Grammatical Errors on English Student’s Thesis Writing of UIN Malang

ABSTRACT

The study of grammatical errors in English writing has been done by many researchers. Error means any deviation from a selected norm of language performance, no matter what the characteristics or causes of the deviation might be. As well the studies that are conducted by those researchers, this study is also going to investigate the grammatical errors on English students’ thesis writing of UIN Malang. This research is very important to be conducted because thesis is a research, which should be correctly written by using Standard English writing, and thesis is the main requirement for student to pass their study. In addition, this research can be used as an instrument to measure the ability of the out put of UIN students’ especially English language and letters department student in mastering English grammar.

Errors are classified into four types, the first is linguistic category taxonomy, the second is surface strategy taxonomy, the third is communicative effect taxonomy, and the fourth is communicative effect taxonomy. This study intends to analyze grammatical errors based on linguistic category taxonomy specifically on morphological and syntactical errors.

In order to bring this study into its purpose, the researcher formulates two
research problems: what types of morphological and syntactical errors found in English students' thesis writing of UIN Malang and what morphological and syntactical errors are commonly found in English students' thesis writing of UIN Malang.

Study on grammatical errors is closely related to human writing that is why the design of this research is library research, which the method that is used is descriptive, qualitative. Descriptive qualitative tries to describe, identify, classify, and tabulate the errors made by English students of UIN Malang in constructing grammatical rules, which are obtained from the thesis writing.

Considering that, the design of this research is library research, the data of
this research are taken from the thesis of English language and letters department students registered in 2002 and graduated in 2007. The more specific data are in analysis of chapter IV; it is because students mostly use their own English in analyzing the data.

The instruments of this study are first, the researcher herself. It is because the data of this research is written data from the thesis writing of English students of UIN Malang. Second, field notes. In this research, researcher takes some notes to capture the collected data.

This study found that the common mistakes made by the student in their writing are in syntax, then it is followed by morphology. Then, this study found that the grammatical errors of English students’ thesis writing are patterned. Students commonly make errors in the same type and category.