Grammatical Errors on BIPA Students (Indonesian Language for Foreign Speakers) in Writing Practice for Beginner Level

Abstract

Writing skill is one of the active language skills that is important in expressing ideas, thoughts, and feelings. Writing is also a difficult thing for BIPA students, especially for beginners with academic goals. The Indonesian language has the standard Indonesian grammar that BIPA students should understand with the process that is not relatively easy. In general, the BIPA students experienced several errors repeatedly in writing, such as word choices, sentence structures, affixes, and word mixing. In fact, most of their issues are in affixes. The students get confused when the affix of memeets the base verb, for instance: (me-)+pukul will be menpukul or (me-)+makan will be memakan. This study will analyze some examples of errors more profound in the final exam from BIPA students in the beginner class. Most of them are from Thailand, Egypt, France, and Timor Leste. Their backgrounds are from undergraduate students to doctoral students who are interested in learning Indonesian studies in their country or planning to study in some universities in Indonesia.