ABSTRACT
This is a descriptive study that analyzes the common mistakes in electronic mail/ electronic letters (e-letters) written by the fourth semester students of English Department of UNNES in the academic year of 2004/2005. The eletters were written by twenty-two subjects in May to August 2005 and sent to Lynne Hand, a British English teacher living in Germany.
The objectives of this study are to discover and describe the types of the grammatical mistakes in the e-letters made by the fourth semester students of English Department of UNNES in the academic year of 2004/2005 dated from May to August 2005 and to find the possible causes of the mistakes. The descriptive approach was used in the study. All the sentences in the e-letters were grouped under 27 types of mistakes and the proportion of each type of mistakes were computed.
The result of the study shows that out of 27 types of mistakes under observation, are: Be (P1=13.13%), Plural (P2=10.10%), Tenses (P3=10.10%), Spelling (P4=9.09%) and Article (P5=8.08%), Preposition (P6=7.57%), Capitalization (P7=8.08%), Adjective (P8=7.07%), Comma (P9=5.55%), Agreement (P10=2.52%), Infinitive with To (P11=2.52%), Contractions (P12=2.02%), Conjunction (P13=2.02%), Full Stop (P14=1.51%), Noun (P15=1.51%), Apostrophe (P16=1.01%), Demonstratives (P17=1.01%), Passive Sentence (P18=1.01%), Quantifier (P19=1.01%), Inverted Structure (P20=1.01%), Verb (P21=1.01%), Infinitive without To (P22=0.50%), Numeral (P23=0.50%), Relative Pronoun (P24=0.50%), Subject Pronoun (P25=0.50%), Unparalleled Structure (P26=0.50%), Object Pronoun (P27=0,50%). The intralingual factors were argued to be the possible cause of the mistakes made by the subjects.
The result of this study may be used by English lecturers to minimize the students’ mistakes in their writing skill especially in the knowledge of grammar, and as a general guide for the English lecturers, especially those in English Department of UNNES, in making writing class curriculum. A future study that investigates the development of writing class curriculum that makes use of e-mail is encouraged.
