An Error Analysis of English Sentence Construction in Writing Subject

Abstract

The purposes of the present study were to know the types of errors found in English sentences constructed by the students of the English Department at Sriwijaya State Polytechnics. Two hundred pieces of writing written by a hundred students from fifty students in the first year, twenty-five students in the second year, and twenty-five students in the third year of the academic years 2020/2021 were taken as the data of the study. They were collected and analyzed in terms of the grammar errors using the Linguistic Category Taxonomy and the Surface Strategy Taxonomy. The results showed that the most frequently committed errors were omission of articles, third-person singular verb incorrect, the substitution of singulars for plurals, misuse of a-preposition, disagreement of subject and verb, the substitution of simple non-past, use of wrong possessive, omission of the verb to be, simple verb use instead of-ing, and misformation of passive sentences. This errors study provides teachers, syllabus designers, and test developers to determine their way of teaching or materials in the process of language teaching and learning. In addition, the most common errors and the ways to overcome them must be tackled by using various and interesting materials in English Structure textbooks with exercises and skills related to the grammatical errors.