EFL University Students’ Errors in Constructing Complex Sentences in Academic Writing

Abstract

Writing in academic purposes becomes a big challenge for EFL students since they are required to produce their S1 thesis as one of the fulfillments to graduate from their study. In this academic writing, using different types of sentences as one of its characteristics is often found difficult for the students to construct, especially in constructing complex sentences related to the dependent clauses: noun clauses, adjectives clauses, and adverb clauses. The difficulties can be seen from the errors produced in the complex sentences used in the academic writing. This paper aims to find out the English Language and Literature Department students' errors in constructing complex sentences in academic writing at Universitas Negeri Padang. This is a descriptive study, and it describes the detail analysis of the students' errors in constructing complex sentences in academic writing. The final projects of the students taken from four classes were used as the source of the data of this study. In this preliminary stage study, 16 academic writings of the students were chosen by using the proportional random sampling technique. The data were analyzed by using the theory of error classification proposed by Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982). This study revealed 129 omission errors (57%), 55 addition errors (24%), 42 misformation errors (19%), and 1 misordering error (0.4%). Based on the errors found, it can be interpreted that the English Language and Literature Department students who have taken Academic Writing Course at Universitas Negeri Padang still have lack of competence in constructing complex sentences.