Common types of diction errors made by the second year students of SMP Negeri 13 Malang

In Indonesia, English is taught as a compulsory subject at junior high school (SMP) and senior high school (SMA) and as local content subject at primary school. So, it is not extraordinary that most of the Indonesian students understand and practice English in their communication, either at school, home or other places. However, in the learning of English, there are many problems faced by students. It is normal for Indonesian students to make errors in their learning process since English is a foreign language. Errors in learning a foreign language may occur in both speaking and writing. Those problems are also faced by the students of SMP Negeri 13 Malang in making a good composition. One of the problems is choosing good dictions. Related to those phenomena, the research problems are “What are the common types of diction errors made by the second year students of SMP Negeri 13 Malang?” and “What are the causes of diction errors made by the second year students of SMP Negeri 13 Malang?”

The present study attempts to describe the students’ error in using diction in their composition. The errors of using diction are based on open words class (verbs, nouns, adjective, and adverb) and closed word class (preposition and conjunction). The categorized open and closed words are then classified into three principles of diction errors, they are; inaccurate use of diction, inappropriate use of the style, and uncommon use of English.

This study is an error analysis which uses descriptive qualitative design. The subjects of the study are the second year students of SMP Negeri 13 Malang in 2006/2007 academic year. The data were taken from the words of students’ compositions which tell about going to Bali and Pasir Putih Beach, which are supposed to contain diction errors. The data were then analyzed by several procedures which include identification, classification, and description of errors and possible source of errors.

The finding of the study reveals that the common types of diction errors made by the second year students of SMP Negeri 13 Malang are inaccurate use of diction and uncommon use of diction. Whereas inappropriate use of style are not found on the data. The common factors that caused diction errors are interligual transfer, intraligual transfer, and communication strategy.