This is a study of speech errors produced by advanced learners of English, who are native
speakers of Indonesian. In particular, it investigates to what extent Indonesian influences
English learners’ speech. It also examines other factors which cause errors in English
speech of native speakers of Indonesian. Both Contrastive Analysis and Error Analysis
are utilized to explain the causes of errors in the Indonesian learners’ English.
This study was carried out in four stages. The first stage consisted of data
collection. The subjects were students in the English Department of the Faculty of
Education, Atma Jaya University, Jakarta. They consisted of students from the classes of
1999 and 2000. The data used was as naturalistic as possible: subjects were tape-recorded
while conversing in pairs about particular topics. The second stage comprised
transcribing the data and entering it into a computerized database. The third step was
analyzing the data in terms of grammaticality, idiomaticity, and well-formed prosody.
The causes of errors were also explained and classified utilizing a detailed taxonomy of
errors. The fourth stage consisted of a prosodic analysis. Errors in accentuation were
identified and analyzed. Errors in intonation were identified with the help of a native
speaker, and analyzed using a specialized computer application called Praat.
The findings indicate that advanced Indonesian learners of English still make
errors in various areas. In terms of grammaticality and idiomaticity, these consist of
errors in the use of articles, errors in the use of auxiliaries, errors in the use of
conjunctions, errors in the use of prepositions, errors in the use of parts of speech, errors
in the use of pronouns, errors in number, errors in clause structures, errors in subject-verb
agreement, errors in the use of tenses, errors in the use of questions words, errors in the
use of possessive forms, error in verb forms, and errors in idiomaticity. Besides
interference from Indonesian, the learners’ native language, errors were also found to be
caused by overgeneralization of the target language, ignorance of rule restrictions,
ignorance of existing rules, false concepts, and incomplete application of rules. Finally,
the prosodic analysis indicates that some words are wrongly stressed by the learners, and
some utterances were produced using ungrammatical intonation patterns. |