MACROLINGUISTIC ERRORS IN INDONESIAN EFL LEARNERS ESSAYS

Dafid Wahyu Utomo, M. A and Yusti Fargianti, M. Pd., as the researcher advisors

The objectives of this research were to find out the macrolinguistic errors in writing essay and to know the possible causes of the errors commit by students. The subject of this research is the sixth-semester students of English Education Department who have joined Academic Writing class. It was conducted in Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa University. This research employed qualitative research approach with content analysis method. In this research, the instruments used were the students essay and interview. The result of the analysis shows that: (1) the students commit seven types of error at the discoursal level and two types of error at the pragmatic level. In the discoursal level, the students commit run-on sentences, unawareness of logical relation between sentences, poor paragraph development, cohesion problem, improper use of discourse markers, coherence problem, and absence of parallel structure. In the pragmatic level, the researcher found miss-selection of lexical item and violation of the maxim of quantity, manner and relevance. (2) The possible causes of the errors included: students have lack interest in writing; students got difficulties to use the correct and appropriate grammar; students got difficulties to construct their idea to the cohesive and coherent paragraph; students vocabulary mastery was low; and students got difficulties to formulate their own idea of writing. Finally, it can be concluded that from 10 errors only 9 errors appear in the student’s essay.

Keyword: Macrolinguistic error, students essay

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