An Analysis of Students' Errors in Writing Procedure Text at the 11th Grade of State Senior High School 3 Kisaran

Abstract

Writing remains a significant challenge for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, particularly when they are required to produce genre-based texts that demand appropriate grammatical structures, vocabulary, and sequential organization. This study investigates the types of errors made by eleventh-grade students at State Senior High School 3 Kisaran in writing procedure texts. Employing a descriptive qualitative approach, the study involved approximately 30 students from one purposively selected class and collected data through classroom observation, documentation, and a writing task requiring students to compose procedure texts. The students’ written work was analyzed using the Surface Strategy Taxonomy, which classifies errors into omission, addition, misformation, and misordering. The analysis identified 372 errors, with misformation emerging as the most frequent category (30.91%), followed by omission (28.49%), addition (23.66%), and misordering (16.94%). These findings demonstrate that students experience systematic difficulties in selecting appropriate linguistic forms, supplying obligatory grammatical elements, and organizing language accurately when constructing procedure texts. The study concludes that English writing instruction should provide more explicit and focused guidance on vocabulary selection, imperative sentence structures, grammatical accuracy, and systematic error awareness to strengthen students’ competence in procedural writing.