This paper seeks to explore errors in Indonesian students’ writing in English. Seventy five students in their second year of study at the Department of English Literature, Faculty of Letters, Methodist University of Indonesia, Medan, were involved in this study. Despite the fact that they have studied grammar in the first semester at the University and several years in High School, students still face problems in writing in English. This study will elaborate on types of errors on students’ writing so as to make them aware of each type of errors before composing a text in English. In gathering the data needed, students were asked to write a letter with a maximum of 90 words to a property agent requesting for a specific home they wish to buy. Their writings afterwards were analyzed in terms of linguistic errors as proposed by Hubbard et al. (1996). These include grammatical, syntactic, substance, and lexical errors. This study revealed that students committed 42.4% of grammatical errors, 26.7% of syntactic errors, 17.9% of substance errors, 13% of lexical errors. Based on the discussion of the findings, it is concluded that Indonesian students in this study committed a great number of errors due to first language transfer.
| Published in | International Journal of Language and Linguistics (Volume 5, Issue 3) |
| DOI | 10.11648/j.ijll.20170503.12 |
| Page(s) | 71-77 |
| Creative Commons |
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited. |
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2017. Published by Science Publishing Group |
Errors in Writing, EFL Students, Linguistic Errors, Error Analysis
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APA Style
Sependi Napitupulu. (2017). Analyzing Linguistic Errors in Writing an English Letter: A Case Study of Indonesian Undergraduate Students. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 5(3), 71-77. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20170503.12
ACS Style
Sependi Napitupulu. Analyzing Linguistic Errors in Writing an English Letter: A Case Study of Indonesian Undergraduate Students. Int. J. Lang. Linguist. 2017, 5(3), 71-77. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20170503.12
AMA Style
Sependi Napitupulu. Analyzing Linguistic Errors in Writing an English Letter: A Case Study of Indonesian Undergraduate Students. Int J Lang Linguist. 2017;5(3):71-77. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20170503.12
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Download@article{10.11648/j.ijll.20170503.12,
author = {Sependi Napitupulu},
title = {Analyzing Linguistic Errors in Writing an English Letter: A Case Study of Indonesian Undergraduate Students},
journal = {International Journal of Language and Linguistics},
volume = {5},
number = {3},
pages = {71-77},
doi = {10.11648/j.ijll.20170503.12},
url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20170503.12},
eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijll.20170503.12},
abstract = {This paper seeks to explore errors in Indonesian students’ writing in English. Seventy five students in their second year of study at the Department of English Literature, Faculty of Letters, Methodist University of Indonesia, Medan, were involved in this study. Despite the fact that they have studied grammar in the first semester at the University and several years in High School, students still face problems in writing in English. This study will elaborate on types of errors on students’ writing so as to make them aware of each type of errors before composing a text in English. In gathering the data needed, students were asked to write a letter with a maximum of 90 words to a property agent requesting for a specific home they wish to buy. Their writings afterwards were analyzed in terms of linguistic errors as proposed by Hubbard et al. (1996). These include grammatical, syntactic, substance, and lexical errors. This study revealed that students committed 42.4% of grammatical errors, 26.7% of syntactic errors, 17.9% of substance errors, 13% of lexical errors. Based on the discussion of the findings, it is concluded that Indonesian students in this study committed a great number of errors due to first language transfer.},
year = {2017}
}
TY - JOUR T1 - Analyzing Linguistic Errors in Writing an English Letter: A Case Study of Indonesian Undergraduate Students AU - Sependi Napitupulu Y1 - 2017/05/05 PY - 2017 N1 - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20170503.12 DO - 10.11648/j.ijll.20170503.12 T2 - International Journal of Language and Linguistics JF - International Journal of Language and Linguistics JO - International Journal of Language and Linguistics SP - 71 EP - 77 PB - Science Publishing Group SN - 2330-0221 UR - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20170503.12 AB - This paper seeks to explore errors in Indonesian students’ writing in English. Seventy five students in their second year of study at the Department of English Literature, Faculty of Letters, Methodist University of Indonesia, Medan, were involved in this study. Despite the fact that they have studied grammar in the first semester at the University and several years in High School, students still face problems in writing in English. This study will elaborate on types of errors on students’ writing so as to make them aware of each type of errors before composing a text in English. In gathering the data needed, students were asked to write a letter with a maximum of 90 words to a property agent requesting for a specific home they wish to buy. Their writings afterwards were analyzed in terms of linguistic errors as proposed by Hubbard et al. (1996). These include grammatical, syntactic, substance, and lexical errors. This study revealed that students committed 42.4% of grammatical errors, 26.7% of syntactic errors, 17.9% of substance errors, 13% of lexical errors. Based on the discussion of the findings, it is concluded that Indonesian students in this study committed a great number of errors due to first language transfer. VL - 5 IS - 3 ER -
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