Learning English becomes more and more important nowadays since we know that English is considered a lingua franca among countries which do not share the same language. In Indonesia, English functions as a foreign language. Learning a different language is problematic since the target language may have different elements compared to the native language. These differences are often the trigger of making errors when using the target language. Gewerhr (1998) states that grammaticality is fundamental, thus the teaching of grammar should be central in a language classroom. Many teachers have been teaching grammar using various approaches, but still, errors are present in students’ performance in terms of grammatical accuracy. Realizing this, we can say that grammaticality is a very crucial feature of written language because ungrammatical errors of written language may lead to misunderstanding towards the intended meaning. Realizing the importance of grammaticality, the writer carried out a research on ten high school students of LSETC, a private English course, in order to know the students’ grammatical competence. The writer is curious to know whether learners (aged 16 to 18) who have completed their TOEFL program are aware and competent enough to comply with the rules of English grammar.
Following Selinker’s theory, the writer does the analysis first from the point of view of Indonesian structure, and then from the point of view of English structure. Webber (1981: 29) asserts that errors can be collected from written or spoken medium. However, the easiest way to identify grammatical errors is from the written one. Acting in accordance with the idea, the writer used composition tasks, particularly argumentative essays to find out what kinds of errors come from first language transfer of grammatical knowledge (interlingual errors).
In brief, the study aims to find out the errors taking place and give brief explanation in relation to Indonesian grammar. The results of the study are expected to be beneficial and can give a picture of inappropriate grammaticality in accordance with Indonesian structure, and therefore the students can be more aware of the difference between both languages. |