ERROR ANALYSIS OF A BIOLOGY TEACHER’S SPOKEN ENGLISH:  
                      A CASE STUDY 
                            
                      Dorothea Rahardani 
                         Abstract 
          This  study  reports  the  common  grammatical  error  of  the  spoken  English  made  by  a 
       Biology teacher of Bethany School, Salatiga. Many scholars have conducted several studies 
       about Error Analysis (EA), however there were still a little study about EA which investigates the 
       errors made by the teacher. Seeing the importance of the teacher’s role in the teaching and 
       learning process, this study is aimed at investigating the teacher’s grammatical error as she was 
       teaching in the classroom. Using the sample linguistic category taxonomy proposed by Burt, 
       Dulay and Krashen (1982) in classifying the errors such as plural forms, verb tenses, subject-
       verb  agreements,  determiners,  and  pronouns,  the  data  were  collected  through  six-time 
       observations in order to get the audio records of teacher’s utterances while teaching in the 
       classroom. Then, the data would be analyzed and specified based on the linguistic category to 
       get the result. The result of this study showed that the most common grammatical error made by 
       the teacher was the use of determiners that worth for 119 errors, 27.87%. Other errors that 
       found  out  were  singular/plural  forms  (91  errors,  21.31%),  pronouns  (62  errors,  14.52%), 
       subject-verb agreements (60 errors, 14.05%), verbs tense (57 errors, 13.35%), and prepositions 
       (38 errors, 8.90%). Pedagogical implications would be made in this study for the development of 
       SLA and TESOL.  
       Keywords: Error Analysis, Grammatical Errors, Linguistic Category Taxonomy, Immersion  
                           Program 
        
                        Introduction 
         Human learning, in any form, may never be free from mistakes. Learning how to swim, 
       play badminton, and how to walk for a baby involve in making mistakes (Brown, 2000), but 
       from these mistakes, people get feedback and they learn how to produce the correct ways or 
       forms.  This is also true when people are learning a foreign language.  Learners also make 
       mistakes.  However, mistakes should not be seen as something negative because ―making of 
       mistakes is an important part of learning‖ (Williams & Burden, 1997, p. 11).  Kavaliauskienė 
       (2003) also mentions, ―Mistakes are often a sign of learning and, as a result, must be viewed 
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                                      ERROR ANALYSIS 
       positively‖ (p. 51). Finally, Norrish (1983) in Sanal (2007, p. 598) notes, ―Making mistakes can 
       indeed be regarded as an essential part of learning‖. 
          Ellis (2005) also explained that learners often make some mistakes or errors both in the 
       comprehension and production process in the language learning. Therefore, ―making errors is the 
       most natural thing in the world and it is evidently attached to the human being‖ (Maicusi & 
       Lopez, 1999, p. 168). Errors can also giving feedback to the learners and the teacher, because by 
       knowing the feedback from the errors, we could know about the effectiveness of the teacher‘s 
       teaching materials. 
          The study of learner‘s errors has become a primary focus in the L2 research during the 
       last  decade (Burt, Dulay & Krashen, 1982, p. 140). Wardaugh (1983) did the first study on 
       learner errors under Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH). CAH is an approach to study the 
       learner‘s errors. It rested on a comparison of the learner‘s native and target languages (Burt, 
       Dulay & Krashen, 1982). This kind of hypothesis looked the errors as a result of interfering the 
       first  language  habits  to  learn  new  linguistic  behaviors  (Burt,  Dulay  &  Krashen,  1982).  This 
       statement  was  also  claimed  by  Brown  (1980)  that  the  principal  barrier  to  second  language 
       acquisition is the interference of the first language system with the second language system. It 
       believed that CAH would predict the areas in the target language that would reflect the most 
       difficulty  in  language  learning.  Then,  the  CAH  hypothesis  rests  on  the  assumptions  that:            
       (1) language learning is habit formation, (2) an old habit facilitates the formation of a new habit. 
          Since the CAH appeared, many critics toward CAH also appeared. Brown (1987) argued 
       that CAH focused on the interference of L1 on L2 learning.  
          CAH raised  many  controversies  because  of  its  several  weaknesses,  for  example  the 
          prediction  of  target  language  difficulties  that  CA  has  claimed  turns  out  to  be 
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                                      ERROR ANALYSIS 
          uninformative (teachers has already known these errors before) and also inaccurate, i.e. 
          many of the errors that CA has predicted in fact occur‖ (Ellis & Barkhuizen, 2005 in 
          Husada, (2007, p. 95).  
          Sanal  (2007,  p.  597)  also  stated  that  ―there  were  a  number  of  theoretical  criticisms 
       regarding the feasibility of comparing languages and methodology of CAH.‖ Burt, Dulay, & 
       Krashen (1982) also argued  
          Errors should therefore result from first language habits interfering with the learner‘s 
          attempts  to  learn  new  linguistic  behaviors……This  and  other  similar  observations 
          documented in  journal  articles  pointed  out  an  embarrassing  gap  between  theory  and 
          reality and set the scene for the acceptance of a more comprehensive approach to errors. 
          (p. 140) 
          Because  of  the  controversy  and  criticisms,  Error  Analysis  (EA)  approach  appeared. 
       Dulay, Burt, & Krashen (1982) contend that EA attempts to account for learners‘ errors that 
       cannot  be  explained  or  predicted  by  CA  or  behaviorist  theory.  ―EA  has  made  a  significant 
       contribution  to  the  theoretical  consciousness-raising  of  applied  linguistics  and  language 
       practitioners‖ (Krashen, 1982, p. 141). Darus (2009) also notes that EA can help the teachers to 
       identify in a systematic manner of the specific and common language problems that the students 
       have.  
          In recent years several scholars (e.g. Eun-pyo, 2002; Bataineh, 2005; Ratanapinyowong 
       & Sattayatham, 2008; Darus, 2009; Liu and Wang, 2011) conducted studies on EA. For example, 
       Eun-pyo (2002) did the EA study on the medical students‘ informal and formal letters in Eulji 
       University, School of Medicine-Korea. In his study he divided the participants into two groups: 
       one group consisted of the students who had taken TOEIC test (advanced level) and another 
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                                      ERROR ANALYSIS 
       group consisted of the students who had no experience with the TOEIC test (low level). The 
       results of the study show that there was no correlation between the number of errors and the 
       participants‘ TOEIC scores. In the other words, high scores of the TOEIC did not mean less 
       number of errors. The study also found that the most common errors were transfer errors from 
       the participants‘ L1 (26%). These errors were considered as crucial errors because the intention 
       of the writers was not clearly delivered. Eun pyo‘s study also suggested that the teachers of 
       English should produce a kind of guide book on the errors that most of the students made and let 
       them to study the errors. By doing so, the students would know their errors patterns and knew 
       how to handle them in the future.  
          In a later year, Bataineh (2005) analyzed the grammatical errors in using the indefinite 
       article produced by EFL students at Yarmouk University in Jordan. The participants were 209 
       male and female freshmen, sophomores, junior and senior students. Based on the analysis of 
       their 50 minutes essays, she found that even though juniors and seniors wrote the compositions 
       twice as long, their errors were 20% and 23% less than those made by the freshmen and 34% and 
       40% less than those made by the sophomores respectively.  The result of the study also showed 
       that the influence of the learners‘ native language was minimal.  Instead, the majority of errors 
       occurred due to the results of developmental factors and common learning processes, such as 
       overgeneralization or simplification. 
          Another study on EA was done by Ratanapinyowong & Sattayatham (2008) who aimed 
       to identify the type of errors in English paragraph writing produced by the first year of medical 
       students from four different medical schools in Thailand. Here, the participants were required to 
       read a medical passage. After reading the passage, they were required to write a paragraph which 
       showed their opinions on the passage that they had read. The results of the study indicate that 
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