Muhamad Nuh Supriatna
09211210095
In learning English students are required to understand grammar. In the process of learning English, many students got misinformation about English material which causes them to make errors or mistakes. Error analysis is important to do as one of the evaluaation subtance. Because of that, the writer carries out a study on students' error in differentiating between independent clause and dependent clause in complex sentence.
In this study the writer used qualitative method. The samples of the research were 20 students from the fourth semester of English Education Program, Faculty of Teachers' Training and Education, Bogor Ibn Khaldun University. The data collection was done by using the test of instrument consisting of 25 questions. The writer limited the research into two abilities (identifying and positioning) to differentiate between independent clause and dependent clause in complex sentence.
Based on the data collected, it is found that there were many students that got the diffiulty in differentiating between independent clause and dependent clause from two cagories, those are identifying and positioning. First, the students' error in identifying independent clause was 3,5% and 7,5% for identifying dependent clause. Second and the last was the students error in positioning independent clause that reached 60% and 27% for positioning dependent clause. thus, from amount of the students' error, it is identified that the most common error made by the students was in positioning ability. It reached 43,5% of students who got error in this ability. It means that some students still had difficulty in the concepts of idependent clause and dependent clause differences in complex sentences.
Keyword : Independent clause, dependent clause, identifying, positioning, error analysis.