Grammatical Errors in Descriptive Academic Writing

Introduction Learning English either as a foreign language or a second language means learning not only its aspects but also its important skills, such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing. As one of the crucial language skills, writing is needed to be practiced, especially by EFL students. Writing is considered the result of complex processes of planning, drafting, reviewing, and revising and some approaches to first and second language teaching writing allows students to learn (Richards, et al., 2002). In addition, Oshima & Hogue (2007) presume that writing is like an ongoing activity that needs creativity and it cannot be done or finished in one action or a step. There must be creating and organizing ideas, writing and editing a draft, and revising it. Like other experts, Dweikat, & Aqel, (2017) cited in Alsher (2021) says that writing is such a problem for some students in creating an interesting, obvious, brief, and effective written work. Writing skills are crucial for L2 students as they afford to provide knowledge of the physical text and it makes them able to express their opinions and knowledge by producing written essays when responding to tasks given as an evaluation (Raoofi, Behmandi & Rahmani, 2017 cited in Khairunnisa, Ibrahim & Othman, 2021). Writing can also be broadened the author's knowledge so that students can express their ideas with more freedom. There are various types of writing that the students should focus on it. The types of writing are persuasive, descriptive, expository, and narrative writing (Oktavianti, Gusmuliana, & Apriani, 2021). In fact, in the process of teaching and learning English academic writing, like in a university or a college, writing ability is the most complicated and complex language skill that students must master since it is dominantly affected or influenced by one of the aspects of the language, such grammar. Besides, academic writing is a product of the mind. It is a mental and cognitive activity. This course generally discusses the essay and techniques used to write scientific work (Suryani & Apriani, 2021). Tarigan (2009), cited in Kaka, Suparwa, & Satyawati (2021) states that grammar is related to verbal and nonverbal language skills and it needs more knowledge to comprehend the gloss of the utterances naturally. It is suggested by Morenberg, Abstract. Generally, errors are committed by EFL students in learning English at any level of study. This research focuses on university students who are taking Academic Writing courses in the third semester. This research is aimed at identifying the types of errors and the dominant ones committed by students in descriptive academic writing exercises. The method of the research was the qualitative approach. The instrument that the researchers used in this research were essay writing. There were 24 students were taken as subjects of the research. To analyze the data, the researchers used Error Analysis Method (EAM) based on Surface Structure Taxonomy and percentage error analysis. The findings showed that many students committed errors involving grammatical items in line with omission, addition, misinformation, and misordering and the dominant was a misordering error. The researchers assume that some factors affect students' errors such as lack of knowledge and competence in English grammar. In conclusion, the error analysis method is a suitable way to identify students' errors using simple present tense in descriptive academic writing exercises.


Introduction
Learning English either as a foreign language or a second language means learning not only its aspects but also its important skills, such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing. As one of the crucial language skills, writing is needed to be practiced, especially by EFL students. Writing is considered the result of complex processes of planning, drafting, reviewing, and revising and some approaches to first and second language teaching writing allows students to learn (Richards, et al., 2002). In addition, Oshima & Hogue (2007) presume that writing is like an ongoing activity that needs creativity and it cannot be done or finished in one action or a step. There must be creating and organizing ideas, writing and editing a draft, and revising it.
Like other experts, Dweikat, & Aqel, (2017) cited in Alsher (2021) says that writing is such a problem for some students in creating an interesting, obvious, brief, and effective written work. Writing skills are crucial for L2 students as they afford to provide knowledge of the physical text and it makes them able to express their opinions and knowledge by producing written essays when responding to tasks given as an evaluation (Raoofi, Behmandi & Rahmani, 2017 cited in Khairunnisa, Ibrahim & Othman, 2021). Writing can also be broadened the author's knowledge so that students can express their ideas with more freedom. There are various types of writing that the students should focus on it. The types of writing are persuasive, descriptive, expository, and narrative writing (Oktavianti, Gusmuliana, & Apriani, 2021).
In fact, in the process of teaching and learning English academic writing, like in a university or a college, writing ability is the most complicated and complex language skill that students must master since it is dominantly affected or influenced by one of the aspects of the language, such grammar. Besides, academic writing is a product of the mind. It is a mental and cognitive activity. This course generally discusses the essay and techniques used to write scientific work (Suryani & Apriani, 2021). Tarigan (2009), cited in Kaka, Suparwa, & Satyawati (2021) states that grammar is related to verbal and nonverbal language skills and it needs more knowledge to comprehend the gloss of the utterances naturally. It is suggested by Morenberg, 38 | Vol. 2 , N o . 1 , 2 0 2 2 ( 3 7 -4 4 ) (1991) cited in Al-khresheh & Orak (2021) that grammar is conventionally defined as the words used to create sentences and it helps someone comprehend how the words are formed in a complex way.
Furthermore, Duddleston & Pullum, (2003) cited in Al-khresheh & Orak (2021) defined grammar as the practice and study of any rules that determine how words are formed into sentences. It has something to do with two basic components, such as rules of grammar and how they are studied and practiced in terms of language framework. In other words, writing ability needs knowledge, not only vocabulary mastery but also grammar mastery due to many students generally making grammar mistakes, particularly in using tense in writing.
Tense is an essential grammar component that has something to do with verb changes that usually make students confused to using it when writing and it is in line with Hornby (1957) cited in Napitupulu, (2021) tenses are all verbs that can be used to indicate action or state formed by the verb and time. Tense has something to do with altering degrees of precision, the time when an event action or an event happened. (Kroeger, 2005). Tenses are defined as the classification of grammar related to the timing and verbs used and the plural forms indicate as the action happened. Greenbaum and Nelson (2002) cited in Kumayas (2021). Without understanding grammar, students will not be able to construct any proper sentence. By mastering it, a student could use a particular language the way she or he loves to. Another reason why grammar is essential in language teaching is that language and grammar are two separate things. Learning about a language is easy, but learning how to use it in every context properly is on a whole different level (Putra, et. al, 2021).
Under the preliminary activities of the descriptive academic writing course that the researchers did with all the third-semester students of the English Department by giving quizzes in terms of descriptive writing exercises, the researchers found out that many students made mistakes in using the simple present tense and they did it repeatedly, and of course, it is considered as errors. Errors are something that cannot be avoided in the target language, therefore it is crucial to get what is meant by error. (Li, 2021). It is also in line with Yahya, et al., (2012) who found that errors are unavoidable and occurred for some reason or other and L2 learners are non-native speakers of English who are strongly bound to the aspects of social and cultural existence and the dominant problem that caused errors in writing was tenses. Hussain et al., (2013) state that errors are caused by memory lapses of the students in terms of tiredness and strong emotions. There are two main natures of errors in language learning. Interlingual errors (L1) and intralingual errors (L2) Interlingual errors are such errors resulting from someone's intrusion. While intralingual errors are kinds of errors caused by someone's misinterpretation or overgeneralization of rules of English grammar. (Bryant, 1984cited in Silalahi, 2014. In other words, insufficient knowledge of the grammatical rules and not too often using English as the target language in their daily activities enable them to find English writing is more difficult than writing in their first language or L1, and because of the limited knowledge, they often commit errors in their writing exercises. Based on the facts stated, the researchers need to conduct a research of error analysis on students' academic writing.

Material and Method
In this research, the researchers used a qualitative method or approach. The qualitative approach is a study that is conducted to search or investigate the quality of relationships, activities, situations, or materials (Fraenkel, Wallen, & Hyun, 2012). It is also suggested by Gay, Mills & Airasian (2012) who define qualitative research as the collection, analysis, and interpretation of comprehensive narrative and visual (i.e., nonnumerical) data to gain insights into a particular phenomenon of interest.
Moreover, Syahri, Sulaiman & Susanti (2017) state that qualitative research is research that has something to do with data analysis of reducing, classifying, verifying, presenting, and drawing conclusions. Like other experts, Creswell (2012) states that qualitative research is research based on 6 main characteristics, namely: 2 0 2 2 ( 3 7 -4 4 ) 1. Roaming or exploring a problem and improving or developing a phenomenon in detailed understanding. 2. Having theoretical framework play a minor yet testify the problem. 3. Mentioning or stating the objectives or purposes and questions of the research both in a general and broadway in getting the experiences of the participants. 4. Gathering or collecting data regard on words in terms of a small number of individuals to get the views of the participants. 5. Scrutinizing or analyzing the data to be described and the theme of the text analysis interpreted into larger meaning of the research findings. 6. Making or writing a research report through flexible, emerging structure and evaluating criteria related to the researcher's subjective reflexivity and bias. In brief, this research is categorized as qualitative research since it has nothing to do with numerical data of inferential statistics which is got by giving treatment. Additionally, the subjects for this research were 24 students in the third semester from the English Department, Faculty of Teachers Training and Education, Universitas Muhammadiyah Palembang taught by the researchers. The subjects were selected based on convenience sampling because of their willingness and availability to participate.
To have the data the researchers ask the students to write an essay of about 400 words on one topic shared, namely "My Beloved Campus" in the form of a descriptive essay. In this writing exercise, the use of the simple present tense was emphasized. They were given one hour to complete the task. The researchers instructed the Zoom platform and asked them to send their writing exercises through E-mails and WhatsApp groups.
After the data were obtained, the researchers analyzed them using the error analysis method (EAM) in terms of collecting samples of the learner's language, identifying the errors, describing the errors, explaining the errors, and evaluating/correcting the errors. (Corder, 1967cited in Dirgeyasa, 2016. The data analysis from EAM was categorized based on surface structure taxonomy: omission, addition, misformation, and misordering. Table 1 illustrates examples of each category. In addition to analyzing the errors through the error analysis method (EAM) based on surface structure taxonomy, the data were also counted or calculated through the percentage of errors analysis, and the formula was stated. P = ℎ 100% Note: P = Percentage

Results and Discussion
This research has something to do with the findings of error analysis conducted by giving a descriptive writing exercise in an academic writing course in keeping with four kinds of errors, (i.e. omission, addition, misformation, and misordering). In other words, the researchers asked the students to write a descriptive writing about their beloved campus and give them one hour to finish and send it through WhatsApp. All of the students made an error in descriptive writing with different total errors. To get detailed results of the activity, Table 2 presents the recapitulation of students' errors based on surface structure taxonomy.  Table 2 describes the errors made by the third-semester students of the English Department in an academic writing course in terms of descriptive writing exercises or quizzes based on surface structure taxonomy. In this research, the researchers found out that 1 st student got 14 total errors in terms of 2 omissions, 0 misformation, 0 addition, and 12 misordering. The 2 nd student got 25 total errors in terms of 4 omissions, 4 misformation, 2 addition, and 15 misordering.
A summary of errors committed by students was presented in the following instances: 1. Omission a) My campus consist of many beautiful rooms. (student 3). It should be: My campus consists of many beautiful rooms. b) We _happy to study there. (student 21). It should be: We are happy to study there. In addition, the researchers then calculated or counted the errors through the percentage analysis formula. To be clear, Table 3 illustrates the results of the percentage analysis formula in terms of the frequency and the percentage of errors.  Table 3 shows the results of the frequency and percentage of errors calculation through the percentage analysis formula. In this context, the highest percentage of error was misordering (0,55%) and the lowest one was misformation (0,08%), while omission was 0,21% and addition was 014%. In conclusion, most of the students made an error in misordering since they tended to be perplexed by the use and function of the simple present tense in writing. Furthermore, the researchers assume that omission errors were made by the third-semester students of the English Department because they left out an item that required an utterance to be considered grammatically. While misformation errors were made by them because they used the wrong forms of structure.

Misformation
On the other side, they made such an addition error because they wrote or put down an item that must not exist in a well-formed utterance, and they made a misordering error because they did not understand the use and function of simple present tense. They wrote or put down the words or morphemes incorrect order in their descriptive academic writing.
In this research, the researchers decided to select the third-semester students of the English Department because they have an academic writing course and they have learned a Grammar course. It was done to know how good their academic writing skills were and their grammar mastery. This research has examined errors in students' writing exercises, coded based on surface structure taxonomy and percentage error analysis. The researchers found out that the findings of this research have been in line with Hidayah's study (2013) which showed four committed errors found in students' writings such as omission, addition, misformation, and misordering.
In addition, the researchers also found out that there was only a slight difference between Hidayah's study and the researchers' study in terms of the position of the dominant error. In other words, she found misformation as the committed error and followed by omission, addition, and misordering, while the researchers found misordering as the dominant one which was followed by omission, addition, and misformation. These errors indicated that students have learning difficulties in writing.

Conclusion
The error analysis method is such an appropriate way to identify students' errors in writing especially in descriptive academic writing using the simple present tense. This is arranged systematically which enables the researchers to get a conclusion based on essays given to the students. Additionally, surface structure taxonomy is good means of describing and classifying errors in terms of omission, addition, misinformation, and misordering. Moreover, the findings of this research showed that misordering errors are most frequently made or committed by the students. In addition, lack of knowledge and competence in English grammar become influential factors that commit students' errors in writing.
In conclusion, the results of this research can give a contribution or recommendation to teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) about grammatical errors in using present tense 43 | Vol. 2 , N o . 1 , 2 0 2 2 ( 3 7 -4 4 ) in writing. In other words, once English teachers are teaching writing as soon as they teach grammar by identifying the types of errors that the students make and correcting them. The researchers believe that the results of this research can help English teachers design teaching materials for teaching writing skills. Besides, the researchers also suggest that students practice writing more and more to improve their writing skills. Hopefully, this research can be beneficial guidance for next researchers to do ongoing deep research related to error analysis.