THE INTERFERENCE OF INDONESIAN GRAMMAR IN WRITING ENGLISH DIALOGUE: A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF MAN PURWOREJO IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2012/2013

Abstract

Grammar is one of the most important components of a language. It is impossible to learn or use a language without knowing the grammatical rules of the language. Indonesian students get difficulties in writing English dialogue because the structure of both languages are different. The different structures between two languages cause negative transfer. Negative transfer is usually due to the influence of the learners’ native language. Learners need to know the grammatical rules of a language so that they can minimize the interference of their native grammatical rules. The researcher chooses the tenth grade students of MAN Purworejo as the object of the research because their writing is still much interfered by Indonesian grammar. Hence, it is important to know what kinds of Indonesian grammatical interference that students make and their efforts to minimize the interference. There are 192 students of the tenth grade which are devided into six classes. The data consists of 32 students’ writing of English dialogue which were randomly selected from the three classes of the total data of 93 students’. The purpose of this research is to find out the types of grammatical errors as the result of the interference of Indonesian grammar which are found in students’ writing of English dialogue and the students’ efforts to minimize the interference. In this research the researcher uses a descriptive qualitative approach. The result of this study shows that there are eight types of errors as the result of Indonesian grammar interference, they are errors in the use of: tenses (13.33%), word order (13.33%), articles (11.11%), pronouns (13.33%), linking verbs (26.68%), plurality (4.44%), prepositions (8.89%), and subject-verb agreement (8.89%). The most dominant error the students made is in the use of linking verb (26.68%). From the questionnaire given to the students, there are some efforts that the students do to minimize the interference of Indonesian grammar such as reading English novels, articles, short stories, and textbooks; memorizing English vocabularies; chatting with a native English speaker on Facebook or Twitter; writing a diary in English; speaking English in daily conversation; watching English films; translating English texts into Indonesian; using dictionaries to study English; translating English song lyric; speak to a native speaker; joining English course; and setting electronic tools using English.