Keywords: Error Analysis, Grammatical Errors, Writing, Descriptive Paragraph

This research was conducted to find out the most frequent grammatical errors
in writing the descriptive paragraph. It was believed that the junior high school
students who are considered as the first stage learners in learning English produce
various types of errors in writing the descriptive paragraph. In this research, the
researcher investigated the students’ errors in writing English descriptive paragraph
based on Corder’s theory at the second-grade students of SMPN 15 Banjarmasin.
Descriptive method was used in this research. The sample was taken by
applying purposive random sampling technique in order to narrow down the
population of this research. The total population was 120 students. There were two
classes out of four taken as a sample. The two classes were used as a sample; class
8A and 8D with total students 60.
The research result showed that the most frequent error was the selection error
with the total 51 errors or 43,2%. Moreover, it is followed by the error of omission
was 44 errors or 37,3%, the error of addition was 18 errors or 15,5%, and the error of
ordering was 5 errors or 4%. There were 118 total errors that the students made by the
students from three tests.
Based on the data analyzed, it can be concluded that the students made all
types of the errors based on Corder’s theory, such as omission, addition, selection,
and ordering. The most frequent errors done by the second-grade students of SMP
Negeri 15 Banjarmasin with the percentage 43,2% was the error in selection.
Therefore, it was suggested that the students should learn more about grammar and
structure. Also, the teacher should pay more attention to the problems grammatical
error and give more emphasis in their teaching process. Additionally, it was
suggested for the other researchers to develop it in further research by analyzing the
errors based on the resource of the error occurrences.