An analysis on the grammatical mistakes in reading passages of Primagama English materials

Mistake or error is naturally made by everyone in spite of best efforts. It is because error was considered to be a wrong response to the stimulus, which should be corrected immediately after it was made. Error is defined as any deviation from a selected norm of language performance, no matter what the characteristics or causes of the deviation might be. Unless corrected properly, the error becomes a habit and a wrong behavioral pattern would stick in our mind. Therefore, this study is conducted on how grammatical mistakes are found in the reading passages of PRIMAGAMA English materials which is specified to identify the types of grammatical mistakes found and describe the dominant of grammatical mistakes occurred.

This study uses descriptive qualitative approach that emphasizes on describing in detail the grammatical mistakes in reading passages in which the data of this study are sentences that have grammatical mistakes. The instrument of this study is the human instrument (the researcher herself) that is gathering and analyzing the data. Triangulation is also conducted to obtain the credibility and reliability of the data finding.

The results of this study show that in reading passages of PRIMAGAMA English materials there are several type of grammatical mistakes, namely sentence fragment, run-on sentences, comma-splices, failing to make the subject and verb agreement, the wrong form of the verb, the wrong of pronoun, faulty of parallel structure, misusing commas and other punctuations and other mistakes, such as: mistake of addition of the article, mistake of the use of number, mistake of misuse object pronoun and failure to attach –s/-es and omissions of article. The total number of the whole mistakes that are found is 81 in which the dominant of mistakes is in misusing commas and other punctuations.

After identifying and describing the grammatical mistakes in reading passages of PIMAGAMA English materials, hopefully for the students and readers are able to increase their understanding about the use of grammar correctly and punctuality, so they can recognize the grammatical mistakes especially misusing commas and other punctuations in their reading. Considering that mistake in misusing commas and other punctuations are mostly found, it is suggested for the teacher to pay more attention and provide sufficient explanation about the use of grammar correctly and punctuality. Moreover, this study can lead the next researchers who are going to analyze the same field about grammatical mistakes further by other theory that is not proposed yet in previous studies.