GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN WRITING RECOUNT TEXT BY THE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS AT SMA BUDISATRYA MEDAN

This research deals with the tenth grade students’ grammatical errors in writing recount text. This research uses a qualitative design in which the data are taken from the sentences of texts. This research applies random technique to get a representative sample; from 160 tenth grade students at SMA Budisatrya Medan, 20 students are chosen as the sample. The data are collected by writing test and interview. The analysis found that: 1) There are five types of grammatical errors; they are verb 89 cases (57.4 %), pronoun 6 cases (3.9 %), preposition 10 cases (6.5 %), punctuation 32 cases (20.6 %) and spelling 18 cases (11.6 %). 2) The causes of errors; Interlingual transfer contributes 10 % and intralingual transfer contributes 90 %. The, intralingual transfer divides into 4 categories; overgeneralization contributes 46 %, ignorance of rule restriction 0 %, incomplete of rule application 10 % and false concept hypothesize 44 % in causing errors happened. So, the most dominant type of grammatical errors made by the tenth grade students in writing recount text is verb. It is hoped that the result of this research is useful for everyone who wants to study about grammatical errors.