AN ANALYSIS OF THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS’ ERRORS IN WRITING FORMAL INVITATION LETTER AT SOCIAL SCIENCE CLASS IN SMAN 2 BAYANG

Abstrak

INTRODUCTION English is known as an international language which is used by many people in the world[1]. In 2013 curriculum (K-13) for senior high school, students must be able to write an invitation letter. There are two kinds of letters; informal and formal letter[2]. A formal invitation letter is a document that presents a formal request for the presence of people, company, or an organization at an event. The main concern to study a formal invitation letter is to prepare the students working in a company or public facilities. Writing in a foreign language is not always as easy as writing in our language. It will cause some errors or mistakes in sentences. Error is a systematic deviation; when a learner has not learnt something consistently gets it wrong[3]. Therefore, writing in a foreign language will present the greatest challenge for them. Based on the observation, the second year students at social science class in SMA Negeri 2 Bayang showed some errors on their writing. It becomes the background why this study is carried out under the title “An Analysis of The Second Year Students’ Errors in Writing Formal Invitation Letter at Social Science Class in SMAN 2 Bayang”. METHODOLOGY The design of this research was descriptive research. This research was designed to describe the errors made by the second-year students at SMAN 2 Bayang in writing formal invitation letters. In this case, the researcher used convenience sampling technique. The convenience study is a group of individual who are available for study[4]. Thus, the researcher chose one class that was available for study. The researcher chose class XI IPS 3 that consists of 29 students. The instrument of this research was the writing test. The researcher asked the students to write a formal invitation letter. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS The writer finds out that students make several errors in writing a formal invitation letter. The errors are grouped according to the types of errors. Students’ Error in Writing Formal Invitation Letter The students often make some errors in writing a formal letter in English. First, because of the format of the letter is different from Indonesian letter. They are also still interfered with by Bahasa Indonesia grammar which is different from English. NO Type of error Total of students’ error Percentage 1 Format error 128 54,7% 2 Grammatical Error 25 10,5% 3 Lexical Errors 12 5,1% 4 Syntax Error 12 5,1% 5 Mechanical / Substance Error 60 25,3% Total 234 100% Students’ Error in Writing Format of Formal Invitation Letter The most types of error in writing the format of formal invitation text is error in writing the date sending of the letter. The total of error is 27 out of 128 errors and the percentage is 21,4 %. The researcher finds out that the students have errors in writing the date sending of formal invitation text. Most of the students don’t write the date directly after the head of the letter. Students’ Grammatical Error in Writing Formal Invitation Letter The students in social science class in SMA 2 Bayang still make a grammatical error in their writing. The most types of grammatical error in writing formal invitation text is error in writing tenses. The total of error is 13 out of 25 grammatical errors and the percentage is 54,1 %. The example of students’ error in using tenses is: 1. We are from school SMA 2 bayang invited alumnus to go to the event. From the sentence, we can see that student should use simple future to tell about plan. Therefore, the verb should be “will invite”. Students’ Lexical Error in Writing Formal Invitation Letter Agustin-Llach in Nila (2017) states that lexical error is a type of error deals with the lexicon[8]. The form of lexical error is an error in word choice. The word choice error refers to the use of inappropriate vocabulary/terminology in a particular field and situation. The example of students’ lexical error is: 1. we school representatives invite all of you. The lexical error is the use of incorrect parts of speech. The student failed to recognize the pronoun. Students’ Syntax Error in Writing Formal Invitation Letter The most type of syntax error in writing formal invitation letter is error in using word order. The total of error is 10 out of 12 errors and the percentage is 83,3 %. The examples of students’ word order error are: 1. The principal invite to you ….. The error in the sentence is the incorrect structure. It should be “The principle invite you to…”. Students’ Mechanical / Substance Error in Writing Formal Invitation Letter The most type of mechanical error is error in using capitalization. The total error is 25 out of 60 mechanical errors and the percentage is 41,7%. The example of students’ capitalization error is: 1. please come to my school separation party. The mechanical error in the sentence occurs because the students forget to use capitalization at the beginning of the sentence. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS Generally, the students at social science class in SMAN 2 Bayang have format error, grammatical error, syntax error, lexical error, and mechanical error in writing the formal invitation letter. The implication of this research is that the teacher can implement teaching learning process so that students’ error in writing formal invitation letter can be decreased. In accordance with the conclusion as already discussed, there are some suggestions that can appear: The study may help raise awareness for teacher to implement teaching learning process so that students’ error in writing formal invitation letter can be decreased. For the future researcher, the researcher is expected to do the research about students’ error in another department in order to see the comparative results and more varied data resulted from them.