A Morpho-Syntactic Error Analysis of Indonesian EFL Students' Writing

Bayu Nandra Ramadhan, Endang Fauziati, Suparno

Abstract: English is considered as Indonesian students? foreign language which is not used frequently in their daily conversations. Since writing in English is challenging for Indonesian students, they sometimes commit errors in grammar and sentence structures. Students? errors were considered helpful as the best sources to identify the students? limitations in English writing especially for teachers and the students themselves. This study scrutinizes the Indonesian EFL students? morpho-syntactic errors and the sources of the errors. This research is a descriptive qualitative research. Participants of this study are the third grade students of MTs N Sukoharjo. They are asked to write a descriptive text about their mother. After the data were collected in the form of written product, the researchers identified and categorized the students? errors in their written work. Then, they were analyzed by using the taxonomy of errors proposed by Keshavarz (2006). The results of this study showed that the most frequent part of the students? errors based on morpho-syntactic errors is "errors due to lack of concord" and the minimum frequency is ?incorrect word order?. Then, the most common error viewed from the sources of the errors is overgeneralization error and the minimum frequency is related to ?faulty categorization?.

Keywords: EFL students, error analysis, morpho-syntactic errors, writing