An Analysis of English Grammatical Errors in Students’ Writing Assignments

The present study was carried out to analyze the types of grammatical errors in Basic Writing and Essay Writing students’ assignments and to explore the sources of the errors. This study focused on searching for the most dominant type of errors and the most possible source of errors that the students made in both classes. 32 pieces of student’s writting work were collected to be analyzed. The data were analyzed using Ellis’s (1994) procedure of analyzing error. Moreover, the type of errors were analyzed based on Azar’s (1989) classification of error and the sources of errors were analyzed based on Richard’s (1974) theory of sources of errors. The results showed that there are 64 errors or 25.2% errors in word form which made it the most frequently occured type of error in Basic Writing students’ work. Meanwhile, in Essay Writing students’ work, there are 80 errors or 20.4% in incomplete sentence. Furthermore, the source of errors in students’ assignment is intralingual errors. It is the source of errors that indicates the situation in which students cannot understand English grammatical rules really well. Intralingual errors occured 189 times or 73.2% in Basic Writing students’ assignments and 252 times or 64.2% in Essay Writing students’ assignments. Additionally, the findings imply that a more appropriate strategy to teach writing and grammar is needed, especially in word form and complete sentence part.