AN ANALYSIS OF PREPOSITIONAL ERRORS IN NARRATIVE TEXTS WRITTEN BY ELEVENTH-GRADE STUDENTS OF SMA NEGERI 4 KUPANG

Abstract

This research aimed at describing the types of error in using prepositions and to find out the most frequent error made by the Eleventh-grade students of SMAN 4 Kupang. The method of this research was descriptive qualitative. The data-collecting method used documentation, interviews and observation. This study analyzed the students' narrative handwriting based on the classification of preposition errors by Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982). Meanwhile, the frequencies of errors were calculated in percentage. The findings of this research indicates that there were 21 total errors that students made which were classified into four categories based on the surface strategy taxonomy. Those were error of omission with 1 error, error of addition with 6 errors, misformation with 14 errors and no misordering errors were found. It can be seen from the percentage result where misformation was 66.67%, followed by error of addition with 28.57%, error of omission with 4.76% and 0% of misordering.  Based on the findings, it can be concluded that the Eleventh-grade students of SMAN 4 Kupang had many errors in writing narrative text especially in using prepositions.