Grammatical Errors in Students' Descriptive Writing and Implications for English Language Teaching

Veranza Diva Roslananda, Christiana Evy Tri Widyahening, Sri Handayani

Abstract


Writing descriptive texts requires students to express ideas accurately and apply appropriate grammatical rules. However, grammatical errors remain a common problem among EFL learners, especially at the junior high school level. Although previous studies have examined grammatical errors in descriptive writing, limited attention has been given to their implications for grammar instruction. This study aimed to identify grammatical errors in students’ descriptive writing, determine the dominant error type, and discuss their implications for English teaching. A descriptive qualitative design using error analysis was employed. The participants were 30 seventh-grade students of SMP Negeri 18 Surakarta. Data were collected from two descriptive writing tasks, My Best Friend and My Favorite Teacher, supported by interviews. The findings revealed 167 errors: omission (73.1%) and misformation (26.9%), with no addition or misordering errors. The findings suggest the need for explicit grammar instruction, contextualized writing practice, and continuous corrective feedback.

Keywords


Descriptive Writing, Error Analysis, Grammatical Errors, EFL Learners, English language teaching.

References


Anderson, M., & Anderson, K. (1997). Text Types in English. In https://books.google.co.id/books/about/Text_Types_in_English.html?id=yfr8OGxyDaEC&redir_esc=y.

Brown, H. D. (2007). Fifth Edition: Principle of Language Learning and Teaching. In Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning (pp. 1743–1745).

Corder, S. P. (1981). Error Analysis and Interlanguage.

Creswell, john w. (2009). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. Manual Therapy, 16(1), 103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.math.2010.09.003

Dulay, H., Burt, M., & Krashen, S. (1982). Language two : Dulay, Heidi C : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. In https://archive.org/details/languagetwo0000dula/page/n5/mode/2up.

Dwi Putri Maharani Reg. (2023). Error Analysis on Students’ Writing Descriptive Text at the Eleventh Grade of Pmds Putri Palopo.

Ellis, R. (1994). The study of second language acquisition. Oxford University Press.

Gerot, L., & Wignell, P. (1994). Making sense of functional grammar. Gerd Stabler.

Harmer, J. (2007). The practice of English language teaching (4th ed.). Pearson Longman.

Knapp, P., & Watkins, M. (2005). Genre, text, grammar: Technologies for teaching and assessing writing. UNSW Press.

Laili, M. (2022). English Language Error Analysis of Descriptive Text Produced By Seventh Grader. 07(02), 21–31. https://doi.org/10.32764/eduscope.v7i2.2323

Matthew B. Miles, A. Michael Huberman, J. S. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: a methods sourcebook.

Prakoso, A. (2024). An error analysis of using simple present tense in descriptive text written by the eighth grade students of MTs Negeri Kota Sorong (Undergraduate thesis).

Prayuda, M. S., Ambarwati, N. F., Yun, F., Ginting, A., Katolik, U., & Thomas, S. (2023). Students ’ Writing Error in Parts of Speech : A Case Study of EFL Students. 9(2), 659–665. https://doi.org/10.31949/educatio.v9i2.4419

Rohdearni Wati Sipayung, B. (2023). An Analysis of Grammatical Errors in Writing Descriptive Text. 5(1), 74–95. https://doi.org/10.36985/c2ja8s98

Thornbury, S. (1999). How to teach grammar. Longman.

Ur, P. (1996). A course in language teaching: Practice and theory. Cambridge University Press.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.31004/jele.v11i5.3218

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2026 Veranza Diva Roslananda, Christiana Evy Tri Widyahening, Sri Handayani

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.