A Review on Error Analysis Stages in Teaching English Structure

Abstract

The goal of this research is to determine the role of error analysis in teaching English as a foreign language, particularly English Structure. Error analysis can provide information on a student's progress in learning a target language, which is then used to improve the teaching process so that they could still properly use the language. The method used is qualitative and descriptive research design.  This research focuses on students of Politeknik Negeri Sriwijaya. Error analysis is essential for teachers to improve the quality of teaching. By doing so, the teacher owns information to improve the methodology including syllabus, teaching material and teaching techniques. The findings  are  four main stages of error analysis simplified  in this study. They are detecting, locating the errors, describing the errors, and classifying  the errors. First stage is done by gathering suspected errors; meanwhile works with unwanted errors are rejected or put aside. Then, locating the errors found on students' works were  done by  identifying them without considering types of the errors. Next step is describing errors where the errors are labeled based on the linguistic category. Final stage is error classification involving  classification and  counting errors. Each stage gives detailed information of students’ performance which is beneficial for the teachers to improve the quality of teaching including the material and how to deliver.