ABSTRACT
The objective of this study is to determine the dominant error and find the sources of errors made by the students’ of SMAN 2 Temanggung in dealing with unreal (in the present) conditional sentence in the academic year 2005/2006.
This study was conducted under the consideration that unreal (in the present) conditional sentence has several variation in the usage, for example in the variation of auxiliary, verb phrase, variation of conjunction, and variation of sentence, so it is very possible if the learners find some difficulties in learning.
The population of this study was the second year students of SMAN 2 Temanggung in the academic year 2005/2006. The total population is 143 students and the writer took 35 (25%) students as the sample of the population.
The instrument of the study was prepared with the composition of multiple choice test items. It consisted of 90 items. The material comprises the variation of auxiliaries and main verb used in unreal (in the present) conditional sentence, conditional sentence with several forms of sentences and unreal (in the present) conditional sentence with omitting the if conjunction. To get the data, the writer administered the test to the sample/students.
To measure the strength of the validity and reliability, the writer conducted a try out test. Then the writer analyzed the data obtained from the try out test using Pearson Product-formula and spearman-Brown formula to find the value of reliability and validity. From the analysis the writer found that the instrument is reliable and from the result the writer took 90 valid items used in the real test.
The real test was conducted on November 3rd 2005. The result of the study revealed that the dominant error made by students is in dealing with the unreal (in the present) conditional sentence with omitting the if conjunction (inverted conditional sentence) and the writer found that that the sources of errors in dealing with unreal (in the present) conditional sentence were caused by interlingual error (23.4% caused by reinterpretation) and intralanguage errors (32.16% caused by ignorance of the rule restriction and 44.5% caused by false concept hypothesized) In order to minimize the errors, the writer suggested that the English teacher should give clearer explanation about unreal (in the present) conditional sentence and drill the students with more exercises about unreal (in the present) conditional sentence.
