Lexical Errors of English Writing Written by the students of The State Islamic University of Malang at Al-Hikmah Al-Fathimiyyah

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the lexical errors in English writing written by the students of The State Islamic University of Malang at Al-Hikmah Al- Fathimiyyah. The objectives of this study are to answer the research questions, those are, what kinds of lexical errors found in the students’ sentences and how those lexical errors occur. Thus, this research is conducted to find out the types of lexical errors made by the students and describe the occurrence of the lexical errors found.

The research is designed by using qualitative descriptive method in which the data are presented in the form of sentences or words taken from the English writing competition 2006 of Al-Hikmah Al-Fathimiyyah students by the theme Bilingualism Application in Islamic Boarding School. The data were analyzed using an approach of formal errors of lexis category by identifying lexical errors made by the students, then classifying the lexical errors found, and describing it as well concluding the results of data analysis.

Data analysis reveals some findings covering the proposed research questions. The researcher finds that the lexical errors are committed in three categories; they are formal misselection, misformation, and distortion. Then, there are seventy two formal misselection, twenty six misformation, and one hundred and thirty six distortion. In formal misselection category, the researcher finds that there are three types, they are, errors of suffix on fifty one errors, vowel-based type on eleven errors, consonant-based type on ten errors. However, errors of prefix disappeared in the students’ writing. In misformation category, there are three types, they are, coinage on two errors, borrowing on seven errors, and calque on seventeen errors. The third is distortion category, in which mostly committed by the students in their writing, occurs in four types, they are, omission on twenty four errors, overinclusion on twelve errors, misselection on ninety four errors, and misordering on six errors.

Based on those findings, this study suggests that the future researchers should determine the types of writing that will be analyzed like description, exposition, argumentation or narration because the differences in types of writing probably influence the production of lexical errors in the students’ writing.