An Analysis of Students’ Singular Plural Errors in Writing Descriptive Text

Grammar mistakes can happen to students learning English as a second language, especially when writing. Some of them will use improper grammar or write with an improper structure. The purpose of this study was to find out how students use singular and plural nouns when writing descriptive text. The information gathered from the result was summarized using a qualitative method. 26 students from SMPN Miftahul Ulum's 7th grade participated in this study. These students have studied descriptive writing and singular plural nouns. The observation was done by analyzing students writing task to see how they wrote the descriptive text and to see what types of errors they made. Additionally, the researcher conducted an interview to determine the source of the students' error of singular and plural nouns. Indirect interview using google form was conducted to validate the data from the questionnaire and was distributed to all seventh-grade students. It asks 10 questions in order to identify the reason why students employ singular and plural nouns incorrectly. Interlingual and intralingual intereference are two indicators used in the interview. The findings indicated that, out of a total of 87 errors, only 21 were omission errors and 11 are misformation. 75 errors of the students are addition.. Most students still write in Indonesian first, then translate it into English, which is the main source of students' errors when using singular and plural nouns. As a conclusion, the majority of students still do not understand the difference between a regular and irregular noun, and they claim that English has complicated structural elements, which is another intralingual factor.