Analysis of Students’ Grammatical Errors in English Writing (Pre-Test) in the English Course at Atma Reksa College of Pastoral Science, Ende - Flores

Abstract

This research begins with the author's curiosity about the English writing skills of Stipar Ende students of the Catholic Religious Education Study Program, second semester of the 2023/2024 academic year. This research is important for researcher to find out grammatical errors in English writing and as evaluation material for the researcher so she can find out students' weaknesses or shortcomings in writing English. The aim of this research is to find out students' grammatical errors in writing English, especially errors in the language aspect, to find out the most grammatical errors often found by students, and the causes of these mistakes and efforts to avoid these mistakes. From the results of the student pre-test, it can be seen that 10 questions given by a total of 80 students, only 7 students wrote correctly or had no grammatical errors. Most students make grammatical errors in writing English. This analysis uses Surface Strategy Taxonomy to group student errors. This research uses a descriptive method with a qualitative approach. The subjects of this research are the writings of 2nd semester students who are respondents and takes English courses totaling 80 people. The results of the research shows that students' errors in English writing consist of the most errors, namely misformation with a total of 84 or (37%), the next type of error is omission with a total of 74 or (32%), addition errors with a total of 47 or (21%), and the fewest errors were misordering errors, namely 18 (8%). The causes of this error come from the intralanguage and interlingual categories. The intralanguage category is an error that occurs due to the interpretation of the language learner, while the interlingual category is an error that occurs due to the student's lack of understanding of the structure of English. This research provides very valuable information or suggestions for English lecturers to design more effective and varied teaching methods so that students master English grammar or structure and are able to write simple English correctly and precisely.