GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN WRITING A FINAL PAPER WRITTEN BY THE EIGHTH SEMESTER STUDENTS OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF STATE INSTITUTE OF ISLAMIC STUDIES WALISONGO SEMARANG

Abstract

The objectives of the study are 1) To find out the errors made by the students in using grammatical in writing a final paper by students of English Department of State Institute of Islamic Studies. 2) To find out the ways to eliminate the errors made by students of English Department of State Institute of Islamic Studies. The population of the research was the eighth semester students of English Department of State Institute of Islamic Studies. The number of the sample was 12 students’ writing. In taking the sample, the writers used random sampling. The writer took 20% from each class. The number of the sample was 12 students. From the data analysis, the result showed that The students produced 93 errors of 12 students’ writing which could be grouped into 7 categories of errors, they are errors in production of verb group, errors in agreement between subject and verb, errors in the use of article, errors in use of preposition, errors in pluralization, errors in use of pronoun, and errors in the use of conjunction. In the research findings, the number of errors in production of verb group is 43  errors , the number of errors in agreement between subject and verb is 14 errors,  the errors in the use of article is 6 errors, the errors  in the use of preposition is 8  errors, the errors  in pluralization or 19 errors, the errors  in the use of pronoun is only 3, and there is no or 0 error  in conjunction. It is also found that the source of the errors is the students’ grammar mastery. It can be said that the students’ grammar mastery is still low, so that they have difficulties in arranging the sentences. After knowing the research findings, the writers would like to give some suggestions to the students and the English teacher. The teacher should emphasize the students that their target language has different structure from their native language. Beside that, the teacher should motivate the students to learn grammar well, so that they can master production of verb group, agreement between subject and verb, the use of pronoun, and the other elements of grammar well. The last is it will be better for the teacher to give their students more practice in using it.