AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN THE CONVERSATION OF THE THIRD GRADE STUDENTS OF TOURISM DEPARTMENT OF SMK NEGRI 1 KUPANG, INDONESIA

Abstract

The spoken and written language cannot be separated from grammatical rules because the grammatical rules of a language play an important role to convey and receive the message. This study aimed to answer the following questions: What were the types and the most of the grammatical errors in the conversation of the third- grade students of Tourism Department of SMK Negeri 1 Kupang? The method of analyzing data was descriptive analysis. The study was conducted at SMK Negeri 1 (State Vocational High School) Kupang in the school year 2011/2012. The subjects of this study were the third-grade students of Tourism Department. In collecting the data, they were given some topics, and they were asked to make a simple conversation with their partner. The conversations were recorded. The data were analyzed using linguistic category taxonomy. It could be concluded that (1) the types of grammatical errors in conversations were: morphological and syntactical errors. (2) the most of the
grammatical errors in conversations were: (a) Syntactical errors consisted of 198 errors
or 83.90% and (b) Morphological errors consisted of 38 errors or 16.10%.