A Morphological and Syntactical Error Analysis in English as a Foreign Language Learners' Written Recount Texts: A Surface Strategy Taxonomy Approach

Abstract

This study aims to identify and classify the morphological and syntactical errors produced by English as a Foreign Language learners in their written recount texts, and to determine which types of error occur most frequently. It employs a qualitative content analysis with descriptive quantitative support, and the data consist of thirty-seven recount texts written by tenth-grade students of SMAN 9 Garut. Recount texts were selected because the genre obliges every writer to mark past time, to sequence events chronologically, and to refer back to real participants, so that difficulties of word formation and difficulties of sentence construction surface together within a single piece of writing. The novelty of the study lies in a two-stage analytical model. George Yule's account of morphology and syntax is first used to establish the linguistic level at which an error occurs, and Dulay, Burt and Krashen's Surface Strategy Taxonomy is then applied to classify the surface form of that error as omission, addition, misformation or misordering; the sequence is grounded in Corder's Error Analysis Theory and Selinker's Interlanguage Theory. Of the 214 errors identified, syntactical errors were slightly more frequent than morphological ones, and misformation emerged as the dominant surface category, driven mainly by inaccurate past-tense and verb forms. The modelweb allow educators to convert error data into remedial activities and targeted feedback because it not only identifies the extent to which a form deviates from the target but also determine whether the learner’s difficulty lies at the morphological or syntactical.