An Analysis of Grammatical Errors Made by Tenth Grade Students in Writing Recount Text

This study aims to identify the types and analyze the sources of grammatical errors in using past tense of tenth grade students of SMA Dharma Praja Denpasar in writing recount text. In this study, the data were obtained by direct observation in the field research. The data were taken from recount texts writing made by tenth grade students. This study used the theory proposed by Dulay, et.al (1982) to analyze the types of grammatical errors and also this study used theory of Brown (2007) in analyzing the source of grammatical errors. To analyze the data, the method used for this study is descriptive qualitative method. Determined from the data that has been analyzed, it can be seen the total number of each error that consist of four types of errors among other, such as; omission, addition, misformation, and misordering and also the most error that was made by students. The highest error frequency was misformation with 220 errors (63,58%). The second was the omission error with a total error of 87 (25,14%). Then the third error was addition with a total error of 27 (7,80%), the last was misordering who only found 12 errors (3,46%). These errors, among others, originate from Interlinguage transfer with 20 items (8, 96%), intralingual transfer occurred with the total 177 times or (79,37%), context of learning was found 12 items (13,00%), the last source of the error was communication strategy that found 14 times of theirs’ writing. These error occurred because student still do not understand the use of proper grammar therefore that English language that has been written is still very influenced by the pattern of using mother language