A STUDY OF ERRORS IN THE THIRD SINGULAR PRONOUNS OF SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE BY USING INTERLANGUAGE ANALYSIS AS AN APPROACH

The purpose of this study is to analyze factors contributing to errors made in learning English as a target language (TL). Employing a case study research, the participant was interviewed for approximately 30 minutes about daily activities and experiences in learning English. This research focuses in analysing the participant‟s use of third singular pronoun in simple present tense. The findings revealed that errors made by TL learners are mainly influenced by some factors related to their TL‟s and native language‟s (NL) knowledge, systems and rules. These factors are coexisted and interconnected in TL learners‟ minds. This is against Robert Lado‟s argument which mentioned that learner made errors in TL learning because of the interference from NL. The study provides pedagogical implications that TL teachers should perceive errors made by the learners as a sign of language learning and development; therefore they should not be discouraged to learn. Also, TL teachers should be aware of their very important roles to help, to guide and to lead the learners‟ progress in learning the TL. The future subsequent studies should consider of involving more sample size over a longer period of time as to obtain to a more generalized finding.


INTRODUCTION
Target language (TL) learning is often challenging for learners.This is because of the vast differences between their native language and the TL in terms of rules, forms and knowledge.Some learners find learning fun while others find it frustrating.Learners exert considerable effort to become competent speakers or even to emulate native speakers.For example, they strive for perfect pronunciation.
In their efforts to learn the TL, learners usually make errors.Some teachers strongly believe making mistakes is an important part of the learning process and that it enables learners to improve their TL skills.Other teachers perceive errors negatively as obstacles in learning, and therefore believe errors need to be eliminated.These teachers have limited tolerance with learners who make errors.Other teachers might ignore errors, or they simply do not know how to address them.
It is widely assumed that errors occur because of the interference of NL and the degree of difference between TL and NL.
It appears that learners transfer rules, forms and knowledge of NL to TL.For example, learners in Indonesia might believe that the rules, forms and knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia are similar to English.Some theorists consider errors as a learning process.It demonstrates the mind"s ability to adapt, transform and restructure NL and TL language systems to a new language system.These theorists also believe that errors are reflections of the learner"s efforts to comprehend the TL systems and knowledge.In other words, the errors are reflections of a new language system being constructed.This new system combines elements of both the NL and the TL.Therefore, it is strongly argued that TL learners make errors as efforts to construct a new language system which is somehow different from the system of NL and TL and not interference of NL to TL.This paper is intended to analyze factors contributing to errors made in learning English as a foreign language.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
This theoretical framework will be divided into two sections.While the first section discusses the errors, types of errors and the reasons to make errors; the second discusses the theoretical approaches e.g.Contrastive Analysis (CA), Error Analysis (EA) and Interlanguage Analysis (IA).
The CA and EA have important role to explain the process of interference from NL to TL.Also the CA and EA, at some point, have significantly contributed to establish and emerge an integrated theory, that is, interlanguage theory (Mizuno, 1991) (Corder, 1974 as cited in Ellis, 1994, p. 56): 1. Pre-systematic errors occur when the TL learners are not aware of the existence of a certain system in the TL.

Systematic errors occur when
the TL learners constructed and use a system; however the system is not the right one.
3. Post-systematic errors occur when the TL learners understand and know the correct system but fail to use it consistently.
It seems that the errors occur because a learner has not yet fully understood and applied the system of TL (Ellis, Ibid).

Source of errors
According to Ellis (2003) there are three sources of errors, which are transfer, overgeneralization and omission.In transfer errors, the learners tend to use their NL knowledge to the TL.In overgeneralization errors, the learners appear to overgeneralise forms of the TL e.g. the use of "drinked" for "drank".However, in omission errors, the learners tend to simplify the forms of the TL, for example, "three apple" instead of "three apples".

Why people make errors?
According to Lado (as cited in However, some theorists (Ellis, 1994;Ellis, 2003;Lightbown & Spada, 1993;Mizuno, 1991) considered errors as learners" efforts to systematically construct and establish new systems of a language in which the new systems are someway different either from the TL or NL.Moreover, Corder (1967) suggested that errors are important evidence that the TL learners are in a process of acquiring TL.In other words, errors reflect the stage of systematic language development that the TL learners have reached (Ellis, 2003).However, if there are differences between NL and TL, there would be possibility of TL learners to make the errors (Lightbown & Spada, 1993).

Inter-language theory
In order to know and understand how and why the errors occurred  1987& Newson, 2007.Moreover, Cook (1988) believed that there are systematic and internal structures in human minds that make them able to construct, articulate and use the languages.In other words, the construction and use of language reflects the internal structure of human mind (Cook, 1993;Ellis, 2003;Lyons, 1977;Pienemann, 2003).
In addition, it is argued that in the NL speakers" minds, they know subconsciously rather than consciously the knowledge of their own NL systems (Radford, 2004).
In other words, this subconscious knowledge of language systems are "not learnt but already present in the mind" (Cook, 1988, p. 170).new knowledge of language system on the basis of their NL system.However, as Selinker continued, the new language system was somehow different either from the system of NL or TL.

Chomsky (as cited in
In other words, the new language system consists of some elements from NL and TL (Gass & Selinker, 2008) and some of the elements are not likely to have come from the NL and TL systems (White, 2003).
Similarly, it is also argued that "the learners are not fully distorting the NL system but inventing a system of their own" (Cook, 2001, p.16) so in some ways the new system is still based on the NL systems (White, 2003).This new language system is called as interlanguage development (Nicholas, Lightbown, and Spada, 2001) or as a trialand-error nature (Mizuno, 1991) which the later also lead to the TL learners" progress.Mizuno further added that the process of TL acquisition is pretty similar to the NL acquisition (young learners) as a trial-and-error nature.There is thus no right or wrong about the interlanguage errors (Gass and Selinker, 2008).
It is believed that TL learners employ various learning strategies to cope with their interlanguages errors (Coder, 1967& Ellis, 1994).In other words, the different kinds of errors learners make, actually reflect different strategies of learning the TL.One of the strategies is omission.According to Ellis (1994Ellis ( , 2003) ) omission is a way of simplifying the learning task by ignoring grammatical features that they are not ready to process.
Another thing, Skehan ( as cited in Han 2004) also found out that TL learners usually have natural tendency to emphasise on content, not on form.In addition, the omission was considered as an evidence of internal processing of the TL (Ellis, 2003) in order to construct their own language systems.

METHODS
This section presents the methods used in this study.It gives all detailed information about the participant, language feature, materials, data collection, data analysis and interpretation (Gass & Mackey, 2005)  Moreover, the reason to choose and use 3 rd singular pronoun in this research is that TL learners tend to omit -s, -ss or -es in the 3 rd singular verbs of simple present tense (Ellis, 2003).For example, "she eat banana" without adding -s to the verb eat.Some theorists believed that omission of -s in the verb eat is a way to construct a new language system (Cook, 1993;Lightbown & Spada, 1993;Gass & Selinker, 2009).It is thus assumed After identification, the second step is to analyse the kinds of language features (third singular of simple present tense) that are non-Englishlike produced by the participant.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
In this section, the findings are  (Ellis, 1994).Even though, as he admitted, he knew the 3 rd singular rules, he forgot to use the correct systems in conversation (line 172).He further admitted that he did not know why he forgot the systems (line 178).
The participant seems to simplify the rules and forms of the language he learnt.In other words, he omits the suffix -s of 3 rd singular verbs e.g. in line 14 "she make" instead of "she makes".It is likely that the participant transfers the NL rules, systems, and knowledge to TL (Lado, 1957as cited in Steilen (2005).In other words, it seems that NL (Bahasa Indonesia) and TL (English) share the same rules.
Steilen, 2005)  errors are made because the learners are influenced by the NL knowledge in which the learners just simply transfer the NL systems and knowledge to TL.
clearly that in English, direct objects whether noun or pronoun, follow the verb e.g."The cat eats the cookie, the cat eats it".In French, nouns of direct objects come after the verb e.g."Le chat mange le biscuit"-literally, "The cat eats the biscuit.However, pronouns of direct objects come before the verb, for example, "Le chat le mange"literally, "The cat it eats".It is thus CA would predict that the speakers of French who learn English might say: "The cat it eats" while the English speakers might say: "Le chat mange le".The CA is based the adult learners of TL and the young learners of NL had remarkably similar kinds of errors.For example, both learners would tend to add -ed of past tense in irregular verbs e.g.writed instead of wrote.In other words, when the learners of TL used writed instead of wrote, actually, the learners tried to construct their own system of language which would be different from the NL and TL.In order to have more effective method to investigate the errors, some theorists introduced a new method, errors analysis (EA).EA approach emphasised on how to identify and analyse different kinds of errors as efforts to understand how and why the errors occurred(Lightbown & Spada, 1993).They clearly stated that " errors analysis was based on the assumption that the speech of second language learners is a system in its own right-one which is rule-governed and predictable and very much like the system of young first language learners" (55).They further claimed that these errors reflected the learners" efforts to comprehend the TL system.Similarly, Susan and Selinker (2001) believed that errors produced by the TL learners.They further stated that the errors made by the learners in TL were compared with the form of TL itself.Like Susan and Selinker, Mizuno (1991) also believed that EA emphasised on errors production such as sounds and sentences produced by the TL learners.However, as Mizuno continued, EA and also CA tended to neglect the internal process of learning TL, for example, how and why the errors occurred.The similarities and differences between these two theories are obvious.CA and EA had similarity on the basis of production but difference on errors investigation.Both theories investigated and analysed the errors the learners made on the basis of production.However, while in CA tended to compare the errors between the NL and TL forms, EA tended to compare the errors the TL learners made with the forms of TL.It can be seen that even though both CA and EA had different approaches to investigate the errors, both theories shared similarities as they focused on the errors production rather that internal process of errors.
condition or can be acquired by human beings" (p.3) regardless of their languages, sexes or status.It can be said that, through this internalized linguistic systems, all human beings including those who learn another language have the ability to learn one or more language(s).Some theorists such asEllis (2003) claimed that the internalized linguistic systems become the basic knowledge of NL learners when they start learning the TL.In other words, there is an internal mental process in TL learners" minds in which the TL learners subconsciously recall and use previously acquired knowledge of NL systems to relate and acquire new knowledge of TL systems (Bochner, Duchesne, Krause, & McMauch, 2010).It also showed the ability of humans" minds to "adapt to the new language and restructure their language systems"

(
IL).The IL proposed by Selinker (as cited in Ellis, 2003) can be explained in this simple diagram below.This diagram simply explains how the IL closely related to both NL and TL.Selinker (1972) suggested that, even though.IL is closely related to NL and TL, IL has its own independent system as a language.As an independent language system, it seems that, as shown in the diagram above, IL becomes a connector between NL and TL.However, Cook (as cited in Cook 2001) argued that the TL learners, on the one hand, have the knowledge of their NL; on the other, their IL knowledge in TL.Cook further claimed that the knowledge of both NL and IL of TL coexist in the learners" minds or "the knowledge of two languages in the same mind: one person knows both languages" (p.16).The combined knowledge of both NL and IL of TL in the same mind as viewed by Cook is called multicompetence.The following diagram described by Cook as the multi-one of the reasons why some people see errors in TL as wrong is because the errors are measured against TL system.It is thus important, as Cook further argued, that the TL learners should not be assessed or judged their language acquisition like the TL speakers but as a sign of acquiring of their own IL.In addition, errors in IL should be considered either as an evidence of language ss or -es.For example, the uninflected base form of verb -eat is added with -s e.g.she eats two bananas every morning.Another example, "Maria goes to Coles every Sunday".The verb go is modified with -es.
that the participant in this study would omit -s, -ss, or -se in the 3 rd singular verbs.Unlike English, in Bahasa Indonesia there are no rules to add suffix -s, -ss or -es to the 3 rd person singular verbs.In other words, the different rules of two different languages would lead to errors.ProceduresFirst of all, the purpose of the study was briefly explained to the participant.After he demonstrated his understanding of the study, he would be given a brief instruction on how to answer the questions.He was instructed to use the third singular person e.g.she or my wife in simple present tense.After he clearly understood the instructions, he would be asked, with some questions previously prepared about his wife"s daily activities.In his response, he was expected to use the third singular person e.g.she or my wife and simple present verbs e.g.cooks.It was also expected that the participant would answer the questions in complete sentences.For example, the question "What does she cook every night?"should be answered "She cooks rice" instead of just "rice".The main reason that he answered the questions in a complete sentence was to see whether the participant would add -s, -ss or -es to the verbs.He was also asked for his permission to record the interview for data analysis.He was interviewed for 30 minutes about his wife"s daily activities and his experience learning English.AnalysisAs the main focus of this research is IL analysis, it will first list and describe the IL patterns of simple present tense of third singular usage.Gass and Selinker (2008) categorized the IL patterns produced by TL learners as English-like and non-English-like (errors) patterns of simple present of third singular usage.While the English-like refers to the structure of TL, non-English-like refers to IL.The first step is to identify the sentences produced by the participants based on the criteria of English-like and non-English-like.
system.The new system consists of some elements of NL and TL.It is also believed that the participant used the NL knowledge as a basic foundation to construct a new system when learning the TL.In other words, the knowledge of NL and TL coexist in the participant"s mind.When the participant produces a sentence "she make", baby wake up or she cook" without adding the suffix-s, it shows the internal process of constructing a new system in the participant"s mind.Cook believed that these sentences describe the temporary knowledge of English as TL.The participant tended to omit -s e.g.she cook which is against the TL systems.Omission is one of the strategies to simplify the TL systems.According to Ellis (2004) the participant ignored the correct grammatical rules because the participant is not ready to process the correct rules.Ellis also considered that omission is a strong evidence of inventing a new language system.One of the reasons why the participant omitted the -s because he had to think what to say in English and sometimes he needed to translate, in his mind, from Bahasa Indonesia to English or vice-versa (in line 148 …"but mostly to translate English to Indonesian uh...or Indonesian to English").It is believed that the knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia and English coexist in the participant"s mind.There is a strong possibility that the participant mixed the rules of both languages.The sentence e.g."he drink" the participant produced is different from Bahasa Indonesia or English in terms of rules.CONCLUSION In conclusion, it is now believed that TL learners make errors due to some factors related to their TL and NL knowledge, systems and rules.These factors are coexist and interconnected in TL learners" minds.When the TL learners produce a TL sentence, the sentence which is called as errors is different from the TL and NL in terms of knowledge, system and rule.These errors reflect the ongoing process of the learners" minds.For instance, when a TL learner says "She play badminton every Saturday in sport centre", without suffix -s in play, it describes a new structure of language construction in the TL speaker"s mind.It is also similar to those who speak Spanish, Chinese or Arabic as their TL.In other words, it is the learners" efforts to construct their own new language construction (IL) which dissimilar either from NL or TLIt can therefore be seen that interference is not the main reason why the TL learners make errors.However, to some extent, interference still contributes indirectly when the learners make errors.For example, learners might possibly identify the