Abstract :
This study is entitled ?An Error Analysis in the Conversation of the Eighth Grade Students of SMPK St. Theresia Kupang in the School Year 2016/2017?. It was conducted in order to answer the following questions:
(1) What are the types of errors that occured in the conversation of the eighth grade students of SMPK St. Theresia Kupang? (2) What is the most common type of errors that occured in the conversation of the eighth grade students of SMPK St. Theresia Kupang? The objectives of the study are as follows: (a) to describe types of errors that occured in the conversation of the eighth grade students of SMPK St. Theresia Kupang (b) to describe the most common type of error that occured in the conversation of the eighth grade students of SMPK St. Theresia Kupang. The writer used descriptive method. The aim of the method is to describe the facts found in a study. The subject of this study was the eighth grade students of SMPK St. Theresia Kupang in the school year 2016/2017. Total number of the eighth grade students of SMPK St. Theresia Kupang was 168. The writer chose class VIIIA, from six classes. They were 20 students as the sample of the study. In collecting data, the writer used conversation. The topics were Facebook, My daily activities, Korean drama is interesting, Using handphone in school, and Valentine party. Pairs of students chose one of the topics and performed the conversation in front of the class. The conversations were recorded and transcribed. The result of conversation shows that (1) The errors committed by the eighth grade students of SMPK St. Theresia Kupang are Misformation, Omission, Addition and Misordering. Errors in students? conversation consist of those types and the total number of errors is 43. (2) The most frequent errors committed by the eighth grade students of SMPK St. Theresia Kupang is omission. It was 17 (39.53%) made by 9 students. In misformation the total number of errors is 16 (37.20%) made by 12 students, in adddition the total number of errors is 8 (18.61%) made by 7 students, and in misordering the total number of errors is 2 (4.66%) made by 2 students. Although speaking is not in English subject at senior and junior high schools but the students should practice speaking English. Seeing at the result of the research, the suggestions are offered as follows: (1) The students should learn more on how to speak English by concerning the grammatical aspects regarding tenses, verb, noun, and preposition. (2) The English teachers should pay more attention on the students? grammatical errors by providing practices on grammatical aspects particularly tenses, verb, noun, conjunction, adjectives and preposition.