A Corpus-Based Study on the Use of ‘Be’ Verbs in Indonesian ESL Students’ Writing (A Case Study)

Abstract

Error Analysis (EA) is beneficial for identifying the student’s current language knowledge state in order to provide information to the teacher to help their students become better language users. As English verbs are considered to be one of the most challenging grammatical items to learn by non-native English speakers, some research in Malaysia have investigated EA to identify errors in the use of “verb be”.  This topic, however, remained untouched in Indonesia’s context. Thus, this study investigated the types of errors in the use of “verb be” in the writing of 84 university students in a private university in Bandung, Indonesia. The results showed that Indonesian students tend to use “verb be” correctly when they write common phrases. Additionally, it showed that the errors tend to distributed almost evenly throughout the seven error categories. These results suggest that formulaic sequences can help English learners avoid errors and also suggest that another EA on the use of “verb be” should use a smaller number of error categories