GRAMMATICAL ERROR ANALYSIS IN NARRATIVE TEXTS WRITTEN BY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

This study attempted to identify and analyze the grammatical errors committed by eleventh-grade students at SMA Al-Irsyad Tegal in their English narrative text writing, applying Surface Strategy Taxonomy. This research used a descriptive qualitative method. The participants of this research were 30 students in the eleventh grade. The data were narrative texts written by the eleventh-grade students. The results of analysis revealed that 14 students produced three of the four main types of errors—omission, addition, and misformation—while no instances of misordering errors were observed. The most prevalent error type identified was misformation, while misordering was the least frequent. Overall, the findings indicate that although students were generally able to arrange words into proper sentence structures, their main difficulty lay in selecting the correct word forms to fit the grammatical context. This was particularly evident in their application of verb tenses, where many students failed to use the appropriate past tense forms required for narrative writing.