An Analysis on Undergraduate Students’ Abstracts at English Education Department in Manado State University

Abstract

The aim of this research was to find out and identify grammatical errors contained in abstract of undergraduate theses written by students at English Education Department in Manado State University. This research used descriptive method. In the data gathering, this study applied purposive sampling technique. The subject of this research was 50 abstracts of undergraduate theses published only in 2018 and then analyzed by using error analysis technique. Based on the findings, the most frequent error made by the students was omission with 19 errors (37.25%), addition with 8 errors (15.68%), archiform with 6 errors (11.76%), misformation with 11 errors (21.56%), and the least was misordering with 2 errors (3.92 %). This shows that there is still need for improvement in grammar teaching and learning for academic writing should be free from grammatical mistakes. From 50 abstracts documented by the researcher, there are only 21 abstract which are grammatically correct, and 29 abstracts contain 51 errors. Since abstract is the published piece for research report by graduated students, there should be more concern in abstract writing, particularly its accuracy in grammar.Keywords: Grammatical error, abstract, undergraduate thesis, English Education Department