Grammatical Error Analysis in English Essay Written by INSTIKI Students on Google Classroom

Abstract

In term of English communication, grammar is an important language component to improve students’ language skill. However, grammatical errors in writing essays made by the students are still found. This can be caused by their carelessness, first language (L1) interference, and literal translation in the second language (L2). Students make errors in various aspects of grammar such as tenses, word classes, and diction. This study aimed to describe and analyze the grammatical errors in English essay of students of Institut Bisnis dan Teknologi Indonesia (INSTIKI). Learning from the grammatical errors in writing was expected to assist the students in improving their knowledge of English grammar and academic writing skills. The objects of this research were 25 students majoring in Informatics Engineering. The data was in the form of English persuasive essays uploaded by the students in the Google Classroom application which was analyzed by using descriptive qualitative methods. The results showed that the students face difficulties in writing essay correctly in terms of grammar. These problems arise because when they do not always remember the rule in L2, can not identify the meaning when processing L2 forms, and still base the writing process on the L1 rule. It was also found that most of the errors were caused by lack of understanding of English grammar. Therefore, their grammatical errors need to be analysed to get some feedbacks for the students’ knowledge of grammar and give better teaching approach for the lecturers in English writing class.