The Analysis of Students’ Errors in Writing Letter as The Short Functional Text by The Tenth Graders at SMA Negeri 1 Nabire in Academic Year Of 2015/2016

Abstract

This research discusses about error analysis in writing letter as the short functional text written by the tenth graders at SMA Negeri 1 Nabire. The objective of this study is to find out the errors made by the students in writing letter. Writing is an excellent communication tool. Through writing, each person will be able to convey feelings dan ideas to others. But, almost all the students in every level of education found that writing is not easy process. English language is different with Indonesian language in its structure, phonology, and lexical meaning. That is caused the students who learn English may produce many errors in their writing.So, error analysis hasan important role to reveal kinds of error the students do most,  the causes of the error, and how the students can learn from their mistakes in writing.

The design of this research is descriptive analysis. It is intended to describe about the data collected. The writer employed purposive sampling to selected the sample, it is consisted43 students of the tenth grade at SMA Negeri 1 Nabire as the sample. In collecting data, the writer gave an an article and then the students have to gave their response about that article in an order to writing letter to the editor.

After analyzed the data, it is found that the students made errors in their writing. The students committed errors in Addition (the presence of an item which must not appear in a well-formed utterance) e.g. addition of article, pronoun, conjunction, etc which has 56 of total errors or 38,62% and this is the higest frequency of students’ errors. After Addition is Omission (the absence of an item that must appear in a well-formed utterance) e.g. omission in article, verb, pronoun, etc which has 52 of total errors or 35,86%. Then, Misformation (the use of the wrong form of the morpheme or structure) e.g. misformation in using pronoun, etc which has 25 of total errors or 17,24%. The lowest frequency of errors is Misordering (the incorrect placement of a morpheme or group of morpheme in an utterance) which has 12 of total errors or 8,28%.