THAI STUDENTS LEXICAL ERRORS IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION

Pembimbing: Dr. Syafrizal, M. Pd., dan Yusti Fargianti, M.Pd.,

176hlm

This qualitative research aimed at identifying the types of lexical errors and finding out the possible causes of the errors committed by the sixth-grade primary students of Warraphat School Thailand in their English composition. The school and the participants were purposively selected. The data was analysed using the content analysis approach. In this research, the instruments used were the students English composition and the interview. 30 compositions were collected from 51 sixth-grade students during the second semester of 2019. The result of the analysis showed that there were 155 lexical errors found in Thai students English composition. They committed six out of seven types of lexical errors, such as (i) misspelling (36%), (ii) errors of omission or incompletion (26%), (iii) errors of wrong word choice (20%), (iv) errors of literal translation (7%), (v) errors of redundancy (6%), and (vi) errors of word formation (5%). Meanwhile, errors of collocation were not found. Furthermore, the possible causes of the errors included: negative language transfer (interlingual & intralingual transfer), lack of writing practice, and weakness in English writing skill. Therefore, the teachers and the students need to raise their awareness of the lexical errors and reduce the number
of those errors in English composition.

Keywords: Thai Students, Lexical Errors, English Composition