An Analysis of Grammatical Errors Made by the Second Year Students at English Department of Bung Hatta University in Writing Their Experience

Writing is one of the main English skills. Writing plays a major roles in expressing ideas, thoughts, opinions, and attitudes. Through writing, people are able to share their ideas, feelings, persuading, and convincing others. It shows that writing plays a predominant role in English language learning. Writing skill is the most difficult one because it requires the students to master the grammar, contents, forms and spelling (Ilmi, 2016:9). It is also applicable to write about experience. There are three kinds of writing. They are writing sentence, writing paragraph, and writing essay. In writing paragraph, grammar is very important. Gunn and McCallum 2005:41 define that grammar is an important and necessary skill that a student must have. It becomes unimportant if the student cannot use it accurately in communication. There are four types of grammatical errors. They are omission (the act of not including somebody or something), addition (the act or process of adding), misformation (indicates of the need to use a particular grammatical feature in certain parts of the utterances but made an incorrect choice), and misordering (incorrect place or position of morpheme in an utterance or wrong order of items). The type of this research is descriptive study. This research aimed at finding out the grammatical errors made by second year students of English Department at Bung Hatta University in writing their experience. The number of population in this research was twenty four (24) students. Because the numbers of population members were small, the researcher used all population members as sample. It was called total sampling technique. The researcher gathered the data by using writing test. The data were analyzed by two scorers. It was used to minimize the subjectivity in assessing. To find out the coefficient of correlation of two sets of errors, the researcher used the Pearson Product Moment Formula, and then the researcher counted the percentage of grammatical errors by using formula that suggested by Arikunto (2012:298). After analyzing the data, the researcher found gramatical errors in omission (28.3%). In specific, there were omission of subject 7 (6.2%), omission of verb 3 (2.7%), omission of preposition 2 (1.8%), omission of article 2.5 (2.2%), omission of plurality 9 (7.9%), and omission of be 8.5 (7.5%). The second, he found grammatical errors in addition (11.1%). In specific, there were addition of be 2.5 (2.2%), and addition of adverb 10 (8.9%). The third, he found grammatical errors in misformation (59.3%). In specific, there were misformation of V2 17 (15%), misformation of article 4.5 (4%), misformation of noun 4 (3.6%), misformation of diction 21.5 (19%), misformation of verb after modal and infinitive 7 (6.2%), and misformation of –be 13 (11.5%). The last, he found grammatical errors in misordering (1.3%). In specific, there were misordering of adjective 1.5 (1.3%), and misordering of modal auxiliary (0%). The researcher found most grammatical errors made by the students were misformation (59.3%). In conclusion, there are many kind of grammatical errors made by the students in writing their experience. They are suggested to learn more in writing experience. They also should know about grammatical errors that they might make in writing so they can be aware of making grammatical errors especially grammatical errors in misformation. Keywords : writing paragraph, writing experience, grammatical error s. Writing is one of the main English skills. Writing plays a major roles in expressing ideas, thoughts, opinions, and attitudes. Through writing, people are able to share their ideas, feelings, persuading, and convincing others. It shows that writing plays a predominant role in English language learning. Writing skill is the most difficult one because it requires the students to master the grammar, contents, forms and spelling (Ilmi, 2016:9). It is also applicable to write about experience. There are three kinds of writing. They are writing sentence, writing paragraph, and writing essay. In writing paragraph, grammar is very important. Gunn and McCallum 2005:41 define that grammar is an important and necessary skill that a student must have. It becomes unimportant if the student cannot use it accurately in communication. There are four types of grammatical errors. They are omission (the act of not including somebody or something), addition (the act or process of adding), misformation (indicates of the need to use a particular grammatical feature in certain parts of the utterances but made an incorrect choice), and misordering (incorrect place or position of morpheme in an utterance or wrong order of items). The type of this research is descriptive study. This research aimed at finding out the grammatical errors made by second year students of English Department at Bung Hatta University in writing their experience. The number of population in this research was twenty four (24) students. Because the numbers of population members were small, the researcher used all population members as sample. It was called total sampling technique. The researcher gathered the data by using writing test. The data were analyzed by two scorers. It was used to minimize the subjectivity in assessing. To find out the coefficient of correlation of two sets of errors, the researcher used the Pearson Product Moment Formula, and then the researcher counted the percentage of grammatical errors by using formula that suggested by Arikunto (2012:298). After analyzing the data, the researcher found gramatical errors in omission (28.3%). In specific, there were omission of subject 7 (6.2%), omission of verb 3 (2.7%), omission of preposition 2 (1.8%), omission of article 2.5 (2.2%), omission of plurality 9 (7.9%), and omission of be 8.5 (7.5%). The second, he found grammatical errors in addition (11.1%). In specific, there were addition of be 2.5 (2.2%), and addition of adverb 10 (8.9%). The third, he found grammatical errors in misformation (59.3%). In specific, there were misformation of V2 17 (15%), misformation of article 4.5 (4%), misformation of noun 4 (3.6%), misformation of diction 21.5 (19%), misformation of verb after modal and infinitive 7 (6.2%), and misformation of –be 13 (11.5%). The last, he found grammatical errors in misordering (1.3%). In specific, there were misordering of adjective 1.5 (1.3%), and misordering of modal auxiliary (0%). The researcher found most grammatical errors made by the students were misformation (59.3%). In conclusion, there are many kind of grammatical errors made by the students in writing their experience. They are suggested to learn more in writing experience. They also should know about grammatical errors that they might make in writing so they can be aware of making grammatical errors especially grammatical errors in misformation. Keywords : writing paragraph, writing experience, grammatical error s.