GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS ABSTRACTS
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the english grammatical error, in terms of subject-verb agreement, found in the undergraduate thesis abstracts written by the graduates of Management Studies of Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Manajemen Sukma, Medan. Subject-verb agreement error is classified into two main categories, namely: (1) the use of number agreement and (2) the use of the tense agreement. The objectives of this study are two folds; to find out the types of SVA errors occurring in the undergraduate thesis abstract, and to find out the factors causing the errors. In this qualitative descriptive study, ten English abstracts are taken purposely as the source of data. In analyzing the errors, six complete procedures called error analysis designed by Gass & Selinker are applied. The results of the analysis reveal that 51 SVA errors occur, with 1 error on the use of number agreement and 50 errors on the use of the tense agreement. All of these errors are caused by intralanguage errors (interference from incomplete L2 comprehension). Moreover, three factors caused intralanguage errors. They are called inconsistency, indeterminacy, and simplification. It is also found that with 36 occurrences, inconsistency exceeds the other factors. While simplification causes 10 errors and the rest is indeterminacy that causes 5 errors. In brief, these results reveal that the graduates are still making errors in writing their undergraduate thesis abstracts. By looking at this fact, the researcher has given several suggestions to escalate and improve the quality of the undergraduate thesis abstracts that are written in English.
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