The particular dialect or language that a person chooses to use on any occasion is called a code 1886 Copyright © 2023 The Author IDEAS is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 License Issued by English study program of IAIN Palopo IDEAS Journal of Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) Volume 11, Number 2, December 2023 pp. 1886 - 1896 The Identification of Subject Verb Agreement Mistake Committed by Fourth Semester Student Using Corder’s Theory in English Education Department at University Mini Enggelina Papua Putri Dasra1, Suardi Sahid2, Riana Murianty3 123Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, Universitas Papua, Manokwari e-mail: suardisahidadi@gmail.com Received: 2023-12-16 Accepted: 2023-12-31 DOI: 10.24256/ideas.v11i2.4351 Abstract This study aims to identify the main problems with the Subject-Verb Agreement found in students writing in the English Education major at University of Papua, to know the main problem researcher used Corder’s theory to determine the mistake in student’s essay while their write. This research was conducted on semester 4th students of the University of Papua. The method used is a qualitative descriptive. The findings of the research show that there were a lot of mistakes that occurred in students’ essays. where the highest percentage of error was Omission (43.97%), then Mis-information (29.08%), Addition (20.99%) and the lowest error was Mis-ordering (4.96%). Furthermore, there are several causes of these errors, namely First language influence, language exposure and carelessness. Basically, the causes of the errors that have been exposed above are the sources of error that are found in students' writing. To avoid and reduce those errors, the students should practice and expose themselves to their language targets. Keywords: Writing, Error Analysis, Subject Verb Agreement Introduction There are four English skills that must be mastered by English education students. One of them is writing skills. Writing is an ability of arranging word into form of http://u.lipi.go.id/1457703302 mailto:suardisahidadi@gmail.com IDEAS, Vol. 11, No. 2, December 2023 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 1887 sentences. Writing also become the most difficult challenge because students have to be aware about organizing idea, grammar revise, vocabularies etc. Thus, writing is not only about writing what you think. Durga and Rao (2018) stated that in order to enhance student academic and professional level, students have to learn the art of writing. Mastered writing skill are needed to accomplish their educational and employable requirements. Ismayanti and Kholiq (2020) defined writing is a productive skill which can help students to develop their ability to expressing what they think and feel. Moreover, Jayanti (2019) stated that students can develop their English ability such as grammar and vocabulary through writing activity. However, in real situation many English students assume that the hardest skill to master is writing skills. Thus, most of them tend reluctant to learn writing skills and also that situation makes them stressed. There are several factors that make English students have difficulty in learning writing skills, such as organizing ideas, lack of vocabulary, grammar accuracy, etc. Besides speaking, writing is also a productive skill, where people tend to produce the language. That’s why both speaking and writing belong to the hardest skills to be mastered. Based on the researcher’s experience, there are some difficulties that students get while writing. Some of them are omission and addiction that students often do at the beginning of learning to write. These types of errors also hinder students from developing their writing. Because they were spending a lot of time thinking about whether their essay is correct or incorrect. Sometimes students make mistakes while write a simple essay, they unconsciously make mistake in subject verb agreement in their essay. In this research, researcher prefer to use the term mistake rather than error in the title because of the context of mistake where as we know that mistake is imperfection that native speakers and second language learners did unconsciously while producing the language. On the other hand, this research was conducted in English education students who learn about the rules of English; thus, their errors belong to a mistake. In addition, there are type of error according to Corder, namely omission, addition, misinformation and misordering those are mistakes that often arise when writing. This is influenced by the mother tongue where the grammar is different from English and on. Thus, when writing students tend to incorporate grammar in the mother tongue and change it to English. In this case, to find out what causes students tend to experience problems in writing. Which researcher wants to find the main problem with Subject Verb Agreement found in students' writing. Saidah and Royani (2019) argue that verb agreement is also one of the highest errors that occurred in students writing where the students are still confused about used plular or singular subject with the verbs. Unlike the Subject Verb object (SVO) based on Arsai and Sahid (2022) stated that, Mini Enggelina Papua Putri Dasra1, Suardi Sahid2, Riana Murianty3 The Identification of Subject Verb Agreement Mistake Committed by Fourth Semester Student Using Corder’s Theory in English Education Department at University 1888 SVO has the simple noun that the form is agglutinate. Labicane and Oliva (2022) Stated that subject verb agreement is one of the common errors that occurred. Hong et al., (2021) indicated that the difficulty that students face is deciding where the correct form pattern of verbs and the subjects. The cause of this error was lack of grammatical in target language and the influence of mother tongue. Furthermore, it can be concluded that this research is about the error analysis carried out by students at the University of Papua. The researcher chooses university students because in university, especially in English education major they learn skill more specific. They learn about writing skill, in English education the students learn about skills but they learn it separate, for example in writing course students just learn about writing as the result they able to write properly rather than student at high school. As we know, that students at high school just learn about English in general. Finding the main problems with Subject-Verb Agreement in students' writing was the focus of this study. The reason why researcher include SVA in this study is based on many students and researchers themselves still make mistakes in SVA. Usually this error is found when students write using simple present tense. For example, the subject I, You, We, They, Verb used is Verb I. This is a simple example of SVA usage. Although it looks simply, many students make mistakes in SVA. Method This study aims to find the main problem in students' Subject Verb Agreement. The researcher applied qualitative descriptive. The sample are fourth semester students. This research applied purposive sampling to consider the sample fit the criteria. This research involved 10 students. However, the students who fit the criteria only 8 students. The criteria were the students were fourth semester students who take writing III courses and they should have collected their last assignment and their final exams. The instrument of this research was a test. to collect the data was the assignment and the final exam. Where the students have to write an essay with the same title that their lecture gave to them. Furthermore, researcher divided the error into four types of error divides error into 4 superficial basic namely, omission, addition, selection (misinformation) and ordering (Misordering). After dividing the errors, the researcher arranged the errors based on the highest errors to the lowest errors. Results After done with all the steps above, the researcher formulated the findings. Based on the result, the highest error was Omission with 62 errors and the frequency was 43.97 %. In omission there consisted of several grammar issues: missing verbs, missing articles, missing pronoun, missing prepositions, missing letters, missing conjunction, missing nouns, absence of –s/-es. The second one was mis-information with 41 errors IDEAS, Vol. 11, No. 2, December 2023 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 1889 or 29.08% that consist of incorrect verbs, incorrect nouns, incorrect prepositions, incorrect conjunction, incorrect adverb, incorrect article. Then, addition with 31 errors and the frequency was 20.99% that Double verbs, Double prepositions, Double article, Unnecessary prepositions Unnecessary articles, Unnecessary letters, Unnecessary pronoun, Unnecessary adjective, and the lowest error that occurred was mis-ordering, only one error there was Word in wrong order with 7 errors or 4.96%. The recapitulation errors of students’ omission error No. Types of Errors Students’ specific grammar issues Number of errors Total of error Frequency of students’ error 1 Omission Missing verbs 14 62 43.97% Missing articles 14 Missing pronoun 1 Missing prepositions 4 Missing letters 17 Missing conjunction 1 Missing nouns 2 Absence of –s/-es 9 Researcher found that the highest errors made by students were omission with 9 specific grammar issues. There were 8 students who made omission errors. The total number of errors was 62 (43.97%). The error consists of 14 missing verbs, 14 missing articles, 17 missing letters, as the most grammar issues that occurred. And 1 missing pronoun, 1 missing conjunction as the least errors that occurred. This type of error was the opposite of the addition error. For example, in the sentence “the city right to my passion”. The sentence should be “the city is right to my passion”. That is an example of a missing verb. Then example of missing articles, “Yard in my house big”. In this sentence, the student didn’t put article and verb whereas this sentence needed the definite article ‘the’ before the word ‘yard’ to indicate that the identity of the noun is known to the reader. The correct form of this sentence is “The yard in my house is big”. Furthermore, the example of missing letter “I am interested in medicin.” It is obvious that the student omitted the letter /e/ for medicine. The sentence should be “I am interested in medicine”. Not only missing letters, sometimes students also miss –s in their sentences such as “If something happen.” In this one, the student omitted the letter /s/ it might happen because the student doesn’t know that the word ‘something’ is singular. The sentence should be “If something happens”. Mini Enggelina Papua Putri Dasra1, Suardi Sahid2, Riana Murianty3 The Identification of Subject Verb Agreement Mistake Committed by Fourth Semester Student Using Corder’s Theory in English Education Department at University 1890 The recapitulation errors of students’ Mis-information error No. Types of Errors Students’ specific grammar issues Number of errors Total of error Frequency of students’ error 2 Mis- information Incorrect verbs 18 41 29.08% Incorrect nouns 14 Incorrect prepositions 6 Incorrect conjunction 1 Incorrect adverb 1 Incorrect article 1 There were 8 students who made mis-information errors in their essays. The total number of errors was 41 errors. The highest error was incorrect verbs with 18 grammar issues. It became the most error that occurred. And the last error that occurs were incorrect conjunction, incorrect article and incorrect adverb with only 1 grammar issue. As we know, mis-information was an error that might happen when the students put incorrect verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs etc in their sentences. To give you an idea, here is an example from the students' essays. “My father is graduate from the same faculty”. The student puts the word "graduate" in her sentence. However, in her essay she was talking about her father's studies in the past. Thus, instead of using the word "graduate", she should use the word "graduated" in her sentence. Therefore, the sentence should be “My father graduated from the same faculty”. This type of error was mostly caused by students L1. In this case, the students knew how to arrange the sentences. But, the students have no idea whether the verbs and nouns that they use were incorrect. As we know, in Bahasa the verbs and the nouns didn’t change, while in English there were some verbs and nouns that might change because of tenses. Because of these differences, this kind of error might happen in students’ essays. Muhammed (2019) knowing the core meaning is not adequate thus should choose variants of meaning that match to co-text and collocational relation hence it takes an important role in determining the meaning of the polysemic words. It means that the students should be careful with other forms of the word in order to avoid the use of incorrect verbs, nouns, prepositions etc. The recapitulation errors of students’ Addition error No. Types of Errors Students’ specific grammar issues Number of errors Total of error Frequency of students’ error 3 Addition Double verbs 11 31 20.99% Double prepositions 2 Double article 1 Unnecessary 2 IDEAS, Vol. 11, No. 2, December 2023 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 1891 prepositions Unnecessary articles 2 Unnecessary letters 11 Unnecessary pronoun 1 Unnecessary adjective 1 There were 8 students that made errors in addition. The total number of errors made by students were 31 errors (20.99%). The highest grammar issues were double verbs with 11 grammar issues. The lowest grammar issues were Double article, unnecessary pronoun and unnecessary adjective with 1 grammar issue. Because of these errors, some of students' sentences became strange because of the unnecessary elements that they put in their sentences. For example, the sentence “I come in from Anggi” based on this sentence, the student clearly put unnecessary prepositions in this sentence. It was grammatically incorrect according to the rules of Bahasa or English. It happened when students were unaware of what they wrote because of limited time. Thus, this sentence should be “I come from Anggi”. Another example of mis- information such as “My goal when I am finishing my master degree” in this sentence, the student used two verbs in one sentence. This sentence should be “My goal when I finish my master degree”. On the other hand, grammar issues like unnecessary letters quite often occurred. In these issues, the students tend to add some letters that made them misspell the vocabulary, for instance, “this country provides schoolareship for students.” The student added letter /o/ and letter /e/ in that sentence so the student misspells that word. That sentence should be “this country provides scholarship for students.” The type of error that made the students tend to put unnecessary items called Addition. this type of error was opposite to omission. In the result, addition became the third highest error. This type of error consists of 8 grammar issues. from these 8 grammar issues, double verbs became the most error that occurred. The cause of this error was quite similar with omission where the students were careless and lack of knowledge. In some cases, the students combined two tenses, they used simple present tense verbs and past tense verbs in one sentence. The recapitulation errors of students’ Mis-ordering error No. Types of Errors Students’ specific grammar issues Number of errors Total of error Frequency of students’ error 4 Mis-ordering Word in wrong order 7 7 4.96% Mis-ordering was the least error that occurred, there were 3 out of 8 students that made error. In this error the students tend to wrote English with the rule of Bahasa. For Mini Enggelina Papua Putri Dasra1, Suardi Sahid2, Riana Murianty3 The Identification of Subject Verb Agreement Mistake Committed by Fourth Semester Student Using Corder’s Theory in English Education Department at University 1892 example, “like I know island Raja Ampat.” Whether the student translated the sentence it looks like there was no mistake. Grammatically it was incorrect, it should be “like I know, Raja Ampat island.” Mis-ordering was the lowest error that researcher found. This error only consists of one grammar issues there was word in wrong order. This error might happen because of students L1. However, not only the L1 but other aspects also included as the cause of the error. The cause of this error was similar with mis- information, the students tended to arrange the sentence based on their mother language. But, because of the sample of this research was English education students, not wonder they more aware with the rules to arrange the sentences as the result this type of error became lower. Discussions The highest error that occurred in students’ sentences is Omission. Then the cause of these error was because of their first language influence (L1) and students’ carelessness. The researcher would like to give some suggestions. The students should learn different kind of vocabulary, such as irregular verbs, countable nouns, uncountable nouns etc. those kinds of vocabulary could help the students to arrange sentences in their essays with various vocabulary. The students should learn about grammar and tenses. This one is quite important because lately some students tent to combine two tenses in one sentence or even used incorrect verbs. The students should be more aware while writing. They should be more careful to avoid errors like addition, omission, mis-information and mis-ordering. The students have to read the essays after finishing it to decrease those errors. The students should manage their time. While writing, students put long time to think the idea, that’s make them wasted time. The students should practice more. By practicing writing, the students would be able to cover all the suggestions above. Those kinds of error might happen because of their first language influence (L1). Error is the result of influence of the mother tongue on the learning process. That statement in line with the findings that the students made error that related by their mother tongue (first language) while wrote. Mertosono and Erniwati (2023) argue that the stint knowledge of the target language was the major cause of the students’ errors. The translation that they used to arrange the sentences and the students' carelessness were taking a part as cause of the error. Carelessness might happen because of the limited time during wrote essay. Besides, language exposure also became one of the causes of the errors above. Language exposure is a contact that the students have while they are trying to learn general or specific language points. Language exposure can support the students to learn the correct pronunciation, to understand the grammar and tenses etc. Go kcan & Aktan (2019) state that exposure to English has an important effect on writing skills, grammar and vocabulary improvement. However, it found that there were a lot of error occurred it meant that the students do not have enough IDEAS, Vol. 11, No. 2, December 2023 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 1893 exposure the target language. Samudro and Amin (2022) mention that receive exposure to a certain language provided that the output become appropriate when using the target language. Moreover, there were several things that made students unconsciously did mistake while they wrote their essays. As the researcher mentioned in the literature review, the cause of errors was carelessness, first language influence (L1), translation etc. Carelessness can also happen not only when the students have no interest to the topic but also because of limited time and anxiety that occurred during the class. There were parts where the students have to think about what they want to wrote. The point was they must have an idea to start wrote their essays. After that, they have to think the words that they need in their essays this habit was also taking a long time. Sometimes the students just afraid about what they have done in their essays. They were hesitating whether the sentences were incorrect. They felt shame if the grammar was wrong while they wrote in the class. Students wasted their time with thinking. Then, when they ran out of time, they start to write anything without thinking twice. In other word, the students became careless because they didn’t have enough time. In addition, students L1 were also take big role of student mistake in their sentences. The rules of Bahasa are quite different with English. But, some of students tended to mix up both of Bahasa and English, as the result a lot of students made some error in their verbs which is, they put wrong verbs or even omitted the verbs. In Bahasa, the verbs didn’t change while in English there were several verbs that might change. Therefore, students should be more careful when writing. Several things that the researcher mentioned above were obvious that carelessness and first language influence (L1) and lack of exposure were related to each other as cause of error while students arranged a sentence. Besides carelessness, language exposure and first language influents there were other aspects that became problem in the process of writing. When students focus to face one problem like organizing ide, they wasted the time. This situation usually happened in the class even if the students knew how to organizing the idea, lack of vocabulary became the next obstacles, so that make students tended to use the same vocabulary in whole essays and sometimes they misspell some vocabularies. Then, grammar accuracy also makes some students get confused while they were thinking about it. Subject Verb Agreement looks easy, which a singular subject takes a singular verb and a plural subject takes plural verb. Subject Verb Agreement refers to the fact that the subject and verb in a sentence must agree in the sentence. The main problem that occurred in students subject, verb, Agreement while they writing was their verbs and vocabularies. They know how to made agreement in their sentence but error might Mini Enggelina Papua Putri Dasra1, Suardi Sahid2, Riana Murianty3 The Identification of Subject Verb Agreement Mistake Committed by Fourth Semester Student Using Corder’s Theory in English Education Department at University 1894 occur because of bounty causes like researcher explained above. After divided the error into 4 types of error, the most error with high number also related to student’s verbs and vocabularies which is a lot of students tended to misspell the vocabularies by added and omitted the letter in several vocabularies, to avoid or decrease the error while writing the students should practice more and be more careful with grammar, tenses and exposure themselves to the target Language. Conclusion After Familiarizing, analyzing, compering and interpreting the data from semester 4th students from English Education at Unipa. The errors that students made are categorized at 4 types of errors, that consist of Omission (43.97%), Mis-information (29.08%) Addition (20.99%), and Mis-ordering (4.96%). Furthermore, the researcher divided those types of errors into several specific grammar issues. After that, researcher found that almost the highest error that found in students’ essays related to the verbs and the vocabularies where some students unconsciously used incorrect verbs and misspell some vocabularies. Thus, researcher concluded that the main problems that students committed were the verbs and the vocabularies. The main source of students’ errors with their SVA in their essays were Carelessness and First Language influence (L1). Even the most cause of errors was carelessness and first language; the other aspect also take part as cause of error while students writing. First Language influence (L1) was quite hard to avoid by students while writing. As we know that in our country (Indonesia) English used as foreign language not second language that meant that students in Indonesia unfamiliar with the rule of English. Students usually used Bahasa Indonesia because of that while students tried to write in English, they usually unconsciously put the pattern of Bahasa with the English words. Meanwhile carelessness might happen when student had no interesting to what they wrote, however another thing that made carelessness occurred also the pressure that they get while writing in the class. To give you an idea, while students started to write there were several steps that they have to do in order to get the idea and organizing the idea. When they spend time for those things, they ran out the time, then they realized that they have to hurry up because of limited time. Thus, they going to write everything without thinking twice. In this case, even they knew the correct tenses or the vocabulary they just forget about it and tried to finish their essays. References Arsai, A., & Sahid, S. (2022). A Brief Semantic Analysis on the Form and Function of Biak’s article ’ma’. 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Students’ Perspective in the Use of TED Talks in Mini Enggelina Papua Putri Dasra1, Suardi Sahid2, Riana Murianty3 The Identification of Subject Verb Agreement Mistake Committed by Fourth Semester Student Using Corder’s Theory in English Education Department at University 1896 Speaking Class. IDEAS: Journal on English Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature, 9(2), 275-283. doi:https://doi.org/10.24256/ideas.v9i2.2277