GRAMMATICAL PROBLEMS IN THE METHODOLOGY SECTION OF MASTER THESES

The methodology section is one of the most important aspects of a master
thesis because it describes how the research was done and what method and
procedure was taken in that research. This research aimed to discover the most
common grammatical problems and possible causes of grammatical issues in
master theses written by English education postgraduate program students at
Bengkulu University, especially in the methodology section. This study used a
mixed method, namely qualitative and quantitative. Most of the grammatical
problems were investigated quantitatively, and the causes of grammatical
problems were studied qualitatively. The corpus of this study was 20 master
theses written by English education postgraduate program students who graduated
in 2021. The findings showed that the most frequent grammatical problems found
in the methodology section of the master theses were incorrect verbs which
occurred 44 times (38,60%), and dominated by tense confusion and subject-verb
agreement, that confused the reader. The causes of the grammatical problems
found in the methodology section of the theses was carelessness, first language
interference, and translation. Carelessness becomes the highest possible cause of
the grammatical problems committed by students, followed by first language
interference and translation. The conclusion of this research provides information
on the most frequent grammatical problems and possible causes in the
methodology section of master theses.
Keywords: Grammatical Problems, Methodology Section, Writing Theses.