asking. It became

inappropriate strategy because the subjects used

the dictionary without knowledge of how to use

dictionary. They wrote what was in the

dictionary directly without thinking the correct

one. For example, some subjects used a

dictionary to find a word ‘bermain’, and in the

dictionary it was written ‘to play’. Because of this,

Isti Nurhayati / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015)

those subjects directly wrote ‘to play’ in their texts

and added word ‘to’ for all of the verbs in their

texts like ‘to swim’.

Furthermore, asking to somebody also was

not wrong as long as the subjects knew the rule.

A case happened to the one of the subjects that

preferred to ask to somebody when they did not

know the English words. For example, one of

subject wanted to say ‘jalan-jalan’, then, he asked

to the teacher. The teacher said ‘go walk’ in

which she pronounced /gəʊ wɔːk/, then without

opening the dictionary he directly wrote what

they already heard. Actually what he wrote was

not ‘go walk’ but ‘go wol’. This phenomenon

happened when the subjects chose inappropriate

learning strategy which became their habits, or

when the subjects used a little thing about English

and they thought that it was a correct thing and

then they applied it in their texts. This situation

showed us unconsciously that interlanguage was

happening.

Other thing that happened relating to the

difficulties in finding English words came to the

condition of higher level confusion of the subjects

that was the students used Indonesian word in

their texts. This happened to one of the subject

that used the Indonesian word ‘setelah itu’ in her

text, it was because she did not know how to say

it in English. The lack of knowledge relating to

the English vocabularies which caused by lacking

of reading habits made students came back to use

Indonesian words even when they had to produce

English sentences. It was also how the

interlanguage happened to the students.

c. Task of constructing sentences

Constructing sentences became the most

difficult part that the students faced during the

writing process. Most of the students made

misordering sentences in their recount texts.

Those errors more and less were because of the

difference between Indonesian and English

structure especially in ordering its phrases and

also an adjective used. For example, most of the

students wrote ‘home grandmother’ instead of

‘grandmother’s home’. Not only that, there were

students who wrote ‘filed football’, ‘garden fruit’,

and other phrases that had same constructions.

Based on the interview, the subjects who

made that kind of errors did not know how to

construct that phrases in English. Because of that,

they wrote it based on the Indonesian structure,

the structure that they already knew and were

familiar with. Besides, there were the subjects

who actually already knew about the rule;

however, when they made the text they forgot

about it because they felt nervous. Furthermore,

there were the subjects who made sentences

exactly same with Indonesian structure that made

the sentences was wrong. Those subjects

reasoned that they used Indonesian structure

because they felt confuse about the English

structure. When such kind of situation happened,

the interlanguage process happened to the

students. They found a way in which they could

resolve their problem in order to finish their texts.

Those ways they got from the knowledge that

they already knew and made experiment with it.

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

Conclusion

Based on the result and discussion related

to the grammatical errors which the students of

X7 MAN 2 Banjarnegara made, it concluded that

there were some conclusions:

The kinds of errors made by the students in

writing recount text were:

a. Omission in all of the grammatical features

aspects of recount text include:

1) The omission of specific participant, the

word that indicated the specific participant,

and also the sign of plurality in the Subject

of specific participant.

2) The omission of verb that indicated material

processes, the element of material processes

like a morpheme, and the word that should

complete a verb.

3) The omission of past verb, the morpheme of

past tense –ed, ‘to be’ in past form, and the

word that completed the past tense.

4) The omission of preposition in stating time

and place, the article, and the sign of

plurality.

Isti Nurhayati / Journal of English Language Teaching 4 (1) (2015)

5) The omission of temporal sequence words,

the word that completed the temporal

sequence word, and the letter of the word.

b. Addition in all of the grammatical features

aspects of recount text include:

1) The addition of ‘to be’ on the specific

participant and the adverb after Subject.

2) The addition of word ‘to’ in the verb of

material processes and the word that had

meaning with the material processes used.

3) The addition of word ‘to’ after past verb which

was not necessary, the word that had same

meaning but different form.

4) The addition of plurality, the double

preposition, and double morpheme in stating

time and place.

5) The addition of a word in the phrase of

temporal of sequence, the preposition ‘to’, and

unimportant morpheme.

c. Misinformation of all of the grammatical

features aspects of recount text include:

1) Misinformation of using letter ‘s’ as

plurality sign and the writing of number as

a rank number.

d. Misordeiring of all of the grammatical features

aspects of recount text.

1. The interlanguage process happens to the

student during writing recount text are:

a. Systematicity

The students constructed a sentence and

grammar based on coherent rules which students

constructed and selected in predictable ways such

as taking a rule from the example that they saw.

b. Permeability

The students constructed a sentence and

rule from the rules that they knew and worked

with their feeling to combine it.

c. Language of transfer

The students often used Indonesian

language structure sentence to construct their

English sentence.

d. Transfer of training

The students constructed the sentence

based on what they already did before.

e. Strategy of Second Language Learning

The students laid on the dictionary and

asking to the friends while they constructing a

sentence.

f. Overgeneralization

The students used the tense and verb form

that they already knew without knowing the

context of the sentence.

Suggestions

Based on the conclusions of the result of

the study, the writer recommended some

suggestions to solve the errors made by the

students and the interlanguage process happened

to the students, among others were:

1. For the teachers

The errors are not a failure that the

students might not do that, so the teacher should

analyze the error made by the students to know

what the students need.

2. For the students

The students are hoped can really

understand about the difference between

Indonesian and English language and the

students should find their strategies in learning

English that can develop the four skills of English.

3. For the school

The school should provide the facility that

supports the English learning process especially

in developing the students’ English skill.

4. For future researchers

For future researchers especially those who

work in language program who wants to resolve

the problems of kinds of grammatical errors and

interlanguage can use the result of this study as

the background to decide the best method in

learning English.

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