GRAMMATICAL PROBLEMS IN THE LITERATURE REVIEW SECTION OF MASTER THESES

The one of the most important knowledge students must have in writing a thesis
is mastery of English grammar. A thesis with many grammatical problems will be
considered not of good quality. The aim of this research was to investigate the
grammatical problems in the literature review section of master theses and the
possible causes of grammatical problems in the theses written by the English
education postgraduate program students of the Faculty of Teacher Training and
Education of the University of Bengkulu. This mixed-method research used a
checklist, documentation, and interview as the instruments. The corpus of this
research was 20 master theses written by the English education postgraduate program
students who graduated in 2021. The result showed that the grammatical problems
found in the literature review section of the students' theses were verbs, pronouns,
adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions. The problems of verbs most often appeared,
especially in using subject-verb agreement and tense confusion. This research also
showed that the possible causes of the grammatical problems were carelessness, first
language interference, and translation. Carelessness was the main possible cause of
the grammatical problems committed by students. It indicated that students must learn
more knowledge of grammar by themselves. This implies that students still need more
practice to develop their writing skills, especially in grammar.
Keywords: Grammatical Problems, Literature Review Section, Theses