Key Words: Error, syntactic construction, translation.
English Department Students are expected to have a good translation skill in native and target language syntaxes. So, when they made errors in translating bahasa Indonesia into English, the error did not caused by the limited syntax skill, namely syntactic construction. So, the researcher aims and is interested to describe the six syntactical errors in attributive, appositive, coordinative, complementative, predicative, and directive constructions made by English Department student’s cohort 2013 of Lambung Mangkurat University Banjarmasin. The research was conducted on October to November 2015.
A descriptive research is applied in this study. The data is described in tables. The population is 75 students. Random sampling is used. The instrument is written test that consists of 20 items text materials in bahasa Indonesia is translated into English.
The result shows that 100% students made error in attributive construction, 86,96% students made error in appositive construction, 100% students made error in coordinative construction, 100% students made error in complementative construction, 91,30% students made error in predicative construction, and 73,91% students made error in directive construction.
Students are suggested to improve their English grammar, learn bahasa Indonesia and English syntaxes, do more practice, have interaction with English medias, and pay attention the English material given.