THE ERROR ANALYSIS OF SPEAKING SKILL ON THE SIXTH

SEMESTER ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDENTS AT INDO

GLOBAL MANDIRI UNIVERSITY
RIKA PRATIWI1 NIKE ANGRAINI2 RUDI HARTONO3
Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, Universitas Indo Global Mandiri Jl. Jendral Sudirman No.629 Km.4
Palembang 30129
Email: Rika.prtw28@[Link]

First Received: 2 April 2022 Final Proof Received: 18 July 2022

Abstract
This research aimed at finding out the types of error based on Surface Strategy Taxonomy
(Dulay, Burt, and Krashen, 1982) that found at ELT student’s speaking and analyzing some
factors influencing their errors. The subject of this research was the sixth semester students of
English Education from Indo Global Mandiri University who already taken speaking 3 and
structure 4 courses. Qualitative study was used as a method to obtain the data. The data was
taken from final exam video of speaking 3 course. The researcher analyzed the data following
the Error Analysis (EA) procedures which involves transcribing, coding, classifying error, also
explaining the errors and their factors. The result shows that the most dominant error were
omission (55,50%), followed by addition (22,49%), misformation (18,66%), and misordering
(3,35%). The current research investigated the factor of errors based on their source were
intralingual and interlingual interference. Meanwhile, intralingual was considered as the major
cause of the students’ errors. In conclution, the students still have a problem in terms of
grammatical aspect of their speaking. It is suggested that the students should pay more attention
to the grammatical aspect and improve their speaking skills.

Keywords: Error Analysis (EA), Surface Strategy Taxonomy, Cause of Errors, Speaking

INTRODUCTION
As an international language which is used by almost all nations in the world as a means of communication,
English is a foreign language for Indonesian students. In the process of learning English, there are four basic skills
of English language that have to be acquired. They cover listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Listening and
reading are passive skills or receptive skills, whereas, speaking and writing are active skills or productive skills
(Rao, 2019, p.3).
Nowadays, speaking is generally perceived as the most fundamental skill to acquire. According to Richards
(2008, p.19), there are three functions of speaking, first is speaking as interaction, the second is as a transaction,
and the third is as a performance. Moreover, most in real life situation speaking being a benchmark of language
skill because when people do their first meet and do a conversation, they can judge the ability of their English
only from their speaking. In fact, Indonesian learners’ speaking ability is still disappointing. According to data
published by Education First Proficiency Index (EF EPI), Indonesia’s English proficiency is getting worse year
by year.
Sometimes the Indonesian students may not understand what their friends talk about, because they ignore
the accuracy continuously and make something wrong or do a mistake when they speak. This mistake is usually
called an error. According to Brown (2015), error as the reflection of the learner’s interlangua competence in
deviation from the grammar of a native speaker. In learners’ knowledge, errors happen because the learners did
not know what the correct is. Sometimes they ignore the error when they made it.
A method to analyze the error made by the language learner is called error analysis. Keshavarz (2012, p.58)
defines error analysis is the analysis that focus on the learners’ errors on the process of understanding the second
language acquisition. Therefore, when the learners make errors, these error can be observed, and analyzed to find
the system that suitable for minimize the learners’ errors.

How to cite this article: Pratiwi, R., Anggraini, N., & Hartono, R. (2022). The Error Analysis of Speaking Skill on
the Sixth Semester English Education Students at Indo Global Mandiri University. Global Expert: Jurnal Bahasa
dan Sastra, 10(1), 59-64

59
Literature Review
Speaking is one of skills that use oral word to express the idea, so the speaker should fulfill the component
of speaking to makesure that the listener can understand the speakers’ meaning. According to Brown et al (2010,
p. 172), components of speaking are vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, fluency, and comprehensibility. While
the types of speaking are imitative, intensive, responsive, interactive, and extensive (monologue). In this research,
chose the extensive speaking to analyzed the error on the students’ speaking.
Error and mistakes are two different things which come within learning process. Error is the flamed side of
learner speech or writing. According to Amara (2015, p.3), error happen because the learners does not comprehend
the rules of the second language that they learn. Mistakes refer to something that is based on guess false or fail to
use knowledge that have been known or learned. Richards et al (2010, p.201) assert that the mistake happen when
the learners less careful on their speaking and also can be self-corrected when the attention is called. While error
explained by Corder (1967, p.167) as branches of the code as a learner gets errors because they just have a little
understanding about establishments of language rules.
Based on the source, the factor that conducting the error divided into 2 types, first is interlingual error and
second is intralingual error. Interlingual error is the error happened because of the interference of the mother
tongue. Brown (2000, p. 224) states the beginning stages of learning a second language are especially vulnerable
to interlingual transfer from the native language, or interference. It means that there is an interference of the first
language in mastering second language. As the result, if the students construct the sentence, they will make error
by simplifying the second language with the first language construction. Intralingual error is the error that is
happened because of the features of the target language itself. Intralingual transfer error can be divided into four
types: over-generalization, ignorance of rules restriction, incomplete application of rules, false concepts hypotized.
Dullay, Burt, and Krashen (1982, p.145) claimed that there are four types of taxonomies which concern with
errors. They are linguistic based category, a surface strategy taxonomy, comparative taxonomy, and
communicative effect taxonomy. furthermore, the study will be focused on four kinds of Surface Strategy
Taxonomy. that consist of omission, addition, misformation, and misordering.
a. Omission is the lack of form or grammar that is supposed to have in the sentence but the staff omit it. For
example, no article, no main verb, no helping verb, no preposition, no punctuation, no possessive case, no
subject, and no object.
Example : Angel make a cupcake. The third person singular of verbs in the present tense takes –s, -es,
or –ies, but in the sentence should be : Angel makes a cupcake.
b. Addition error is the opposite of omissions. The errors are characterized by the presence of an item that
must not appear in well- formed utterance. Addition errors result from the all too faithful use of certain
rules. There are three types of addition errors:
- Double markings : two items marked for the same feature.
- Regularization (Overgeneralization) : applying the rules used to produce the regular once to those
that are irregular form.
- Simple Addition : the use of an item which should not appear in a well formed utterance.
c. Misformation is the wrong form of the morpheme or structure (Dulay, 1982, p. 157). It characterized by
the use of the wrong from the morpheme or structure while in omission errors the items are not supplied
at something, misformation errors can be typicallized into, archi-form, and alternating-form.
- Archi-forms errors are those of selection of one member of a class of forms to represent others in
the class.
- Alternating form errors is when the particle of form (as in taken) is being acquired, they may be
alternated with the past irregular.
d. Misordering error is the incorrect placement of a morpheme or group of morphemes in a utterance.
Example : [Link] buys two books new. The sentence is wrong because the placement of adjective
should be place before the object. The sentence should be : [Link] buys two new books.

In relation to the explanations above, Ailatat (2016) found 125 errors on his interview with the
students’ of EED Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta University. Which the highest frequency of errors that made
by the students’ was omission, then misformation, addition, and misordering.

METHODS
In this research, the researcher used qualitative research method in research design. The researcher classified
the errors’ aspects made by students by using theory proposed by Dulay et al (1982), surface taxonomy strategy.
The participant of the research was the students of sixth semester of English education study program. They have
taken all of language skill subjects including speaking 3 course and structure 4 course.

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 The data in this research was chosen from the final exam of speaking 3 course in video format. In qualitative
research, video categorized as a visual document. It supported by merriam et al (2016, p. 106) which state that
documents is the materials that relevant to a study that refer to in a wide range of printed, digital records, personal
documents, popular media, visual documents. This video was chosen because the researcher analyzed the error
on the students’ speaking.
The students gave their instagram link to the researcher, and the videos were downloaded from the students’
Instagram or WhatsApp messenger if they deleted the video on their instagram. Neverthless, the researcher was
able to collect 14 videos from the students.
The first step of data analyze, the researcher played the video one by one, and transcribed the data which
made the analysis process easier. Transcription or transcribing is the process of reproducing spoken words into
written text. Atkinson (1989) stated that in analyzing, the data should writeable and readable. The researcher
played the video on her computer with the split display to make the transcribing process easier, then she played
the video for about 3-5 seconds and repeated that part 3-5 times to make sure about what the students said on the
video to type later until the end of video. The transcription process typed on the researcher’s computer one by one
and collected it into one folder that consist of the students’ videos.
After transcribing the data, the second step is identified the errors on transcribed data. The researcher
underlined and used color coding to mark parts of the text that indicates as an error that commit by the students.
Codding is the process of making notation of the data as potentially relevant for answering the research question
(Merriam et al, 2015, p. 202). According to Creswell (2012, p. 243), coding is “the process to make sense out of
the data, divide it into text segments, label the segments with codes, examine codes for overlap and redundancy,
and collapse these codes into brod themes.” The researcher clasified four errors categories by using four underline
colours to represent the types of errors such as red for omission, green for addition, blue for misformation, and
yellow for misordering.
The researcher calculated the data by tabulating the errors in order to get the percentage of each sub category.
In calculating the percentage of each errors, the researcher applied this following formula that porposed by
Sudijono (2012, p. 43) :
𝒇
𝐏= 𝒙 𝟏𝟎𝟎%
∑𝒏
The researcher presented the excerps from the students’ speaking that contain the erros which clasified based on
the surface strategy taxonomy theory that purposed by Dulay e al (1982).
In the fifth step, the researcher interpreted the result by describing the finding from personal perspective
about the errors that the students committed on their speaking after finishing all of the steps. The researcher also
compared the result of findings with previous studies with the same phenomenon, especially in students’ speaking.
Then, the researcher concludes the findings

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

The researcher found 209 errors in their speaking which were categorized into four kinds of errors that
purposed by Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982) namely ommision, addition, misformation, and misordering. The
following table shows the errors which were committed by the students based on the Surface Strategy Taxonomy
(Dulay et al, 1982).

35 33
30
25 21
19 20
20
15 14 14 15
15 13
10 10
10 8 7 7
5
0

ERROR

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 The most errors was from Participant 12 who committed 33 errors on his speaking. While the least errors
was committed by Participant 7 and 5 with 7 errors. The result of the analysis showed that the highest percentage
of error was omission (55,50%). The lowest one was misordering (3,35%), while the other types of errors were
addition (22,49%), and misformation (18,66%). To be clear see the table below:

Types of Error Frequency Percentage

Omission 116 55.50%
Addition 47 22.49%
Misformation 39 18.66%
Misordering 7 3.35%
Total 209 100%

Besides classifiying the students’ errors into four types, the researcher also analyzed the factor that made the
students committed the errors in their speaking based on the source of error. There are two sources of error, they
are Interlingual and Intralingual.

Source of Error Frequency Percentage

Interlingual 84 40%

Intralingual 125 60%

Total 209 100%

From 14 participants, all of them stil made errors in their speaking. In this study, the researcher analyzed the
data by using surface strategy taxonomy by Dulay et al (1982), consists of: omission, addition, misformation, and
misordering. The findings on surface strategy taxonomy showed that the most error was omission with percentage
55,50% and it was followed by addition with 22,49%, misformation with 18,66%, and misordering with
percentage 3,35%. Majority of the students created the omission errors. Omission is leaving out an item that is
required for an utterance to be considered grammatical (Maolida & Hidayat, 2021, P.338). So that, their sentences
are considered ungrammatically.
All of the participants were committed the omission error in their speaking. So, it made omission was the
dominant error which made by the students. These result were also congruent to the previous study about errors
conducted by Ailatat (2016) and Suad (2014). From these findings, we could say omission is a common error in
surface strategy research, since it was also experienced by the sixth semester students of Indo Global Mandiri
University. The majority of omission error were omission article and omission plurality. 13 students omitted the
articles and 12 students omitted plurality.
The factor that influences the omission of articles and plurality errors is interlingual interference. In the
students’ native language (Bahasa) the plurality of noun does not add the suffix –s/es, while in the students’ target
language (English) should add the suffix –e/es in the plural noun. For example, in the sentence in Bahasa Saya
mempunyai beberapa mobil, if the students follow their target language grammar correctly, they must add suffix
–s/es after a noun. So, the sentence must be I have some cars. The interlingual interference will make the students
translate the sentence into I have some car.
The frequent error that made by the students is Addition. Addition is characterized by the presence of items,
which must not appear in well-formed utterence. In this research, the students added unnecessary items in their
speaking, and there were 47 items of errors. They were adding double pronoun and suffix –s to the verb where it
should not be added. These errors might occur due to students missunderstanding of the use of some rules. The
researcher found some students’ errors by added letters in the form of a verb as in the sentence “The histories
Benteng Kuto Besak is...” from participant 7 (01.29) the final -es in the verb should be omitted because it was
not suitable with the history mentioned in the student’s speaking, while the suffix “es” in the word “histories”
represents a plural of history.

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 Morover, the students also often added unnecessary items in their sentence. For the example in the sentence
“So, Kemaro island is the one of the most...”(P9, 01.29) the student add article “the” twice in this sentence, and
the first word “the” is unnecessary one, so it should be ommitted from the sentence and the correct sentence is
“So, Kemaro island is one of the most...”.
In misformation, some students tended to create the sentence error in pronoun. Misformation is the use of
the wrong form of the morpheme or structure. Based on the finding data, the researcher found 39 misformation
errors from the 13 participants. This error could probably happen because the difficulties of the target language
grammar. For example, the excerp from participant 12 “Then he guard jump to find the prince”. In Bahasa
“Penjaga dia” when this words change to English it could be “his guard” or “her guard”. When the learners try to
translate those word, the misformation errors may happen for example “he guard”, “guard he”, “him guard”, “she
guard” and other possible errors. These misformation errors occur because the learner uses the wrong form of the
morpheme or structure.
The students also produced misordering errors. However, it has lowest percentage among the error types
since it is only 3,35%. Misordering is the use of the wrong form of the morpheme or structure. This result may
be explained by the fact that the participants in this study were not really influenced by their mother tongue system
in ordering the words. This finding supports the idea of Mustafa, Mulya, and Bahri (2016, p.8) who state that
misordering errors mostly committed by the beginner learners. However, it was found that the misordering errors
in this study were also caused by interlingual interference. But, there were only a very few words ordered by
following the rule of students’ native language, Bahasa Indonesia. The excerpt below presents the example of
negative transfer of students’ L1.
“...tourist destination in the city Palembang...” (P4, 00.14 )
It can be seen that the student translated directly from L1 to the target language. Unfortunately, in this case,
the student did the negative transfer because the rule of English is different from Bahasa Indonesia. The correct
sentence should be “..tourist destination in the Palembang city...”.
Another type of error that was found by the researcher in the students’ speaking is wrong pronunciation.
Most students who made this error mightly because of they slipped their tongue, and another reason is because of
the interference of the L1. The researcher believed that this type of error is very common in students’ speaking,
both the beginner and advanced English learner, they still learn how to be better at handling the obstacle in
mastering English.
In conclusion, the result of this study shows that the cause of students’ error in their speaking performance
are both intralingual and interlinguaal inteference. When the students have incomplete knowledge about the target
language (English) and build their own rules, it is called intralingual error. meanwhile, the errors are classified
into interlingual if the students were influenced by the pattern of their first language (Bahasa Indonesia). However,
the current study found that intralingual interference is the major cause for spoken English errors produced by
English Education students of Indo Global Mandiri University.

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