Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) Volume 5, Issue 1, January 2019 p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/index 107 NATIVE LANGUAGE INTERFERENCE ON TARGET LANGUAGE WRITINGS OF INDONESIAN EFL STUDENTS: AN EXPLORATORY CASE STUDY R. Agus Budiharto English Education Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, University of Madura, Indonesia E-mail: congbudiharto@gmail.com APA Citation: Budiharto, R. A. (2018). Native language interference on target language writings of Indonesian EFL students: An Exploratory case study. Indonesian EFL Journal, 5(1), 107-116. doi: 10.25134/ieflj.v5i1.1630. Received: 28-09-2018 Accepted: 30-11-2018 Published: 01-01-2019 Abstract: Possessing language students who are skilled in creating a structured, orderly and no error-found piece of composition constitutes a hope and a wish for many EFL teachers, as they are the individuals who undergo a big problem when their students commit numerous errors in EFL writing as a result of their native language interference. This study is aimed at exploring native language influence on students’ English writings as well as investigating the salient and common grammatical errors in their writing with the purpose of checking whether or not Indonesian as the students’ L1 influence them when writing in English. To this end, a corpus of 22 English essays written by students is examined and the errors are then categorized according to the following aspects: grammatical, lexico-semantic, mechanics, and word order sorts of errors. In this study, mixed methods research designs are used: quantitative and qualitative. The results revealed that UNIRA students commit different sorts of errors which are chiefly on account of their native language (Indonesian) interference. The students highly rely on their L1 in stating their thoughts, even though the ranking processes revealed that their essays hold different sorts of errors, those in the grammar and the lexico-semantic statistically constitute the most serious and recurrent ones. Keywords: grammatical sentence; L1 interference; lexico-semantic; writing. INTRODUCTION There seem to be an acknowledged truth that English language has appeared become a worldwide language and a lot of nations of the world are struggling a lot for learning it as a target language (TL) or a foreign language (FL). English, which is broadly employed in either spoken or written forms, has been a significant communication instrument in a multi-ethnic humanity and can be used for many different interests in a variety of fields, such as in the field of education, business, employment, etc. By virtue of its increasing significance, more attention and endeavor are placed within the instructions of language, writing for instance. Schunk (2009) has a notion, that “writing forms an important component of literacy although less research is conducted on writing”. It is perceived as a very complicated activity even in the mother tongue. Moreover, writing in a foreign language definitely is twice more complicated and it may take time and attempt to become skilful in it. For Indonesian learners as TL learners at all stages doing activities of writing in English as a foreign language (EFL) frequently present immense challenge and meet difficulties with an accomplishment related to chiefly writing in English as their target language. Writing proficiency is considered as the most complicated one to master for them. The complexities lie both on how ideas are generated and organized, and on how these notions are translated into legible text. More importantly, Indonesian learners of English have to consider the use of the EFL sentence structures appropriately in order to be able to write an essay well. It is mailto:hanifadiantika@gmail.com R. Agus Budiharto Native language interference on target language writings of Indonesian EFL students: An Exploratory case study 108 so noteworthy to be applied that it can create a good piece of writing in English. Within the study of target language, the grammatical sentence structure may occupy a leading position. It is because discovering how words are pronounced, spelled, and their meaning in dictionaries is seemingly uncomplicated, but examining the grammatical sentence structures of TL without having a substantial command regarding the rules of grammatical sentence structure in TL is seemingly complicated. Hence, a case of the rules of grammatical sentence structure within target language merit more focused attention. Indonesian and English have divergence in the rules of the grammatical sentence structure, the linguistic parts, and the verb forms. In Indonesian, the forms of the verb do not need to change its form, whereas the verb forms of English alter a lot. In English usage, if Indonesian students wish to state actions or events that are happening, they have to employ pattern ‘S+ Verb ‘be’ + ing form’. If Indonesian students wish to say something occurs in the past, they have to utilize the past tense time. All in all, the individuals require using different tenses to express something occurring in different times. In Indonesian, we just alter adverbial phrases to state something that occurs in different times. In addition, there are a number of distinctions on the verb’s meaning between Indonesian and English; therefore, it is very easy for Indonesian students to yield errors in employing verbs in English writing. Given English constitutes the FL/TL for Indonesian students, the mother tongue then will inevitably possess some unaware influence on employing the TL. It is fairly common for Indonesian students to take their grammar to English writing. In any case, they translate words, phrases, sentences from Indonesian into English by employing the cognitive process in Indonesian’s structure in their writing. Therefore, unavoidably, it can interfere with their written English. Despite the fact that writing is regarded as an extremely difficult practice, the students cannot stop practicing it. It is because in students’ academic life, writing gives an indispensable feature for them. Clearly, writing in target language (TL) is not a simple job to achieve with no difficulties because when writing TL, many appealing possibilities of knowledge occur. One of them is the native language (L1) interference. Native language interference then can be associated with writers utilizing command from their mother tongue (L1) to a foreign language or target language. Taking into account many researchers have developed theoretical approach, which have effectively investigated L1 interference “so that students, learners, researchers, and teachers of the second language could further develop the exploration about the impact of mother tongue influence” (Olutekunbi, 2011). Additionally, according to Adebayo (2017), numerous studies have been carried out around the world, chiefly after the establishment of second language acquisition (SLA) in the 1970s. Since this time, many researchers and linguistic experts have carried on examining the influence of native language interference in the learning of a FL or a TL. It is generally admitted that the native language (L1) has an influence on TL or FL particularly when it takes place to writing, which is deemed the most complicated proficiency to master. Nowadays, there has been mounting attention in many studies connected to writing since such proficiency is regarded as an extremely important matter not only inside academic studies but also outside academic learning. Possessing language students who are skilled in creating a structured, orderly and no error-found piece of composition actually constitutes a hope and a wish for many EFL teachers because they are the individuals who undergo a big problem when their students commit numerous errors in EFL writing as a result of their L1 interference. Moreover, the most important task the EFL teachers must do is to instruct their students not only how to consider but also to employ a TL/FL like the Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) Volume 5, Issue 1, January 2019 p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/index 109 native employer does. Indeed, this is not a trouble-free task for the teachers. The influence of mother tongue is obviously revealed in the written forms that become the starting point of technique the teacher uses in testing their student skill. The present study aims to explore native language influence on second-year University of Madura (UNIRA) English-major students’ written English in Writing Course 1, as well as to investigate the common grammatical errors in their writings with the purpose of checking whether or not Indonesian as UNIRA students’ L1 potentially influence them when writing in English. UNIRA is one of private universities in Indonesia owning English Education Department of FKIP where English is a medium of the instruction. In this regard, UNIRA students of English Education Department have to use English when they are doing communication, presentation, written assignments, or examination in the EFL classroom. That is why the students’ considerable knowledge of English sentence structure is considerably needed. It has been accepted that in the process of learning English as FL or TL native Indonesia-speaking UNIRA students meet many difficulties and commit numerous errors. Error analysis (EA) is accounted as a set of actions to identify, describe, and explain learners’ errors (Ellis & Barkhuizen, 2005). However, EA not only relates to identify and detect learner’s errors but also to explain the reason for occurrence of learner’s errors. EA, a particular type of linguistic analysis that is dealt with the errors the learners create, has started to be a much-discussed issue within the field of EFL. Error analysis is very significant to be done, it is because to know if there are errors to be corrected or not. Essentially, an error relates to an identifiable change of the grammatical elements of a native speaker, depicting the learners’ aptitude in the target language (Brown, 2007). Additionally, errors in language learning come about systematically and repeatedly with no any notice by the learners (Gass & Selinker, 2008). Errors, as the non- native outcomes of the learners’ inadequate linguistics command, are viewed as mother tongue interference in the foreign language or target language. Interference, in this regard, means transferring of element of one language into learning of another. Errors may develop automatically as languages skill development that can be obtained and learnt. There are two ways in developing the language aptitude. First way is concerning language acquisition which can be regarded as a subconscious process and comes about in natural non-intimidating surroundings. Language errors in the natural surroundings usually are not at once corrected as they might be in informal academic surroundings. Second way is concerning language learning which takes place at school in an academic setting. It is unlike language acquisition, this type of language learning is regarded a deliberate process. Thus, errors frequently take place in this type of language learning since rules and grammar dealing with what learning is all regarding. This indicates that errors can be caused when individuals began learning languages. According to Darus and Ching (2009), errors in EFL writing occur as a result of interlingual and intralingual errors. Errors located to be attributable to L1 interference are called ‘interlingual’. ‘Interference’ or also named ‘transfer errors’ which become the major concern of this study, is defined as the inappropriate influence of a native language (L1) structures or rules on second language (L2) use (Saville-Troike, 2006). Moreover, the influence of a native language on the TL has become a main problem, which not only influences language students in acquiring a new language but also in the quality of written English as a TL. Olanipekun et al. (2014) maintain that school students may elicit the poor-quality level of attainment in numerous areas of study by virtue of a poor- quality foundation in the language of English, which always associated with the clash between native language and English as TL. At any rate, the interference as stated by Ellis (2008) can occur in a variety of areas of linguistics components (such as phonology, R. Agus Budiharto Native language interference on target language writings of Indonesian EFL students: An Exploratory case study 110 morphology, syntax, lexis and semantics). L1 interference is traceable to system of the native language in influencing the making of the target language. This way is considered as language transfer (LT). LT is a significant cognitive aspect regarding error in writing English as foreign language or TL. LT involves positive and negative. It is called positive transfer or facilitation when learner transfers structures of TL and structures of any other languages that is regarded similar and correct, or in another words positive transfer takes place when L1 and TL contain appropriate structures of linguistics. In contrast, negative transfer occurs when learner transfers structures of the two languages which are regarded dissimilar, inappropriate or ‘error’. An error that occurs due to the learners’ ignorance of an item in TL is called intralingual error. In the words of Darus and Ching (2009), intralingual errors are those that occur because of incomplete application of rules and failure to learn conditions for rule application as experiences in the TL are very limited. Generally speaking, in the language learning process, this error usually occurs when the learners have acquired a limited linguistic knowledge, for example, in grammar rules which are puzzling them. Intralingual error consists of some subcategories of errors, namely: 1) overgeneralization - it is related to redundancy reduction. It occurs when the learners face the difficulties to apply the rules of TL, they attempts to reduce their linguistics burden by over-generalizing their rule to cover examples to which that rule does not apply. As a result, they make an unexpected arrangement on the foundation of other arrangements in TL, e.g. "She will swims" whereas English rule allows “She will swim" and "She swims"; 2) Ignorance of Rule Restriction - this term is associated with the learners’ failure to notice the limits of existing structure, effecting in the wrong use of norms in TL. The learners are unsure of applying the correct rules of TL grammar, which are appropriate for the acceptable English usage. Thus they are inclined to take no notice of the rules, and attempt to apply what look ‘correct’ to them in a special context, e.g. "The man who we saw him" through extension of the pattern “The man whom we saw"; 3) Incomplete application of rules - it deals with errors created by the learners when they apply a completely developed arrangement, e.g. “Where they buy the umbrella?" instead of “Where do they buy the umbrella”; and 4) Incorrect hypothesis - this refers to errors resulting from incorrect notions hypothesized derive from the incorrect comprehension of difference in the TL. The learners are not able to completely comprehend a difference in the TL, e.g. the application of “is” as an indicator of simple present tense in “He is cleaned the garden” whereas English rule allows “He cleans the garden or He is cleaning the garden”. Given that learners’ L1 plays a very important role in getting knowledge of TL, it needs to be noticed that many studies have been carried out to examine the interference of mother tongue (L1) in the learning of English as a foreign language or a target Language. A research by Bridgit (2015) which highlighted the grammatical bits of English affected by the grammatical bits of Lumarachi among the Lumarachi students of English by investigating the examples of interference by virtue of errors of morphology demonstrated that differences regarding the phonological and morphological structural between Lumarachi and English cause L1interference. In addition, another study conducted by Adebayo (2017) that investigated the extent to which the grammatical and structural differences between English and Yoruba influences the learners’ English aptitude revealed that errors became inevitable in L2 acquisition, taking into account that even advanced students of a foreign language are prone to commit errors. Bearing in mind the use of a native language on the TL becomes a main trouble, which influences language learners in Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) Volume 5, Issue 1, January 2019 p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/index 111 learning English as TL/FL, thus this study aims to examine the errors native Indonesia- speaking UNIRA students generate when writing essay in English and to explore the causes and sources of the students’ errors. The error sorts attributed by native language will be presented in the following category; errors in grammar, lexico-semantics, word order, and mechanical errors. METHOD In this study, mixed methods research designs are used: quantitative and qualitative. According to Gay, Mills and Airasian (2009), “mixed methods research designs combine quantitative and qualitative approaches by including both quantitative and qualitative data in a single study”. The quantitative method is used with the intention of collecting the data of the statistic regarding errors that were obtained from the subjects’ written composition. While the qualitative method is used with the intention of collecting the data empirically in the written composition form made by the subject for analyzing the error. Twenty-two students of UNIRA from English Education Department of FKIP participated in this study. They were registered in the English Writing I course during the second semester of the academic year 2016-2017. The partaking students have ever been studying EFL as a school discipline for 6 years when they were in middle school and high school. Nevertheless, all of them also had their education in national schools, in which Indonesian as their native language became the media of instruction. They all started learning Indonesian in elementary school more or less at the age of 7. In contrast, English is a TL taught as EFL in their college. All of the participants speak more Indonesian as native language (L1) at their home and with their friends than English. The data was gained by collecting a piece of the students’ writing which was produced in an assignment of the English Writing I in a classroom. Each of the students was given a theme: “A good student and a bad student,” then they were asked to write on it approximately 120 to 200 words. The compositions were all written in 60-minute class sessions. The students were not conscious that their essays are going to be under analysis. Twenty-two essays collected were analyzed to examine a variety of errors and to count the amounts and ratios. Then, the highest existing of either interference will be described quantitatively because quantitative study reports statistical information including percentages displayed in helpful graphics for example graphs and charts (Nunan & Bailey, 2009). This present study was carried out, through Error Analysis (EA) to explore the sorts of error UNIRA students composed in their EFL writings. In analyzing the data, Ellis and Barkhuizen’s steps (2005) are utilized in this study. They are 1) collection of a sample of learner language; 2) identification of errors; 3) description of errors; and 4) explanation of errors. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Interlingual errors generated by the UNIRA students were classified according to the grammar error (words or sentences which are relative to tense, subject-verb-agreement, singular/plural markers, articles and preposition), the lexico-semantic error (errors associated with wrong choice of vocabulary meaning), the mechanical error (spelling error), and word order errors. Table 1 shows the sorts of interlingual errors. Table 1. Sorts of interlingual errors No Sorts of errors Freq. % 1 Grammatical Errors Tense Subject-verb-agreement Singular/Plural Markers Articles Prepositions 34 15 12 12 5 32% 15% 12% 12% 4% 2 Lexico-Semantic Errors 14 14% 3 Mechanical Error 9 8% 4 Word Order 5 4% Total 106 100% Further, Figure 1 illustrates total number of UNIRA EFL students’ errors. The R. Agus Budiharto Native language interference on target language writings of Indonesian EFL students: An Exploratory case study 112 statistics presented in the figure proves that the grammatical category constitutes the salient errors category with the highest percentage of 75%. Then, the lexico-semantic errors category comes in the second position because it contains a problematic feature of the target language (TL) that is regarding spelling with a percentage of 14%. Next, the mechanical errors come in the third position with a percentage of 8% and lastly are the word order errors with the lowest percentage of 4%. Figure 1. Total number of UNIRA EFL students’ errors Grammatical errors From Figure 2, it can be seen that the tense errors have the highest percentage of 32% and form the most troublesome part, subject- verb-agreement errors are 15%, singular/ plural markers errors are 12%, articles errors are 12%, and the lowest percentage is 4% which represents preposition errors. Figure 2. Grammatical errors Tense errors Tense errors become the most salient characteristic in the target language writings of UNIRA students. These errors constitute 34% of the whole numbers of error. The students commit numerous grammatical errors for a number of reasons. They are not able to write appropriate negative or interrogative sentences in the simple present tense. Auxiliary verb forms of simple present tense, such as do and does, should be employed in making construction in either negative or interrogative form. However, the students do not utilize the verb forms and surprisingly they utilize be “is” in both negative and interrogative sentence. It may occur since there are no English auxiliary verb forms in Indonesian sentence; the students thus produce errors in their construction (see examples 1 and 2). They are also inclined to add one of the different forms of the conjugated verb “be” (such as: are, was) to become an additional verb in constructing simple present tense and simple past tense form (see examples 3, 4, and 5), and also the students are puzzled to make interrogative sentence forms so they omit auxiliary verbs which should be utilized (see examples 6, 7, and 8). The students also omit copula verb, such as is, am, are, in creating a positive sentence form (see example 9). Besides, they are predisposed to omit helping verb form when they make a present progressive tense (see examples 10 and 11). 1. He is not respect time 2. Why is he come late? 3. They are listen to lesson well 4. they are come late 5. He was live in a bad society 6. He not listen his teacher 7. Why the student not obey the rule? 8. How they educate them? 9. A kind student not always smart 10. when the teacher teaching the material 11. He often not coming to class These findings reveal that the participants do not possess a comprehensive command on the use of different verb tenses in English such as copula, helping verb and auxiliary Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) Volume 5, Issue 1, January 2019 p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/index 113 verb. The students also feel perplexed and meet complexity in selecting and utilizing the appropriate verbs in verb phrases. Accordingly, they mismatched an item in a verb form to other verb forms incorrectly and they produce errors in their writings. These errors are caused by negative transfer or interference since the students are already accustomed to the simple arrangement of Indonesian verb tense. Subject-verb agreement errors The second rank in the grammatical errors is the incorrect use of subject-verb agreement with a percentage of 15%. In the English sentence rule, the subject and the verb phrase are supposed to agree in number and person. Such as a singular subject agrees with a singular verb, whereas a plural subject is followed by a plural verb. However, the students frequently are not aware when to add the bound morpheme “s” of singular and when to add the plural morpheme “s” to TL verbs. Thus, they are befuddled and have a tendency to add the third person singular bound morpheme “s” to the verb when the subject is plural (see example 14) and drop the morpheme “s” in the verb when the subject of the sentence is singular (see example 12, 15, 16 and 17). The participants also give singular copula verb “is” for plural subject (see example 13). It reveals that the students are puzzled regarding final “s” as plural form and final “s” as third person singular, for that reason, they are liable to add bound morpheme “s” to the verbs when the subject is plural (such as they) and omit bound morpheme “s” when the subject is singular (such as she, he, it). Moreover, these errors occur due to the absence of the third person singular bound morphemes of “s” and the plural morpheme “s” in Indonesian verbs. 12. He also understand the lesson 13. Students is someone who... 14. Bad students always makes... 15. Because he always come late 16. Everybody have a bad side 17. The teacher give a material Singular/plural marker errors Putting marks with singular and plural forms are deemed as one of the major complexities that the students face in their English writing. This kind of errors constitutes 12% of the whole figure of errors in this study. It is discovered that the students omit the bound morpheme “s” of plural even when the sentence holds plural quantifiers, such as many, a lot of and some, which characterize the plural (see examples 20, 21, 23, and 24). They also tend to add the morpheme “s” in the plural nouns with words such as a, an, much, each, etc. (see examples 18, 19, and 25). Furthermore, a transfer from the spoken medium of FL possibly influences the misuse of the plural bound morpheme “s” because Indonesian students are inclined not to pronounce or read the “s” when they are speaking accordingly the students commit error in creating their sentence. 18. there are a students like that 19. A clever students... 20. There are some good student have... 21. There are many factor... 22. Because a good pupils...... 23. They have much friends 24. ...that have a lot of backgorund 25. ...think about a good students 26. they will make friendship with peoples Articles Errors Given the fact that Indonesian has no article system, whereas nouns in English commonly are preceded by indefinite articles: a, an, definite article: the and zero article: Ø, Indonesian students are liable to neglect the use of English article system. Consequently, they yield errors in article by misusing or deleting of articles in English. Besides, errors in article occur because when the students write in English, they are prone to translate directly from their native language (Indonesian) into target language, i.e. English. The students also look perplexed with the usage of definite, indefinite, and zero articles in English as seen in the following examples. R. Agus Budiharto Native language interference on target language writings of Indonesian EFL students: An Exploratory case study 114 27.Good student is diligent student 28.Every school must have good student 30.Some students have no good attitude 31.Good student always have good behaviour 32.A good pupils.... 33.Good student is student… 34.How to give advice to bad student? 35.There are a students.... Preposition errors It needs to be noticed that Indonesian preposition contains general meaning but English contains particular meaning. Nevertheless, the EFL Indonesian students are inclined to equate English preposition with L1 preposition when they write in English. Thus, seemingly, they intentionally create an effort to come across similar structures to their native language in English. Accordingly, they easily can recall their prepositional command of L1. Preposition errors in their English writings then are unavoidable produced. Besides, these errors occur as the students are incapable of choosing the proper preposition by virtue of a choice of prepositions that contain the same function in English such as prepositions “at”, “in”, “on”, etc. Additionally, they frequently refer to Indonesian, i.e. by translating their L1 sentence into the TL word by word (it is called literal translation) such as in the following examples. 36.Kind students look at from their uniform 37.Because he is busy in him life 38.You can find from the attitude 39.Being lazy at the class... Lexico-Semantic Errors These errors deal with the students’ capability of mastering vocabulary and using lexis correctly in conveying a given message. The UNIRA EFL students are not able to use TL words that have similar meaning in their appropriate context. This is because they seemingly do not master TL vocabulary meaning and usage yet, so errors in lexico- semantic occur. They also translate directly from L1 to convey their thoughts in English. These errors can occur because of student’ lack English vocabulary. As indicated in examples 40, 44, and 45 that the students’ vocabulary are deficient in noun, examples 41, 43, and 46 can prove that the students’ vocabulary are very poor in an adjective and an adverb. So do the example in 42 which shows that the students are inefficient at knowledge of vocabulary in preposition. 40.All childish are good people (children) 41.It can make the student be more bad (worse) 42.They come to school only sleep (for sleeping) 43...can receive knowledge from the teacher goodly (well) 44.In backside......(in another side) 45.A bad student not has politeness (a good behaviour) 46.The teacher give small score for them (low) Mechanical Errors There are phonemes and combinations of phonemes used in English which do not occur in Indonesia, for example, 1) the last letter e in bite or late. The spelling e is not pronounced. Bite is pronounced with the phonemes /baɪt/; 2) the use of a combination of three phonemes (also called a triphthong) such as /aɪə / in fire; 3) the letter i in fire is pronounced with the phoneme /aɪ/. It is of course different from Indonesian. The letter/spelling i in Indonesian is unchanged as in ibu, which is pronounced /ibu/. These descriptions indicate that Indonesian does not have a spelling system as English. Consequently, errors in spelling (misspelling) occur. Besides, they have habits to utter using L1 spelling system in their daily life which can influence their writing in English (see examples 48, 49, 45, 53, and 55). Besides, they also misspell phonemes in English by epenthetic vowels, i.e. by adding a vowel at the middle of sounds or phonemes (see examples 47, 50, and 51). 47.A bad student can be a cleaver student 48. But many friends fill like.... 49.....they will thing about.... 50.... coming too class 51.They wiil make ..... 52.The cliver student often talk 53.There are smart, stupid, activ... 54..less attantion from the parents 55.The teacher mus know the character Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) Volume 5, Issue 1, January 2019 p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/index 115 Word Order Errors Inappropriate word order constitutes a common error syntactically that the learners generate on account of L1 transfer. The following examples demonstrate that the students are still affected by Indonesian word order system. They have a tendency to create the adjective follow the noun according to Indonesian word order system (see examples 56, 57, 59). In English word order system, the adjective is supposed to precede the noun. Nevertheless, the students who are ignorant about this rule, they will follow their L1 rule and then use it to TL (see example 60). Consequently, errors in word order come up. In imperative sentence like example 60, the students put adverb of frequency (always) after the noun phrase “the class”. The adverb should be put in the beginning of sentence or before the verb “come”. 56.from the attitude students 57.....can give punishment appropriate 58.Every teacher there is care 59.Good students usually have attitude humble 60.Come to the class always on time CONCLUSION This study is aimed at identifying and analyzing the common errors in English essay writing generated by the EFL Indonesian university students. From the analysis, it is found that students’ native language (Indonesian) interference is the main cause of their errors in the English essay writing. The present study came up with the following outcomes. The UNIRA students highly rely on their native language in stating their thoughts. This is in line with statement of Alvarez (2014) that the use of native language, particularly at public institutions, occupies a huge proportion of the language used in class. Students persistently resort to native language, leading to its overuse and to avoiding using English. In this study, the ranking processes reveals that the students’ essays hold different sorts of errors, those in the grammar and the lexico-semantic statistically constitute the most serious and recurrent ones. It is vital to represent students’ notice to the distinction between Indonesian structure and English where the errors are recurring. Hence, students should need to practice writing activities more often with the intention of internalizing them and to be capable of using them appropriately, whenever they are demanded to write in English. Some experts (Pritchard & Haneycut, 2005) highlight that in order that pupils to write well, they need enough time with the intention that they are able to think critically, rewrite, select, revise, and organize their notions in real writing and re-writing. If this practice is committed, it may carry alteration in EFL writing errors. There are a number of particular ways for language teachers to assist the students avoid interference of Indonesian in English writing. First way is by boosting students to think in native means. It means that the students do interlingual transfer since they are not “thinking” in a native means. By committing this, when language students are able to think in the native means, they potentially will have no opportunity to transfer their “native notion” into the TL, which results in interlingual transfer. Therefore, language teachers have to attempt to create the students not possess the opportunity to commit the word-to-word translation of their native notions or group of words. Second way is by giving essential language input for the students. This way talks about lots of different visions regarding the role of input in development of language. Yet, it has been commonly admitted that language input can determine the output. In addition, great quantity of L2 input can adjust students’ tendency in formulating their notions and developing them in idiomatic way, thus it can assist to diminish L1 transfer. Third way is by creating contrastive analysis (CA) of Indonesian and English. Language students need to be fully conscious of the possibilities of interference so that they may be able to avoid generating errors transfer. It is highly needed in order that the students become aware regarding the linguistic divergences between Indonesian and English. In the R. Agus Budiharto Native language interference on target language writings of Indonesian EFL students: An Exploratory case study 116 course of English teaching, students’ insight and sensitivity towards the differences between Indonesian and English should be cultivated by employing not only the method of analysis, contrast, but also induction. The last way is by increasing a good command of English vocabulary and grammar. It needs to be noticed that native language transfer causes numerous errors not only at the lexical level but the grammatical level as well, which will have a negative impact on students’ English writing. On the involvement of teachers in teaching process, their speech in explaining new words and phrases and structures of syntax are extremely vital for students in college English courses. Teachers should give a situation and connect both the new words and phrases to either the familiar context of the students’ life or to the context of the text. 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Agus Budiharto INTRODUCTION METHOD In this study, mixed methods research designs are used: quantitative and qualitative. According to Gay, Mills and Airasian (2009), “mixed methods research designs combine quantitative and qualitative approaches by including both quantitative and quali... Twenty-two students of UNIRA from English Education Department of FKIP participated in this study. They were registered in the English Writing I course during the second semester of the academic year 2016-2017. The partaking students have ever been st... The data was gained by collecting a piece of the students’ writing which was produced in an assignment of the English Writing I in a classroom. Each of the students was given a theme: “A good student and a bad student,” then they were asked to write o... Twenty-two essays collected were analyzed to examine a variety of errors and to count the amounts and ratios. Then, the highest existing of either interference will be described quantitatively because quantitative study reports statistical information... This present study was carried out, through Error Analysis (EA) to explore the sorts of error UNIRA students composed in their EFL writings. In analyzing the data, Ellis and Barkhuizen’s steps (2005) are utilized in this study. They are 1) collection ... RESULTS AND DISCUSSION REFERENCES