Error Analysis on EFL Students’ Thesis Proposal Writing

Abstract

The present research was intended to analyse the errors made by the university students, especially the students in the eight semesters who write thesis proposals. Hence, the main objective of the present research was to investigate types of errors as well as to know the dominant errors which were existed in students’ thesis proposal compositions. This research employed descriptive quantitative study by calculating the number of errors by percentage. There are 42 participants from English Education Department in one of public university in West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. The results showed that there were 195 errors consisting of 71 (36%) addition errors, 64 (33%) misformation errors, 48 (25%) omission errors, and 12 (6%) misordering errors. The most dominant errors as shown by the percentage were students tended to add more than the structure or grammar needs. Students overgeneralized to use affix –s in verb and to use double auxiliaries (be, are, is). These results suggest that the instructor needs to help students on understanding and practicing more to fix the errors.